In my nearly thirty years of existence I have done a lot of stupid things. There are only a few of those stupid things I am proud of though, and today was one of them.

After breakfast, I walked to the Downhill Madness office, where myself and eight others were kitted out with trousers, a jacket, gloves and a helmet. We then went with the bus to La Cumbre, the start of today's adrenalin rush.

Getting there was half the fun: our driver, Sebastiano, had to navigate steep streets, low electric wires (no mean feat with the mountainbikes on top of the van) and a deviation just to get us out of La Paz.

We got to La Cumbre about an hour later, and got to try out our bikes. David, who is a guy from Glasgow and one of our two guides, explained how the gears worked, and what we needed to do (stay on the right on the asphalt track, don't break with the front break alone unless you want to topple over, don't break continually unless you want your breaks to overheat and die.)

Now, I'm not very good with gears at the best of times. I forget my left from my right, forget which one makes it harder to peddle and which one easier. And hurtling down a mountain at high speed does not make it easier to remember... but there was no time to worry, because we were off.

David went at the front, his yellow and blue jacket soon no more than a speck in the distance. Santos, our second, Bolivian guide, went at the back. He really looked the part: bandana over his slick black hair, cool shades and very, very confident.

The first bit was asphalt, easy and fast. Very fast. David said that without breaking, you could go up to 60-70 km per hour. After a few corners, I gained some confidence and actually overtook some of the slower riders. It was great fun, there wasn't much traffic and I was having a ball. I knew it wouldn't last though...

We'd reached the end of the asphalt and had a baño (well, a hole in the ground) stop at the coca checkpoint, and then the road became rocks and sand, soon to be rocks and mud as it had started to rain. Badly. Adding to that, we had reached the only uphill bit of the entire journey.

I was fine for a bit but then started to have trouble breathing. We were still at about 4000 metres at that point, and I just started wheezing, so I had to tell Santos I had to walk for a bit. I tried to bike the downhill bits, but because of the rain I couldn't see properly and I was scared to go into one of the many holes in the road, so I went very, very slowly. Luckily Santos was very patient. In the end, I didn't arrive much later than the rest, who were having a banana.

We had to set off pretty quickly as it had started to rain even harder. It was tough, with lots of holes and loose rocks in the road, and I could barely see because of the streaming rain. We also went round a tunnel and the road just dropped, making me go at high speed withouth being able to see. Scary stuff.

In a way it was lucky the clouds were so low, because at least you couldn't see the thousand metre drops at the edge of the road... yet. At the little settlement of Chuspipata we had reached the 'actual' Death Road.

This is the road where more vehicles plunge over the edge than anywhere else, and where there are more fatal casualties per year than anywhere else in the world. It's not hard to see why: it's a 3.2 metre dirt road, plunging from 4640 metres to 1295 metres in altitude over just 64 km. There are vertical drops at the edge of the road of over 1000 metres, with barely a tree to stop you falling.

So you could say it's hardly suitable for the large amount of buses, trucks and cars that go over every day, damaging the road even more through their weight. The amount of crosses you see by the end of the road (cynically called 'Bolivian danger signs') serve as a reminder to how many people have lost their lives here.

It would, of course, be naive to think you yourself are safe from all danger, on your bike. Not only are you relying on your own reflexes and alertness, but on those of every coca-chewing driver on the road as well. David said most biking accidents happen with people either overestimating themselves and going too fast, or with people looking at the scenery instead of the road and not paying attention. At least he wasn't trying to pretend it wasn't dangerous at all, but gave us all fair warning.

I asked him if he had any tips for people with glasses who could't see where they were going, to which he replied deadpan: 'Don't clean your glasses while you are on your bike'. Very useful, that.

Anyway, we started going down the Death Road, stopping frequently when the signallers with their red and green flag (traffic controllers who warned trucks of trucks coming the other way) told us to wait. We went through a waterfall, which would have been out lunch spot but it was still raining a little so we continued for a bit until we got to a wider, but dustier piece of road, where we had a sandwich. By this time, we were all completely wet and very muddy.

We went down the dust road, being choked by sand whenever a lorry came past, and were soon dry, even if we were eating sand... I took it easy (but still going pretty fast) as the dust was blinding me about as much as the rain had before, and there was a lot of sand and loose rocks, which gets slippery and hard to control at high speed. By this time, the clouds were behind us and we had full view of the landscape, which was awe-inspiring, if terrifying.

We could see the town of Coroico before us, and we knew we were nearly there. But first we had a little bit of single track yet to do. There were no cars to distract us here, but it was steeper than anything we had done before, plus it was very dry sand. I nearly went into a shrub, and got off at the two steepest corners, but I managed to stay on for the photo, and towards the end I sort of got the hang of it, skidding down all the way...

And that was it. Been there, done that and got the t-shirt, which said I was a survivor of the Death Road... It was one of those experiences where you only get scared afterwards. At first, you get on with it, but as soon as you get safely off your bike, the adrenalin hits you and you just start shaking with delayed fear.

After settling down, we had a shower at the eco-lodge of Yolosa and some delicious food, and finally had the chance to talk to each other a bit. I sat next to Yves, A Belgian from Liège. His girlfriend was ill so she wasn't there. They were flying back home tonight. Simon, a Brit who was spending Christmas in Rio. Swiss girls Evita and Helen, who, together with Mathias, were not coming back with us but going to Coroico. And a Portuguese guy who lived in New York. There was a monkey who stole our bread!

We set off around four in the van, changing a back tyre on the way. Simon went to make a phone call and Sebastiano put the van on the side of the road. Two seconds later we heard a big bang, followed by a cloud of smoke. One of the auxiliary tyres had blown (in the back, you have four tyres, two left and two right). Sebastiano had a look at it, shrugged his shoulders and said: 'Es OK. No importe, no lo necessitamos'. (It's OK, it doesn't matter, we don't need it)

I could hear the Portuguese guy mumbling 'Famous last words', which was not very reassuring. Simon and I were thinking perhaps we had put on our 'Death Road Survivor' t-shirt too soon as we still had to go back up the same way, in the van, which now had a flat auxiliary tyre...

On the way up, we could see the improvised Bolivian road rules in action:
1. Upcoming traffic has right of way (which means lots of trucks backing up on steep hill slopes until they found a space in the road, next to the cliff, where they could get out of the way)
2. Downhill traffic goes on the outside (which means they can see the outside tyres, at the edge, better)
3. Warn drivers of what's ahead (which means lots of hand signals)
4. Stop for people in trouble (which means picking up cholas with all their shopping when another truck has broken down)
5. Don't, on any account, let your concentration waver (this is a tricky one as they all chew coca. Except our driver, Sebastiano, who was such a great driver I could have hugged him when we arrived safely)

La Paz, in our absence, had transformed itself into one big market place. A lady tried to get into my bag, she already had it prised half open when I felt it. I hadn't been too careful because all she would find was dirty laundry...

I had Burger King for dinner as it was still too early to go to a restaurant and I was knackered. I read my book in the hotel, already feeling my muscles in my arms tense up...