The Death Road

Our starting point, so high up there was snow on the ground!
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Here's an adventure that I've been looking forward to since we left the U.K! (and Claire has been dreading!!) It's called the Death Road and used to be the main route into the capital of Boivia, La Paz. You would expect the main road into a capital city to be wide with overtaking spots, at least with two lanes of traffic... Not in this case!! It was a single track road, hugging the mountainside with very steep drops. Twisting and turning as it climbed 3600m in 65km. There were more deaths on this road every year than on any other in the world!! (or so the story goes..) until they built a bypass. Now almost all the traffic goes along the bypass and the road is a downhill mountain bikers heaven. So you find a suitable company to hire your bikes from. We went with B-Side Adventures http://bside-adventures.com, they had fantastic bikes, Ironhorses I think. Full Sys, disc brakes, great gears. Basically the best bike I've ever ridden. Oh and they had a no-death so far record! We were kitted out and driven for two hours to La Cumbre the highest point of the route at 4700m. It was very cold, snow was on the ground and the air was thin but that didn't matter as we weren't pedaling! Our guide went ahead and we came absolutely flying down the first section. (it's part of the new bypass so a wide tarmac road). After hitting speeds of 50mph on a mountain bike we reached the dangerous bit, the 2100m descent on the dirt road, also known as the death road! There were two Dutch guys and three girls from England and Ireland in our tour. At this point we split into a fast and slower group. Basically Boys and Girls. (no sexism intended, just the way it was) I tried to keep up with the fast group, which was a whole world of fun! Claire was coping a lot better than she thought and gaining in confidence, especially by cycling with other beginner bikers. You might even go as far as to say she was enjoying it! Our guides kept snapping photos (over a hundred) and I'll put a link in here soon for a shortened slideshow from their photo website. (that annoyingly I can't get the pictures off to put directly on here...)On our way down we had to go through waterfalls and deal with suicidal Israeli bikers from another company. Apart from that, the views were awesome, the track very bumpy and sometimes scary, but all of it great fun. Five hours after our start we all arrived safely in tropical Yoloma at 1100m above sea level. Afterwards we were driven to nearby Coroico to refresh at a hotel. Before an equally exhilirating evening/night time two hour drive in very foggy conditions with a crazy, wanabee rally driver back to La Paz.

Claire looking a wee bit nervous
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We chilled in Olga's empty flat and planned our next destination... Potosi