The ride started an hour or so outside La Paz, next to a rather nice lake. We stopped here to get outfitted with all our equipment and get the first bit of the safety briefing and so on. Most of the photos from here on were taken by one of the guides. I'm not really confident enough on a bike to be pulling out my camera and taking photos on the go...
We each had a sip of ~96% alcohol (pretty sure it was just a bottle of ethanol), for warmth and strength, after offering some to Pachamama (Mother Earth) for luck.
They made a big deal of the post-sip shot. I don't even drink that much :o
Ready to go!
The first few hours were basically just bombing 60km of tarsealed road down the left of this lovely valley. Was good.
If only I could be so grossly incandescent...
After the sealed road, we jumped in the bus to take us to the top of the actual death road, 30km or so of gravelly goodness, starting with this nice tame bit.
Before heading to confront death.
We stopped around here somewhere to have the last bit of the safety briefing, regarding the particulars of riding on that particular bit of road. The whole valley was incredible.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only bit of road in Latin America where you have to drive/ride on the left. It's so the drivers can look out the window and see how far away from the death they are.
Most of the road wasn't really that terrible. A lot of the curves had plenty of space for downward-travelling vehicles to wait for the others to go past, and in a lot of other places there was enough space for someone with a bike to stop. Apparently it gets fun when there's 2 trucks or buses trying to get past each other. The guy going down'll have a line of cars behind him, and everyone has to back up and find a little nook to wait in. So the truck has to reverse past 10 or 20 cars in all these little spots til he can find his own. After the ride we were shown some pretty crazy videos of big buses trying to get up when the new road was closer. One of them got most of the way and then couldn't fit under an overhanging cliff, so, after a night of waiting, reversed back to the bottom. Another had an army of people around it directing. They were the passengers, not wanting to be inside if the bus went over, for obvious reasons.
In the end it doesn't really matter that the road wasn't SO terrible, if you fall in most places you'll still die or being horribly injured.
Makes for some nice photo ops though.
There were crosses all over the place on the way down, and our guide had the story of almost all of them. Not many were from people riding their bikes off the edge. It seemed like most of the cyclists that die do so in some way like this: there was a girl who was stopped for a truck coming up, with loads of space. She got scared the truck was gonna hit her and took a step back. Two crosses in that place, same thing...
Apparently a few years ago there was a local that lived near a particularly notorious bit of the road, who got sick of seeing people dying. So he went out one day with a couple of different coloured flags to direct the traffic there. He did this every day, and the drivers tipped him with cash and food. Eventually other locals caught on, and for a while it was supposedly much safer than before, with everyone that lived in the area. Then the new road opened and the tips dried up. A van full of people drove past us at one point, and someone yelled from the passenger window "one more!" warning us that there was another coming behind. Our guide said "that was the guy, the first guy with the flags!"
The last few ks of the ride are the most dangerous. The road's a bit better, the death doesn't seem so imminent, you're tired, you're accustomed to your bike, and there's a bunch of little villages and therefore more people. Went off without a hitch for us though, and we all made it safe and sound (despite half of us being in t-shirt and shorts, seeing groups from other companies that force their clients to wear proper clothes and full-face helmets. That shit won't save you if you fall 100m down a cliff).
Waiting for some of the others at the bottom on a bridge, we saw a handful of locals panning for gold in the icy-cold river. Supposedly they find 4-5 grams a day, which they sell for the equivalent of maybe NZ$40. Extremely good money for Bolivia...
After, we went to a restaurant for lunch and to see all the photos. They had macaws :D
Mike and Laryssa recommended staying in Coroico, near the bottom of the road. I went and chilled out there for a couple of days, reading in a hammock, looking up the road where I'd come from:
Next it was back to La Paz, in a van that went (naturally) up the old road. After a day there to get some laundry done and so on, I left for Sajama, a tiny almost ghost-town near the tallest peak in Bolivia, Nevado Sajama ("Snowy Sajama").
M&L told me there was one van a day to Sajama from the town next to the highway, so to get to that town early. Accordingly, I got there really early. It was Sunday (the first of 3 that've thrown off my plans, but the others'll come), and the guys next to the vans on the highway that said "Sajama" on the side of them told me the van that day didn't leave from the highway, that I needed to go to the main plaza. So I got a cab to the main plaza, which was packed with people and surrounded by unmarked buses and vans. After asking around a bit, they told me to go to the highway, so I went back to argue with those guys, who then told me to go to the market. So I flagged down a van that was going back to the plaza, and the driver asked me the usual questions people ask tourists, and directed me through the market to where the van for Sajama should leave from. Turns out I was still fucking early. Oh well.
There was 2 other tourists in the van, so we got a room together, and they went off to camp for the night somewhere. I went for a little walk to read in front of Mt. Sajama, though even in the late afternoon it was bitterly cold.
I have no idea whatsoever where that path goes to.
Football field/running track.
The landscape around Sajama was breathtaking in its own way. Plains for miles in all directions, with snow-capped volcanoes at the edges and herds of llamas and alpacas grazing around the place. During the day it was hot for the most part, but cold as sin when the wind rose. In the times when there was no wind there was nothing to hear but absolutely perfect silence.
Pretty sure I missed most of the sunset, but it was still nice out.
Both nights I was there the clouds were kind enough to grace the altiplano with their absence, so I layered up in everything I had to check out our friendly neighbourhood galaxy.
In the morning I went for a walk to the hot springs nearby. It was a nice walk, though reasonably monotonous. I wish I'd had a tent, there's a circuit around a bunch of lagoons and another set of hot springs. You could probably do it in a day, but I didn't feel like walking literally all day, nor did I have enough food to do so.
Nice spot to sit and read for a couple of hours. dat sunburn though.
The next day I traveled to Cochabamba, which was basically the access point to 2 other places I wanted to visit. I spent a day there wandering the city a bit, which was reasonably standard fare as Latino cities go (jaded, much?), and writing the blog after I'd worked out where my bus for the following day left from. As always, there was a bunch of cool street art:
Actually, I lied, there was a shitload of awesome street art everywhere, I just never had my camera on me to take photos (none of it was in the centre of the city, mostly I saw it out cab windows). There was also probably more Volvo parts shops per capita than anywhere else in the world, but I can't verify that one.
Next morning it was up early again to go to Torotoro, Land of Dinosaurs.
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