The worlds most dangerous road
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
OK, I´ll be honest, I pretty much only did this because it sounds cool. I haven’t really been mountain biking before and I don’t really like going fast down hills on small unsturdy things like bikes. But there I was at the top on this hard core mountain bike dressed like I actually know what I was doing.
There’s lots of companies that do this ride and I went with Gravity who started the whole thing and are known as the best. I wasn’t sure it would make much difference but after seeing other groups I’m glad I chose Gravity. One of the guides from the other group actually biked off the cliff (luckily only fell a couple of meters) and the people were riding all over the road acting like idiots, and gravity actually carry rescue gear soooo if you are going to do this ride I would would really really recommend you go with the best, as it is actually quite dangerous and people do die.
So we drove about an hour out of La Paz, had the big safety talk and had about an hour of biking down hill on paved roads to get used to the bikes. I figured I´d just go really slowly but our guide said that people have accidents because they either go to fast or too slow and can’t get to somewhere safe when trucks come past…damn. Anyway finally we arrived at the top.
The road is so dangerous because its about 3 meters wide with a huge cliff on one side and there’s heaps of big trucks going up and down. About 100 people die every year but biking is probably the safest way to go down. Its not paved, its wet, bumpy and very muddy. There are these little alcoves every so often which you stop in when trucks come and the guides have whistles to let you know if there’s traffic coming. It took me awhile to trust that the bike wasn’t going to fall over every time I hit a rock, but I was OK, I didn’t fall off which was good! It was pretty amazing scenery, very cloudy which meant you couldn’t see the drop so much, which is good for your mental state.
We rode through rivers and under waterfalls, it was pretty amazing! It took about 5 hours and I did not let go of the brakes once, my hands were so sore at the bottom, as was my arms legs, ass…it was hard work. Don’t think I’ll be a full time mountain biker but it was cool to be able to do and I got a free t-shirt…much like every second tourist in Bolivia. At the bottom we had a big lunch and a shower and this really nice hotel. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to stay the night so headed back up to La Paz that night. A very long day, and had to get up a 5am the next morning for a flight to the Amazon…
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