Steer Clear! World's Most Dangerous Road - AKA road of death....

"Hey Cora! Let's ride bikes down the world's most dangerous road!" - Marlana.... I'm thinking - that should give us the adrenaline kick for our trip in Bolivia. We go ahead and book the trip with Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking (the highly recommended company) the day before our flight to La Paz. Upon arriving at our hostel, we discovered that the majority of the travelers were planning on doing the ride as well, so we weren't too worried.

A brief background on death road: The road was first built by Paraguayan prisoners in the 1930s. It used to be the only link between the 2 Bolivian cities of La Paz and Corioco. It is 64 kilometers (40 mi) stretch of continuous downhill riding for bikers. An estimated 200 to 300 people are killed every year from the 600 m (1969 ft) cliffs the road sits on. The width of the road is the length of of 2 average people laying down with their heads touching ( we have a picture for proof).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road#Mountain_biking

http://www.sawse.com/2008/02/20/road-of-death/

The morning of a very long and painful day at 7:30 am: We meet our tour guide and group at the cafe down the street from our hostel. Our guide is an outspoken young man from Brighton, England and made sure to point this out, and the fact that England is above all, when I called him an Australian mate! He got a kick out of Marlana and I - being from Teeexxxxxxxaaaaaaassss, ' come on Texas - move a little faster!'

Anyway, we get on the tour bus/van and our guide gives us his orientation. "Hello all, let me introduce myself, this is Gravity Biking, I'm from England, where are you from? Oh Australian - you guys need to sit by the Texans over here - I'll repeat everything niiiice and slowwwwww... oh and by the way - look at these horror pictures!' ......And this is where Marlana and I begin to hold our breath...for the entire day.

Our guide's name is Dayle. About 7 minutes into the drive, Dayle begins to tell us stories about all of the bikers who have died/ severely injured themselves on the death road ( these stories include horribly gruesome photographs as well) . The average biker death rate for the road is about 1 person every 2 weeks on average. Marlana and I look at eachother silently saying " WHAT ARE WE DOING?!?" The fact is, we had already paid and there was no turning back. The first story is about a young woman who only used her right brake and ended up severly fracturing her face on the rocks. This small mistake cost her life! Ok , so I never ride bikes....really. And this mistake sounds like the typical Cora error - I'm thinking 'ahh! I am really going to die today!' Other stories include a man who used his brakes with too much force, a man who was passing without properly yelling loud enough to the pasee, and too many more to remember. Throughout this presentation, Dayle repeatedly suggests that these stories are meant for nothing but our safety. His logic: the more terrified and nervous we are, the more deterred we will be from repeating these mistakes.

The Decent

We get to the top of the road from a back highway. We get dressed with the clothing from the biking company which includes ski-like pants ( it is extremely cold and rainy at the top of the road), gloves, helmet, and rain jacket. Also - did I mention we are riding this road in the rainy season? The most dangerous road in the most dangerous season.. can I just say this is more thank enough adrenaline for us at the time. Dayle gives us a brief biking review session - how to brake, ride through curves, etc. We try out our bikes and then begin the decent. Marlana and I are at the back, of course. I am seriously braking ever 2 seconds......( in my head - both hands, both hands!) The first part of the road isn't bad -pavement, relatively wide, and NO CLIFFS.

After about 2 stops, we arrive at the "off-road" section, meaning - no pavement. Our guide informs us that we are about to approach the most dangerous part of the most dangerous road. Here is where we are introduced to the 1300 ft cliffs and the ridiculously narrow width. Right about now, Mar and I aren't speaking to anyone, we are tense beyond belief, and our guide continues with the horror stories. Before we depart, Dayle gives us another brief info session. We are now told that in order to avoid oncoming traffic, bikers must ride on the left side of the road - AKA THE SIDE OF THE CLIFFS. What?! Let me just say that our group consists of about 10 people and Marlana and I are the only ones that are the least bit nervous.... I don't get it. Also - he made it clear that any time we stopped our bikes, we absolutely must get off on the right side of the bicycle - as to avoid stepping off a cliff. This is when Dayle tells us about the French girl. Tragically, she stepped off her bike in the left direction and simply walked off the cliff - and died. She walked off a cliff. Here's a link to her story:
http://www.liebreich.com/LDC/HTML/Climbing/Mountain_Biking_Bolivia.html

Ok, after severly freaking us out, Dayle leads us down the journey. Here is when I realize that this road should be closed and blocked off - or at least be illegal for a tourist destination! We begin to see crosses about ever 50 ft where people have fallen off the cliffs. We can't seem to bring ourselves to ride on the left side of the road because of the narrow width. Mar and I were at the back of the line the entire way down continuously braking....my hands/wrists were killing me. Dayle tries to get us to go faster but we can't! No way was I going to speed down the rocky, dirty, wet road of death.

The Return Trip

After 5 hours of suffering, we make it to the bottom alive and physically uninjured. Our entire group arrives about 30 minutes before us. We have a lunch break and many of the group members decide to have a little party..... on the bus ride back.....this just does not sound appealing to us. I still can't decide which was more frightening - the bike ride down or the bus ride back up. With only inches between us and death, our driver stops the vehicle over the narrowest part of the road and remains there for the longest minute in my life. We proceed to stop for a photo shoot in front of the most photograped section of the road. Dayle - being the sneaky triple scorpio that he is - comes up behind us and holds us both upside down over the cliff. This apparently is very funny and entertaining to him and the rest of the group because everyone seemed to want a picture of this. Finally, we get back on the horror ride and continue on the journey. Dayle proceeds to have his fun, of which Marlana and I do not partake at all, and decides to have random stops like for trout, bathroom breaks (too many), and whatever else he could possibly come up with ..... At this point - I need to get off this road. NOW! We also randomly pick up a bolivian woman and her little boy and one of our group members from Sweden severly embarasses himself. He is obviously an alcoholic and tries speaking spanish to the Bolivians but can't communicate at all. He also unsuccessfully hits on Marlana asking for her name - she replies " I don't want you to call me."

We can see the lights from La Paz! Honestly, I am slightly surprised to have lived through all of this. Needless to say, Dayle did not receive a tip from the girls he almost dropped over a cliff.

LESSON LEARNED: risks>chance of survival = don't ever do this road!!!!!!!!

XOXO
Cora

Transportation Bloopers - Bolivian Version

Cora and I often talk about how entertaining it would be to put our lives (especially this trip) on a reality t.v. show. Several times a day we find ourselves in situations that could only possibly happen to the Cora-Marlana combo. Many of these occur in regards to transportation....which is why we are taking the liberty to write a special Bolivian version.

First of all, en camino a Bolivia, we took a flight on little sleep, no food in our stomachs, and no air conditioning. Both Cora and I had a billion wet paper towels pasted all over our bodies throughout the duration of the flight to avoid passing out and a little girl staring at us the entire 4 hours due to the ubsurdity of the entire situation. Lets just say....we were famous on this flight.

Then we arrive in Bolivia.

Bolivia is AWESOME. We have had a wonderful time in the country and amazing experiences that cannot possibly be expressed in a type-written blog.

However, Bolivia is also famous for its transportation flaws, and Cora and I got the best of it. As follows....

• Cheap Plane Ride

In order to avoid another 28 hour bus ride across Bolivia, Cora and I went in search of cheap plane tickets, which we found with the help of a local tour agency. Excited that we had outsmarted the bus system, we pranced up to the front airport desk with bags in hand ready for our short, 90 minute flight.

One tiny little problem....not both of our names were in the system. So after some diplomatic Spanish interchange, pleasant tones, and persistence, we were allowed on the flight without knowing exactly what strings had been pulled to permit us to do this. Other than some slight double booking problems we arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia successfully.

4 days later.... Our return flight.....

We headed up to the front airport desk with a little more hesitance this time, hoping that for this flight both of our names were in the system. To our surprise, they were BUT they had decided to change the flight time to 1.5 hours later without notification. So we complain a bit, realize thats not going to work, and then try to get over it and seat ourselves in the airport with no air conditioning and scorching hot weather. About 30 minutes before our flight is supposed to leave, we have still not been allowed into the boarding area and a nice woman begins to make conversation with Cora. After about 10 minutes of this, Cora and I head upstairs to find something to eat and before our food had made it to the table, the woman from earlier frantically runs up the stairs, yelling at us in Spanish that we HAVE to hurry or we are going to miss our flight. Cora runs downstairs while I try to tell the waiter that we do not have time to wait anymore. They still do not allow us into the boarding area, however, because our plane had not yet arrived....despite the fact that it should be taking off in the next few minutes. We walk around the airport a bit, only to find the same woman following us again yelling directions at us. She would not leave us alone and was convinced she was right. Cora and I cannot handle the commotion at this point so we go upstairs to try and recover the food we had had to leave and to get away from the entire situation.

We eventually do board the plane....really late....and are a bit frustrated at this point. Lucky for Cora, another nice woman sits next to her on the plane who also feels the need to take good care of the foreigners and repeatedly asks the flight attendants for our food even before the flight takes off and wakes the sleeping Cora up throughout the flight to inform her of our location and tell her about various landmarks. Cora loved it, Im sure....

We were happy when she got off the plane. She got off at the second stop.

YES. The plane landed about 5 different times for a flight that should have taken only one hour directly. Thats like flying from Austin to Dallas....and taking off and landing in Texarkana, Houston, El Paso, Waco, and finally.....Dallas. We spent a lot of time trying to make sense of it without success.

Needless to say, we arrive to La Paz 4.5 hours later than the original ticket stated and desperately rush to catch our overnight bus that was leaving to Uyuni. I will not bore you with those details, but catching the bus successfully involved sprinting down the streets of La Paz, completely out of breath from the extremely high altitude....imagine.

We had a wonderful day in Uyuni and saw the beautiful salt flats (pictures to come). And then....

• The Bus Ride Back

Just when I was about to write this entry, we had another comical event. After boarding our bus to head back to La Paz (thinking nothing else could possibly go wrong with Bolivian transportation), we walk on to see that they double booked our seats. So we sit down in some empty seats to wait until things get sorted out. The people who had the seats we were sitting in walked on the bus, yelled at us in Spanish because they thought we didnt understand, and hovered over us trying to make us move. (Just for future reference, talking in an elevated tone does not generally increase understanding on the receiver´s end.) We could not budge due to the fact that we were crammed in with all of our stuff in this crowded bus. We simply asked if she could bring the bus manager up so we could sort it all out before we relocated. This was not okay with the woman and she expressed this with continued commotion. To add to it all, in the midst of all of this, someone walked by and accidentally dropped their child´s underwear on my lap....

To make a long story short, we were relocated to the back of the bus, on the bumpiest bus ride ever. I dont think we were even driving on a road, and several times (and I say this with all seriousness), Cora and I thought the bus was going to flip over, and we had our heads covered to avoid glass shattering injuries .... no exaggeration. About an hour into the bus ride, despite a dehydration process in preparation for the bus ride, I had to go to the restroom as did Cora shortly after. The bus did not have a bathroom, and the driver only stops 6 hours into the ride. So for 5 hours, on an incredibly bumpy road, Cora and I, while also fearing for our lives, miserably awaited the bathroom break.

5 hours later, we were able to sleep. And now, all of it is extremely hilarious.

Well, we are about to head out with my really good Bolivian friend, Gustavo, whom I befriended in the uni in Chile. And then we are heading to meet Matias in Peru!

Love you tons,

Marlana