Bolivia and Death Road

I wasn't planning to visit Bolivia in the beginning since it's a bit too far south as well as it requires a visa for us citizens. However, I've heard way too many good things about Isla del Sol and Copacobana, which primarily pushed me to visit this part of the world. Then I thought, since I'll be cashing out on the visa I might as well do the other super touristy and famous thing in Bolivia – ride the “Death Road” :)

Immediately after crossing the border you are taken away by the unreal landscapes of the mountains and the massive lake Titikaka, sitting in between them. The roads winds left and right, on the side of the mountain. I was surprised I didn't see any bikers, I would have thought this would be a prime spot for them … maybe in the future :) After a fews somewhat ridiculous adventures and transfer of 4 busses, due to the fact that I bought a cheap tiket to La Paz and about 17h after my departure from Cusco, I was entering the massive city of La Paz, the highest capital in the world, at about 3700m above sea level.

It's really mind boggling how people would build this metropolis in between mountain crests. Most of the buildings are built out of red bricks giving the mountains a bit of a red tint.

Given that the city spans multiple mountain crests, its construction is rather complex, with highways and bridges connecting various parts of the city. This is a shot of a main highway passing through the heart of the city.

Although it is very poor, here and there you can find very progressive architectural styles. For example the house on the immediate right with a triangular window overlooking the street, or the funky blue building in the background.

Another example of the city's connectedness. This pedestrian bridge spans a large park across a huge market where you can pretty much buy anything. One more thing, street food in La Paz is extremely cheap and good, so much so that I never even ventured into a restaurant, I just ate with the locals (most of the time with them staring at me with surprised eyes :)).

The next morning: putting all on the gear and getting ready for the death road experience.

Our group of “death road” entruders. This is not a joke, apparently, every year this adventures claims on average 3 tourist lives.

The first part is riding on the pavement for about 40min, to get accustomed to the bikes and such. The ride was entirely immersed in fog, due to the altitude so no amazing scenery was visible unfortunately.

Finally, we arrived to the old non-paved infamous death road. It has been closed to traffic since 2007 due to its danger and the fact that a new one was being built with concrete, leaving this merely as an adventure for not the weak-hearted.

Shot of me on my trek bike :) a mixed sense of fear and excitement made me smile...

some more shots of the road curving along the side of the mountain.

Riding … The blurriness describes this experience best, as this is what you see most of the time as you blast by the stones on the edge of the abyss, hoping that you'll get grip on the next corner … awesome stuff!!! You generally don't want to break with the front tire, due to understeer and loss of control, so you're trigger happy fingers have to always stay on the right brake, the rear tire.

Myself on the so called “death corner” I think you can imagine why.

The green abyss...

The picture says it all …

The road is precipitated with tens of waterfalls that you gotta be careful when crossing since slippery stones create problems for wipeouts. But seriously, the scenery is literally breathtaking!

Action shot of me :)

on the easy part of the road :)

Self action shot

After some riding time we found ourselves stuck behind quite a large conglomeration of people, ropes and trucks. It turns out a pickup truck has experienced the fate of so many before on this infamous road. People were trying to pull it up with ropes, about 30-40 beings. We jumped to help, but soon realized that the cause is missing leadership, so much so that there were 3 ropes pulling the car in different directions. The drivers have been long rescued so now the task was to pull the car up. After about 15 min of looking around and pulling mindlessly on ropes, we decided to let the locals deal with it and continued on...

the last part of the road we were supposed to ride in the van since its uphill, however as our van was stuck behind the fallen pickup, we couldn't rely on that. So we continued the downhill ride … now uphill. I gotta say, although we were fully exhausted and tired, this part of the road did not dissapoint.

I managed to get ahead of my group with only one rider standing between me and the finish line :)

Some more action shots...

After arrival we had buffet and a swim in the pool for refreshment. I gotta say this was quite an experience! And I can't say I escaped the “death road” unscathed, what kind of adventure would that be :) I did take a fall down after locking my rear tire at one of the curves, but thankfully to all the protective equipment escaped with a long road rash scratch on my arm and ripped pants and jacket :) But hey, now I got a real story to tell ;)

Next, the Uyuni salt flats, my last stop south in Bolivia … promise!