Death rides in Bolivia--fun and adventure for the certifiably insane

February 2004
US$1 equals 8.0 Bolivian boliviano

I drove in and out on the road they donundefinedt call the death road (only I call it that) and mountain biked the one they do.

The road I call the death road runs a mere 35 miles from Achacachi to Sorata, 12 miles up and 23 miles straight down from a high Andes pass to Sorata on the jungle's edge. I drove in on a gorgeous sunny day, four peaks over 20,000 feet glistening on the high horizon, recuperated for a day and two nights, then drove back out in deadening fog and drizzle.

Why do something so silly as to drive to Sorata if you're only going to recuperate from the drive in? Well, Sorata is the hiking, climbing, and mountain biking mecca of Bolivia. It sits 70 miles, a scenic four-hour drive, from the sprawling, cacophonous capital of La Paz.
But Sorata might as well be on another planet. I tried a little chit-chat with the military guard where the pavement ends at Achacachi, asking about the road to Sorata, but the kid with the machine gun was as responsive as a post. Clearly this was the road to Sorata (the sign behind me said so), but maybe he only spoke Quechua.

I was impressed at first. This dirt road wasn't bad--for the first 100 meters. Then it got so much worse I slowed to a crawl to avoid shattering my teeth. Why would someone pave a road with big round river boulders? The adjoining fields told the story. The locals had cleared their tiny plots by throwing the boulders covering them into walls six feet high, and the excess went into the road.

The crystalline high peaks were transformed into what they might look like after a case of whiskey--I had triple and quadruple vision as I bounded along at 6 mph. It took two hours to get up the hill where the pass let the road drop down into Sorata.

2,000 feet down
On the pass, the boulders disappeared. Still, I screeched to a halt, unable to process the view below--straight down, where the road looped back and forth on itself, little villages stuck out from the sheer hillsides as though theyundefinedd been pasted on by a sociopathic child at play.
White crosses lined the edge of the road as far as I could see. An inch off the road was a drop of 2,000 feet. And the "road" was one narrow lane. I could see a truck careening around a corner right below me, headed up. My feet started to tingle.

The truck downshifted and swung straight up at me. Up to then Iundefinedd been worried whether I had enough fuel to drive in and out of Sorata. Suddenly I cared only about making it into Sorata. I swerved for the nonexistent shoulder and felt the van totter as the truck went rocketing by at 6 miles an hour.

I pulled back onto the deeply rutted track and tried to appreciate the view, a picture window of peaks swooping to verdant jungle, with quaint Andean villages perched in between.

Whoooo...what is that in the rear-view mirror? A run-away bus behind me, tooting its run-away horn. I skidded out of the ruts and came to rest with my left front wheel, the one closest to the precipice, lodged against a white cross. The bus went roaring by.

Not everyone makes it
The rest of the trip was similarly uneventful. Eventually, I slithered down the hill to within a few miles of Sorata, concentrating mightily on braking while also pressing the gas pedal lest the engine die and I lose both power steering and power brakes. I caught a flash of red sideboards ahead of me, a big truck that suddenly turned and was lost to view. As I slid closer, I realized the truck had not taken the road, but had instead gone over the edge. I slammed on my brakes and literally skidded by, avoiding converging locals. Passing, I could see a jumble of shattered red boards and the truck cab on its side, 50 feet below. Five minutes later, as I turned the last corner toward Sorata, I met an ambulance with lights flaring and siren blaring.
I arrived in Sorata a wreck. And took my time recuperating before daring the drive back out. In Sorata, I flirted with a 43-mile bike trip (day one of three days) into the jungle to explore the seldom seen ruins of Iskanwaya. Unfortunately, Travis, proprietor of Sorata's foremost mountain bike emporium, and I couldn't rustle up enough fools to make the three-day trip.

So on day three I gunned the van back out of town, through herds of cattle and sheep, back up the Sorata death road, meeting Toyotas galore (apparently the only vehicles allowed other than runaway trucks and buses), over wholly unnecessary speed bumps at the edges of small villages, up through fog so thick I couldnundefinedt see the sheer drops, and down the river boulder-strewn other side using both brakes and accelerator while navigating scattered rocks marking the roadblocks thrown up the day before.

Travis had told me about the roadblocks, a dual protest against the sale of Bolivian natural gas to the States and the failure of the Bolivian government to pave the road from Potosi to Tupiza.

"You're joking," I said. "The road from Tupiza to Potosi (which I'd driven twice) is just long and dusty. It's nowhere near as bad as the death road into Sorata."

The Real Death Road
The current fad for the real "Death Road," a single lane dropping from a 15,500-foot pass above La Paz to Coroico in the jungle at 3,500 feet, a plunge of 12,000 feet in 39 miles, is to do it on a mountain bike. So that's what I decided to do.
The Bolivian National Police in La Paz started keeping statistics in January of 1998, to see if the Death Road to Coroico is as bad as everyone says it is. They've concluded that, yes, it is.

In the eight months through August 1998, the police cataloged 80 deaths, one every three days, from run-overs (63 with five injuries and eight deaths); collisions (64 with 36 injuries and 10 deaths); flips (139 with 32 injuries and 12 deaths); cars going off the cliff (65 with 85 injuries and 18 deaths); fires (8 with 14 injuries and 12 deaths); cars into the gutter (80 with 20 injuries and 13 deaths); overtaking (six with five injuries and five deaths); cars hitting a fixed object (five with four injuries and one death); landslides (two with one injury and no deaths); and passengers thrown out (three with five injuries and one death).

Since these statistics were collected, the government has built a new, mostly two-lane alternative, so trucks and buses wouldn't have to fight over a single lane. But, for some reason, trucks and most buses have been banned from the new road, so only regular vehicles and a few buses can use it. All trucks and most buses continue up and down the single lane Death Road, competing with the mountain bikes.

The Death Road is usually a sea of mud for the middle half and a dusty bowl for the last fourth. Fortunately, the first fourth has been paved into two wide lanes, perfect for out-of-control mountain bikers of the novice variety, such as myself. Eighteen other more experienced bikers led me down this fast paved track. It took me a good few miles to loosen up so I could let go and keep up. But, eventually, I was whooshing along with the certifiably insane.

A long way down
Then we hit the fog, which slowed me until I learned to ignore it. Next we left the pavement and looped down through the jungle in slithery mud. In seconds, we were a brown lot, 19 of us covered with beige goop from head to toe. We slipped and sludged, dodging trucks that came unexpectedly around corners, swerving into tiny cliff-side turn-outs, about which our guides had repeatedly cautioned. More than once they had shaken their fingers--you must dismount from the inside of the bike, that side closest to the road, otherwise one can fall down a very long way, up to 6,600 feet--over a mile vertical. Another mountain biking company had lost a biker to a wrong side dismount less than a year ago.
A splattery half-hour later we dropped below the fog and, suddenly, were scared half to death. For the first time, we could see what was off the outside of the road--nothing. We halted, carefully getting off on the inside of our bikes, and gawked over the edge. The sheer drop didn't seem to stop. We'd missed the fright of our lives, protected from reality by the cottony fog we'd been biking through.

The view seemed to inspire some of the more devilish riders in the group. They jumped on their bikes and led us downward in a rush. We made two stream crossings, throwing off water in curtains. Then we started our final descent, the last few rushing miles, and I thought, why the heck am I going so incredibly fast? I've survived this far, so maybe I should slow down for the last couple of miles, I told myself, and I did.

The lady in front of me didn't and suffered our only mishap when she hit a camouflaged speed bump 300 feet from the little village that was our final destination. No serious injury, though--good as new with a couple of stitches.
Booking your Death Ride
Gravity Bolivia can provide all transportation, a nicely maintained Kona mountain bike, three guides (front, rear, and middle of the group), and a safe experience...plus digital photos (which you can buy over the Inernet the day following your adventure). You'll find them in La Paz at Edificio Avenida, across El Prado (Avenida 16 de Julio), the main street in La Paz, from the movie theater Monje Campero; tel. (591)2-310-701. The cost of the ride is a mere $49 (plus $10 for medical and accident coverage if you don't have your own).
You can download a video of the Death Road ride here. IL