Camino del muerte

Getting a month off for Xmas break sounds good until you realize that you have to give up breaks in the first semester to have enough days to do it. The fact is that pretty much all accredited schools require teachers to work 180 days, and if you take off a month you have to make it up somewhere else. Needless to say the first semester of school has been a long one. We did, however, get 2 days off for Thanksgiving, we are an "American" school after all, and a group of us decided to head to La Paz and try our luck riding bikes down the World's Most Dangerous Road. 

Also known as the Bolivian Road of Death, this road was built by Paraguayan prisoners of war during the 1930's. This region of Bolivia is called the Yungas and the road connects the Amazon region to the capital city of La Paz. The statistics are gruesome. An estimated 200 - 300 people die per year on this road, about one vehicle every two weeks. This is because the road is a single track along steep cliffs and this region is often foggy and rainy. Of course there are no guardrails and when the vehicles drop, they drop.

A new road has recently opened that is paved and wider, and the Death road has become a downhill adventure on a bike. It's just one of those "things" that you have to do when you visit Bolivia, that and the Salt Flats. I've been in Bolivia for a little over a year now and it was time to give it a try.

You start the ride after a 45 minute bus ride from La Paz to La Cumbre at an altitude of 4,700 meters. That's 15,500 feet. The sun's intensity burns your skin cells and it's a struggle to catch your breath as you gear up with the rented equipment to head down 63 km of the World's Most Dangerous Road.

The company we chose is called Gravity Assisted and has the best reputation. They provide all the gear necessary to make the ride as comfortable and safe as possible. They take your height beforehand so that the bike is set just for you. My bike, "los gatos", my padded bike shorts and I were ready to go.

The first part of the journey is on a paved section of the road, which is not technically considered the death road. This part has more traffic and since it's paved you can really get going fast. I don't have many photos from my camera, since my main task was to pay attention to the road and not get hit by a car or go off the cliff's edge. One of our guides rode up ahead and took photos for us and we each got a burned disk to take home. Here's some photos from the first part of the journey.

After an 8 km uphill section, appropriately named, Heartbreak Hill, we caught our breath enough to continue on to the unpaved section which is where the death road begins. To the left you can see the paved section continues on, a recently completed project, but to the right is our destination... on the dirt death road.

The first section built my confidence but as soon as we hit the dirt, I hit the brakes. The brakes are very touchy. You have to be careful how you press them because that could cause you to wreck. Ahhhhhh, so many things to think about and all I want to do is look around and observe my surroundings. I had a boyfriend once that blamed my constant looking around while driving as the cause of traffic problems in our city... I guess I better stay focused.

There were no deaths on the death road, at least not today!