LaPaz and the Death Road

During the nightmarish all-night bus journey from Uyuni to La Paz, I asked myself "What could be the most defining memory about Bolivia I'll take with me?" and despite a few ideas, my mind was unable to stay far whilst co-ordinating my body's ability to cling on to the seat, whilst our bus bounced in and out of almost trench-sized potholes on all sides.

Reserving seats with the best quality bus company in an attempt for 'some' sleep was obviously futile, with dinners, cutlery, served hot drinks AND passengers bouncing sky-high for the roof. To top things off we were herded out into the dark cold at 2am and onto a much less comfy, obviously cheaper bus with no explanation from the "suddenly" non-English speaking staff.

Bolivia´s most populated city, La Paz had all the loud hustle and bustle of congested traffic and street markets but with seemingly round the clock protest parades in the city´s Plaza de San Francisco, close to the hippy-friendly tourist district. Upon further inspection, every 1st shop was a tour agency selling trips into the untamed Amazon jungle by boat whilst every 2nd seemed a hippy clothing outlet selling all manner of Che Guevara merchandise.

Ironically, despite the dreaded arrival into La Paz, the first thing on our to-do-list was to take a trip down the North Yungas Road or "Worlds most dangerous road" leading from La Paz to Coroico over a small distance of 56 km (35 miles). It's reputation for extreme was solidified in 1995 after Inter-American Development Bank christened it the "world's most dangerous road" with one estimate being that 200-300 travellers are killed yearly travelling it.

Transitioning quickly from cool Altiplano terrain to rainforest as it would through steep hillsides and atop cliffs, it was "almost easy" to forget the danger for a split second as we took in the lush, green, humid jungle vistas before us. But obvious extreme drop offs, a single-lane width and lack of guardrails, made the road obviously dangerous, not mentioning what a spell of rain or fog could do to visibility and the loose rocked, muddy surface.

On July 24, 1983, a bus veered off the Yungas Road and into a canyon, killing more than 100 passengers in what is said to be Bolivia's worst road accident, and there was a very obvious "Christian cross" symbolising the location of the night disaster.

We were certainly not the first to take the Death Road by bike, and I more than once pondered the morality of turning such a place of tragedy into a popular adrenalin-junkie destination.