El Camino de La Muerte

This past weekend, I bicycled down the most dangerous road in the world, a 66 kilometer stretch of highway wide enough for one car, which descends from La Paz, at an altitude of 4600 meters into the jungle, ending at around 1000 meters. Along the entire road, one side is sheer cliff, about a 200 to 400 meter drop into the rainforest. At various points, waterfalls splash onto the road, adding an extra factor to the already horrible conditions. There are only certain points at which two cars can pass each other, and so when two meet, the one going down is forced to back up to one of these points, and then pull its wheels halfway off the cliff so that the other car can pass. Fortunately, I went on a bicycle (I swear it was a lot safer), but at various points the guide would stop us to talk about accidents that had happened in various locations. At one point, we passed a village, famous only because it has 23 buildings, and every single one of them is a trout restaurant. Later, we passed a stone which commemorated an election that took place during the dictatorship in Bolivia, only because the opposition party had all been pushed off the cliff at that point when the military government realized that they couldn´t possibly win democratically. Oddly enough, the road ends in a small, one horse town called Yolosa, where we rested for a few hours and then took off back up the hill to Coroico (in a taxi).