Death Road, and on to Rurrenabaque. Sábado 17 de noviembre – lunes 19 de noviembre.
Saturday morning. Up at 5:45. Patricia and I are going to go pull some Bolivianos out of a casajero (electronic bank machine) as we are heading on to Rurrenabaque, in the Amazon where I have been told there are no machines. We will meet Jason at the Agency we are heading out with to bike down the ‘Death Road’. Jason looks pretty rough this morning. He did meet friends at a bar last night, but I think it is more that he did not sleep. Apparently there was a solvent smell in his room and I am sure that was not pleasant.
We are all there by 7 AM, have breakfast and meet our fellow bicyclists. Besides the three of us, there is Kristian, a Finnish journalist in his 40s on vacation, and a young French couple, Jeremy and Océan. (I really enjoy many of the French women’s names. Océan is really pretty too like most of the French women I have met.) Our guide is Javier, and he has brought his girlfriend with him.
What is the Death Road? It is part of the road from the high pass not far outside of La Paz (on the altiplano or high plains) to Coroico in the Yungas. The Yungas is a beautiful region of forested mountains and and fertile valleys which is between the Altiplano and the Amazon basin, and one of Bolivia’s major coca-producing regions. The road, after climbing up to 4200 m , descends to 1200 m near the town of Coroico. The Death Road part starts at about 3500 m and is a rough, stony, dirt track, about 50 km long, mostly one lane wide, which has been cut out of steep mountain sides for much of its length and so has dizzying drop-offs with no railing or anything between your vehicle or bicycle and hundreds (or more) of meters of air. The Death Road designation comes from the fact that more people have died on this section of road than anywhere else in the country (by far). Although there is now an alternate route for this section which is paved, the old road is still used by some truckers, locals, and tourists, as well as cyclists mostly in the dry season.
My group in the fog at 4200 m .
At 8, we ride in the van from La Paz at 3500 m up to 4200 m , check out our bicycles, and by 9, we start. The first section is a two lane paved highway. It is beautiful country and it is a pleasant ride. I have to keep passing slow-moving vans which I believe are for biking groups of which there are several on the road today. Within minutes of starting, we are strung out a lot. I am in front so I pull over to wait. Soon Javier catches up and I find out that Jason has blown a tire, Océan’s chain has broken and Javier’s girlfriend has decided this is too fast and scary and will do the rest of the trip in the van that accompanies us. I am glad she has made this decision now because we are still on paved road. We come up to a tunnel and we have to take a rough track to bypass it as it is dark and I guess there have been accidents with cyclists in there. After a half hour or so, we hit a police checkpoint where they are checking for drugs coming up out of the Yungas. We pay an entry fee to the region (again), have a snack including what Xavier calls ‘Cocaine Cola’ and we get back into the van to drive through a flat to uphill section. I ask if I can bike it, but it does not fit with the ‘program’. Too bad. By 10:30 we are out again and at the beginning of the road we came for. We are at about 3500 m and have a downhill which takes us two and a half hours (although I spend a good deal of that waiting for others) and is about 50 km long.
The beginning of the 'Death Road'
On the old road, we are instructed to stay to the left of oncoming traffic England-style, because we can navigate more safely near the cliffs than cars or trucks can. There is not a lot of traffic. There is one heavily loaded pickup truck that comes barreling up the road as if it is being chased, and I find the first wide spot and pull off to wait for it to pass. A van of German tourists going uphill passes us lower down, where again I pull off. Patricia tells me that they were angry with her for passing on the left: I guess they do not know the rules of the road here.
We see a lot of birds of prey soaring along the road, songbirds, and butterflies. This is cloud forest and very beautiful. I ride fast, much faster than the other tourists, and am really enjoying the ride. However, I cannot quite keep up with Javier. However, he and I spend a lot of time waiting for the others at various places and he tells me a lot of the many sad stories of this stretch of road. At one point we stop where there are a number of large rocks in a circle on a small pull-out where he says that road crews hang out and chew coca.
Javier points out the ‘French corner’ where a French female tourist fell to her death, the Italian corner where an Italian tourist, also female, met her death. He told us there have been 28 cyclist deaths including 4 guides since 1998 when they first started making a tourist destination out of this road. He shows us where two buses collided and both went over the cliff. He tells me that there are three main reasons why vehicles go over (mostly buses and transport trucks, which clearly have less room to manoeuver. First, drunk or fall asleep at the wheel. Second, going downhill too fast and do not know the road well enough. Third, coming uphill with too heavy a load, and when they meet oncoming traffic on a steep uphill and have to stop, they do not have enough power to get going again and when they try, they end up rolling back over the cliff. One bus driver, meeting another vehicle, was too scared (or tired or drunk) to back up. So, after the passengers got off, the other driver backed up the bus, right off the cliff.
You get the idea here.
Océan has had a bike accident and has not biked in a long time so she is going very slowly and prudently, and Jeremy is staying with her. Even though they informed the agency they would be going slow I doubt that Javier ever heard this and gives them a bit of a rough time for it. Clearly not the right thing to do.
Local wildlife of the cloud forest
Towards the end of the ride, my chain keeps slipping: likely the chain and freewheel are worn. Fortunately this is near the end, although they probably have spare parts in the van. We stop at a bar in the town we come to for a beer, which is likely an agreement made to drum up more local business. We then move to a small resort where we take showers and have a buffet lunch.
I get a chance to talk to Kristian who works for the Finnish national news agency writing stories for their internet news service. We talk about my summer project and he seems interested. This is good news and we will keep in touch.
At this point, Patricia, who has been having second thoughts about her plans, decides she will go back up to La Paz with the van and others, and not on to Rurrenabaque with me. This is due to two things. First, the rest of the road from here down to the Amazon basin is reported to be a slow, difficult and dangerous road, and so she is thinking of flying which is what a lot of people do. Jason has a flight booked to avoid the bus ride. Second, she has only a few weeks left on her trip and, like a lot of people, she is starting to get antsy about getting the most out of her remaining time: she is thinking about going south and not into the Amazon at all.
We pack up and get going and five minutes later I am dropped off where I can catch a Trufi, a van that has a travel route but only leaves when it is full. The rest of the cyclists are going back to La Paz with the van. An hour later I catch one and make the uphill drive for 20 minutes to Coroico. The next day I will have to get a Trufi down here which is where the bus from La Paz to Rurrenabaque passes. I get a hostal room, have supper and go to bed early. I am looking forward to some good hiking in the morning as it is a beautiful area and Jason has told me about trails here. Unfortunately, overnight and all morning it is pouring rain. I buy a bus ticket which is supposed to stop below at 2:30 PM and arrive in Rurre about 7 AM. But the ticket agent tells me to come back at noon. I realize that this is because the buses are often delayed and later that evening I see why.
When I go back the agent tells me the bus is on time and I end up talking with Guillaume, another Frenchman who works with handicapped teens and adults in France, and who seems to spend a lot of time traveling. His last home in France was a car! He is in his 20s, and idealistic but laid back. We end up traveling together. We wait for the bus with a couple from Belgium, Marion and Sebastien, who have just finished university and are traveling before settling down. They have an interesting way of safeguarding their luggage in the hold of the bus: they chain their two backpacks together.
The bus heads off and we are soon on a road very reminiscent of the Death Road: narrow, very rough, and very big drop-offs. I can see why people prefer to fly. The road is mostly not wide enough for two vehicles and so we repeatedly stop and wait or back up as there is a lot of traffic both ways. I am not sitting by the window although I am on the cliff side, but I hear later from several who were. There is no question of sleep at this point, although there really is not much you can do if the bus goes off. After several hours of this, we appear to be down near the valley bottom and I relax. Not only that, but I have the best sleep ever on a bus. When we arrive around 8 AM Monday, I am refreshed and we are only an hour behind schedule. Apparently I am one of the only people who slept. More of the night was spent on hair-raising road sections!
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