So I was in La Paz again for just one more day before making my way back towards Peru for my return flight to Buenos Aires in just over a weeks time. I had been in and around La Paz for over 2 weeks now and, with valid excuses, hadn't had the chance to do one of the most tantalising and controversial adventure activities in Bolivia - to ride a mountain bike down the World's Most Dangerous Road. Most other travellers I'd been talking with had been raving about it, while many others chose to not take the risk.
A section of the road on a better day - this was all cloudy on our day.
The facts aren't pretty - built by Paraguayan prisoners during the war back in the 1930's, the road is a narrow gravel strip of varying quality chiseled into the side of enormous cliffs that drop hundreds of metres down to the Coroico river below. It joins the tropical Yungas region (elevation of approx 1000m) to the capital of La Paz (elevation 3800m) via La Cumbre - a high point of 4700m - by barely hanging on to the side of an Andean mountain. Many of the prisoners perished during its construction, thousands of Bolivians since, and now the odd tourist as well.
Some pics from the net...
A long way down...
Last year a new, safer, paved road was finally opened (after 20 years of construction) which means the "death road" is now only used by local traffic and mountain bikers with their support vehicles. Unfortunately it also means what little road maintenance there was, is now even less (landslides are common in the wet season), despite a tax payable by each mountain biker to go towards keeping it open.
Anyway, onto those facts... while the road was the only link between northern Bolivia and the capital, it is estimated between 200 and 300 people died each year. In one year alone, 25 vehicles plunged off the road into the ravine below - thats one every 2 weeks! Many of these were large trucks and buses whose wreckages were too large to safely remove, so they still lay where they fell (we saw many of them on the ride). One bus had 60 passengers and there were no survivors. The nearest hospital is 2 hours away and rescues here are extremely dangerous and often not very successful.
Wet and cloudy - our group on one of the dangerous corners.
The same corner from a wider angle on a better day.But probably the most startling fact is that 8 mountain bikers have died since organised tours began 5 or 6 years ago. One Israeli died just a few months ago. Amongst those 8 were 3 guides! When I asked how this could be, the answer from our guide was that they ride the road every day and therefore their exposure to the obvious risks is much higher.
All the South American guidebooks advised to choose your tour company wisely and to be wary of cheap operators, as this was one activity where you don't want anything going wrong or any corners to be cut. One company was consistently highly recommended and proudly boasted "the safest record", but was by far the most expensive, and although my funds were getting low I was reluctantly prepared to go with them. But then some guys I was chatting to in my hostel earlier said I have to go with another company named Freebikes, who offered all the same services as the other company (and more), but with a smaller group and at half the price. I checked them out and was pretty impressed, so the next day I was off on the most dangerous thing I'd done in a while with a small cheap tour company that my guidebook had warned against...hmmm!
The group turned out to be excellent and I would thoroughly recommend them. The bikes, gear, guides, food and transport were all top notch and it was much better to be in a small group of just 4 (plus 2 guides), compared to the 15 or so in the other more expensive group. A whole days fun with everything included - lunch, snacks, drinks, all equipment, showers, a t shirt and CD of pics - was just $US39 with Freebikes. Pretty cheap but still the most expensive daytrip I did in Bolivia!
The Ride - 68km distance and 3650m descent:It seems strange that a road that links the highest capital city in the world to the low lying tropical jungle should rise at first, but it does - to a chilly 4700m, where our support bus drops us and we start our downhill ride. The first 20km are on smooth, paved highway with snow-capped mountains as backdrops, and cars and trucks as obstacles. It's freezing as we hurtle round the swooping big corners and long straights at top pace. Keeping to the right of the highway we pass some buses as if they are standing still, and then we get passed by some cars as well.
On the fast paved section. That's me in the front.After passing through a police check, a tough uphill section (its hard to fill the lungs at 3000m!), the pavement ends and the gravel begins. We have descended 1600m already and are in the cloud forest region where, appropriately, it is very cloudy and misty. Unfortunately the clouds and rain didnt lift until the very end of the ride which is rare for this time of the year (dry season), but it did make for a great, muddy, wet (and sometimes slippery) ride down the death road.
The strain on your hands as you clutch the brakes, and the concentration in your mind and eyes on staying on the road is pretty exhausting, so the regular breaks came as welcome relief. We would stop for photos (unfortunately the rain and clouds didn't help much), drinks/snacks, and to observe dangerous points where accidents had occurred or wreckages were still visible. Consistently along the entire road were countless crosses, plaques and memorials to lost ones, which was a constant reminder to focus and concentrate.
After riding under waterfalls, through streams, and over bridges we finally got down into the jungle area and could take off some layers and have fun going down the dry tracks a bit faster. One of the other guys took it a bit quick round a hairpin turn and came unstuck, but nowhere near a cliff edge, fortunately. The adrenalin was constantly running for the entire ride and as gratifying as it was to reach the end safely, it was also a shame for it to end. Definitely a highlight of Bolivia!
Muddy, sore and dirty but happy!
I had about 4 days to get back to Lima from Copacabana in Bolivia. So I caught three buses back to back (about 22 hours all up) and passed through the popular tourist spots of Puno, Arequipa (I'd been to both of those places a few weeks prior), Nazca (I wasn't too interested in seeing the Nazca lines) and chose to stop at Ica for my last couple of days. Ica is surrounded by desert - the classic sand dune type desert that you learned about in primary school. Massive, rolling dunes that go on forever in all directions with no sign of life or water whatsoever. Except for Huacachina - the oasis in the middle of the desert. Synonymous with sand deserts is the dream of a tropical oasis that is so often just a mirage in the eyes of a poor lost man in the Sahara. But Huacachina is a real oasis - I stayed a couple of nights there just to prove it wasn't!
Huacachina is an oasis formed by a natural spring, and is a popular resort town for Peruvians in the summer, and for backpackers at any time of the year. Unfortunately you can't swim in the lake like you once could due to pollution, but most of the cheap hostels and hotels have a swimming pool to relax by.
There wasn't much to do there after you had walked around the lake, except relax or take a dune buggy / sandboarding tour. Both were extremely rewarding. The dune buggy tour was doubly great because I bumped into Pete from England again (who I had been on the ill-fated Salar de Uyuni tour with a couple of weeks earlier) - its a small world when your travelling on the gringo trail in South America!
The dune buggy tour was amazing - within minutes of hopping in (and with no safety precautions or warnings) we were absolutely flying up, down, over and around the biggest sand dunes I've ever seen in my life - it was pure exhiliaration, with a hint of danger, as the buggy wasn't the safest looking vehicle I'd been in recently. But it certainly tackled the dunes with aplomb and was faster and more thrilling than any rollercoaster I've been on in my life.
Then we would attempt to sandboard down some dunes (with plenty of stacks on everyone's behalf), and luxuriously be driven back to the top to do it all over again. Even though it took days to get the sand out of all the crevices in my body, it was great fun.
The wax on the base of the sandboards was essential and made for a fast first ride, then progressively slower each consecutive ride until you almost got bogged, even on a steep dune. Then you'd get the driver to "wax 'er up again" and hold on for the fun first ride.
After the oasis I stayed a night in Ica with a local Peruvian in his very humble, basic home. He lived with his mother in a 2 room house with many other families within the same building. There was no running water in his home, nor a toilet, and I slept on the concrete floor. All the families shared a non-flushing toilet and a sink down around the back. His mother ran a small cafeteria inside the immigration department of Ica and she cooked us a beautiful lunch two days in a row. Milton was very generous and took pride in showing me around his town, to his friends birthday party, his English school, and the nearby bodegas (wineries) where the national drink pisco is produced. Since I was at end of my trip and I still had a few gifts from Australia in my backpack, I gave Milton everything as well as some clothes and books that I no longer needed that I think he appreciated. I even gave him a Wiseacre cd and shirt as he played the trumpet - I bet it's a bit different to the type of music he is used to here though!
So another overnight bus and then straight to the airport in Lima for a few hours sleep and the redeye flight back to Buenos Aires, which marked the end of an amazing trip in Peru and Bolivia. I couldn't wait for a nice comfortable bed and a hot shower though!
