DEATH ROAD!!

Apart from the rafting, river zip line and generally taking local transport we had not been risking our lives much recently, so we thought it was time to inject a little fear back into our trip.

What better way to do this than to mountain bike down "DEATH ROAD". Now I know that lots of things have scary names when they really aren´t scary at all, but this is NOT one of them!
On average 1 person died on the 32km stretch of road every 3, yes 3 days. Mountain bikers have been riding down it for several years and on average 1 dies every 4 1/2 months. Being a bit geeky Ells and I did a few calculation on the risk involved with mountain biking down this road (unfortunately this was done when half way down, scaring the crap out El) and the odds of dieing while mountain biking are 6500-1. Thinking about this further we concluded that if you rode down as fast a possible with the lead guide the odds were cut dramatically. Which means that as that was what I was doing I stood a chance of about 500-1 of dieing (and we'd PAID to do this). These odds are the risk of being KILLED not injured. It turns out that if you get away injury free you have done very, very, very well.

So this is what we were going to do and what an amazing day it was. We started at an altitude of 4660m in snow and ended several hours later at 1500m in hot sun. Starting with a new tarmac section of road we wound our way down through the mountains, I was keeping up with the lead guide and was a little shocked when we started to overtake buses and lorries ( I think that this also cuts the odds of dieing even more, sorry Mom!).

Ellie was taking it a bit easier as I think she had already started calculating the risks. After this first section we got onto the real "death road", 32km of narrow dirt track that clings to the sides of mountains with countless hairpin bends and shear drops of 600m+ over the edge (this is Bolivia so of course there are no safety barriers).Every bend or long stretch of road was littered with crosses and shrines for the people who had died. It`s almost like the whole road a long never ending reminder of those who didn´t make it to the end.

As I was hurtling down these roads following the suicidal guide I suddenly thought about doing this in the England. I imagined going to the bank with a business plan. I could even hear the bank manager talking to me "So your business idea is to take people down the most dangerous road in the world on mountain bikes. They don´t have to have any experience and there are no safety barriers anywhere on route. You also say that you would like to go down as fast as you can and that the risk of death is about 500-1" It was at this point I realised that this would never be allowed in the UK and probably for very good reasons!








As if the risk of injury and death was not high enough just completing the "death road" the guide decided that I had proven myself worthy enough to attempt some stunts. The main one being to ride as fast as possible down a small down hill section and off some rocks into a shallow pond. This was actually really cool, although I got soaked through. It was so much fun that it had to be done again. As I waited to go I watched in shock as another biker (Matt) had a go, landed, came off and rammed his face into the rocky bottom of the pond. Luckily we were wearing full face helmets so all he suffered was cut arms, a few bruises and a twisted knee (well I say ALL like it was nothing, but he could hardly walk after!). My final jump ended without any injury, although it did make my back tyre explode, the 4th flat tyre in a week. It also caused Ellie to titter and mutter about too much good food and something about fatso, the cheek!!

So we managed to survive the day in one piece and totally unharmed. If anyone every finds themselves in La Paz with a day to spare and a REAL death wish, it´s definitely the thing to do!