Saturday 8 June 2013

19th to 22nd May, Death Road and Potosi

Having barely ridden a bicycle since childhood, I thought riding "The World's most Dangerous Road" aka "Death Road" in Bolivia was a spiffing idea. There's an modern alternative road now so without the heavy traffic, it's not as dangerous as it was but with narrow bits, shingle road and steep drops, it's still one for the brave. We started out at a breath-taking 4700m altitude (snow), rode through heavy (and very cold) rain, and ended up in the Amazon jungle (1200m). The first 20km or so is tarmac so you get used to the bikes on that before doing 35km or so on the rocky Death Road proper.

A snowy start


A misty middle


Stopping for a break on a 400m high ledge








Lots of crosses at the side of the road - always reassuring


I was very nervous to start off with but soon decided that riding downhill was much like riding a motorbike so I was soon zooming away.

It took about 3 days for these trainers to dry


The finish line


Having survived the bike ride, most of us decided that 1.5km of zip lining was in order. My first zip lining experience, it seemed like the superman harness was the way to go to start off with.

And.....celebrate!


Celebrate with a beer and an injury waiver form for zip lining!/i>



Superman harness. I can fly!!!! (ps - the chap is not sat on me and yes he was needed.....to pull the brake)



Brake woman, BRAKE!!!


Then it was back into the bus for the drive back up the road we'd ridden down....in the dark....again with some rain! Aided with rum and coke, a pole, music and flashing lights, I'm fairly sure that the bus ride back up was more dangerous than the cycle down! A brilliant day and one of the best bits of my entire South America trip, largely cos I was pretty nervous and did it anyway. Yippy-kye-aye etc!

Rogan doing a bit of pole dancing


Francois outdoing everyone on the pole dancing


Sue and Kirsten happy to be alive



Having been caught in protests and road blocks on the way into La Paz, we left at 6.30am to avoid them on the way out.....only to hit a town on route to our next stop, where no amount of sweet talking could squeeze us through, keeping us there for 5 hours. Bolivia likes its protests and road blocks. It's not a country you can travel through quickly. So, we had a frosty bush camp on our way to Potosi. Some went down into the Silver mines (threats of asbestos put me off) and we all ganged up on Kirsten to celebrate her birthday.

shush, is she there yet?



Suprise! The relief is that she did not have to meet the police to discuss dodgy truck parking, as she may have been led to believe



Potosi has a LOT of churches







Ooh, that's a nice cloud! Let's take a picture.




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