Rain.
Fog. Mud. Three thousand foot cliffs. Landslides. A narrow one-lane dirt
road with buses and trucks. Sounds like an unlikely combination for a holiday
bicycle outing. But somehow it works, and indeed, it was quite exhilarating.
The “worlds
most dangerous road” drops over 11,000 vertical feet as it snakes its way
through the Andes to the edge of the Amazon basin. It is the only way provisions
can get from La Paz to Coroico and the other small towns in the region.
For years it was a one-way road. On specified days of the week you could
only go downhill. The other days it was one-way uphill. Currently traffic
flows both ways. At some of the more treacherous blind corners, human traffic
signalers stand to guide the traffic safely past each other. We are told
that the people who do this work are volunteers from one family, a family
that lost several members over the side.
Now the road
is actually a tourist attraction. Gravity Tours (www.gravitybolivia.com)
provides mountain bikes and guides to shepherd riders down the 64-kilometer
course. A bus follows behind picking up stragglers and to transport riders
and equipment back up to La Paz.
The proprietor
and head guide is a wild-bearded New Zealander who spices up the tour with
stories of cannibals in Bolivia and anecdotes about casualties along the
dangerous road.
The dress code
on the ride called for layers. Layers that would accommodate the outrageous
extremes in altitude and weather. We rode through chilly mountain air all
the way down to steamy jungle, not to mention passing through waterfalls,
rain and fog. The fog was a blessing at times, momentarily obscuring the
view of the thousand-foot drop-off just a few feet from our tire tracks.
