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The worlds most dangerous road (North Yungas Road) is a dirt road built on the side of a cliff in the 1930's to aid the transportation of coca leaves out of the jungle. At its height, someone died on this 30 km stretch of road every single day. The road isn't used by heavy traffic anymore and instead there are many companies in La Paz that take you down it on a bike. We decided to go with a company called Gravity, we had heard a lot of about them and we knew they had god bikes and had operated for years without getting anyone killed. The company is owned by Kiwis living in Bolivia and although they were the most expensive company to go with, we thought with a 450m drop on one side of the road, this probably isn't the best place to cheap out.
With how high La Paz is, I didn't expect to go up higher to get to the death road but that is exactly what we did - up to 4000m above sea level into the Bolivian Andes. Thankfully the whole route is downhill as trying to cycle uphill or even on the flat in such thin air would have been a nightmare. Our group consisted mainly of chicas (girls) so I was feeling pretty comfortable. Turns out these were speed demon Chicas and I sat at the back of the group for almost the whole day. The first 35km are on an asphalt road but its very very steep, so while Jolly lead the group I held white knuckled on my brakes the whole way down stopping occasioning to look at the stunning view. At this point we pass through a police check point where they search vehicles for the chemicals needed to make cocaine. This police check point is closed between the hours of 12am and 6am, which is when this road gets a lot of traffic. Then we hit the death road - 450m drop to our left, narrow gravel road (3m wide at its narrowest), lots of other cyclists (and the occasional car) and a long way to the bottom. And to make it worse, the rules are that traffic going downhill (us) goes down cliff-side. Awesome. But we all made it, albeit very sweaty, with a sore bum and sore hands from squeezing the brakes so hard for almost 5 hours. The surroundings are incredible and although they stop several times throughout the day for photos on the ride itself I saw very little other than the dirt in front of my bike!
At the end of the day everyone goes to the La Senda Verde Animal refuge for lunch and a cold beer. Jolly and I had booked to stay there for 2 nights and it's a really cool place. Started by a Bolivian couple with one monkey, it's now a sanctuary for 35 species of animals all saved from poachers or the illegal pet trade. The monkeys pretty much own the place, they go where they want and they do what they want - in fact they even have a swimming pool which the monkeys have taken over and no one can now use. The couple receive no government funding (although the government to drop off animals to them) and make most of their money by travelers coming and volunteering for a few weeks or months at a time. This was definitely a worth while place to visit, seeing all these lovely animals (some with horrific histories) being so well cared for.
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