Cycle Bolivia's Death Road

“Luckily the rain had stopped, and so we started the ride in good spirits. Every time I dared to look down to my left, it resulted in my heart racing and sweaty palms. The drop was unbelievably steep, and you couldn’t see the bottom. [...] After about two thirds of the way, we rode on a flat part for a while – the first time all day that we had to use our pedals! Most of the time we just sat on the bike and hit the brakes hard, trying not to go over the edge. Because there are so many curves on the way, the cars that come up the road usually honk before turning around a corner. At some point, a car turned around the corner so suddenly that the sound of honk took me by such surprise that I hit the brakes too hard – and I flew over the handlebars. Luckily I didn’t go over the edge and was able to catch the bike before it went over, making this an incident without a tragic outcome (except for me being terribly shaken up with visions of me on a rock at the bottom of the mountain).”

“It was quite eerie. Besides scaring myself looking down, I had practically lost the group who were miles ahead. I started speeding up on the straight sections really going for it, which kind of scared me but was electrifying at the same time. The scenery was incredible. I was really enjoying my first mountain biking experience – on the most dangerous road in the world! As I was speeding down, I saw another member of the group at the side who looked like he was fixing his bike. As he caught my attention and my wheels were still rapidly spinning, I forgot to look where I was going. My wheel must have slipped and I crashed heavily into the rocks with my bike landing on top of me – and that was my mountain bike experience complete! I had so much adrenaline buzzing through me that I didn’t feel any pain and carried on unhurt, although my bike lost a brake.”

“We got picked up at 5am. I didn’t get a single second of sleep (must have been subconsciously worried). I was incredibly tired, like the feeling you get after staring at a computer screen for too long. [...] As I woke, it was raining and the van was stationary. There was a lot of commotion as people tried to figure out what was causing a huge standstill on the road. It must have been about 2 hours we sat there, patiently waiting, until we started moving, past the weather control stations and up into the Andes Mountains where we peaked at 15,400 ft. Rain was now snow, everything was sparkling in white crystals with the odd rigid rock peeking through.”