Daring the World's Most Dangerous Road

Date of trip: Saturday, 3 October 2009

It is impossible to come to Bolivia (especially to La Paz) and not hear of the World’s Most Dangerous Road or Death Road (El Camino de la Muerte) as Bolivians refer to it. It used to be the case that you would not only hear of it, but also have to travel on it if you were going to the Amazon region of the country. That is, until 2007 when a new road was finally finished and opened to traffic. Cars still sometimes use the Death Road, but rarely. Thankfully. Because the road’s “fame” originated from the 200 to 300 victims it would take every year; people who plunged to their end off the edge of the cliff. Today, the Death Road is mostly used by tourists on bike tours down to the Yungas town of Coroico. Many tour agencies in La Paz offer the trip – some more experienced and better equipped than others. That’s why it is very important to pick well before you make the trip. We heard stories of people going on tours with agencies that had bikes with very bad brakes. You don’t want to risk that on this road, trust me. When it came to picking whom we would go with, the decision boiled down to two agencies – Gravity Assisted and Madness Bolivia. Both are recommended by the Lonely Planet and both had been recommended to us by friends who had personally taken the tour. Madness was offering a discount on the price at the time we were looking to go, so with Madness we went.

The days before we were booked to make the trip, it had rained almost every day. I wasn’t looking forward to biking the road with rain or fog. Luckily, the day of, it cleared up. The sky was bright blue; the sun beating down strongly. We had heard that normally a group on any day consists of at most 10 to 12 people. The day we went, there were 24 of us! Talk about a caravan of bikes. (We later learned that a tour group of 14 Aussies had signed up at the last minute.) We met up early on Saturday morning, had breakfast, gathered our gear, loaded up into three mini-buses and departed for El Cumbre – the high point, from which our descent would begin. Three guides plus the mini-buses were to accompany us all the way down to Yolosa (our end point). After some brief instructions and testing of the bikes, we were on our way. The first part of the descent follows the new, paved road. It is a fast, smooth ride downhill. Hugging the curves, wind in your face, enjoying the scenery. I might add that when we started, I was wearing my ski jacket and gloves. It was pretty cold, especially with the wind. The lower we rode, the warmer it got, and the layers started coming off. The whole group stopped a couple of times. I stopped more often to take pictures and just admire the scenery without having to worry whether I might topple over. The landscape down to the Yungas is pretty impressive. You start out at La Cumbre with nothing but barren rocks and brown hillsides. But this quickly changes and the metamorphosis goes through more grass and some bushes until you reach the point where the tropical vegetation begins and the humidity shoots up. We passed through a drug checkpoint (although there they mostly check people coming from the other direction, since that is coca country) and a checkpoint where we had to pay 25 Bs each to use the road to Coroico and sign our names, along with passport numbers and nationality. I have never been to a country where there are as many checkpoints as I have seen in Bolivia so far, but that is a subject for another post. 

At one point, our descent down the new road ended and the real “death part” of the journey began – on the old, narrow, gravel road. When I saw it, it was hard for me to imagine that this road had been used with such frequency in the past. It was even harder for me to imagine that two cars, let alone two trucks or buses, could pass each other on the narrow surface. Because that is all it is. A narrow, flat gravel surface that winds along the edge of the mountains, with no protective barrier of any kind separating you from the open air. Needless to say, I tried to stay far from the edge and relied on my brakes quite a bit, especially in the beginning. After a while, you get used to the surface, the constant bumps and become more familiar with what your bike can and can’t do on this road. And you loosen up and enjoy the ride. And it is a spectacular ride. Aside from the sheer adrenaline rush, the stunning scenery all around you makes for an almost surreal experience. You feel really tiny compared to the massive green hills around you, the cliff below you, and the brown thread of a road winding its way along the hillside far ahead or below. By the time we arrived in Yolosa, about 4 hours later, I was in a T-shirt, sweaty, and ready for a beer.
 

After a brief pit stop, lunch, and a dip in the swimming pool in a nearby hotel, we made our way to the place where we would spend the night. (We had decided to stay overnight in Yolosa. Everyone else in our group, except for one person, returned that same afternoon to La Paz.) La Senda Verde – eco-lodge and animal refuge. We had been told it is a pretty unique and fun place. We were too tired to explore that evening but the next day we found out why. We made the acquaintance of several monkeys (capuchin, spider and squirrel), a couple of dogs, a very curious coati, a bear, and several guinea fowl, macaws, and parrots. The thing that most amazed me about the place is that all these animals co-existed in perfect harmony – the dogs playing with the monkeys, the monkeys teasing the macaws, and the coati… well the coati was just nosy about everything. Mostly, it would sniff along the ground with its long snout (our hunch was that he was looking for ants or worms), but then when it got close to us, it sniffed us out pretty much everywhere and later proceeded to do the same with one of the dogs while it was sleeping. After breakfast, we observed the bear being fed, after which we decided to visit the pool. That’s where we discovered the capuchin monkeys – playful, cheeky and super curious. One minute they were trying to steal something away from us, the next, one was giving me a hug. They were the most adorable things and made the cutest sounds, especially when they weren’t getting their way. Now, how can anyone resist that? We played with the capuchins and one spider monkey and her baby for over an hour. That has probably been the highlight of my stay in Bolivia so far. At the end, it was hard to leave. And I guess some of the monkeys didn’t want us to leave either. The spider monkey and her baby hugged me as I got up to go and promptly fell asleep in my lap. Trying to separate myself from them was quite an endeavor, as they would simply change position and fall back asleep again. Well, in the end the owner had to extricate me from them, sad as it was.

We met up with the Madness group that had done the tour the following day to return to La Paz. Up at La Cumbre, it was foggy and rainy. Guess we really had lucked out with the weather after all.