The Death Road

By our calculations, the Camino de la Muerte, or the Yungas Road, drops about 4000m in altitude over a distance of about 70km. From La Paz, already at about 3600m, the road climbs to over 4500m, then it is all down hill. Quite incredibly, this single-lane, two way road was until 2006 the only road connection between most of lowland Bolivia and the capital. Trucks, buses, and private vehicles alike negotiated the road, passing under waterfalls, within millimetres or even overhanging 500m precipices, risking landslides on the saturated surface. Sliding off the edge was and still is a certain one-way trip. The road gets its name from the outrageous death toll it exacted until the asphalt alternative route was completed - about one person per day died on the road.

We haven't had to keep left on the road since leaving England, but the Yungas Road is different to most other roads in Bolivia in this and another aspect. The keep left rule was instituted so that drivers coming up the road, and therefore nearest the precipice during passing manoeuvers, could look out their windows at the front tyre, and thereby get as close to the edge as possible. Those going uphill also have priority - downhillers have to squeeze over and/or back up to let opposing traffic pass. I am probably more interested in road rules than most, so I won't go on too long about it; suffice to say there was more than the usual to think about on this little track.

Anyhow, the top of the road is in territory that looks like this - sunlit alpine peaks and passes bathed in sunshine. We were there at about 7:30 in the morning, and it was bloody cold, but we soon descended into the relative warmth of that cloud.

The surface is of wet river rocks and clay, hard enough at the best of times, and with those cliffs alongside the ride hovered somewhere between chore and adventure. Don't worry mums, there was no traffic! We had left early in the morning just so we would have the road to ourselves, and riding I left nothing to chance.

That's Emily and the bike down there in the middle ground of the photo, checking out one of the scores of crosses we saw, erected for obvious reasons during the road's heyday. Here and there Emily spied the carcases of cars, buses or trucks down in the ravines. Can't say I was looking off the edge much!

We had been told there were fantastic views, but these were not on offer on the day we went down; we got them from other vantage points later on. The fog made it all the more eerie and atmospheric though - Em was stoked to be riding in a cloud forest.

There I am, riding under one of several waterfalls that just fall onto the road, turning it into a creek for some distance downstream. The forest grew more dense and spectacular as we progressed slowly downhill.

There's not much traffic on the road nowadays, unless you count mountain bikes, so there are far fewer deaths too. Each day, several La Paz-based companies take up to a hundred or more paying customers for a spin on the road. Gravity-assisted, they cruise or fang down 64km of unbroken descent. Sounds like fun, though just days after we tip-toed down a man died on one of these excursions, reportedly suffering a heart-attack either before or after he slid toward the edge of the road, and oblivion.

We just had a beautiful morning, wondering at the beauty of the mountain, the altitude and its effect on vegetation, and of course the forest.