The Road of Death!!!

The Road of Death!

I spent today mountain biking the World´s most dangerous road, but I survived! Statistically more people die on this road than any other in the world, this includes the streets of Baghdad. Okay, so I´ve built it up, are you impressed? Okay more facts, it´s a 64km ride, with a 3,650m descent. So on a mountain bikes that´s lots of fun. But the start is at an elevation of 4,760m, at 8.00 this morning it was really frosty and of course difficult to breath!


One of the many waterfalls on the road.

We rode through waterfalls, on loose rocks, a little pavement and through two large streams. I booked the tour with Gravity Assisted, they are one of the best outfits, expensive but I got to ride a full suspension bike and we ended the day at an animal sanctuary with great hot showers and a pool. At times it was easy to forget the 800m drop on the side of the road, other times it was really terrifying. There is a lot of loose rocks on the road and one guy had an accident, luckily he only scraped himself. We were all given really good protective clothing at the start of the day. The goggles came in handy too, as towards the bottom the climate is completely different, very hot and dry and the dust from the road clings to the air. They took photographs and video of all the riders, so at some point I´ll try and upload them here. Oh and to top it all I got a free t-shirt!


A parrot at the sanctuary.

Tomorrow night I´m of to the Salar de Uyuni (famous Salt Flats), it´s a 3 day tour that ends in San Pedro, Chile. I´m looking forward to being at a slightly lower altitude and somewhere warmer, well at least in the day.