Today we went mountain biking on the world´s most dangerous road. The road is called Death Road and goes for 64km along a cliff edge with a drop of 400-600 metres. The road was made by prisoners from the war against Paraquay and is mostly dirt track and gravel.

We did the ride with a new company who only take small groups so it was us plus four Israeli guys. The guy who owns the company came along, he´s a champion downhill racer, his coach Pato plus the driver Jorge. It took us a few hours to get to the starting point and when we did we were on the main road for an hour and a half. We were going down the road on the bikes at what must have been 60mph, which meant that there were big distances between us all. At one point Matthew had stopped at the side of the road to get something out of his eye and Pato decided last minute to stop to see if everything was ok. This meant that Lisa went into the back of him and came off her bike doing a few rolls and flips. It probably looked a lot worse than it was, the Israeli guy behind us said ít wasn´t funny at all, i thought that was the end of the ride´ Pato started yelling at Matthew for causing the accident but it wasn´t anyones fault, he just felt bad about it and wanted to vent. The helmets were really good so apart from a few bruises and a smashed mobile phone we continued the ride.

The valley around the death road was beautiful. There are a few memorial sites where people have died but this is for the tourists. The main accidents occured with locals when two cars were trying to pass one another, and one would fall off the edge. There were loads of bikes on the road with us which was annoying when they didn´t keep to the right side of the road. We stopped a few times for police checkpoints and for sandwiches and chocolate bars. By the time the ride was over we were covered in dirt and soaked from going through a few rivers. We did it really fast according to JC and passed all of the other groups.

After the ride we had a few beers at the bottom of the valley and then got in the van to take us to a hotel where we had showers, a swim in the pool and lunch. The ride back to La Paz was along the new road and took 3 hours although it didn´t seem that long because everyone talked the whole time. Pato was hilarious and very unpolitically correct, and at one point said he imagined Israel to be like a war zone with bombs flying everywhere. Simon and Matthew would have really enjoyed it, we felt a little left out with all the talk about cars etc. Jc the owner of the company is a computer engineer and Pato a mechanical engineer along with Jorge. Everyone went on the ride and treated it like a ride rather than a tour, we really really enjoyed ourselves.

When we were back in La Paz we got tshirts and a cd of photos from the day that JC had taken. We said goodbye and went for some dinner in the hotel restaurant.