Where's Grayleen?

Seemingly from everywhere, backpackers flock to La Paz to partake in its number one tourist activity: mountain biking downhill for hours from a high pass above La Paz along an unpaved road ending up in the town of Yolosa. The thing that draws the crowds is not the 11,500 foot effortless descent, nor is it the rugged mountain views, nor the cute town of Coroico near the bottom promising balmy weather, swimming pools, and cold beer. Each of these would be reason enough to travel the road, but, ironically enough, the reason people are drawn like moths is that the road has been officially declared to be “The World’s Most Dangerous Road” by the Inter-American Development Bank.

The Yungas road served as the only connection between the Bolivian Amazon and La Paz up until the new, modern road was finally completed just three years ago. The road earned it’s designation as “The World’s Most Dangerous Road” because an average of 300 people died each year on the 50 mile stretch. It’s a single unpaved lane serving both directions that hugs cliff faces with drops in various places the likes of 900, 1,200, and 1,600 feet. Built in the 1930s, the entire road is prone to rock slides and in several places passes directly beneath large waterfalls. The road drops from 15,420 feet to 3,937 feet and fog and rain are the norm in the higher elevations. The custom here is to drive on the left hand side of the road (opposite everywhere else in the country) and to give uphill traffic the right of way. This means that downhill traffic must back up and around corners to find a slightly wider spot for oncoming traffic to pass. Cars and trucks are much less common today as they tend to stick to the new road for obvious reasons like pavement, two lanes, and guardrails. The sign at the top warns that 46 deaths have occurred on the road in 2009, a far cry from just a few years back. All this makes for an exciting backdrop as largely inexperienced bikers barrel down the rocky roadway with wide grins spread across their faces. Like I said, moths to a flame.

A nice stretch of road (photo borrowed from itinerant londoner)

Sometimes it’s hard to feel an emotional connection to bare-bones statistics. During our time in La Paz, we heard many tragic stories, and one even first hand from witnesses.

• There’s the story of the bus packed with 42 passengers that met an SUV of returning youths from a party in a town below. The bus, facing downhill, had to reverse back up the hill to find a wider spot. The driver misjudged and the bus slid over the edge of a 1,000 foot drop. There were no survivors.
• One man spent 18 years of his life living and working along a single bend in the road up until they opened the new road. He used red and green signs to help drivers maneuver their vehicles safely past one another and subsisted solely off of tips offered by drivers in gratitude for his efforts. This bend was the exact spot where his entire family went over the edge in their car those 18 years before.
• In 2004, a biker hit a rock and fell, sliding over the edge and falling about 300 feet. In many ways she was lucky: the drop was fairly short compared to most along the road, it wasn’t a pure cliff face, and, most importantly, the mountain biking group behind hers happened to contain a group of Americans trained in mountain rescue and one of them was even a nurse. This group acted quickly, finding a dodgy rope and lowering the nurse down. They eventually found a picnic table that they used as a backboard. Sadly, the woman stopped breathing as they hauled her out of the abyss. They believe that she may have lived had they had medical supplies. There are no rescue helicopters in Bolivia and the nearest ambulance is more than two and a half hours away in La Paz.
• In May of 2009, an English biker went over the edge. Exactly why no one knows. Again, there was a similar story of how long the ambulance took to arrive and again the biker did not survive. Some bike companies added the new memorial as a stop on their tour and had bikers pose for photos. The owner of one of these companies was helping get the full group into the camera frame where he took a step backwards that wasn’t there and disappeared over the edge, dying instantly.

In order to try to ensure the safety of the bikers, the bike companies and the local community have imposed a tax of 25 Bolivianos ($3.50) per ride down the road. This money is to buy a new ambulance to be stationed nearby, safety equipment, and to pay for continued upkeep to the road. In a story not uncommon in Latin America, over $1 million dollars of collected funds has disappeared somewhere into some government official’s hands and there is no ambulance to date.

Posing for the classic shot; this photo is of the group that went down the day after us.

The question is whether or not Aileen and I joined the ranks of the world’s most stupid bikers. You bet we did!¹ We had a really fun and almost completely effortless day of riding our bikes down the road, stopping many times along the way for photos, snacks, and equipment safety checks. Our bikes were in top condition and our guides clearly knew the road and provided detailed instructions well ahead of tight turns or waterfalls. It was really interesting to experience such a dramatic drop in elevation: from freezing cold to cloudy and drizzly, to sunny and hot. In the end, however, Aileen and I both admitted that we were a bit disappointed with the ride. We’d heard so many (many, many!) different people rave about how wonderful it was that we expected something really special. Instead, I’d describe it as coasting down a bumpy road for several hours with very good but not great views along the way. It’s a novelty and maybe worth doing for that.

We rewarded ourselves for surviving the trip with three nights at a gorgeous hotel in the town of Coroico that sits on a hillside overlooking the bottom of the road. There was balmy weather, a swimming pool, and cold beer as promised!

1In our defense, we knew very, very few of the details I describe above when we signed up for and went on the trip. Would we have gone had we known everything? “Gray, if everyone you met rode their bikes along cliff faces at high speed, would you do it too?” I honestly don’t know.