The Worlds Most Dangerous Road. La Paz to Coroico.

Starting about half an hour away from La Paz by minibus, the “worlds most dangerous road” is actually more of a track cut into the side of the enormous mountainous valleys that surround the City. One and a half lanes at best of dirt and gravel with places every few hundred metres where cars can wait to allow people coming the opposite way to pass. On the right side of this typically Bolivian thoroughfare rises a wall of rock high up the mountain, on the left plunges an abyss of nothingness to certain death below. It twists round the natural curves and bends of the slopes to which it tenuously grips so that, at any one place it is impossible to see what is coming round the corner, though sometimes you can look across the valleys to stretches a mile or two away and plan ten minutes in advance when to stop for cars. Nor is it just cars that use this suicide highway named “Death Road” by the tour agencies that plug this cycle ride as a fun thing to do. Every other vehicle that uses it is a cargo laden lorry, just big enough to squeeze past a pushbike without causing serious danger.

Protecting our new cigarrette free lungs!!!



Not without reason did this terrifying name come about. On just 43 miles of track, the only road that leads directly from La Paz to the Amazon in the North, the toll is averaged at 25 to 30 vehicles plummeting to their certain doom every year (that’s more than one every two weeks!). With a vertical drop of up to 1,600 feet it’s no surprise that about 100 people die here annually, including around three bicycles, much like the ones we were about to bomb down it on. It starts just outside the city at 4,500 metres above sea level, and drops so quickly to the outskirts of the Amazon Basin that in places you can feel your ears pop.

Early that day we met with the rest of our mad group of cyclists, a few English travellers, the ubiquitous group of Israelis, and a smattering of other accents and skin tones, on gringo alley, the road in La Paz chokka block full of tour agencies, bead sellers and internet cafes. Each of us were given a pair of gloves, over trousers for the dust and a bright orange vest… oh and a mountain bike. After arriving at the starting line I wasted no time at all getting on mine and doing some serious riding to make sure the brakes were in definite working order. Then I got on Amanda’s and did the same thing all over again.

Without a great deal of further ado (waiting for the ladies to take advantage of the only toilet opportunity for the next five hours aside) we mounted up and began the first section of the trail. We were followed closely by the company’s minibus, loaded with first aid supplies, a satellite phone, ropes and stretchers as well as water and the days lunch. (or so they said) This opening stretch was characterised as a lowering gently into cold waters, we were on a wide asphalt road in strict single file, the more adventurous of us zooming ahead trailing wild, maniacal laughter in our wake, the more sensible giving their brakes one last try before the real thing. I suppose this was the opportunity for the guides to assess which of us had no business being in the saddle, which were likely to fall off and die so they know who to avoid, that sort of thing. Soon we came to a police checkpoint, designed to stop everybody going to or coming from the north. Bolivia is after all second only to Columbia for cocaine production. The export business is a serious thing. That passed, we climbed the trips only uphill stretch to the point of no return. A right turn took us all from the civilised tarmac of a normal road to the “Death Road” proper. Before us was lay a thin ribbon of light brown wrapped around the mountains like the worlds biggest present. The scenery as we started, cautiously down the first kilometre or so was amongst the most incredible I have ever seen. Like a fairytale land in a story book we were surrounded by immense mountains covered in a thick layer of green forest. Nobody lives out here but the occasional mad trapper or Vietnam veteran, surviving off the scavenged remains of fallen buses. There is nothing but nature for miles, through a sparse layer of morning clouds we could see down a network of valleys for miles and miles. As so often happens in the Andes it really gave us an impression of our smallness surrounded by incredible bigness, it was very beautiful and humbling.

That being said, we weren’t here for nature spotting, we were here for the adrenaline (90 percent concentration, 10 percent spine melting terror). For the initial few hundred metres I know I spent most of the time staring just in front of my front wheel, madly steering to try to steer the bike away from the foot deep potholes in the road, any one of which could see me out of control and over the edge. Looking back I could see Amanda in the rear of what was becoming two distinct groups, one cautious, the other with a death wish. I hung back for a while, especially after our first meeting with a massive lorry coming the other way. We allowed it to pass on the inside while we all stopped and clung to the very edge of the cliff, brakes on full with white knuckled hidden by our gloves. Pretty soon we were used to the threat of immanent death enough to speed up a little and take in some of the astounding scenery around and below us. At one point one of our group, an Israeli guy who thought he was invincible hit a rut and went flying off his bike, luckily it was on a left hand bend, if it had been a right hand bend I am confident he would have waited a while longer before he landed. As it was we were doing sufficiently crazy speeds by that time to seriously ruin his knee and scrape gravel right into his back. He spent the rest of the trip going decidedly slower.

We stopped for lunch at the site of a waterfall falling down the mountainside, crashing into the road and flowing across to plummet again over the other side. Nearby the Israeli’s all collected over a carved stone, placed at the point where the last person fell off the track, a fellow Israeli guy. This more than anything brought it home what we had gotten into. By this time of course it was far too late, it was quicker to carry on than to go back.

Sitting pensively on a fellow bikers memorial stone.




With this inevitability in mind I decided to leave Amanda behind and shoot forward with the lead group. Psycho speed-freak adrenaline junkie that Amanda is, she decided the same thing and after lunch we began shooting round bends with the screeching of brakes and showers of gravel flying in the opposite direction. Well we wanted some excitement.


As the day wore on the roads changed from dirt to gravel then back again. After about 4 hours, we began to glimpse Coroico around the mountain in the distance on the apex of each outward curve. The lorries became much more frequent at one point, we had to keep a fairly close watch on the guide out front, signalling a warning for everyone to get over to the right every time one of the bigger trucks came rumbling past. Eventually, at last, after fording our last mountain stream, we came to the bottom of the road. Above us, perched precariously on the top of a jutting spur of hill lay Coroico, our destination, a little further down, along a foot-wide path through the undergrowth was a camp where we could shower and eat before moving on. Hands numb from the constant vibrations, bums sore with one too many bumps we descended one last time for a bit of real off road biking. Exhausted, we reached the end, a little hut set into a clearing in the forest with spider and howler monkeys venturing close enough to touch (the spider monkey tried to crawl down Amanda’s top). There were also a couple of alpacas and a parrot to keep us company for dinner. The food was great, a huge buffet of meat and veg, even something to keep Amanda happy. A short ride up in the minibus later saw us all in Coroico. Some of our group elected to stay, others left in the van for La Paz. We waited till the hustle had died down and, as I sat on the bags in the square, Amanda wandered about for a while looking for a hotel. It seemed that, a couple of scrapes and near misses aside, we had survived the Death road. For this achievement we were given a free t-shirt by the agency (limited edition only for those crazy enough to tackle the road), we also owed each other a beer… as soon as our hands stopped shaking. We would be drinking it by the pool in our hotel…with this view…….

In Paradise...yet again.