My aim today was to cycle down "El Camino de Muerte", or what Bolivias tourist industry describes as "The worlds most dangerous road". This is 3500 m of pure descent, about 60km downhill. It was the main link to the Yungas region below La Paz, but a new road was built and most of the traffic was taken off it, which was fortunate as the accident rate on this single track, unpaved, safety barrier free road with hundreds of metres of sheer drop on one side was sky high, earning it it's name. Plenty of agencies run tours down it, but I decided to save the £50 and do it on my own bike.
I started off and to get to this long downhill I had to climb 1000 m out of La Paz. As always the hardest bit was the first with the fumes and traffic of La Paz, but afterwards although the gradient didn't get easier (it was quite a steep one) the lack of Dodge buses did make it easier.
I reached the summit of La Cumbre at about 4700 m and started to go down, putting on my ski gloves and the rest of my clothes to counter the inevitable cold. The first bit of the downhill was spectacular with the high snow covered mountains as the background, but lower down I went through the cloud, and it was difficult to see and raining. It was really raining hard when I decided to pull in for lunch. After lunch I found after a bit of difficulty the split between the old and new roads, and went on to the old road.
It was still very foggy and raining and the road was everything described above, so I took it slow, especially on outside curves. It is actually the only road in Bolivia where the traffic drives on the left, so that upcoming traffic can locate their wheel on the edge of the cliff. But this drop was on my left, and there was little traffic so there was no way I was riding on the left.
The clouds/ fog gave the route a mystic feel. I sometimes dared to peer over the edge and saw a sheer drop to absolutely nothing.
I changed my brakes half way down, the length of the climb combined with the wet had worn them completely down. Soon after I emerged from under the clouds and got views of the now forested mountains.
The road got wider and straighter and I could get up a bit more speed nearer the bottom. I saw my destination about 5 km away on the same level, but the road then wrenched away to the right down a long valley, leaving me a 600 m climb up!
Despite the cobbles on this fairly steep climb I managed to get a rythmn, but my bike has decided on principle that it cant go a full day without a medium to serious technical problem and two thirds of the way up the tyre went flat. On trying to fix it I discovered that the whole valve simply wasn't there. There was a big hole in the inner tube where the valve should be. This detail may be uninteresting to non cyclists but it's fairly unusual, and it's the second time it's happened on this bike. I discovered I didn't have the correct spare tube and had to hitch up the remaining third of the hill. I ended up in Coroico, a pretty hillside town.
I started off and to get to this long downhill I had to climb 1000 m out of La Paz. As always the hardest bit was the first with the fumes and traffic of La Paz, but afterwards although the gradient didn't get easier (it was quite a steep one) the lack of Dodge buses did make it easier.
I reached the summit of La Cumbre at about 4700 m and started to go down, putting on my ski gloves and the rest of my clothes to counter the inevitable cold. The first bit of the downhill was spectacular with the high snow covered mountains as the background, but lower down I went through the cloud, and it was difficult to see and raining. It was really raining hard when I decided to pull in for lunch. After lunch I found after a bit of difficulty the split between the old and new roads, and went on to the old road.
It was still very foggy and raining and the road was everything described above, so I took it slow, especially on outside curves. It is actually the only road in Bolivia where the traffic drives on the left, so that upcoming traffic can locate their wheel on the edge of the cliff. But this drop was on my left, and there was little traffic so there was no way I was riding on the left.
The clouds/ fog gave the route a mystic feel. I sometimes dared to peer over the edge and saw a sheer drop to absolutely nothing.
I changed my brakes half way down, the length of the climb combined with the wet had worn them completely down. Soon after I emerged from under the clouds and got views of the now forested mountains.
The road got wider and straighter and I could get up a bit more speed nearer the bottom. I saw my destination about 5 km away on the same level, but the road then wrenched away to the right down a long valley, leaving me a 600 m climb up!
Despite the cobbles on this fairly steep climb I managed to get a rythmn, but my bike has decided on principle that it cant go a full day without a medium to serious technical problem and two thirds of the way up the tyre went flat. On trying to fix it I discovered that the whole valve simply wasn't there. There was a big hole in the inner tube where the valve should be. This detail may be uninteresting to non cyclists but it's fairly unusual, and it's the second time it's happened on this bike. I discovered I didn't have the correct spare tube and had to hitch up the remaining third of the hill. I ended up in Coroico, a pretty hillside town.
In the morning it was raining hard, and the night before I´d booked a walk with a guide for the morning. I went to see whether the walk was still on, and he said that he´d take me around the local sights by car. I ended up getting a guide to myself as the others obviously took one look at the rain and decided they weren´t walking anywhere. The guide was enthusiastic and gave a lot of information about the area. He was also involved in projects to encourage Bolivians not to chuck rubbish anywhere, a much needed campaign. I´ve seen towns on the altiplano where every little plant on the plain downwind of the town has a bit of litter stuck to it.
The area was stunning. The forested mountains provide an amazing backdrop, and the views way down to the river below added to the scene. Furthermore the mist and clouds just made the view better, even more magical. I was driven to an Afro- Bolivian village, home to descendents of slaves that survived the horrors of the Potosi mines. I was shocked to learn that slavery only ended in practice in 1952 with the Bolivian revolution, and after that the ex- slaves took over the haciendas and ran them as co-operatives. In theory slavery was ended one hundred years earlier, but the slaves had to buy their freedom. However no slave had the money to do so.
The walk around the village was very pleasant, as I was shown all the different crops/ plants that were being grown in this co-operative. They included cocoa, coffee, papaya, bananas, oranges, and others.
In the afternoon I took a bus back to La Paz, a 50 mile uphill in a minibus all done in first or second gear.
On Sunday morning after a couple of days in La Paz I started a 3 day trek from the pass above La Paz to Coroico, the same place where I had finished my longest downhill. This trek was a downhill one, starting at 4800 m and finishing at 1300m. Viewing the gradual change in scenery from the snow covered Andes to what was nearly rainforest was fantastic. It was an old Inca road, and it used to be the main thoroughfare down to the Yungas until the "Camino de Muerte" was built by Paraguayan prisoners of the Chaco war in the 1930s, a war for potential oil in the Chaco border region egged on by oil companies on both sides. I read that the Incas were very keen on road building and not always just for building the roads themselves, they wanted to keep their subject peoples busy and out of mischief (ie not rebelling). The Spanish conquerers were truly awful to the people here (I've been reading Eduardo Galeano's treatment of the subject which exposes some of the horror experienced by the conquered) but the Inca emperors had their excesses too. If they felt like fish from the sea or something from the jungle relays of runners over hundreds of miles were ready to get it for them. Hugh Thompsons "white rock" details the last Incas who tried to drum up support for a last rebellion against the Spanish but some subject peoples unsurprisingly didn't want to support them, leaving the Spanish to play divide and rule.
I started the trek with only myself and the guide, but we soon met up with others and created for ourselves a group of 6 plus 3 guides. The trek was easy to do by oneself but I didn't feel like doing it on my own. It was a very nice group; 3 from Belgium, 2 from Switzerland, and myself. It was a very French speaking group; I was the only one who struggled in French! But it wasn't too bad as I generally understand a lot more than I speak and they would speak with me in English individually. The Belgian girls, Karen, Lees, and Lisa were great fun; they were in a choir called "Solidarity", which gives concerts around the world to raise money for projects including one in Bolivia, which they were visiting. This meant that the walks were livened up by the Flemish choir.
The first day was all downhill from the Andean heights to our campsite at 3000 m, below the treeline. Walking down all day is harder than one might imagine, it is tough on the knees and the flat is certainly easier. I also was wearing my cycling shoes, which are designed for walking long distances but not if you don't take off the metal part at the bottom, which I couldn't, making some rocky parts very slippery.
The tricky path took it's toll on the Swiss girl, who slipped and injured her knee, and struggled for the rest of the trek. It certainly made us think about the inaccessibility of such areas in relation to medical services; there was no road anywhere near and if she decided not to continue she would have had to go back for a few hours on the back of a mule. For the local people life is certainly tough in these areas, especially in relation to lack of medical services. In the evening I was asked to translate the conversations for the girl about her options and the information would often pass through four languages, from Aymara to Spanish to English and then finally to French! She was then given some medicinal plants to bandage to her knee.
The guides were really helpful and cheerful Aymara guys, and were a lot more talkative than guides on the other excursions I've been on, explaining a lot more and answering questions on detail. They chatted between themselves in Aymara a lot of the time, and they certainly seemed more at ease in Aymara than Spanish, which is a second language to them. The Aymara and Quechua peoples of Bolivia are a lot more reticent and less talkative than others in South America, certainly not fitting the stereotype of loud, party loving, and gregarious Latino. My knowledge of Aymara/ Quechua history only scrapes the surface, but one can only guess how the long history of oppression might affect their worldview and their interactions with those outside their community.
They taught me some Aymara words and phrases, not any use to me for the rest of my life but it's always good to make people feel that outsiders value their culture.
The walk continued through some stunning views, and on the second and third days it went up and down a lot more. We thought on the third day we saw the fabled condors, and were admiring them for a few minutes, bit were told afterwards that they were just a smaller relation. The birds had the same markings and the same distinctive style of flight as condors that a long term resident in La Paz described to me, ie hardly seeming to fly at all but just floating on the air currents. But unfortunately the birds were not condors.
The second night was a lot warmer than the first, it was 1000m lower and that made a lot of difference. We saw fireflies all over the place as well.
The last mornings walk was easier and gentler in gradient. We enjoyed some more singing from the Flemish choir, and Karen talked about her visits to the Taize community and her Christian beliefs. Her more "moderate" interpretations of the Bible certainly contrasted with those of my host in La Paz (lovely though she is), who inspires me to sympathize with Marx on the subject of religion.
The next day's challenge was the Death Road- in reverse. I slightly regretted not giving it a go and going back to La Paz by bus the first time I was in Coroico, so I'd asked the trekking agency to drop my bike in Coroico when one of their cars came down. The climb was monstrous, it started below Coroico at 1200m, and finished at La Cumbre at 4700m, the 3500 m difference the biggest I've attempted in my life.
The first part involved climbing the old unpaved road, and this was even enjoyable in parts. Well, except when my inner tube blew up early on (I can heat the snickering of my brother already). After a long time trying to fit a badly fitting Chinese inner tube I could go back to enjoying the climb. The scenery and the sheer adrenalin rush of having to cycle so close to such vertical drops made it quite fun. I could observe waterfalls and the plant life at a much slower speed than when I came down. I could also see the sheer number of crosses put by the side of the road in memory of those who had fallen over the edge. I saw one in memory of a foreign cyclist who fell off two years ago. At the most dangerous points the density of crosses was very high.
I was also a tourist attraction for those cycling down, even for the tour guides who took pictures of me going up. I got some Tour de France style support from about 20 cyclists stopped by the side of the road, and I think I was looking quite impressive to them until I fell off trying to squeeze past their support bus...
Towards lunchtime I was getting tired and was very glad for a cafe break. I stopped at the meeting point between the old and the new roads, and the rest of the climb was on the new, paved road.
The rest of the climb was not in any way enjoyable. It was a question of physcing myself up to complete it and counting off the kilometre markers. The scenery was great but I couldn´t appreciate it at all. I really felt finished towards the top, the last 5 km were painful. However I was really happy to complete it and was very satisfied that I'd done it. My mountain bike survived the climb too, perhaps that was more of an acheivement...
At the summit (La Cumbre), I was feeling so exhausted I couldnt even be bothered to cycle the 20km down to La Paz. I was feeling very drained of energy and could not face a cold descent, so I flagged down a minibus and asked if the driver could take me and my bike to La Paz.
I started the trek with only myself and the guide, but we soon met up with others and created for ourselves a group of 6 plus 3 guides. The trek was easy to do by oneself but I didn't feel like doing it on my own. It was a very nice group; 3 from Belgium, 2 from Switzerland, and myself. It was a very French speaking group; I was the only one who struggled in French! But it wasn't too bad as I generally understand a lot more than I speak and they would speak with me in English individually. The Belgian girls, Karen, Lees, and Lisa were great fun; they were in a choir called "Solidarity", which gives concerts around the world to raise money for projects including one in Bolivia, which they were visiting. This meant that the walks were livened up by the Flemish choir.
The first day was all downhill from the Andean heights to our campsite at 3000 m, below the treeline. Walking down all day is harder than one might imagine, it is tough on the knees and the flat is certainly easier. I also was wearing my cycling shoes, which are designed for walking long distances but not if you don't take off the metal part at the bottom, which I couldn't, making some rocky parts very slippery.
The tricky path took it's toll on the Swiss girl, who slipped and injured her knee, and struggled for the rest of the trek. It certainly made us think about the inaccessibility of such areas in relation to medical services; there was no road anywhere near and if she decided not to continue she would have had to go back for a few hours on the back of a mule. For the local people life is certainly tough in these areas, especially in relation to lack of medical services. In the evening I was asked to translate the conversations for the girl about her options and the information would often pass through four languages, from Aymara to Spanish to English and then finally to French! She was then given some medicinal plants to bandage to her knee.
The guides were really helpful and cheerful Aymara guys, and were a lot more talkative than guides on the other excursions I've been on, explaining a lot more and answering questions on detail. They chatted between themselves in Aymara a lot of the time, and they certainly seemed more at ease in Aymara than Spanish, which is a second language to them. The Aymara and Quechua peoples of Bolivia are a lot more reticent and less talkative than others in South America, certainly not fitting the stereotype of loud, party loving, and gregarious Latino. My knowledge of Aymara/ Quechua history only scrapes the surface, but one can only guess how the long history of oppression might affect their worldview and their interactions with those outside their community.
They taught me some Aymara words and phrases, not any use to me for the rest of my life but it's always good to make people feel that outsiders value their culture.
The walk continued through some stunning views, and on the second and third days it went up and down a lot more. We thought on the third day we saw the fabled condors, and were admiring them for a few minutes, bit were told afterwards that they were just a smaller relation. The birds had the same markings and the same distinctive style of flight as condors that a long term resident in La Paz described to me, ie hardly seeming to fly at all but just floating on the air currents. But unfortunately the birds were not condors.
The second night was a lot warmer than the first, it was 1000m lower and that made a lot of difference. We saw fireflies all over the place as well.
The last mornings walk was easier and gentler in gradient. We enjoyed some more singing from the Flemish choir, and Karen talked about her visits to the Taize community and her Christian beliefs. Her more "moderate" interpretations of the Bible certainly contrasted with those of my host in La Paz (lovely though she is), who inspires me to sympathize with Marx on the subject of religion.
The next day's challenge was the Death Road- in reverse. I slightly regretted not giving it a go and going back to La Paz by bus the first time I was in Coroico, so I'd asked the trekking agency to drop my bike in Coroico when one of their cars came down. The climb was monstrous, it started below Coroico at 1200m, and finished at La Cumbre at 4700m, the 3500 m difference the biggest I've attempted in my life.
The first part involved climbing the old unpaved road, and this was even enjoyable in parts. Well, except when my inner tube blew up early on (I can heat the snickering of my brother already). After a long time trying to fit a badly fitting Chinese inner tube I could go back to enjoying the climb. The scenery and the sheer adrenalin rush of having to cycle so close to such vertical drops made it quite fun. I could observe waterfalls and the plant life at a much slower speed than when I came down. I could also see the sheer number of crosses put by the side of the road in memory of those who had fallen over the edge. I saw one in memory of a foreign cyclist who fell off two years ago. At the most dangerous points the density of crosses was very high.
I was also a tourist attraction for those cycling down, even for the tour guides who took pictures of me going up. I got some Tour de France style support from about 20 cyclists stopped by the side of the road, and I think I was looking quite impressive to them until I fell off trying to squeeze past their support bus...
Towards lunchtime I was getting tired and was very glad for a cafe break. I stopped at the meeting point between the old and the new roads, and the rest of the climb was on the new, paved road.
The rest of the climb was not in any way enjoyable. It was a question of physcing myself up to complete it and counting off the kilometre markers. The scenery was great but I couldn´t appreciate it at all. I really felt finished towards the top, the last 5 km were painful. However I was really happy to complete it and was very satisfied that I'd done it. My mountain bike survived the climb too, perhaps that was more of an acheivement...
At the summit (La Cumbre), I was feeling so exhausted I couldnt even be bothered to cycle the 20km down to La Paz. I was feeling very drained of energy and could not face a cold descent, so I flagged down a minibus and asked if the driver could take me and my bike to La Paz.
I dedicate the completion of the longest and highest (in altitude difference) climb of my life to Robert Guantlett and James Atkinson, who often inspire me to give it my all.
This is my last day in Bolivia, I will miss the country for many reasons. Hopefully one day I´ll make it back here, but this will be my last long trip for a while as I start a teaching course in September and have to start working hard!
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