Death Road and the last time i take a cheap bus overnight

The Death Road is the gringo friendly term for the Yungas road, A 38 mile road that is about an hour from

Leaving La Paz

La Paz. It descends quickly from 4500m to 1200m, winding through steep hillsides with drops into the ravines below of several hundred metres.
It got its name when a feasability study into building an alternative route found 200-300 people died per year on the road.
I wasn´t initialy going to cycle it as it seemed like a bit too risky, but Gareth and Lizzie persuaded me it would be a good day out so......why not?!


When i went to book i asked jokingly how many had died on that agencies trips. The lady said 1 in 6. I questioned it, yes really 1 in 6, no problems she said. I said i don´t think i´ll book it then, 1 in 6 is greater odds than i´m prepared to risk. She looked confused, then said oh!!! died, i thought you said guide! 1 guide to 6 cyclists, no nobody has died..........

The first part of the trip was on well paved roads, we cycled for about an hour down cool, mountainous

Top of the death road

roads. We pulled off this road onto what seemed like a dirt track, were given a few rules i was very happy to follow, and off we went. The first part seemed ok, despite the fact that we were pretty much cycling into cloud and visibility was reduced to 20metres. It soon became apparent why it was so dangerous. The road quickly thinned, and to the left hand side was a sheer drop, no crash barriers, with parts of the road no more than 9-10 feet across!
It would be very difficult if not impossible for 2 vehicles to pass on these sections.

The road would become steep quite suddenly so you picked up speed very quickly, then there would be a

Bit dangerous

steep right hand turn which you could easily misjudge especialy in a car or truck. We passed numerous memorials and crosses on the sides of the road that marked where vehicles had left the road, and also several where cyclists had also come off. It was foggy for the first 20 minutes or so which made it more difficult for us, but its not hard to imagine what it would be like dark and raining aswell.
The fog cleared, and it revealed itself to be a beautiful route, winding down and down as the vegetation gradualy became jungle and the temperature quickly rose. I tried to concentrate on the road however.
We finished in the village of Coroico, where unusualy there was hot showers, towels provided (first time in south america!) and a swimming pool.

The next day i went back to safe activities, to see the ancient remains of Tiwanaku, a series of buildings built

Unfortunate Israeli girl forgot to brake

between 500 and 950AD.
A lot of it was undergoing messy reconstruction work, but there were some spectacular remains in very good condition. The outer walls of the main temple were almost perfect, and there was a great sunken temple complete with dozens of stone faces in the walls.
The most interesting item was a decorated giant statue dating from 300AD, 3M tall that was housed in a museum complex nearby but sadly no photos were allowed so you´ll have to take my word for it.

Last night i took the bus from La Paz to Uyuni. I chose the bus that was half the price of the regular tourist bus, and what a treat it was.

It left at 7pm and was pretty cramped. There was no room for hand luggage above my head so it had to be under my feet. My seat reclined but this reduced my legroom further.

Statue at Tiwanaku

By 11pm the bus got to the desert, it started vibrating pretty hard. This continued through the night, at points it was so hard i was surprised it stayed together.
I woke at 4am for the 100th time, tried to look out of the window but it had iced up on the inside so i couldn´t. When it got light it was fairly obvious it wasn´t a proper road but a track that had been made across the desert. We arrived at 6.30am it was still freezing cold, so i headed to a hostal and fell asleep.

Tiwanaku sunken temple

Sunken temple detail

I had a look around, and spent the afternoon in a trance watching wall-e and jurassic park 2 in my room. I learnt the spanish for rogue robots is robots renegados and dinosaur is dinosauro, so not a complete waste of time. Definitely going for an early night.