El gran viaje 2007

Anyone who has ever been to La Paz knows about the World´s Most Dangerous Road, because I´m pretty sure it´s forbidden to leave La Paz without going down it on a mountain bike. Even if, like me, you haven´t been on a bicycle since you were a kid. A little kid.

Anyway, we started early Tuesday morning at La Cumbre, the start of the road down to Coroico in the tropical Yungas region of Bolivia. La Cumbre is definitely not tropical, and we all started flying down the road bundled up in warm hats and fleeces. After just a few hours, everyone was wearing t-shirts and we had descended thousands of feet. That was about the point in the journey when the smooth, paved road turned into a single lane dirt road with stunning cliffs on the left side-- the World´s Most Dangerous Road (it´s also called the Death Road, by the way). Our guide assured us that no one had ever died on the ride with them (although there had been lots of broken bones and some rescues over the cliffs), which made me feel a little better flying around sharp corners at what felt like full speed to me.

We made it though, after about five hours on the road, to the Senda Verde, an animal refuge at the end of the road where we had lunch and got our free beer and t-shirt. The climate was completely different from La Paz-- humid and hot, with tropical trees and flowers everywhere. Sergio and I took advantage and stayed the night there, hanging out with the spider monkeys and the volunteers and hitching a ride back to La Paz with the group that rode down the next day.

So after our little detour we´re back in La Paz for a few days, which we´ll be spending doing things like backing up photos and laundry, getting used to the altitude again, and recovering from the World´s Most Dangerous Road.