Yungas de Corani, Bolivia, South America

I had an awesome day on the Death Road today! It started out with an early wake up call at Hostal Copacabana, and I met the rest of the group at a restaurant called Little Italy at 7:30am. There was enough time to grab some breakfast and then we headed out at about 7:45am. It was about an hour drive to get to the start of the ride, which was at 4,700m (14,000ft). The first 20km was on the paved road that all the traffic still use today. It wasn’t very dangerous, but it was really fun because you could build up some good speed.

We got a great day for the ride, there were some clouds in the sky, but no rain, so it was a heck of a lot better than the start of the jungle trek bike ride. I started the ride right behind Gino, and within the first few hundred meters, his back tire blew out. I was wondering if this was a sign of things to come for the day, but luckily it was the only problem with equipment that we had all day.

We stopped a few times on the way down the paved road to take some pictures, and to hear about some of the accidents that have happened on this road. You can still see some of the wrecked cars and busses at the bottom of the roadside where the vehicles have fallen down a couple hundred meters and killed most of the people involved.

We got to the bottom of the paved road and had to pay 25 bolivianos ($3.50) for entry to the Death Road. We then got back into the van and drove about 8km up the road that was all uphill and would have been a real pain to ride up at this altitude, especially on mountain bikes with full suspension. We also got fed some sandwiches and chips in the van that our guides, Noel and Goose, brought along for us. They were both Bolivian, but spoke excellent english, so it was perfect. Noel would usually ride ahead and take photos and videos of us, and Goose would stick with the group so we had someone to follow.

We got down to the start of the actual Death Road, and that’s when I could really see why it was the world’s most dangerous road. This is a single track dirt road, that runs right on the side of a mountain, most of which does not have a guardrail. It is covered in loose rocks which make it incredibly slippery, and you constantly have to watch out for landslides. There are also dozens of crosses littering the side of the road where so many people have died on this road in the past. They built a new paved road for trucks to use, so this road is not used nearly as much anymore. Now it is mostly just these bike tours and the support vans that follow.

Our group of six stopped quite a few times not they way down, which covered about 30 miles. It was incredible how much the climate changed from the 4,700m at the top, to the 1,100 meters we finished at. Each stop we made I had to take another piece of clothing off because it got so much hotter really quickly. There were a few parts of the road where we picked up some major speed, road through a couple of rivers, and had to be careful on some corners where the road had an incline, but away from the mountain. It was a pretty dangerous ride, but I think there was only one fall in our group, and Gino managed to catch it on his GoPro. Luckily it wasn’t me though, it was one of the Brazilian guys who were in our group. And luckily again, he wasn’t injured, thanks to the knee pads.

We ended up at a little restaurant that had showers and towels all ready for us. It was really nice to get cleaned up and then have a decent lunch at the restaurant. It gave us time to see all the pictures and videos Noel took, and i was able to take a copy of all of them onto my computer. The group headed off at about 3pm, and I had a short walk over to the entrance of La Senda Verde.

This is the animal sanctuary that Laura and Alyce had volunteered at, which looked amazing. I don’t have time to volunteer there, but I did want to stay for at least one night to check it out. It’s a bit of a strange set up where they do have a few rooms to rent, but they don’t have a very organized way of checking people in or giving out information. I just kind of wandered in, found someone to give me my key, and then I just wandered around the grounds. Most of the areas have signs that say you can’t enter without someone from the staff, so I was pretty limited as to what I could see.

There was a bit of paper in the room that had some rules and information about the sanctuary. It said that there is a tour every day at 4pm, so I tried to meet for that in the restaurant, only to find out that it went at 3pm today, so I missed it. There wasn’t much to do so I just hung out till 7:30pm when I could go for dinner in the restaurant. It was a bit strange because they set it up so that I had a small table to myself, and all the other people at together. I was a bit surprised they didn’t give me the chance to eat with some of the other travelers or volunteers, but it is what it is. The dinner was not very good, it was a salad, and then some sort of corn lasagna, instead of meat. I did have a brownie with ice cream for dessert, so that was pretty good.

It looks like there are some pretty cool animals around here. I’ve seen a couple of monkeys and some beautiful parrots just milling around. I have a tour to see the bear tomorrow morning at 8am, and then I’ll get the full tour after that to se the rest of the animals they have here. I’m just hoping I can get some sleep tonight. All these animals are really loud!