La Paz, Bolivia (La Cumbre - Coroico)

Tuesday, January 11, 2005:

I had heard of the road from La Cumbre (altitude 4670 meters) to Coroico (altitude 1800 meters) well before my trip began. This passage, starting from a high mountain pass over La Paz and winding down and northeast toward the start of Bolivia`s Amazon Basin, has earned the dubious distinction of being the "World`s Most Dangerous Road," and is often more simply dubbed the "Death Road" by many La Paz tour operators. On average approximately 100 people die each year when their vehicles crash, slide on mud or otherwise fall over the steep, unprotected ledges that descend 1,000s of feet to the floor of the rainforest valley below. The new year is starting off poorly because, on January 6, 2005, the drivers of two large buses inexplicably decided to race each other up a narrow stretch of the road that could not support both vehicles (the fact that it was and is now the rainy season did not help). The exact details of the accident are sketchy, but at least 25 people died and more than 100 were injured, many critically, when the buses tumbled off a ledge with a relatively short drop-off (were it not for the fact that the ledge was not completely sheer, there would not have been a chance of survivors).

Before my trip began, I had no intention of going down the Death Road under any circumstances whatsoever. I had read other stories of accidents as well as travel writer Tim Cahill`s humorous account (in the book Road Fever) of superstitious, panicked drivers crossing themselves, breaking into a cold sweat, and breaking bottles of wine against their car tires before descending. But travel does strange things to you. After several days in La Paz, I couldn`t imagine leaving the city without taking a bike trip down to Coroico. People did it every day and, after some investigation, it seemed that the chances of making it on a bicycle were more than decent. Riding a large bus or truck, particularly at night, is another story altogether, however (riding at night is a "death wish" says Lonely Planet).

In addition to my growing compulsion to do something stupid (other than the usual everyday stuff, of course), I needed to find myself an activity after returning to La Paz from Rurrenabaque and the Amazon. The roads in and out of La Paz were closed indefinitely by a series of blockades, courtesy of the El Alteños that live around the rim of the valley La Paz is nestled in. Until they got bored or the police lost patience and beat the crap out of them (as many of the more affluent residents of La Paz were not-so-quietly hoping for), I was stuck. What to do? Out of sheer boredom and ennui, why not catapult down a mountain at 50 kilometers an hour with uninterrupted 1,000 meter drops immediately off to the side of the road? Well. Why not?

I signed up with the aptly named "Downhill Madness" on Monday (www.andesamazon.com: Check under "Mountain Biking" and "La Cumbre --- Coroico). I then briefly ran down a list of things I needed to do to prepare myself for the trip. There wasn`t much. Getting plenty of sleep the night before and making sure I had a pair of clean underwear. That about did it.

Well rested and decked out in my finest pair of clean underwear, I was at the office of the tour company by 8 AM sharp. This wasn`t too hard, since the place was just across the street from my hotel. Although I was on time, I found that I was the last person in the group to arrive. Everybody else had picked out helmets, gloves and a thin pair of windproof pants to wear over the pair they were already wearing. I quickly got my things together and hopped into the van, which had a rack for the bikes on the roof. There were 8 other people in the group, as well as two Bolivian guides who spoke passable English. There was a couple from Johannesburg, a couple from London and a couple from France. There was also a guy in his mid-20s from London and another guy in his mid or late 20s from Oregon. As we started talking in the van, he told me he was taking 9 months to travel while waiting to hear back from law schools he was applying to.

We began the trip in the van with a flat tire in the first five minutes. This wasn´t encouraging. As we sat on the side of the road and waited for the driver and the guides to do something, we saw two other vans with bikes mounted on top pass us by. One of their guides looked out the window at the sagging tire and laughed loudly as he flew by.

Fortunately, the company actually had had the brains to pack spares in the back and we were back on track within less than 10 minutes. We began climbing up out of the city past some of the poorer sections of La Paz (incredibly steep hills supporting shacks and very little in the way of vegetation; parts of the city look like craters on the moon or, with the cracked reddish mud, Mars).

The higher we went, the foggier and colder it became. Finally, after some 45 minutes, the driver pulled the van over to the side of the road and we got out. We were on a large patch of dirt to the side of the highway, facing a small lake that was barely visible in the pale white mist that surrounded us. I could see my breath. I could also feel the altitude --- I had never stood on ground this far above sea level (4670 meters). There was another group nearby, its guides removing their bikes from the roof of their van, just as ours were doing. When they finished, the guides briefed us on the best way to brake and on the way the trip would be organized. One guide would ride in front, one in back. We would stop every 15 minutes or so to make sure the group was sticking together and to make sure that there weren´t any problems with the bicycles. Finally, we were told that it was extremely important to stay in the lane closer to the ledge at all times because the traffic ascending the mountain drives in the distant lane and there were numerous blind bends to get flattened on if you didn´t watch your position. After the briefing, we took a few minutes to test the bikes. It was immediately clear to me that I was on a much better bike than the one I had been on in Ecuador, riding down the mountains above Papallacta (for any biking afficianados, the bikes were Rocky Mountain "Flow" models; the shocks and brakes were excellent).

At about 9 AM, we started off down the road. The first 30 kilometers of the 64 kilometer stretch to Coroico are paved. The downside is that there is slightly more traffic here and it moves more rapidly. We pulled over several times to let large trucks pass us. At the same time, we flew by some trucks that weren´t moving very quickly. The wind and the cold were biting and a light freezing rain was falling. By the time we made it to the first checkpoint, most of us had trouble feeling our fingers. However, I found that the ride was fairly smooth and that I wasn´t being bounced around like a ragdoll as I had initially feared. This encouraged me to pick up more speed as we started the rainy and windy second leg.

I rode behind the first guide and two other members of the group. They would disappear into the fog at times, but not for very long. The shoulder of the road to my right was also shrouded in fog. Two meters or so from the end of the pavement, a white mist concealed a sharp drop off the side of the mountain. There were shoulder guards in several places here, however, and the distance from the ledge was fairly comfortable on a bicycle.

After 30 or 40 minutes, we passed a police cocaine checkpoint. While coca is legal, the instruments and chemicals for converting coca into cocaine are not. Anyone passing the checkpoint was subject to inspection, however, nobody stopped us (the police no doubt being used to constant groups of crazy gringo tourists passing by on bike).

As we descended, the rain let up, the temperature climbed and the fog began to lift. We could see snow-capped mountain rise thousands of feet immediately above us and rainforest dropping away below us. Occassionally, a boy with a herd of llamas or sheep would cross the road in front of us. Otherwise, there were few cars and few signs of life. An occassional hut on the side of the road, little more.

A gradual uphill stretch (about 25 minutes) proved to be the hardest of the trip (in my view). While there was little risk of falling off the mountain (again, the shoulder of the road was broad, allowing some margin of error with a fall), ascending at over 3000 meters was brutal. I was panting loudly throughout the climb and could hear the heavy breathing of other group members from 20 meters away or more.

After a couple of hours, the guides stopped us. We looked down the mountain at the mist-shrouded road in front of us and saw the pavement give way to dirt, rock and mud. The road narrowed significantly as well. There was no shoulder on the left side --- the edge of the road marked an abrupt descent into oblivion.

The guides explained that this was where things became "more difficult" (read: "more dangerous"). We should always stop when traffic was trying to pass us because we could make the drivers dangerously nervous otherwise. We should also carefully control our speeds and watch for patches of mud and water. Finally, the guides wanted us to split into two groups, a "faster" and "slower" group, each with one guide leading it. I went into the fast group with the two guys from London, the South African guy and Oregon.

We passed some other bikers and a number of vehicles. I quickly realized that the bikes were far better suited to the road than most of the cars and trucks going down or up it. At approximately $800 each, they probably had more value too. Most importantly, the brakes were good --- many of the worst accidents on the road occur due to vehicular brake failure. Needless to say, many of the cars in Bolivia are not kept in the best condition.

The scariest thing about the road --- aside from glimpses of the bottom of the ravine to the left --- was the number of crosses along the side memorializing those who had died there. There was also a plaque in Hebrew for a 23 year old Israeli who had died there in 2001. One person pointed out the shattered blue roof of a large bus that lay several hundred feet down the mountainside. I was glad that I missed a view of it until later when we rode the van back up the road on our return to La Paz.

There were a number of waterfalls running from the cliffs above us thousands of feet down and over the road. It was impossible not to get soaked and, with the mud our tires kicked up, we quickly became covered in dirt. It would fly into our eyes and mouths and there wasn´t much to be down about it.

At several points, large trucks and buses passed by. It was easy to see why the road was so dangerous for these vehicles: they weighed many tons and were traveling on a road of slippery mud that was perhaps not even a foot wider than they were themselves. They went very slowly as a result, but one of the guides pointed out that mudslides were a possibility here and that the cliffside edge of road could collapse from under them.

In the last hour, as my arms and hands became sore from continuous breaking and I found myself spitting mud out of my mouth continuously, it started to pour rain. I found myself riding through streams of water several inches deep and getting rain and dirt in my eyes. I had to slow down and alternate eyes. At several points I was straining to keep one of them open, even though it had mud and dirt in it.

After approximately 6 hours (including time for breaks and a snack) we made it to the bottom intact and covered in mud (faces included). A resort/eco-lodge provided us with hot showers and served us lunch in an open-walled wooden building that provided views out into the rainforest. A monkey, clearly a pet of the owner, scampered around us while we ate. A pair of vibrant blue and orange parrots sat perched on one of the railings nearby.

Having biked down the World´s Most Dangerous Road, we now had to drive back up it in our van. The driver had taken this path many times before and seemed comfortable --- we thought he seemed a little too comfortable, as he would often look over at the guides to joke with them while waving his hands around in the air expressively. When he saw us taking pictures out of the window, he pulled the van closer to the edge and stopped, thinking we would appreciate this. We didn´t. From the window, we could see straight down (something we fortunately couldn´t do while on the bikes).

About halfway up the unpaved section of the road, a large bus in front of us became stuck in the mud. It was on a particularly steep and narrow stretch and, with no way of passing it, we watched traffic back up behind us and coming in the other direction down the mountain. After spinning the wheels of the vehicle several times, the bus driver forced all of the passengers off of the bus --- no doubt for their own good. He tried again and, fortunately, broke loose.

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, though not without a few hair-raising moments. Several minutes away from the office, the driver of our van decided to cut off a large and fast-moving truck by making a sharp left turn in front of it. While being flattened in a stupid routine accident on the way back from biking down and driving back up the World´s Most Dangerous Road would have been an ironic ending to the day (and period), we were spared by several fractions of a second. In general, I would rather bike down the Death Road again than drive with 90% of the drivers in Bolivia.