Latitude 16° 08' S: Mountain Biking ¨The Most Dangerous Road in the World--La Paz, Bolivia

Coroico, The Yungas
Bolivia
6 de marzo de 2010

It´s a cold, grey-hued, misty early morning and I´m hurtling down an asphalt road with nothing on the right side of me but a giant abyss of 4,000 feet. All morning as we drove from La Paz to La Cumbre at 15,400´ the words from Hotel California kept racing through my head: ¨This could be Heaven or this Could be Hell.¨ Hotel California is very popular in Bolivia, and I´d been hearing the song all over the place. But I gotta shake those lyrics. I´m on the ¨Most Dangerous Road in the World,¨on a top-of-the-line mountain bike with the best company in La Paz, on a journey that will bring me from 15,400 feet to 3,600 feet in less than five hours. 64 kilomters: 22 on a new asphalt road and 42 on an infamous dirt and gravel track cut precariously into the side of a mountain no wider that twelve feet and with no guard rails. All downhill. No shortcuts. Just me, the bike and a strong countenance.

I´ve been up since 5:00 a.m. shower. Dress. Think. What am I doing? Taxi to the Alexander Coffee Shop, our rendezvous spot. I meet the early few who are here to join the ride. It´s pretty multinational. Maybe twenty of us. Almost all Europeans. We´re waiting for the team leaders of Gravity Assisted Biking, the best and safest bike company in La Paz who do this trip. I know I should eat, but I´m so nervous I can´t. But I do grab a few Diet Cokes. Just what I need. A massive caffeine jolt to add to the anxiety.

This is my third visit to La Paz, and three times I´ve walked into Gravity´s offices, interviewed the team, and twice I´ve walked away. This time I commited to the journey. Who knows when I´ll be back this way. It was never the bike ride down that spooked me. It was the ride back up that always stopped me in my tracks.

It was an hour to La Cumbre, another thirty minutes of orientation--do this, don't do that. Good news: it's all downhill. Bad news: you have to keep right where there are 3,000 foot drop offs. Yeah! We´re all dressed in mulitple layers. It´s cold at 15,300 feet, on the altiplano, but we´ll drop through mulitple ecosystems until we reach Coroico in the steamy Amazonia jungle. Our guide starts with a blessing to Pachamama--Mother Earth. He passes around a bottle of pure alcohol for all of us to drink, then he pours the rest on the road. Supposed to appease the spirits. I silently say a prayer to God.

Gravity´s the best company around. No nonsense. They charge double what other company´s charge, but what you get is the best mountains bike for this kind of trip, well-tuned and checked several times during the descent. A guide fore and aft. Snacks. Water. Lunch thend inner. Forty minutes of instruction time at La Cumbre. And the knowledge that in their ten years they´ve never lost a single biker. What´s another $45.00?

We're off. I´m in absolutely no hurry. Actually, I´m a super-charged, way excited, nervous wreck. I feel the gears, test the brakes. The front runners take off. Those of us more prudent take up the rear. It´s all freefall from here. To my right are 3,000 foot cliffs. The first 22 kilometers are on twisting asphalt highway. Immediately I see a line of four crosses marking the spot where a car hurtled off the road in January. I try to imagine the horror!

To my left are striated cliffs of the high Andes. Painted on flat surfaces are spiritual reminders that invoke more than Pachamama:

¨Jesus es la luz del mundo.¨

¨Te amo Jesus!¨

¨Jesus nos bendiga!¨

People have died on the road. Lots of them. It´s not called ¨The Death Road¨for no reason. Upwards to 200 a year plunged off this road before the newer asphalt road was built at the beginning of the decade. One a single day in 1984, 88 people, standing in two trucks that collided, fell to their deaths.

I switch gears and start singing Amazing Grace. It´s much more comforting.

Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far

and Grace will lead me home.

It´s a serpentine descent, one giant asphalt swtichback after another. I´m more than exhilarated. Adrenaline´s pumping through my body. It´s a smooth ride, there´s no traffic, so I keep left. I can see ahead of me. To my left is 4,000 feel of empty air. The experience is beyond words. I just stay in the spectacular moment of this most astounding ride. Still, I´m unnerved, and I control my descent, stay with those in the back of the pack.

It´s still early and traffic is light. Before this new road went in this was the only way from La Paz to the Yungas. Daily, scores of trucks brought fruits and vegetables to the altiplano from the warm fertile lowlands.

Views are minimal. we´re high in a cloud forest, at the end of the rainy season, but an early morning thick blanket of clouds hang in the valleys far below. Occasionally they lift and we see 20,000 foot high peaks in the distance.

I´m still take up the rear--not because I´m afraid, but because I can´t stop taking photos. Every time I round a new corner there´s another WOW vista. I gasp at what I see: Huayna Potosí at 19,973 feet, shadowed and textured in misty clouds; a view of the trail to come--miles of serpentine track twisting below us; a condor flying on an updraft. I stop so often to take pictures that I finally hand over the camera to a woman riding in the supply truck whose husband is riding with us. I tell her there´s a fresh memory card in the camera and just snap away.

I´m more free to enjoy the view, the ride, the thrill of this adventure. By now we´ve dropped several thousand feet. Despite the fact that´s it´s late summer, it was a cold start at La Cumbre. I start to shed layers, and, even though I don´t have the camera, I stop an each new bend in the road.

By 10,000 feet we´re firmly in a cloud forest ecosystem. Bromeliads and tree ferns are in abundance, luxuriously rich because of more than adequate moisture and humidity. All around me are richly striated upheavels of rock. Below us are exhuberant forests textured and hued in mulitiple shade of mossy green. Despite the altitude, we´re still at 16 degrees latitude south.

By now I´ve lost track of how many death markers I´ve seen. Not that I don´t see them. I do, and am sobered by what I see. One´s in Hebrew. The aft guide tells me it´s for a young Israeli girl who slid off the track on her bike a few years ago. Other times I´m mesmerized by long lines of crosses honoring those who died when a bus or truck they were riding in fell off the mountain. To date, 22 bikers have died on this road. They either took chances or were riding badly equipped bikes. Gravity boasts 0!

Hotel California still pops into my head:

On a dark desert highway,

cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of colitas,

rising up through the air

Still there are signs painted on rock faces:

¨Mi Dios Vive!¨

¨Es Espiritu Santo es Dios!¨

¨Dios te amo!

I pray:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

At 8,000 feet we stop for lunch. This is actually are 5th or 6th group stop. The group is never too far from beginning to end. A mechanic checks our bikes. I pull out a Diet Coke! Yay for Diet Coke. By now I can eat and am hungry. It´s hot. Bolivia´s close to the Equator and the sun is high in the sky. We begin to see orchids. Here the tree ferns are gigantic. I´ve not seen them this big since New Zealand.

The road is still a sinnowy sliver of gravel. It´s been a wet summer, and we occasionaly pass small rockslides, pushing us even closer to the edge. Despite the guide´s admonition to ¨keep right,¨ I do just the opposite. I´m having the time of my life, but I don´t want to push my luck.

This is all more than exhilarating. I´m awestruck at the beauty around me, the undulating mountain ranges, the pea-green verdancy of forests. It´s real, but seems unbelievable.

At midday all mist has lifted and we´re in full sun. I strip off more clothes and am down to shorts and a tee-shirt. It´s hot. This is all perfectly fine, because we are now encountering waterfalls cascading off the mountains and onto the gravel track. We plunge and splash under them, get wet from the ice cold water, then dry out in the warm sun until we hit another one gushing off the mountain. I feel like a kid! By the time I get to the end of the trail, I´m filthy with mud and dirt.

Indeed, from almost the beginning, water was everywhere. Ittumbled off cliffs, and cascaded of rock faces far in the distance.

It veiled of rock walls in diaphonous sheets of silver mist. It gurgled past in small rivulets that paralleled the track. Far off multiple slivers of water fell hundreds of feet.

It was all overwhelming and fabuous.

Lush yellow wild flowers begin to appear, as well as huge stands of pampa grass. I see wild impatients growing in clumps on rock outcroppings. No reminders of the altiplano here.

At 5,000 feet we get our first glimpse of Coroico, one of the principal towns in the Yungas. It appears as a distant oasis far beyond and below us. From here, it´s an easy ride to La Senda Verde, a wildlife refuge cum guesthouse that is to be our end point. As we drop the last two thousand feet, we begin to enter the first vestiges of civilization. At the absolute end, the guide who led the front runners applauds our accomplishments. My butt hurts from the long ride, but I want to turn around immediately and do it all over again.

We shower, take a swim in the pool. It´s good to be in the Amazonian lowlands after days on the cold, high plateau. The staff has prepared us lunch. The majority of the group will turn around and return to La Paz after they eat. Some of us have chosen to stay. I pass the afternoon reveling in the animals that have been resuced and are housed here: boas, and super-friendly monkeys who come up and sit on your lap.

The next day I take a taxi to Coroico where I enjoy the exhuberance of a Saturday street market. What strikes me most about Corocio is the ethnic differences between people living here as opposed to those on the altiplano. I was in Amazonia. Here were African blacks whose predecesors had come as slaves. Because their bodies could not adjust to the high altitudes, they were sent to the lowland to work the fields. That, of course, was a long time ago.

I eat lunch, buy fresh bananas and passion fruit, then decide to walk to five kilometers back to La Senda Verde. It´s late summer, and poinsiettas are in bloom. Wild flowers are everywhere. Butterflies skirt my face and feet. It´s a white-hot, dazzling day and I enjoyed the solitude as I walk back to the eco-lodge.

At 2:00, that day´s bike group began to arrive. I would ride back up the narrow gravel path, past the hundreds of crosses, out of the rainforest and back to the altiplano.

I sit on the right side of the van, my eyes glued to the impossibly beautiful scenery, glued to the van´s tires that were dangerously close to precipice below. At times, the van came within inches of certaind eath. This was exactly the reason that had stopped me before. I could have chosen to take a bus up the new road. But, no...I wanted to relive the rush from the day before.

By late afternoon we´d come off the old gravel road and onto the new paved highway, and then to La Cumbre. We´d come full circle.

A soft luminescent light of late afternoon greeted us a we arrived in La Paz. Each of us was deposited at our hotel.

That night, after dinner, I attempted to relive to descent, my time in coroico and the exhilarating ride back to La Paz. I was grateful beyond words. Amazing Grace´s opening verses came to mind:

Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far

and Grace will lead me home.

Grace! God's influence upon us resulting in happiness and thankfulness.

I was a thankful man!