La Paz (Bolivia)
20 NOV - 27 NOVEver since Alby Mangels commenced World Safari 2 and managed to stumble upon the Yungas Road I have wanted to take this on. I'm not sure why silly things like this enter my head, nor can I tell you why they take up residence for years and years on end until I finally complete the task that I've set myself. I mean there's no UFC contract or million dollar prize waiting at the finish line, just the satisfaction of having not died. Still, there I was, as a 35 year old man signing up to mountain bike a road that has claimed literally thousands of lives within its deep cavernous pits!
For the unlearned or perhaps the more sane amongst us that really haven't previously given a toss about the existence of this road, some facts. This dirt track or 'road' as they call it in the Andes is a 64 kilometre stretch that leads from La Paz to the small tropical town of Coroico. The kick-off point for the start of the road is 50+kms north-east of La Paz at an altitude hitting 4650 mtrs at La Cumbre pass (fantastic views! Really, really tough breathing!). It's one of the few roads that actually connects the Bolivian Amazon to its capital city and the it drops approximately 3500mtrs in those 64kms before reaching the town of Coroico.
Oh yes, it's a two way street ...and a 600mtr drop in places!
The Yungas Road - Bolivia
The start of the Death Road
So, why is it the Death Road? The lame reasoning relates to its builders and creators, a group of Paraguayan prisoners that managed to carve out the more than precarious perch on precipitous drops back in the 1930's. Some of their lives were given to 'the making of' the road during that time so that obviously others could die following in their machete cutting wake also - if you think about it, it's quite an ingenious idea, the Paraguayans built a road so badly that many more Bolivians would lose their lives in the thought that they could survive a 'simple drive'. The better story however and the one for which the road has actually gained infamy is due to the number of vehicles, predominantly packed Bolivian buses, that somehow have made their way over the edge whilst journeying up and down the road. At one point it was estimated that somewhere near 300-400 people were dieing on the road a year with an average of one vehicle every two weeks making the swift journey down the hillside into lush tropical rainforest at something approaching close to terminal velocity (see 24 July 1983 for a 100 person+ death tally on the Yungus).
These days admittedly you don't get the same two way traffic on the Yungas as the new North Yungas road takes the bulk of the load. What you do get however are mountain bikers and what you hear in the hostel bars regarding deaths of mountain bikers (currently standing at 32) sounds something like urban myth although I was later to ascertain from our guides that the stories were in fact true. Bar story number one actually went something like this, it involved a guide who had stopped to take a picture for the group of gringos he had been chaperoning. He showed them the place where two bikers had flung themselves magnanimously from the edge for the overwhelming enjoyment of their own crew on that fatal day. As the guide backed up to the edge he either misjudged the terrain or his proximity to the edge and hey presto, he was going down superman style. Bar story number two and the one reiterated by our own guides with sufficient detail and clarity as the death happened on their watch occurred in October of '09 (Go Veritgo Biking). This happened to be an Englishman who they assume blacked out whilst travelling at a half decent click and Evil Keneviled himself off Bolivian terra firma and into the lush tropical rainforest below. Their assumption was that excessive partying and excessive altitude had caught him unawares at the wrong point in time - sorry dude, they don't offer refunds either!
Bugger it though, I though if Alby could do it then I could do it too. I signed up with Vertigo biking and awaited the 8am pick-up for the drive up to the top of La Cumbre pass, the starting point for our 64km scream down the Yungas.
The first thing that I have to say is this. Standing at 4650mtrs in a shirt, shorts and a flimsy yellow road workers vest at 9am is like cannonballing three frozen milkshakes all at once and having a half hour brain freeze. My actual 'brain fade' at not bringing suitable warm clothing did actually become an asset later on rather than a liability but for the first hour I was serverely questioning my internal fortitude and capacity to hold out until some warmer weather came our way.
It's the call of the Llama - an early morning start om the Yungas
Geared up and ready to roll
Yup, pick the odd man out in this cheesy shot!
With the early morning chill heightening the quite obvious nervous anticipation we all carried , we jumped onto our two wheeled thunderbolts and rolled out down the leeward side of the range. Having not ridden any sort of two wheeler for a while and just letting the bike roll away was fantastic thrill until the point in time that the speedo advised me that I was hitting between 60-70kph and then as a result it dawned on me that shortly I'd be passing moving vehicles, buses et al at speed on a few of the upcoming turns. Use those skills mon frere!
Start of the Yungas, an speedy 22km roll until the dirt track commenced
Taking buses on some of those hairpins was sketchy
Helisher @ speed!
The first 22kms down to the start of the dirt version of Yungas was actually a lot of fun and more than a little confidence building. It allowed you to get a feel for the bike, its limits, your own (supposed) limits and a speed that you could comfortably cope with. The only issue as I mentioned earlier was the fact that we were passing cars and buses at speed. In the first hour I managed to encounter my first sketchy moment where I made a passing manouvere on a vehicle that at the same time decided to make his own passing manouvere on the vehicle in front of it. I got pushed to the outer edge of the road lining up perfectly with an oncoming lorry and had to break swiftly in the dirt in order not to be the next order of pancakes for the day. Ok, no problems, just keep on riding, everything will be all Kool & the Gang , #33.
Making our way to the main Yungas checkpoint we stacked our bikes back onto the van and made our way the 6kms uphill to the actual start of the Death Road. With our collective anxiety already building the elements decided to throw their own bits and pieces in to heighten the tension. The clouds rolled in up the valley, a steady drizzle set in and visibility dropped off noticeably. At this point I wasn't sure which was going to be more valuable, not being able to see the 600mtr drop to the valley floor or to not seeing the road in front of me!
'The balcony' during the downhill run
'The balcony' in the afternoon - who is that idiot hanging over the edge???
WooHoo - mad props for the massive drop(s)
Without question, as the elements closed in around us the start of the road looked sketchy. Not something that looked desperately unachievable on a bike but at 3-3.5mtrs in width you really wondered as to how these cocoa chewing bandits made their way up and down the hill considering there was always two lanes in operation. I've seen some photos and it looks like a cheap Boliviano adventure ride for all. Even on a bike for the first 10kms or so most of us were relatively hard on and quite dependant on the certain functionality of the back brakes, keeping to the wall on the inside of the road and not really getting the opportunity to peer over the edge into the abyss. I readily admit that it took a fair amount of time to have the confidence to just let the bike roll out and to be able to trust myself enough to know that I could handle the bumps and dirt with relative ease.
Peering over the edge - I love how the road just disappears into nowhere
Yup, hands firmly on the brakes there!
The Yungas just rolls away a hundred or so metres below us
What you do find however is that as your confidence builds you don't concern yourself so much with the drop but just focus in on the task at hand, which happens to be the road infront of you. I mean, you definitely notice the crosses on the side of the road (and there are many), you notice the distinct lack of guard rails and you notice when your guides call out (Italian, French, Israeli) - the explanation here being that the corners are named after the nationality of the biker that went over the edge at that point. Thankfully to date there hasn't been a need to name an Australian corner, plenty of Israeli corners however...there's no real hypothesis for that discrepancy, just stating the facts.
This story would not however be complete without my own 'relatively' sketchy moment and it seems that everyone has at least one. So I'd say somewhere close to halfway along the stretch I managed to pick up a little bit of speed and noticed myself coming into a hairpin turn a little too fast for my liking. I put on the back brakes but for some reason the bike crossed up in the mud and started to slip out from under me. Now crashing onto the dirt would not have been so bad but as I crossed up it quickly came into absolute focus that the drop off on the side of the road was somewhere close to 50mtrs, a nice 'sayonara' farewell would have been had by all. I managed to hold onto the bike and thankfully stayed on but those few seconds really sharpened the experience up for me.
Our guides - ummm, yeah, we 'trusted' them!!!?
From the altiplano into the tropical forests
The last 15-20kms of the run was relatively cruisy. The road widened by a fair margin and everyone obviously felt a lot more comfortable with their capacity to handle the road. In some places we were still pulling 50-60kph even though the drop-off's were in the 50-100mtr range - relatively safe unless you got it desperately wrong.
Approximately 3-4hrs after commencing at the pass of La Cumbre we rolled into Coroico with the Road of Death firmly tucked away for safe keeping. It had been a lot of fun and I'd say for the majority or the ride relatively safe. So if you're in La Paz and want to go out and get your 'ride on' then I fully recommend it, just don't blackout before any of the corners otherwise they'll be naming those wicked turns after you...or your nationality at least!
Safe in Coroico, the Death Road completed! Although nobody told us that we'd be riding back up the same road in the van as night began to fall!
