The Death Road

To say I was nervous the night before the death road would be an understatement. I mean, people have died doing it, so it was a bit of a restless sleep. I decided to go with a fairly expensive company, Gravity Mountain biking, as they had good reviews and supposedly good equipment. I felt that if ever there was a time to scrimp, this was certainly not it.

I left Cora at the Wild Rover hostel (not knowing if I would see her again) and met the guides and the rest of the group at a local café. The first part of the trip was a short jeep ride to La Cumbre, where we would start our 65km downhill cycle. We were given our bikes and gear and after a quick briefing, we prepared to set off. Before leaving La Cumbre we gave an offering to “Pachamamma”, which meant doing a small shot of nearly pure alcohol and pouring some on our wheels for protection.

Blessing of the bike

The first 15km of the death road cycle is down a paved highway, which gives you a good chance to get used to the bike. Far from taking it easy at the start, we were overtaking buses and cars on the steep downhill which was great fun. There wasn’t much cycling involved as good oul gravity took care of that. We did have to keep a firm grip on the brakes though!

Getting used to the bikes

 After about an hour we finally reached the start of “The Death Road” and got our first glimpse of what lay ahead. The view from the top was amazing, as the mist rolled in from the jungle far below. Unlike other roads in Bolivia, on the death road you drive on the left (so that drivers close to the edge can see how near their wheels are from going over), for us this meant we had to cycle on the cliff edge side, a shock for us to say the least!

The start of the Death Road

We set off, slowly at first, but gradually as we got more confident, faster and faster! To be honest, there’s not much chance to get scared or look over the edge as you’re trying to concentrate so much on the road ahead. I barely noticed all the crosses at the roadside, in remembrance of others who were not so lucky on this road. The guides were great and kept us informed of the road ahead so that we knew what to expect.

Some not so lucky visitors to the road

The "Top Gear" Section

After an hour or so, we got to the narrowest part of the road, where the famous Top Gear episode was filmed. We took it nice and easy over this part as there was a fairly decent drop beside us (1000ft) and only 4ft of road in places! There was some water coming from above us from some recent rain, which we were told had washed out some of the road. 

After this we stopped to take a couple of pictures at the steepest section, which meant sitting with our legs dangling over a straight drop down to the valley floor below.

On the edge of the world

Towards the bottom, the road opened out a bit, and before I knew it, we arrived to a small town. We were all relieved, but actually sad it was over. What I didn’t realise was that the worst part was yet to come. We then had to load up the bikes on the jeep and drive all the way back up the road! We all bought ourselves a couple of beers in a shop as we thought these would be good for the nerves. We then set off back up the road and now that we were not cycling anymore, I could stare over the cliffs as our jeep lingered on the edge of the road going back up. 

the not so nice view from the jeep

To make matters worse, we met a bus coming down full of locals. I decided it was best to get out of the jeep as it tried to pass the bus. 

Bus of mad locals coming down the road

There was a loud cheer when we finally got back onto the main highway and made our way back to La Paz. We had survived the “Worlds Most Dangerous Road”!