travellingbennetts

Death. The final frontier.

We’ve all heard of Bolivia’s Death Road built by Paraguayan prisoners of war in the 1930s, connecting La Paz with Coroico with a drop of 3,500 m over 64 km starting at a gasping 4,600 m. The bus with more than 100 people going off the edge in 1983 is famous, and the road claimed 200-300 drivers a year until the 1990s, but it wasn’t even Bolivia’s most dangerous road even at the height of its fame. It still claims mountain bike riders today, the most very recent an Ecuadorian who decided to take selfies while riding, only had the fingers on the front brake, lost it on a slippery bit and went off the edge. It is perhaps the only South American road Australians are comfortable on though; you ride/drive on the left so LH drive vehicles can open the window and see just how close they are to finding out whether they are booked in upstairs or down for eternity.

Our group rode into El Alto on the rim of the valley dropping down into La Paz, and parked up at a property where they were under good care. Riding into La Paz is avoided at all costs – the city town planner left his set square on the bus heading in on his first day in 1548, then had a stroke and decided to draw the road design freestyle with his pencil in his mouth, then accidentally poked his only working eye with the pencil…. You get the idea. Down into the maw via the excellent cable car network, then to the hotel at a fairly sizeable 3,600 m altitude.

Our group was given the choice – Death Road by bicycle, or Death Road by trail bike. No choice really for USA Scott and I, we are on a motorcycle tour so bicycles are slightly behind mules as acceptable transport. Everyone else chose bicycles, we all knew they’d regret it. Up slightly less early than the bicycle riders we were into a taxi for a ride a long way out in the opposite direction to the Death Road. Into the motorcycle dealer and hire shop, we met the owner, and our guide for the day, Gus. Here are the bikes said the owner, a pair of DR650s, choose your weapon. Right, where do we sign? You paid didn’t you? Yes. Well just go! Righto, all insurances null and void, better be switched on. Straight up onto the street, it was like some of those scenes in The Fast and The Furious, racing along and passing everything via the correct side, the wrong side, and the footpath. Up north-east into the lower socio-economic suburbs, the bitumen became intermittent and the dust absolutely pea-soup, especially for me at the back. At one stage I found myself riding in a ditch trying to get past a truck, luckily launching back onto the road before reaching the concrete vertical sided channel. Eventually the ‘burbs thinned out, and we were onto some pleasant dirt.

At the head of the valley we turned 180° and rode up a track across a slope. When we reached a long scree section, I assumed we were now on the Death Road because it dropped off into oblivion. But it turned out virtually all the roads are like that. Up the top we reached a lookout then headed around some dams to the start of the mountain biking area. Unlike the unmotored, we went to the top where we parked and walked to the statue of Christ who looks down over the start of the Death Road. We walked because people make burnt offerings around the statue, and use pallets for the fuel, hence the ground is littered with DR tyre-ending nails. The motorcyclist ritual is to make an offering of 96% proof alcohol to whichever deities are accountable for Death Road safety by pouring some on the ground, and then to their horror drinking some and saying a prayer the 96% proof immediately wipes from memory. Inhibitions crushed, down we went.

It turned out that wasn’t the start of the Death Road either, but we did some awesome dirt that was the original lead-up to the Death Road and then eventually ended up on the new bitumen road for about 10km to get to the actual Death Road, passing various mountain biking friends and loved ones on the way.

A stop for a quick choccy while keeping an eye uphill to make sure we’d beat the mountain bikers to the Death, and we were into it. A stop near the top was to pay a fee to the local community who do some work on the road to keep it passable, although as we’d find out it unless they all went to Uni to do geotechnical engineering it was always going to be a bit token.

Onto the Death Road, first impression was that it was rough. Bloody rough. Mountain bike rider whinging then giving up rough. Even we started to get a bit handsy trying to brake and clutch while hanging onto the thin DR grips. Turned out the mountain bikers started further down, so no need for their whinging or giving up just yet. Even though we were by now into the Death Road everyone has seen photos of, we’d only passed one car coming up, and the actual fear of going off the edge was pretty much nil. I mean how often have you been riding along, and suddenly just careered off the road for no reason? Well once for me, that’s another story, but for most it never happens, so it was more about avoiding rocks and puddles. The first stop down the hill for photos was the famous “hang the legs over the edge” spot.

Photos taken aplenty, it was onto the next iconic spot, the San Juan waterfall, where the mountain biker had recently selfied himself off the Ecuadorian voter’s register. This looks scary from the viewpoint, the greenery hides the road so well it is hard to believe it can be more than 3 feet wide. But again, after some advice from Gus about avoiding aggressive front braking on the slippery bits due to the lack of ABS and TC on DR650s, it was easy.

Then onto the harder bits; the landslides. There were five when we did it, and three were either away from oblivion edges or just a matter of avoiding the big rocks. The first bad one was okay, just a matter of getting the bike over a rocky bit, which Scott demonstrated admirably. The second bad one had gotten a lot worse than on his last visit according to Gus, with only a narrow ledge to work with, previously they’d been able to walk the bikes across. Looks easy if I ride says Scott, and that’s just what he did. I squibbed it and decided to let Gus do my bike, after all someone had to take photos and offer some unwanted opinions drowned out by the roar of 650cc’s bouncing over rocks. How they will ever fix this landslide and re-make the road is beyond me, it is a real mess.

After the second bad landslide, it was a dusty doddle down the descent to the end. A few photos and some sucking on the CamelBak were undertaken at the final sign, which weirdly says welcome to the Death Road. Didn’t we just finish it?

Off via some sketchy back roads to re-meet the new road, we charged up the hill to a trucha (trout) lunch. Gus asked whether we just wanted to go back to La Paz on the new road, or whether we wanted to do some more dirt. Don’t mind more dirt we said, little realising that this was the equivalent of placing a no-care no-responsibility waiver in front of the Death and Accessory Roads deities, although they were happy we’d only had water during lunch.

Gus was not a regular tour guide because they don’t do that many motorbike tours, and in fact could more accurately be described as an enthusiastic La Paz part-timer. He clearly felt that our ability to keep up thus far meant that he could now go off exploring new Death and Serious Injury Roads. So off we went through a mountain village, up a road made from sharpened basalt lumps, up over a basalt fence which explained the source of the basalt lumps, and over rough ground to get back onto something more reasonable. Gus was a straight A to B man, avoid deviation caused by following the actual road, preferably just go straight up. This worked well a few times, but as the altitude increased to the 4000s the bikes started to struggle. The end came when Gus decided we could get back on the main road by going directly up. I’d gotten into a boggy bit so struggled to even get to the slope, making it half way up before meeting Gus coming back down. Scott had likewise stalled and had to give up, so I could retreat with full honour.

Gus then decided that as it was a nice day we might get some views from a nearby 5000 m peak. The DR’s weren’t consulted. Again upwards, trying to keep the vertical rate of climb a bit more gradual, we found ourselves on open terrain where we could all make our own roads. The race was on to the top. Scott’s brutalised DR was struggling, Gus’s was going OK, but mine had found a second wind as long as I stayed in first gear. Up to the top, the views were a bit patchy but the personal motorcycling altitude record had been smashed.

After that it was pretty tame, besides Gus nearly taking us off a cliff when trying to pioneer a new track directly to B from A, and 3 river crossings with bonus boulders. The bikes gave up before we did; Scott ran out of fuel heading back to La Paz but coasting was fine for about 20 km, then Gus’ bike kept stopping as we ploughed back through the dusty ‘burbs, at one point causing a bit of a traffic jam as there was nowhere to pull off. Eventually back to the dealership by keeping the throttles fully open in a low gear, it was handshakes all around and a huge thanks to Gus who had vastly over-estimated my confidence and abilities. But I’d survived Death and actually had a lot of fun.

The Death Road? That was the easy part. The hard part? Just getting out of La Paz.