The Road

The Inter-American Development Bank - no idea what it is, but it sounds official - has dubbed the road from La Paz to Coroico "The most dangerous road in the world". Nonsense of course, the most dangerous road in the world is any road where my friend Marco decides to make his driving lessons comeback again, but I was still intrigued.

The road climbs up first from La Paz to a cloudy 4700m and then plunges 60km into the "Yungas" to Coroico´s subtropical 1700m. The first third is nicely paved, but the rest is a sandy- rocky-dusty-winding road of about 10cm wide, dropping down to precipices too deep to hold your breath. At strategic positions there are "traffic wardens" waving big green and red plastic bags. No idea what they are for ... At less strategic locations you can see crosses and monuments for the fallen ...

So ... biking time ! A crack team was assembled to go down. Two develish chicas from Eire & Inglaterra with their talkative sidekick. They comprised the braver red team, who took the cheap tour on bikes from Burkina Faso. The yellow team, team "we-like-to-die-please", consisted of two strapping South African lads, the giant Clive and sneaky ol´ me.
To make sure at least half of us made it to Coroico we had our guide "photo stop" José, the cheap mute tour guide from Burkina Faso, and the driver with the "bezemwagen" to pick up the pieces and hand out bananas.

The paved section was phenomenal. Our mountain bikes weren´t designed for speed, which was a pity, but it was still pretty fast. The trick was finding the best aerodynamic position (for me, butt first) and then just let go. The wet corners were a bit tricky but we all made it to the drugs control police stop.
Then the real thing started. My mountain biking buddies know the descends in the Ardennes (btw, Sander and Marco: get your asses over here right away and do this !). This was just like the ones there, only make it 3 hours long, add 500 meter drops at the side and some upcoming traffic. It was exhilirating!

I have been told afterwards that the views were spectacular (red team ...), but I only saw the road, at least when the dust or fumes from passing buses didn´t obscure it ... we went down like a yellow streak of lightning. Swerving through the turns, never knowing what lay behind the next corner. It´s really a miracle that no one fell and hurt him/herself badly. José got us through in one piece and took about 30000 pictures of us on the way (and two movies while riding - I´ll try to put them somewhere for you to see later; they´re awesome).

And where did it end ? In the lovely town of Coroico after a well-earned shower with shampoo for everyone ... and a late lunch at the poolside. The group was great fun; one of the best days of my travels here :-D

Now, to show my mum that I am not only here to get myself killed, I stayed in Coroico for a few days to load up a bit again ... in 8-euro-a-night luxury :-) This is my hotel room:

And this is the view when I take three steps out of my hotel room door:

And this is where I take my buffet breakfast. And these are the three Argentinian girls I met this morning during breakfast. They wanted to be on the Internet so badly, I promised to put them on the blog.

Happy New Year !!