THE DEATH ROAD

Dun dun dun… scary intro and all that to the world’s most dangerous road (~300 deaths per year)

All in all, the Death Road was a real highlight of South America. From awesome downhill mountain biking right into having a few drinks on the bus or a few too many for me (Mitch) and learning why it is a really bad idea to drink at altitude.

First things first, the company we went with was Barracuda biking which I highly recommend for a few reasons. Firstly our guides Andy and Willy are great fun, Andy is a pretty blunt kinda guy and loves dropping the occasional c-bomb to the horror of the girls in our group. Secondly despite being a fun couple of guys, they are really serious on safety… More on that later but lets say we saw the guides from most expensive/premium group (Gravity) abandoning their riders and causing accidents on the world’s most dangerous road. Not cool.

The guide had it timed so that “Eminem - Lose Yourself” would play as soon as we reached the road. Perfect leadup anticipation music as we just as we started to see the sheer dropoffs and the rocks and gravel we would need to navigate down. At first we thought it was accidental (until the next bus turned up playing “AC/DC - Highway to Hell”).

At the top we started off with the safety briefings and gear checks. As well as a few group photos.

One tradition before you set off is a blessing to the “Pachamama” the Andean earth spirit for protection. This involves taking some pure alcohol, pouring some on the ground, then your bike tyre and then take a sip. It tastes awful.

To start you off there is a short section of regular road just to test out the bikes. But even here you start seeing the first memorials.

The death road itself comes after this and is gravel all the way down. After another warning to watch out for the “baby heads” which are largish rocks that will shift under your bike and can throw you over the edge.  Also, the traffic on this road drives on the opposite side of the road to the rest of the country (so the driver’s side is on the cliffside and they can see how close they are…)

The further you go in, the hairier it gets. And not far in you hit “postcard corner” which is a drop off cliff great for a few team photos.

A few times we encountered the “Gravity” team - which is the most expensive and should be the premier provider. However what we saw was the guides abandoning their team and racing each other down the hill… at one point one of their guides did a jump, cut off one of our riders, clipped her front tire and caused her to fall off. Pretty unsafe team. Three of the riders in their group gave up and took the bus down (none of ours did) and I’m not surprised since their guides didn’t do much to keep their team safe.

And then onward down the hill. Past the graves and memorials.

At points, the water comes over the road as a river, so you gotta watch that.

Once you make it down, we shared a few good beers. At this point you gotta be careful because since you just descended 3.4km from 4,600m to 1,200m the oxygen can make you feel pretty good and have a few too many. In our group’s case we continued on drinking on the bus and it got pretty out of control.

We took the death road back up to La Paz and it was good to see to road from another perspective. Fun fact about the Death road - statistically it is safer to take the death road back up rather than the new road. While the new road is fully paved and wider, everybody takes it now and there are many accidents there (Bolivians are not the best of drivers…)

The next day I had the mother of all hangovers and learnt a valuable lesson about altitude…