Bolivia - Cycling ´The World´s Most Dangerous Road

After a spot of high altitude training in Chile´s northern-most national park, Lauca, of which the highlight was Nik spotting a rare Puma (see blurred pics on link below). We left Chile for the last time on this trip - or at least tried to by bus. Rarely for Chile the promised bus failed to come, and after 4 frustrating hours trying to wave down a Bolivia bound truck, we cut our loses and hitched back to the Pacific coast at Arica with 2 Lan Chile pilots. Their driving was so good down the appallingly steep road, that we also trusted them to fly us to La Paz the next day ( to be frank this also saved a killer 12 hrs bus journey) La Paz, the world´s highest capital city, makes your head spin. Not just from the altutide, but after the relative sanity and safety of Chile, Bolivia seems a world away. In La Paz, the rich are mega-rich and live in the depths of the city - more air and warmer climate. While the poor (there is no middle class) live in shacks which literally cling to the side of the crater in which La Paz exists. Ever year or so, a serious landslide will take out a few neighbourhoods - then they go back and start building again. We felt a bit trapped in the city - after so long away from big urban centres - so we seized the chance to ´get out of town´and experience what is allegdedly, the world´s most dangerous road on a mountain bike. The road really does exactly what it says on the tin. It`s a dirt track cut into a mountainside, which drops about 3 kms vertical over 65km of ´road´, with an 800m vertical drop into the gorge below, and waterfalls crashing down onto the road in places, with the result that sometimes bits of the road just crumble away. Crash barriers have not yet made it to that part of Bolivia, and every year 30 or 40 buses and trucks simply fall off the edge. Some of the cheaper biking companies have lost 7 mountain bikers so far between them, so we paid as much as we could to ensure the best bikes with the best brakes, and lived to tell the tale. The tales the guides love to tell of how some tourists met their maker on this road are not fit for publishing as my mother will read this - I´ll keep those stories for when we get back. But for added reality, they were pulling the crushed cab of a truck out of a 200m gorge the day we cycled past. At which point Nik and myself were very pleased we failed to hitch hike on a Bolivian truck a few days previously. Lots of photos at http://www.shutterfly.com/progal/album.jsp?aid=768a5498cf4b272b7af2 -password = photos - the best ones are 807, 817, 828, 837, 839, 860 and 862. In La Paz we spent a fortune on soft fluffy alpaca jumpers, which will be very handy in the tropics, and went to a football match, the local team are called ´The Strongest´not a translation but their real name - and quite frankly to run around at 4000 mts they deserve the name. Funnily enough their home record in the Copa Liberadores (SA verion of Champions League) is really quite good. From La Paz we moved on to Lake Titicaca - birthplce of Inca civilisation. From here Nik and I took it in turns to get hit by the lurgy. Obviously, being a bloke, my illness was far more spectaular and appalling - 4 hours puking on a Pervian bus with no loo - superb. Latest pics for your enjoyment - scroll to bottom for new ones http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/stokes_richard2004/my_photos