Camino del Muerte!

Still in La Paz, although we´re heading out tonight on an all night bus to Potosi to begin our conquest of Southern Bolivia. Yesterday signed up to do a mountain bike tour of the ¨world´s Most Dangerous Road¨from La Paz to Coroico. I know it sounds terrorfying, but the uniqueness of the venture is called into question when every agency in town (of which there are many) offers some sort of excursion there.

It works like this: From La Paz you are driven about an hour outside of town to an area known as El Cumbre, at 4700 m. It´s freezing and you´re surrounded by snow covered mountains. These tours utilize what is known as ¨gravity-assisted" mountain biking, which is to say they are mostly downhill. At this point, the road is fine, well paved asphalt, and easily two lanes wide. Once we set off, you immediately pick up speed to the point of being uncomfortable. You really have to resist the urge to ride the brakes as you are essentially riding your bike down a mountain. Scenery whips by almost too fast to appreciate, but fortunately we took many breaks to take in the vistas, as well as snap a few photos. We were so high up that we literally descended into clouds as we went further and further down the mountain. There were two drug trafficing checkpoints along the road, although we weren´t hasled at all, we just had to walk the bikes through them. At times we were going so fast that we actually passed trucks who were making their own slow, laborious way down the mountain.

After this part of the ride there was a brief (30-45 min) uphill portion which the tour guides cinviniently forgot to mention to us. It actually wasn´t too bad, and like on El Misti, I really appreciated all those gym sessions and stadium runs I did in preparation for this trip. After the brief ascent we were ready for the ¨Death Road.¨ This road, at one time, was the only way to get from the city of Coroico to the capital. All gravel, muddy, wet, (Coroico is at 1700 m, practically the jungle, especially in comparison to La Paz), completely devoid of guard rails with a drop of anywhere between 20 and 600 m at any given time, and barely as wide as a single bus, much less two, at points; it earned its reputation as the world´s most dangerous road due to the frequency and severity of fatal traffic accidents on it. Indeed, on our way down, we stopped no fewer than five times to view either wreckage of previous accidents or memorials to people who had perished, including mountain bikers on package tours from La Paz. (interestingly enough, another factoid the agencies neglect to tell you.) On this road, uphill traffic drives on the left while down hill traffic hugs the cliffs to the right. The logic being on a road where cm can mean the difference between life and death, the people on the outside going uphill have a better view because of where the driver´s side is positioned. For some reason we were also instructed to ride on the left even though we were going downhill (I thought you were supposed to ride a bike with traffic and run against, but what do I know?), so we did get some interesting views on the way down. At times I was actually moved to laugh aloud that this road was ever at any point an acceptable way to get from A to B in anything bigger than a mini cooper.

Author´s Note: In the interest of full disclosure, a new road from La Pazto Coroico was built six months ago, drastically reducing the ammount of traffic on the ¨World´s Most Dangerous Road.¨ In fact, these days, the road belongs, almost exclusively, to the mountain bike tours. I believe the title of the ¨World´s Most Dangerous Road¨now belongs to the one connecting Bagdhad and the airport in Iraq.

The farther down we went, the more lush and tropical the scenery became. Off came the fleeces and the wind resistant shells, and on came the bright yellow spandex bike jerseys. I´ve never felt lamer, but I do have to admit that we all looked cool decked out in the same uniforms. Wait until you see the pictures...

Coroico was a welcome respite from the chilly weather in the highlands. At 1700 m we had descended 3000 m in just over four hours. Our tour arranged for lunch and showers at the Hotel Esmeralda overlooking the town. Chris and I enjoyed it so much that we think we´ll return in a couple of weeks for a vacation from our vacation, lying by the pool and playing scrabble for a day or two in the tropical muggines before returning to the Alpine chilliness of the Cuzco and Sacred Valley areas.

On a less happy note, my camera was stolen today in the market in La Paz. I´m pretty bummed out about it, but it was my own fault, I had it in the giant pocket of my fleece jacket, a fingerless man could have probably gotten in there without me feeling it...Fortunately, Chris still has his camera, and the tour agency provided us with a CD of all the pictures they took on the trek. Having a valuable stolen in a market is just as much a traveler´s rite of passage as offering a bribe, so on that note I´m trying not to view it as the end of the world. I´m also interested to see of losing my camera will help me better take in my mind-blowing surroundings rather than having me always try to frame them in my viewfinder in order to look at them later. Perhaps losing the camera will help me focus on the present, and at the very least, it will save a lot of you the burden of sitting through my vacation slide shows...