Tracy mountain biking down the 'death road' in La Paz

Okay, so after my history with mountain bikes so far in this trip, I didn’t imagine that I would be going to ride down ‘the world’s most dangerous road’… For anyone who has been following my trip from the beginning, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I still have the memory imprinted in my brain of watching poor Kerry, the Auckland ambulance officer mountain biking in the Redwoods Forrest, sailing through the air after missing the landing of a jump. I firmly believe in signs, and so decided then and there that I was going to avoid mountain biking throughout the trip...

But the thing is, I love to ride… It’s one of my favourite forms of exercise. So it didn’t take me long before I got onto to bike, in Puerto Madryn. It was technically a mountain bike, but there were no mountains so it couldn’t really be classed as mountain biking. But when I arrived in La Paz and heard about this exciting bike ride down the mountains into the tropics, I couldn’t help but get a little excited. It had everything that I was looking for in a day’s adventure, fantastic scenery, a little bit of exercise, and best of the all, the prospect of warm tropical weather and a swimming pool at the end.

There was only a small problem… Colloquially known as ‘the death road’ it has been responsible for more fatalities than any other road in the world. The route goes from ‘La Cumbre’ (the peak) a short drive out of La Paz, which is 4800m above sea level, and over 64 kilometres plunges a dramatic 3600 metres to the town of Coroico. The road is gravel, incredibly rocky, and narrow. At about 3.2 metres in width, there is barely enough space for a car to pass a bike, let alone two cars or heaven forbid, two trucks! Added to this is the fact that the road is flanked on one side by towering mountains, and on the other by spectacular cliffs, with vertical drops of up to 600m. In 2005 an average of one bus plummeted over the cliffs every two weeks on the ‘world’s most dangerous road’. According to the Lonely Planet, 8 tourists have also died cycling down the road. It also happened to be rainy season, which would mean mud, waterfalls, and at times a very slippery road.

I debated within myself for a few days while wandering around La Paz, and eventually decided it was too exciting to resist, but with Kerry’s accident still in my mind, I compromised by committing to go with the safest possible organisation. So I shopped around a little before deciding on ‘B-side adventures’. At US$55 for the day, it wasn’t the cheapest option, but it was the cheapest of the companies that had the safest bikes, and I was assured that they had a good reputation, so that was going to have to be good enough for me.

Our group was made up of about 18 tourists, and 4 guides, who gave us a number of briefings along the way to make sure we would be as safe as possible. The initial road was paved, with long stretches between turns, and all downhill, so we were able to get a fair amount of speed, and in almost no time we had covered 20km. Here began what I would have to say was the hardest part of the entire day. 8km of uphill road… Ascending is hard in a bike at the best of times, but we were at 3800metres above sea level, and I seriously thought that my heart was going to jump out of my chest it was pumping so fast. While slogging it out and lamenting how unfit I felt, several younger riders overtook me… But I made it up in the end, and managed to resist the temptation to ask the minivan to stop and let me put the bike on the top.

After the uphill section, we entered the ‘death road’. I quickly found that going too slow was worse than going to fast, as the combination of braking with rocky, muddy terrain just made you skid and lose control of the bike every time you tried to turn. So I used the trick that my dad taught me when learning to drive, break into the corner, then accelerate out of it, and found that I felt much more secure on the road. I found myself overtaking all those youngsters who had passed me on the uphill with a little feeling of satisfaction! After the first ten minutes or so, the group was incredibly spread out, so we separated into three groups, the fastest ‘speed demons’ the middle group who rode more cautiously, and the slower group who might have been faster walking their bikes down the hill!

I somehow found myself grouped with the speed demons, as one of only two women amongst the rest of the men in the tour. Numbering 9 in total, we sped down the road at a pace that was sometimes alarming, but I kept to the rear of the pack so I could slow down a little if I was insecure. We passed many other groups on the way down, our superior bikes giving us the ability to go a little faster than the other groups (who only had $35 bikes!). I was generally able to keep up as long as we didn't have to peddle! As soon as the road turned flat or uphill I again fell behind, a victim of the altitude, and it felt like the bike was made of lead! Thankfully the flat and uphill sections were relatively few. The road was incredibly unpredictable, though, with twists and turns, and lots of rocks that could cause havoc if you weren’t paying attention. Along the two hour downward journey two of the speed demons went head over heels. Thankfully, though, they fell onto the road, and not into the cliffs below and ended up with only minor injuries. I am pleased to announce that I completed the ride with no injuries, with the exception of my incredibly tender bottom!

At the end of our journey, we were presented with a t-shirt that proclaimed us ‘death road’ survivors, and we were offered complimentary beer to celebrate. The one thing that had surprised me throughout the entire ride was the lack of other traffic. We had seen one other car, and one motorbike, but apart from that, everyone else on the road was a tourist on a mountain bike! From everything that I had read, the road itself wasn't dangerous as such, it was supposed to be the sheer amount of traffic on it, and the way people drive, coupled with the conditions that made it the world's most dangerous road.

So I asked about it and found out that in 2006 the government had completed a new road to Coroico, fully paved the entire way and much safer, so the road we rode on is hardly even used any more. Which actually meant that technically, the path that we road down is no longer the world's most dangerous road... As we enjoyed a sumptuous buffet lunch, I sat watching the extraordinary scenery below, feeling a sense of satisfaction, contentment and exhaustion, and I decided that I was unperturbed by the news that the road was no longer the most dangerous in the the world. In fact, I was grateful, firstly because it meant that we survived relatively unscathed, but also because I don't think my altitude-weakened heart could have taken any more adventure! In all, it was a thrilling, exciting day that I would highly recommend, but definitely not for the feint of heart.