WMDR
The mostly single lane road starts in the cool altiplano and ends in the rainforest as it winds through steep hillsides sometimes with 600 meter drop-offs and no guard rails! Within a mile of the start of the ride, we peered over the edge to see a mangled bus on the valley floor contributing to the many deaths that occur yearly prior to the new road. Our ride day would have been treacherous for large motor vehicles because low cloud created very limited visibility – fortunately the only vehicles that use this road now are for bike support, tourists, and from the few pueblos located towards the bottom of the road.
The ride started with twelve kilometers on a sealed surface which the new and old roads share. This was great downhill riding and got us used to the sharp turns and the downhill bikes, although didn’t do much for the terrain to follow. The day’s disappointment for me was to come when myself and a couple of others were outvoted in the bid to ride or drive the next eight kilometers of uphill riding! I need hills right now for La Ruta and perfect training would have been to do this entire ride in reverse.
Twenty plus kilometers done and the ride would now begin in earnest with my favorite loose gravel. Ever since wrecking hard on La Ruta last year I’ve been careful on gravel, especially with borrowed bikes! I guess I could always stay back with Andrea and take it easy – haha, no way that’s going to happen. We stopped every four to five kilometers so everyone could regroup, and David, the guide from Gravity Bolivia, could explain about the turns and obstacles in the next section.
A serious amount of damage could be done with one wrong turn or slip, and with many different tour groups and their support vehicles all along the road we had to take it easy. I wish we had this road entirely to ourselves and didn’t have to watch for anything coming in the other direction! I did get to duel it out with three Aussie guys which made the riding fun and the pace faster than being on my own.
Prior to taking a taxi the short ride to Coroico we hopped back on the bus for showers and lunch at the Senda Verde animal refuge, a locally owned facility providing a safe home for rescued monkeys, bears, birds, etc.. It was great to clean up and refuel, but the highlight was seeing the work that the refuge does for animals caught in the trafficking trade. Bolivia has a law stating that rescued animals cannot be reintroduced back into the wild due to spreading disease, and even though most of the animals roam free on many hectares of land they know where their food and shelter come from so very rarely stray outside of the boundaries. It’s sad but they still have incidences where people throw stones at the macaws to try and dislodge them from the trees so as they can sell them in the surrounding markets – maybe the monkeys are smart enough not to stray too far so they don’t end up back as street performers or worse.
We changed at the last minute from two nights to a single night at the Sol y Luna Ecolodge so as I could head off to climb Huayna Potosi on Monday and Tuesday. The lodge is set on a beautiful hillside a couple of kilometers from town, and provides amazing views of the countryside and the Death Road – if the cloud hadn’t lingered around all afternoon we would have had the most amazing views from our completely open room, “Jatata”. Maybe we should have stayed for two nights after all!
August 10 – August 11 2013