The World's Most Dangerous Road

For Eric's last day in Bolivia, outside of La Paz we biked down The World's Most Dangerous Road. Bolivia is notorious for it's cliff side roads that lack guard rails and lead to ever growing numbers of fatal car and bus accidents. I've heard people say that only 10% of Bolivia's roads are paved.

The mostly gravel Death Road winds 64k (40 miles) down a single lane path sketched into mountainous cliffs. Starting just under 5,000 meters above sea level, we cycled downhill to 1,600 meters. At any given time, the drop off the side of the road could leave a cyclist falling 3,000 meters. We later learned that a biker from our hostel had fallen off a small pass the same day as our bike trip. Fortunately, he only fell 25 meters and was saved by a tree. Unscathed and escaping death, he hopped back on his bike after he was rescued to continue to tackle the road.

Before we started our bike ride, I found out that the front breaks of the bike I rented didn't work. I adamantly demanded another bike and tested out the new breaks on my new Trek. Squeezing the front break as hard as possible, my bike screeched to a stop, and I went flying over the front handle bars. Break test a success.

Cyclists die every year attempting to conquer the Death Road. Throughout the entire journey through the mountains, in place of a nonexistent breakdown lane, gravestones, crosses, and flowers speckle the road every 50 to 100 meters. At one point, as we passed through the altitude where clouds float, a white wall surrounded our bikes. I couldn't see anything beyond the street right in front of me, and to my right, the blanket of white at the edge of the road surely led to an endless free fall. I joked about the added bonus this trip would be if I biked off the edge after getting my paragliding certification in Ecuador.

Our bikes took us under waterfalls and slippery passes. We had to carry our bikes across a flooded, washed out portion of the road. We passed coca fields and mountains that looked over us from their 6,000 meter high stadium seating. Thankfully, after five hours of biking (and numb fingers from terrifyingly squeezing the breaks), we reached the bottom, and survived The World's Most Dangerous Road.

The World's Most Dangerous Road