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It was an early wake up call this morning, in preparation for a huge, exciting day! To be honest, I didn't sleep much because I was so pumped.
Dawn and I packed our day packs and had a quick breakfast before meeting up with the boys to walk to our meeting place. We met up with our guide Mark, a terry tough nut baldy from Sydney, in whom I would place my entire life while cycling down the worlds most dangerous road - El Camino del Muerte (in English, THE DEATH ROAD). We all piled into this s*** heap of a van, with our bikes loosely strapped on top, and began out ascent to 4700m above sea level, where our ride would begin. After a quick safety briefing, we only had one final thing to do before we began the scariest bike ride I will ever do in my life. Mark rips out a small plastic bottle from his jacket, it's filled with what I thought was water. Mark called this liquid "irresponsible tourism" and explained that in order to be safe, we needed to make an offering to Pachamama - mother earth. This clear liquid was 96% alcohol and we were to drink a shot of it and pour some on our front tyre as an offering to mother earth. Now 96% alcohol is effing terrible at the best of times, but at 7:30am in the bitter cold it put a few hairs on my chest!
Then there was nothing left to do but get our arses onto the death road! Within 5 minutes of riding as fast as we could downhill, we had our first casualty - a girl in my group got the speed wobbles going down the road, flipped over the front of her bikes handlebars, ripped her chin clean open and broker her jaw in two places. We later found out it was wired shut and she wouldn't be eating solid food for 6 weeks. Holy. Fark. We stopped off at a few accident scenes and saw a mini can that had gone over the side killing 10 people. They just left the wreckage lying in its final resting spot looking like a mashed up tin can. Pretty sobering stuff, but nothing compared to what was coming on the official death road.
After about 18km of riding on a tar sealed road, we finally got to the gravelly start of the actual Death Road. It was still quite early in the morning, and because we were so high up, the mist was covering the road (and offering a bit of comfort for those scared of seeing how huge the cliff was) so we were told to go extra slowly until we ascended below the clouds. We took off again, some people going extra slowly and hugging the cliff side, I hadn't seen how far down I had to fall so I went with a bit of pace. Our first stop was at a memorial where 5 politicians lost their lives as a result of extremists who kidnapped them, tied them up and pushed them over the side because they didn't want them to win the election.
The more we descended, the warmer it got....and the brutal stories of deaths on this road continued. A man lost his entire family over the side, and subsequently invested time and money into a human traffic light system that made the road marginally safer. Bolivia's worst traffic disaster also occurred on this road, where a bus with 102 passengers on it went over the side killing everyone on board. An estimated 300 people a year have died on the road since its construction in 1930..... That's around 25,000 people!
The mist soon cleared and I got my first glimpses of the sheer drop over the side. At some points it was 600m, vertical. After seeing that I went slightly slower! We also got to see where Top Gear Bolivia was filmed, I don't think you'd find me trying to negotiate the 1 car width wide gravel road! The scenery was beautiful though, and we had lots of opportunities to take photos and have a mini panic attack.
After 4 and a half hours of flying downhill, and descending over 3000m, we reached the small town of Coroico. Some of us paid just $43USD to do three zip lines, spanning over 1500m in total and about 300m above the valley floor. Another prime example of "South American Safety" was the fact that we actually had to use our own breaks to slow ourselves down. The man who instructed us spoke less english than I spoke Spanish, and so he showed us how to use the breaks and pushed us off. Thankfully on the other side of the zip line was a rolled up mattress to stop us in case we forgot to use the breaks...they claimed it was up to US safety standards!
We then had a late lunch at yet another animal sanctuary, and had a few beers before the 4 hour trip back to La Paz, which we continued to drink on.
We went back to our tour guides house and got even more merry, then went ten pin bowling Bolivian style. There were men standing at the end of the lanes to stand the pins back up and roll the ball back to you! After a few games we went to Mongos bar, drank way too much, and headed home. What a farking day!
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