Biking Death Road

We were very excited to have a 7.30am pick up after several days of early morning starts. A kiwi man called Tim and a Bolivian support guide called Marco picked us up from the hotel.

We did a series of icebreakers in the van, which was funny because we all knew each other already. The van played very kiwi chilled music, the type you hear when you go skiing. We drove up a valley for about 45 minutes that looked strikingly like the Crown Range in New Zealand, but it was 4000 metres above sea level. We pulled into a car park with a perfectly mirrored lake.

Here, we got dressed in full body windbreaker outfits and tried out the bikes. After all our equipment was ready and we’d had a briefing, there was 20km of downhill on the asphalt road in one of the most spectacular vallies I’ve seen. I was loving it, not needing my breaks at all and able to look around without bouncing off the odd pothole in the road.

Tim or Marco (one was always at the front and back) would stop every 10 minutes to let everyone catch-up. I was following Tim on the second section when he ground to a halt on the side of the road, Susie pulled up behind me. There had been an accident – already! We waited 20 minutes despite Marco’s voice over the walkie talkie saying everything was fine in Spanish.

The van pulled up with all the other girls inside. Richella, a lovely Irish girl who had been most keen to do the ride, had flipped over her handle bars and had a big cut on her forehead. It was only superficial, nothing broken (Ashley was a nurse and could check) and no concussion, but Richella was very upset and ended up getting an ambulance to be checked out fully for peace of mind. We waited roughly another hour for it to be arranged.

Then we began the actual Death Road. It started above a sea of clouds, just green peaks peeking out. We were driven down slightly further than the normal starting point because a few of the girls were quite shaken. The road was hardpacked gravel and large rocks. It wound around green mountainsides, the path snaking out in front of you.

It wasn’t too hard to ride and I barely noticed the huge drop to our left. The worse thing was how rocky it was – my hands and forearms ached by the end of the day, just from holding on to the handlebars. The bikes were amazing and had double suspension. Anytime I hit a rock, it would somehow not throw me off, just bounce me back up.

The ride didn’t feel that long but we had started late. The last 10km the road smoothed out and you could really pick up speed. There were two little river crossings and then we were at the bottom!

We had lunch (a celebratory beer and pasta) around 3.30pm at an animal refuge. There were monkeys, tapirs and capybaras. One huge howler monkey opened the cage from the inside and escaped, also setting free a turtle.

Then we had three hours back to La Paz in the van. After it got dark and you could no longer see the scenery, the most amazing stars came out.