The World's Most Dangerous Road

Parents. I can feel your hearts sinking already at the title of this post not to mention the picture accompanying it. Particularly Liz's parents. Why would I (one who has been entrusted with the safety of their daughter) allow her to travel on something called "The World's Most Dangerous Road" on any form of transport ... let alone ... by bicycle?

Let me say first that this was not an easy decision! When I orginally heard about "The Death Road" (as it's also know) I thought - no way. When Liz asked why not, I said: "What's the point? We can cycle whenever we want. Why should we needlessly risk our lives cycling on the world's most dangerous road?" Case closed. Or so we thought.

It came to pass that later on our travels we met up with a couple of English lads called Adam and Tom. They had been to La Paz, they had done "The Death Road", and they said it was one of the best experiences they had had in South America. They also said that most fatalities on the road were due to motor vehicles falling off the side when trying to pass each other. Since the road rarely gets over 6 metres wide, and most of the time the drop is over 100 metres with no safety barriers - this used to happen a lot. Apparently there used to be a big accident once every week on average, often involving large unwieldy vehicles - such as busses packed with people. Hence there used to be a large number of fatalities per week, and hence the road earnt the title "World's Most Dangerous". Bike fatalities, we were told, were few and far between.



Adam and Tom went on to say that the number of vehicles on the road had now decreased significantly since a bypass had been opened. Apparently there was no safer time to cycle "The Death Road". In the face of this argument, it would have been rude not to give it a try! We booked with an agency called "Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking" because they were twice as expensive as anyone else (and so we assumed would be safer) and boasted a record of only one death in thirteen years. Presumably that meant they were due a couple ...

On the day in question we got up early and were driven to a height of 4600m, where we were introduced to our bikes. We were instructed to "bless" them by pouring an 80% ethanol solution onto the tyres, and then we had to take a (small) swig ourselves. It was vile. After this we cycled around a bit on the flat, getting used to our bikes and trying (unsuccessfully) to dispel the jitters and thoughts of imminent death. It was then time to start going downhill.

The first part was a steep but safe asphalted section on which we were permitted to get up some serious speed. We're talking, too fast for peddling, crouched low to the handlebars to reduce air-resistance, kind of speed. Great fun.



This lasted 45 minutes or so, then unfortunately we hit gravel. Even more unfortunately this gravel went uphill instead of down. The next 20 minutes were a kind of thigh-burning, lung-popping, high-altitude, cycle hell. At the end of it we were told we'd gained just 10 metres in vertical height. For anyone thinking of trying to ride a heavy downhill bike uphill at altitudes of 3500m plus, I'd recommend a head doctor.

Anyway, after this it was time for the main event ... that really dangerous road thingy. After cycling along it for a couple of minutes we realised a few things:

1) It´s really narrow. Around 6 metres. That sounds wide enough, but believe me it isn't when there's a 100m drop on one side.
2) There's a 100m drop on one side. This is pretty much constant throughout the first 3 hours of cycling on the road and is frankly terrifying.
3) It is on a badly maintained gravel track. You have to stick to one of the vehicle tracks in the road or risk sliding all over the place on the loose stones. These tracks are 30cm wide at best.
4) Downhill traffic (including bicycles) has to travel on the left hand side all of the time. This is the side nearest the drop. The reason for this is that in Bolivia the driver's side is on the left, so if downhill traffic also drives on the left, then the downhill driver has a better view of his outside wheels whenever there's a passing situation. This doesn't matter for bikes of course, except that they have to cycle on the left nearest the drop as well, to reduce the chances of a truck in the face when going round blind corners.



The upshot of all this was that we were cycling in a very narrow vehicle track never more than a metre or so from a huge drop. If we left this vehicle track at any point then there was a good chance the bike would slide out of control. Dangerous then.

Fortunately the road wasn't very steep, meaning we could go as fast or as slow as we wanted. We went for the slow option. If we weren't on the world's most dangerous road, it would have been embarrassingly slow. Occasionally one of us would get a bit more confident, or the road would get a touch less dangerous, and we'd speed up. Sooner or later however, we'd notice the deadly drop just inches from our tyres and return to our snail's pace.

The dangerous bit of the road was long (around 4 hours of riding), spectacularly beautiful and a whole lot of fun. It was also mercifully devoid of incident, barring a small spill from Liz when she hit a large rock. In any case, we both reached the bottom intact and survived! And we've both got a T-shirt to prove it ...

PS. The road finished at a wonderful riverside animal sanctuary called La Senda Verde, that cares for injured and/or mistreated animals. On show were dogs, turtles, parrots, maccaws and some very friendly monkeys. One particular female spider monkey climbed all over my arms, head and shoulders, before clinging to my leg and relieving herself. According to one of the carers this meant she liked me. Lovely.