El Camino de la Muerte, Bolivia---The Road of Death
This is, admittedly, a rather odd first choice for 1000 places to see before one dies. But after seeing a program on the Discovery Channel today, I cannot help but year to one day travel this road, if nothing else than to experience for myself a place that has such power of life and death in and about it.
The North Yungas Road is a 60m road that runs from La Paz to Coroico in the South American country of Bolivia. In 1995, it was labelled the "world's most dangerous road" by the Inter-American Development Bank. Current estimate state that 200-300 people are killed every year traveling this road, emphasized along the road by the wooden crosses dotting the landscape.
It was built in the 1930s by prisoner labor, and remains one of the few roads connecting the Amazon rainforest northern region of Bolivia to the capital city of La Paz. Today, the road remains in much the same shape as when it was built. It is a single lane, unpaved, unsurfaced, muddy, slippery stretch of road no more than 12 feet wide in most places with absolutely no guard rails to speak of in its entirety. On one side of the road lies a sheer precipice with 3000 foot drop-offs, while the other is exposed mountainside prone to landslides, rockslides, and give off gigantic waterfalls every time the weather turns wet--which, being the rainforest, is often. The road is most travelled by buses (full of people), large trucks (10 wheels and more), and cars going back and forth between La Paz and the outlying rainforest villages.
No why on earth would I want to go and drive something like this road? Well, I don't--want to drive it, that is. I want to partake in an activity becoming increasingly popular with a select group of thrill-seekers: I want to bike the Death Road. The appeal of mountain biking 60 miles downhill, without any need to pedal along terrain so beautiful and breathtaking as this is almost too good to be true. I mean, of course around a dozen cyclists have been killed participating in afore-mentioned thrills, but there's always risk, right? I mean, the odds of getting killed on the Death Road are something like the odds of face-planting into the road while riding a fixed gear in Mississippi because of a laundry bag getting sucked into your front wheel.
The bike ride starts out even higher than La Paz at about 16,000 feet (4876m) above sea level and descends to 4,000 feet (1220m) in about 40 miles (65km). The bike ride takes nearly 7 hours, as the road snakes its way through the high mountains of the Andes to the subtropical jungles that lead to the Amazon basin in Corocio. The bike ride down the road is highly recommended for extreme mountain biking enthusiasts seeking thrill. During the ride down the road, bikers must maneuver by tractor trailers, buses and cars. Frequent rain and fog reduce visibility. Thousands of bikers from around the world come to "Death Road" each year for a ride of their life.
Labels: adventure, biking, bolivia, death road, mountain biking, travel, world
posted by aron @ 11:00 PM
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