The World's Most Dangerous Road

Not far from La Paz, there is a road that joins the towns of La Cumbre and Yolosa. La Cumbre is at the top of a mountain (4700m), and Yolosa is deep in a valley (1200m) and they are 63km apart. The stretch of road that connects these two towns winds and clings to the edge of a steep mountain face. For the most part it is a very narrow gravel road (just over 3.2m wide) with steep cliffs off the edge (up to 600m drop in places) and with few, if any, safety barriers. There are even sections of the road that are currently eroding thanks to waterfalls that are landing directly on the road. It also doesn’t help that there is usually fog lingering around the road!

Sounds dangerous? It is! In 1995 it was identified as the World’s Most Dangerous Road by an Inter-American Development Bank report.....and not without good reason. Over the years, there have been numerous fatalities on (or off) this road. An average of 26 vehicles a year disappeared over the edge into the great abyss. The road itself is lined with plenty of crosses indicating the location of many of the accidents. One of the most renowned occurred in 1983, involving a flat-bed truck which went over the edge killing the driver and 100 passengers!

In 2007, a new replacement road opened across the valley, and most of the traffic now uses that new road. So the old road is perfect for mountain-biking enthusiasts. Naturally, we didn’t pass up the opportunity to ride down it....and what a rush! As we mentioned above, it is 63km long with a vertical drop of 3500m so makes for one great down-hill adventure! The first 20km of the road are actually on the new paved section and during this part we were overtaking some trucks and busses. We stopped at the first corner and (just to put us in the mood) the guides pointed out the carcass of a mini-bus down in the valley that went over the edge killing all 7 on board. The remaining 43kms are on the old gravel section and this was definitely the scariest part! However, we were so focussed on staying on the road that we never noticed just how dangerous it was in places. It was only when we were driving back up the road in the bus that we realised just how narrow some of the sections were. Hard to imagine that we went down it at such speed! Over the years there have been about 15 cyclists killed doing the ride but thankfully there were no issues with our group! The tv show Top Gear did a piece on this road, which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXLxszv9eCM&feature=fvw

Because of the altitude difference, the area at the bottom of the road was actually quite tropical (a welcome temperature change!) and there were even some monkeys around :)