Sunday, April 15, 2007

The World´s Most Dangerous Road


IMGP6313
Originally uploaded by theslaad.
On Thursday we got the bus from Puno to La Paz. This interesting journey involved first travelling to the Peru/Bolivia border where we had to get out of the bus, go though immigration and then walk 300m up the road. Very smooth and well organised though. Back on the bus to Copacabana in Boliva, where I had a delicious chilli con carne. Then we had to get onto a different and altogether inferior bus, where our luggage was thrown onto the roof and then we were packed into tiny seats. About an hour or so later, the bus stopped and the driver informed us that we´d have to get off the bus and onto a boat, while the bus would get on a bigger boat. Well, this worked well enough and we watched the bus come in to the other side on it´s barge. Another couple of hours later and we were in La Paz and being ripped off by taxi drivers (it happens).

Yesterday I rode a mountain bike down the World´s Most Dangerous Road (WMDR), previously called the Death Road. The WMDR decends from 4700m to 1200m over the course of 64km. It hugs the side of the mountains with drops of up to a kilometer to one side, and no safety barriers.
Apparently only 12 cyclists have been killed there in the last 4.5 years, which isn´t bad as it´s one of the top things to do in Bolivia. I´ve no idea how many cars/busses have gone over the edge. The road is no longer used by motor vehicles as a new road with tarmac and safety barriers has been built to replace the existing one.
We arrived at the top of the pass at 4700m and got sorted out with our bikes and kit. I´ve never ridden such an expensive bike. It had nifty things like full supension and hydraulic disc brakes and stuff. Needless to say, at 8:30am at that altitude it was pretty chilly. The first 27ks of our ride were a gentle downhill on proper road past the cocaine smuggling checkpoint and the toll booths for the WMDR (3$ per bike). Got up some pretty good speed on this section. We then, at about 3400m, had a couple of uphill sections, which at that altitude are no fun at all. After a rest and a snack we got on to the gravel section. This is where the WMDR starts properly. We then got to cycle downhill for 42km on rough gravelly paths by the side of the cliff, through streams, under waterfalls and down into the blistering heat of the rainforest. It was pretty hairy at times trying to keep up with the guides, but I only locked the back wheel once, and that was round a left hand bend so I wouldn´t have died anyway...
There was only one real crash, and that was when Matt our Kiwi guide went over his handlebars trying (unsucessfully) to avoid a four year old kid running out in front of him. He´d only just been telling us how he hadn´t had a crash on this route. He won´t be able to tell anyone else that...
At the bottom we had hot showers and beer in a little rainforest resort place with monkeys and macaws and gibbons, before getting the bus back up the new road to La Paz, which took about as long as riding down did.

Today, we´ve been looking around the markets in La Paz. In theory you never need to go into a shop as everything you might want to buy is available on the street. Particularly interesting was the Witches Market where you could buy such delights as dead Llama foetuses. Nice.

3 Comments:

At 12:36 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The potential for stunts on the WMDR would seem to be high. Pity there's nothing like that in Norfolk, I suppose Gas Hill can be a bit hair raising at times.

Cheers,
James

 
At 12:46 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did you go 'no hands' down the WMDR incidentally? If not why not? It was a random question from some-one at work?

James

 
At 11:11 pm, Blogger Chris and Jen Coleman said...

Er... 'No Hands' would have been suicidal. It didn´t occur to me to try. One handed whilst waving for the camera was bad enough.

Official photos here:

http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/GravityBolivia/April2007/20070414

Password: photos

 

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