One of the highlights in the area of La Paz is the Death road. There are numerous agencies in the city offering bicycle-tours on this road. For two of those agencies breakfast is offered in
I do not know how many tourists I fed before they went on the tour. Some came back after their trip and reported enthusiastically.
Already when I planed my cycling-trip in South America I read about the street and put it to me as one of the objectives, but of course not with an agency, but alone, or preferably with another cyclist.
So again I was rather lucky when on Saturday Pete came into the café, whom I had met in Chile before. Of course he also wanted to ride the Death Road and it was not long until we had planned to go on Monday. Actually, we wanted to get up at 6 o´clock, but we overslept and we had to serve an unbelievable number of breakfasts. Finally we managed to let loose until 8 clock.
At first we went out of the city and at 4600 m on the Cumbre. Early in the morning, slightly offset in time, the tour agencies take their tourists up the mountain. Since I am not one of the tourists, I wanted to go up on my bicycle. Given the late time, we decided at the end of the city to take the bus to the pass.
It was an adventure on its own, and I enjoyed the difference in travelling.
We arrived up here quite quickly and in one piece.
With the aid of Cristians handdrawn map.
we went off the bitumen to the Ghost road right away.
We went across gravel towards a fantastic quite valley.
Some landslides had blocked the road partially and we had to find a different path in the steep slope.
Further down the road conditions improved, but anyway, now the road was blocked by animals.
Then the fog came along, or a cloud, who knows the difference?
Unfortunately we couldn´t identify the ghost road anymore and therefore we went back on the bitumen.
This road leads to the mountain above and we enjoyed a wonderful view down into the valley.
Not far away and the Death road branched off. Until a few years ago it was the only road from La Paz to Coroico, and the name · Death Road was justified. Since the new road was built there are almost only cyclists using the road (about 150 per day), and less deadly accidents happen than on other roads. Pete has more written about it on his Blog .
Nevertheless the landscape still is amazing.
Unbelievable how the street was built into the steep slope.
The road itself is not to steep, it is a track indeed, but it is no diffcult riding if you´re not getting too close to the edge.
Probably the potentially rockfall from above is more dangerous.
A helmet would be useless in such a case!
Some crosses at the side of the road show that there have been fatalities in 2005.
It´s scary to imagine a car coming from the front with such curves in front of us.
But there are no cars there anyway driving today.
We passed along high cliffs, under waterfalls
But I prefered to ride on the inside of the road instead of the slippery street shoulder.
The lower we came the warmer it became and slowly we felt we arrived in the tropics, easily to recognize with all the plants, butterflies and animals.
It was so warm that it was easy going crossing the creeks.
Everything dried up immediately.
In Yolossa, at 1155 m, we finally arrived at the bottom of the valley.
Meanwhile I ask myself if the Coca-Cola-Company substitutes all those little villages because they are allowed these giant advertisments. You see them here quite often.
For us it meant that we had to ride back up the mountain for 8 km over the worst cobstone-road.
With Pete, it was very entertaining, and time went by relatively quickly. We knew that Coroico is a tourist haunt, and we could expect good food.
When we arrived in Coroico, we had enough of the cobblestones and went straight to the next, cheapest Residenzia and then to dinner. Unfortunately, I noticed the many mosquito bites until the next day, the first since I'm in South America.
Pete did´nt like the idea to go down cobblestones again and wanted to take the bus from Coroico. I was not really matter, my forearms were again so affected that I agreed to the bus.
So we still had the whole morning of sightseeing in Coroico. Really a nice little village, even in the clouds you partly could guess what beauty is hidden behind it. The many small roads offer many opportunities for mountain biking. Therefore, a couple of tour operators have also settled here.
Then we went squeezed into a minibus and went nearly 3000 meters altitude up to the Cumbre,with the bikes tied on the roof. The vehicle had a breakdown and for a moment we thought whether we should continue with the bike. As we noted, however, that on the the next 15 km we had to climb up 1,500 meters, so we decided to wait until the bus was running again, which no longer was a long time. Happy we were when we were finally up again released into freedom again..
For 26km we went down to La Paz on a very good road.
At one of the checkpoints some eateries were situated and we had the best chicken ever served with potatoes.
Even when the tour wasn´t too strenous it stimulated our appetite.
Soon we arrived back in La Paz and the café had me again. Luisa wondered if I could be there on the weekend to help her because Cristian was not there. Of course I said yes because I did not think that my credit card would arrive by then.
Oh wonder, on Wednesday afternoon, a monitoring call concluded at the German Embassy, I received the happy news that my credit-card had actually arrived in the morning. What a joy, but I still had promised to be here at the weekend, so I postponed my departure date to Monday 26 April.
I needed this time to organize some things like getting my bike done, buying Souvenirs and sending them home etc.
As I had stated already several times before, there is a great similarity between the Bolivians and Mongols. When I saw this statue
which reminded me of Dschinghis Khaan I decided that threr definitely is an affinty.
I enjoyed the local markets
where thee local people recognized me and they already knew what I wanted and what I liked and I could buy everything for “non-tourist-conditions�.
On Monday the 26th April, I left the city after more than 3 weeks, but I promised that I would come back. There are still so many roads and trails to explore here, but Iwould need a real mountain bike. For this time,after the tens of thousands of kilometers on the bike for me the Café a far more interesting experience. Thanks again to Cristian and Luisa.
