El Camino del Muerte/ The Death Road (Bolivia)
When your boyfriend works for a year as a tour guide on the Death Road, people tend to assume you have experienced the Death Road yourself, and not only once --a few times. Over the year I lived in Bolivia, I got to know the other guides, drivers, mechanics, secretaries, managers, head boss, and their families and assortment of friends. I even got to know their speech, as I was a practice audience before a couple of the guides were about to take their test. I even lived with the lead guide and a few other Gravity guys for a while... and I never once considered going down The Death Road until I was about to leave the country.
For those of you who've never gone bike riding with me, I'm a nervous biker. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was around 10 or 12 years old, when my brother (two years my junior) taught me to ride. Everything about riding was/is unstable to me, so mountain biking down a road nicknamed "The most dangerous road in the world" wasn't on my South American to-do list. Nonetheless, I did go down the road without problems, although, I can't speak for our entire group.
First, let me give you some information on this gravel-to-dirt, "two-lane" pathway. When I talked about doing it, to spare my family some grief (granted, they caught on quickly), I referred to the Death Road by it's original name: the North Yungas Road. I'll do the same in this assessment. All-in-all, the North Yungas Road is roughly 40 miles long and drops over 11,000 feet in altitude from start (about 16,000 feet/ 4,700 meters above sea level) to finish. This road claimed a total of three deaths last year, and there were several years after 2007 with zero deaths-- this road is not a major highway anymore, although there are some (we saw maybe nine or ten at most) cars and trucks that pass through. This little-known fact is often overshadowed by the time before 2007, when the North Yungas road was a major highway and got it's reputation for accumulating about 300 deaths a year. The road is three meters (fewer than 10 feet) wide in the narrowest section --not too far off from some "two-lane" West Virginian backroads. The kicker with the North Yungas road, however, is that the most significant drops are over 3,000 feet into the valley below. Take-away point: Don't go over the cliff.
When you're a nervous beginner-biker, coding the best-known name for this road, so your family won't worry too much, it would likely be in your best interest to go with confident bikers down this road, as to increase your confidence and safety, right? I did the exact opposite, but we were fine... for the most part.
Our group was of four beginner-bikers who were all pretty nervous about this feat, BUT we all also had another thing in common: trust in our guides and the company. Gravity is known to be the safest company, which is part of why Mike worked for them when he came down to Bolivia. Our private tour with Mike as our lead guide was perfect. In the photo above, you can see our group: from left to right, there is me, my good friend Ashley, Mike, Mary (Mike's mom), and Jennifer (Mike's sister).
As we glided around bends, braked steadily on the steeper sections, and became more comfortable with our bikes, guides, and gear, our group steadily gained confidence as we covered more of the road. At least, most of our group gained confidence. You may or may not have noticed Ashley's nose in a couple of the previous photos. Well, in one photo, Ash feigns her fear to fall over the edge for comedic effect, but as it happened...
...mayhaps she did. I went ahead and got her permission to tell this story; however, it's still important to stress how wonderfully she handled everything, because I have been reproached for telling the story and focusing on the outcome as opposed to the could-have-beens. Here's what happened.
Skittish, Ash kept telling herself she couldn't do the road, but kept making efforts to complete it. This continued to happen until she clutched her front brake, flipped over her handlebars around a sharp turn, legs glued around the frame of the bike (the bike followed her over), and disappeared over the edge of the road. Needless to say, the guide who was beside of her during this, Andres, leapt from his bike to grab her, and landed on a poof of dust and the camera strapped around his neck. PRAISE GOD there was a lower-ledge RIGHT where Ash landed because she fell about a foot or so onto this landing and grabbed a resilient sapling. Our expert driver helped her back on the road. (There's always a back-up vehicle behind the group with gear, backup supplies, snacks, first aid, etc. so the driver was immediately available.) They, thanks to Ash's quick-thinking, managed to save the bike, too. I mention the bike because she kept apologizing for potentially breaking it!
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| Andres, Left; Mike, Right |
That night, once we returned to La Paz, she found that her nose had two fractures, but she was otherwise completely unscathed. Truth be told, she pointedly spent the entire rest of the day reassuring us that she was fine and was convinced over the period of the day and the ride back to check into the hospital, just to be sure everything was okay.
As for the rest of us, once we were all convinced she was well and with us, we kept our own pace and wove our way to the end of the road together. We have some great stories and shared some laughs, especially after we knew, without a doubt, that Ashley was alright. We ended the road with a zip line tour and a walk around the animal refuge (basically, we got to see a lot of monkeys).
*Please feel free to find more information yourself or check out Gravity's webpage on the road at <http://www.gravitybolivia.com/index.php?mod=tempview1&id=1251406369>.
*Photo credit to Andres with Gravity Downhill Mountain Biking.
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