Le 10/10/11, 21:14
-66.7874615-17.9900435
With Brice (de NY, not de Nice), we decided to have some "fun" by doing the Death Road on bike.
It's the former road between La Paz and Coroico, from 4700m to 1100m height, 50 kms of unasphalted road, that was one of the most dangerous road in the world before they built a new one (almost 150 dead per year).
Now there's only some agencies that propose to make the descent by bike...at first sight they look more or less the same regardings to bikes and safety measures, so we took a cheap one....big mistake!
The bike in itself were not bad, but very badly maintened...and the guide was just crazy....Brice had to change his bike with the guide because his brakes dindn't work properly, mine was almost as shitty and I felt down....luckily not on the precipice but still on the road...stayed in shock a few seconds and had to go on. The problem is that I'm not used to do such a large descent by bike on a bad road, so at the end I could barely moved my hand because of the pain...I was to "crisped" on the bike and used my hands and wrists as amortizer...one week after my wrist still hurts...
Anyway, it was still a nice experience, because the landscape and the road are just unbelievable, and this was on my way to the Amazon...
I spent the afternoon and day after in Coroico the have a rest, it's a nice and quiet area, before taking the bus (15h to do 300 kms...I should have felt the trap) to go the jungle.
And then I made my second mistake in two days...going up in the worst bus I've ever seen, on the second worst road I've ever seen (yes it's indeed the continuation of the Death road, still unasphalted but just larger)...I was the only foreigner in the bus...after being blocked 3 hours for works on the road, the driver just went mad, and drove like if he was on a rallye...During a while I got very scared and thought this was my final moment...the most unbelievable, is that the other people in the bus, were quiet, it was "normal" to them, it shoud have helped me but made me feel worse, like if I was in an horror movie actually...when we finally went out the mountains the road was less dangerous but still very bad, so I couldn't sleep during the whole night of this true nightmare.
When we arrived in Rurrenabaque on the next morning, after taking a shower on my hotel, first thing I did was buying a flight ticket for my way back to la Paz.
It's the former road between La Paz and Coroico, from 4700m to 1100m height, 50 kms of unasphalted road, that was one of the most dangerous road in the world before they built a new one (almost 150 dead per year).
Now there's only some agencies that propose to make the descent by bike...at first sight they look more or less the same regardings to bikes and safety measures, so we took a cheap one....big mistake!
The bike in itself were not bad, but very badly maintened...and the guide was just crazy....Brice had to change his bike with the guide because his brakes dindn't work properly, mine was almost as shitty and I felt down....luckily not on the precipice but still on the road...stayed in shock a few seconds and had to go on. The problem is that I'm not used to do such a large descent by bike on a bad road, so at the end I could barely moved my hand because of the pain...I was to "crisped" on the bike and used my hands and wrists as amortizer...one week after my wrist still hurts...
Anyway, it was still a nice experience, because the landscape and the road are just unbelievable, and this was on my way to the Amazon...
I spent the afternoon and day after in Coroico the have a rest, it's a nice and quiet area, before taking the bus (15h to do 300 kms...I should have felt the trap) to go the jungle.
And then I made my second mistake in two days...going up in the worst bus I've ever seen, on the second worst road I've ever seen (yes it's indeed the continuation of the Death road, still unasphalted but just larger)...I was the only foreigner in the bus...after being blocked 3 hours for works on the road, the driver just went mad, and drove like if he was on a rallye...During a while I got very scared and thought this was my final moment...the most unbelievable, is that the other people in the bus, were quiet, it was "normal" to them, it shoud have helped me but made me feel worse, like if I was in an horror movie actually...when we finally went out the mountains the road was less dangerous but still very bad, so I couldn't sleep during the whole night of this true nightmare.
When we arrived in Rurrenabaque on the next morning, after taking a shower on my hotel, first thing I did was buying a flight ticket for my way back to la Paz.
