La Paz & Death Road
Early one monring we set out on a down hill bike ride from La Cumbre (at around 4,600m above sea level) to the sleepy town for Chorico at around 1,700m – 3,000m of descent over around 65km of road. Well there was a little bit of uphill, which at altitude was hard work!
Apparently the road was given its name by the Inter-American Development Bank in 1995 when, on average, a truck used to fall off the side of the road every two weeks. However, there is now a new road and it is now basically only used by cycling companies. We didn’t met a single vechicle (appart from the support vechicles) on our trip down from the high altiplano through the yungas, although apparently this is quite rare.
The first 2 hours were spent on asphalt getting to the start of the ripio road – which was narrow, twisting, with a long drop to the bottom – not helped by the fact that you have to cycle on the left (i.e. by the drop off) as the truck come up on the right, but the wall as the road has a habit of crumbling away at the sides – reasurring – but great fun.
I guess if we’d had an accident, we could have visited the witches market near our hotel to pick up a llama foetus or two to help mend the borken bones!
Tags: Bolivia, Death Road, La Paz, Travel
Jenni
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