The World's Most Dangerous Road

After two weeks, I thought I would have been used to the altitude, but I still feel like I'm out of breath constantly. Every so often I have to remind my body to take deeper breaths. Sometimes, especially if I wake up and immediately start doing things, I feel as if my lungs won't expand large enough. La Paz is built in a large valley with the main street running right down the center, which means if I want to get anywhere I always have to walk uphill at least one way, usually both ways. Often I walk about three or four blocks and then suddenly realize that I'm breathing like I'm out for a run.

So, I've taken eight rides down our main trip, the World's Most Dangerous Road. The first three trip were pretty much as a participant. The next two as sort of an assistant and doing many of the jobs that the Bolivian guide usually does. The last two were as a lead guide with another lead guide observing and giving me tips. My final training ride is tomorrow with the owner of the company coming along and if he deems me doing a great job, then I start leading trips on my own.

The Boli's role as a guide is not so much as my assistant, because they have all been here much longer than I and know the road much better, but more as support. They do most the background work while I'm dealing with clients. This included getting bikes ready, taking photos and dealing with maintenance issues. I've really enjoy most of the Boli guys I work with and am happy that this job sort of provides me with some immediate Bolivian friends as opposed to my job in China where it was hard to break out of the ex-pat community.

I begin my average day by walking downstairs to our office at 6:15am to gather my stuff. I grab the list of clients for the day, radios, a camera and my trip bag which has everything I'll need paperwork wise. Then I book it over the workshop two blocks away where I meet the Bolivian guide and driver. We gather the bikes together, grab the rental gear, the vehicle first aid kit, the “oh shit bag,” the tools/spare parts box, the rope rescue bag and the back board. From here we load up the bus and are meeting the clients in a cafe downtown by 7:15. After meet and greet and whatnot we're driving up to La Cumbre which actually means the summit. The drive up is through high Altiplano terrain. I've never been to Scotland, but I have always imagined this is what the Scottish highlands look like. Its like rolling hills of dry grass and rocky pinnacles looming high above. I sometimes imagine William Wallace on the peak of a pinnacle, kilt blowing in wind, standing high above the herds of llama. Of course this is Bolivia and not Scotland. There is much more likely to be a Cholita standing guard over the massive llama herds. (Clarification: In many Latin American countries chola and cholita are derogatory words against women, but in Bolivia, Chola is considered a polite word for indigenous women such as Quechua and Aymara women who still wear the traditional dress. Cholita shows more respect than chola.)

La Cumbre is the pass where we unload the bikes next to a small lake surrounded by high peaks often covered in snow. Here I go over our main safety speech, teach the tourists to respect hydraulic disc brakes and mainly press the point of not acting like an complete idiot. The ride is extremely easy, but has massive consequences of failure. Our largest cause of accidents is always testosterone exceeding ability level. From La Cumbre at 4,700 meters elevation, the ride starts out extremely easy down a long paved road. This is our opportunity to see who can actually ride a bike and who we need to give a good deal of coaching to. This part is also much steeper than the drive up. Instead of rolling grass hills and giant llama herds we instead descend through a steep gorge of large rocky cliffs. After passing through a military drug checkpoint searching for cocaine ingredients, we come to the town of Unduavi. From here we have a 8km climb uphill. We give the clients the option of doing the climb or riding in the bus for it. As far as grade goes, its not very hard. However, we are still at 3,300 meters and the air is very thing. The first hill always makes my lungs feel as they are trapped in a box and can't open large enough. We are also riding downhill bikes with a large amount of suspension and horrible pedaling efficiency. Most of the time I enjoy the uphill climb so I don't make it sound as hard. If I don't feel like climbing one day or its wet out, I make the climb sound absolutely horrible and nobody wants to even try. We give the clients a vote and if at least half the groups wants to do it then we let them try. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair for the most the group to sit on the bus for an hour while a few people try to prove something.

After this climb, we take a right on a gravel road heading downhill. This is the official beginning of the World's Most Dangerous Road. The road really is easy to ride. Its usually wide enough for only one vehicle, but has pull-offs every 25 to 50 meters. However, the cliffs on the side are often as deep as 700 meters straight down. We also pass many crosses and monuments. The attitude generally determines whether I tell more or less horror stories. If the group has a bunch of nervous people then I generally hold off on most the stories until the drive back up. If the group is full of cocky guys then I tell lots of horror stories on the way down. The first monument we come across is a rectangular block with five names on it and a bolt sticking out of the top. The monument commemorates the five Martyrs of Democracy who in 1944 were bound and thrown off the cliff by a military dictatorship in 1944. There also used to be a cross on the monument, but jeep hit it a few years ago and flipped over the edge taking the cross with it. You can still see where the monument has moved a few inches on its base towards the cliff edge.

At one spot a French girl didn't take her sunglasses off as she came through a tunnel and face planted straight into the side wall. She spent two days unconscious in the hospital. Another French girl stopped at cliff edge once, stood there straddling her bike and just lost her balance falling the wrong direction. She fell about 600 meters. The first bicycle death on the road is commemorated by a small simple plaque in Hebrew. An Israeli girl was trying to wipe here goggles of condensation while moving and rode straight off the cliff edge. Another guy was watching a beautiful blue butterfly when we went sailing into the wind with the butterfly. He actually survived with two full arm casts. There is one spot where they just recently built a fence. Last year, a tourist was racing another tourist and took the off camber turn too fast. He completely slid off the cliff. A few months later the owner of another local company was taking pictures of his clients facing the wall side in the exact same spot. He took one too many steps backwards and fell to his death. Near this spot we pass the supposed house of Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, while he was hiding in Bolivia. We also generally point out a large cross the for the worst accident of the road's history. A truck carrying over 100 people in the back fell off the road, while trying to get around a bus coming the other direction. The road got its designation as the World's Most Dangerous Road by the Inter-American Development Bank in 1995 for its average of 200 – 300 deaths per year. In 2006 they opened a new road nearby which has drastically decreased traffic on the old road and thus decreased the death rate. There have 18 deaths on the road since Gravity started running bike trips down the road in the early 90s. The only client that Gravity has ever lost though was an older heart attack victim. All the horror stories above have been from different companies.

As the road descends we slowly see more and more vegetation. Eventually we actually drop into the Amazon Basin. The terrain is more that off alpine jungle at 1,100 meters above sea level. This area is also covered in Cocoa fields. We end our ride at an animal refuge near the town of Yolosa. The refuge, La Sende Verde, keeps animals that have been confiscated from private owners or the black market, but cannot be returned to the wild. These animals include a few species of monkey, parrots, tortoises, snacks, a spectacled bear, a coati and a few others. The coati and the monkeys are absolutely amazing. The coati is related to our racoons, but much much friendlier. He enjoys cuddling with people and will clean you skin by lightly nibbling at it. Many of the monkeys also enjoy being with people and I'm constantly amazed at how human like their interactions seem. They will often grab your hand and try to lead you around to places that they want you to go. They also like to play, wrestle and cuddle. Especially on cold or rainy days the monkeys get very lazy and seek out people to cuddle up with for warmth. Sometimes the squirrel monkeys and capuchins try to crawl inside people's shirts. There is one spider monkey in particular that has come to know me. When I walk in Cacao will often run up to me and give me hug and then grab my hand with either his hand or tail to lead me somewhere. Le Sende Verde is also an eco-resort in order to support the refuge side of business. Here, our clients get a free buffet lunch, a beer, showers and a pool to swim in.

After lunch we hop back onto the bus for a 3½ hour ride back to La Paz on the same road we just came down. I find this part much scarier than riding a bike down, but our drivers have all been driving the road for a very long time and are very careful. I usually tell the clients more history or horror stories as we come back up the road. Then we mostly kick back and relax till La Paz. Upon our return we drop the clients off at their hostels and hotels, take all the gear back to the workshop, head back to the office, pay the driver, split the tips, burn the photo CDs and other general end of trip stuff. Depending on the group and generally how fast our day was, I can be down with all this anywhere in-between 6 and 10pm. Usually I have just enough energy to walk down the street, grab some street food and head to bed. Getting up to do it again the next day at 6am.

Mi Casa y Gnarly Paseos

I've spent the last few days to settling in, figuring out my way around La Paz, getting to know some people and riding. So far I'm pretty happy down here. I live in a nice area of town, but close enough to downtown to walk or take a cheap taxi. I've met some people and some interesting characters. Then of course, there's the riding. The riding is spectacular and awesome and sometimes gnarly.

First of all, let me tell you about where I live. Gravity has two offices. One is a hole in the wall place on the Prado (the main street) for tourists to come for information, to sign up for trips and whatnot. Our back office is really a house in a nice area of town half way up the mountain to the north. The first floor is the office part, the second is two apartments and the third floor is the owner's apartment. I live in one of the two apartments with the other two full time gringo guides. My bedroom is spacious and has big windows that allow lots of sunlight in. One of my windows faces out into the street. Across the street is a small plaza with benches and a statue in the middle. Its a very small plaza tucked back and hidden in this neighborhood so it turns out to be a popular place to come make out on the benches. There are also the occasional prostitutes who hang out on the corner waiting to be picked up by really fancy cars that are obviously from a much nicer area of town. Apparently my window used to have an awesome view of Illimani, a towering peak with glaciers. Now there's a half built five story building right in the way. We have two maids who clean the apartments and the office and general stuff around the house. The older head maid, Dona Rosa, lives in the other apartment with her husband, Don Juan, who also does a lot of odd jobs for the company around the house and the workshop. The workshop is right around the corner and one block away. The space is perfect. There is a huge amount of storage space for bikes, a large room for the mechanics who each have there own personal station and a bike shop attached to the side. Gravity is the South American importer for Kona, Santa Cruz, Titus and a lot of the big component companies plus a lot of smaller companies. This means we get sick deals on pretty much anything we want.

I've met a lot of people and its difficult keeping track of who’s who. First there is Alistair the owner and the other two full time gringo guides. One most rides we have one gringo guide and one Bolivian guide. There is a small army of about 12 Bolivian guides who also work as mechanics in the shop. Most weekdays they work in the shop and then get pulled out to run rides whereas we just ride everyday. Many of them are really good riders and they're all great mechanics. They are all pretty friendly and seem very laid back. Laid back seems to be a very Bolivian attribute. Our drivers are similar. We have one permanent driver who works the most and then we have a few other guys that come in as needed. These guys are smiling, happy and cracking jokes the whole day. Aside from the guys who work in the shop, we also have the maids and all the people in the offices. The office staff is pretty mixed with both Bolivians and gringos. There's also a small number of part time gringo guides who come in whenever they feel like and are needed. Many of them have other jobs in La Paz that keep them busy and they just guide for Gravity for fun. One of them that I rode with the other day runs an NGO dealing with sex trafficked women and their children. I’m sure MTB guiding is nice way to relax. Another really interesting character is Jack, the head brewer at brewery here in town. The brewery is actually part owned by the owner of my company, which means its a great deal for us (really cheap beer!). Jack could be described as an uber-conservative, Texan, mile a minute man who likes to drink, a lot. Aside from that description though, he's a really friendly guy who. I really enjoy hanging out with as long as were not talking politics. He told me that he came to Bolivia when his girlfriend dumped him, his dog died and Obama got elected to office, so he said “I gotta get out of here.”

Lastly for today, I have to talk about the riding here. That is why I'm here after all. I got really lucky. My first ride happened to be our Secret Single Track ride. We have a lot of other rides to offer from just the World's Most Dangerous Road, but the WMDR is easily 90% of our business. I think my pictures on Facebook really speak for them selves about how amazing the landscape is and how gnarly the trails were. Our day started with a drive up to the trails just outside La Paz in a Land Cruiser listening to Rage Against the Machine and general 90s hard rock. For the morning we shuttled the La Paz downhill race course three times. Multiple runs gives the clients time to learn the course and get better at anticipating features and riding more smoothly. The course had some pretty hard sections too. Two of the three clients took diggers right off the bat on the initial drop in and the third client took the easier line around and still walked a bit. I've got a good picture on Facebook of one of our clients launching over his handlebars. There was one turn in particular farther down that I couldn't ever get without dabbing. It was a tight steep off-camber turn around a large rock. After a picnic lunch on a high pass, we spent the whole afternoon descending a long series of trails crossing all sorts of terrain. We started high on a ridge-line flowing over hillocks and dips and then dropped into a rocky trail that actually passed straight through the center of a village. After the village we passed through an incredible landscape of cliff edges and giant sand spires. After wrapping through the spires, we continued down a long ridge-line that got narrower and narrower. Eventually coming off the toe, the got super steep with several options constantly. You could either choose the steeper straighter line down or the route with tight switchbacks and small berms. We took a small break right at the end of the toe, before the ridge just completely dropped away. From this vantage point we could see two old women and a small child walking up the trail, so we waited for them to pass before continuing. These women were dressed in the traditional layered wool ponchos. I can't imagine having to walk up and down this horribly long and steep trail on a daily basis just to go to town from that village that we had passed way back when. I was in shorts and a t-shirt and these women were dressed like it was below freezing out. After a quick chat with the ladies, we dropped the last bit of super tight switchbacks with cliff edges on the sides that were just begging to thrash us. I had to dab on most of the final switchbacks and I'm looking forward to nailing them in the future. I was also terrified on much of the turns due to the consequences of failure and look forward to putting that fear down too. Of course, while riding through the village way back, I smashed my real derailleur, so to fix it, I just took it and the chain off and relied on the power of gravity to ride down. However, this meant that through the switchbacks I couldn't get that oh so important half pedal stroke in. After dropping off the road, we had to ride a mostly dry river bed back to a town near La Paz where we met the Land Cruiser to head back. Sometimes this river bed was just angled enough downhill that I could cruise down without pedaling, but often I had “skateboard” my bike along. The river bed was really cool though, because much of it was caked in magnesium making it look like a bunch of streams of white powder intertwining each other.

This thing is long enough. I'll write more about the WMDR and the city another day. I put up an album of the single track on Facebook and I should be getting some more pictures of Lima, Peru and La Paz up soon.

I'm in Bolivia

Part 1
I write this one from the front of an express bus on a 27 hour journey to La Paz. Its about 9:15pm and dark. This bus is far different from the overnight buses I experienced in China. There, they packed in as many beds as possible and everyone got their coffin to spend the night in. This bus feels like luxury comparatively. There are two decks. The bottom is mostly the cab, crew quarters, los banos and cargo space. The upper deck has rows that look like normal bus seats except bigger, more leg room and they lean most of the way back to laying down position. There is even a padded foldout leg rest thingy. The front of the upper deck has a half-circle table with benches facing a large window stretching across the bus width. That is where I sit now, facing the dark highway, watching traffic go by. There is a Peruvian couple sitting on my left flirting in Spanish and listening to Jack Johnson. Honestly, its a bit scary sitting in front of this window watching scenery come at me through the dark on this narrow mountainous highway. Occasionally I grab the computer as we swing around switchback after switchback.

Lima truly is built in the middle of a desert. I spent a day in a town on the outskirts of Lima called Miraflores in-between arriving Sunday and catching the bus Tuesday. The city is quite a non-photogenic place this time of year. All winter long Lima is covered in this fog that just sort of blankets everything white. It is not the type of fog that you can watch coming in and out, covering and uncovering the world creating epic photographs of clouds moving through objects, but instead gives the whole world a sense of being two dimensional

We began this journey from two-dimensionality at 9am cruising down the coast of Peru with the Pacific ocean crashing upon the beaches to our right. The sand dunes stretched out for miles off to the left. The desert grew as we veered a bit inland and all I could see to either horizon was nothing but sand. Save for the occasional concrete village there really was nothing but sand and rock. Eventually we started into the mountains which could really be better described as giant rocky sand dunes. I noticed many of the villages we passed had walls that seemed to have been built to keep the desert from taking over the village.


Part 2
Okay, I'm now writing this section from my new apartment in La Paz. I've met most of my co-workers, taken a stroll around town and unpacked all my stuff. Bus ride turned out to be 30 hours total, but I rather enjoyed it. The scenery was unbelievable and I have decided that I definitely need to go back and check out the area around Lake Titicaca some more. The other guys here say there is more incredible mountain biking around the lake and up into the Cuzco area. I have quite a headache, but I'm not sure if its from the altitude or if I just didn't drink enough water on the bus ride. Either way, I plan on getting stuff done tomorrow, so it can't stick around. Anyways, I hope to be riding real soon as I sit here and stare at my lovely bike in the corner of my bedroom. I also hope to have facebook albums up soon.
Peace

Even the airports in Florida have hundreds of old people

As many of you know, I'm headed off to La Paz, Bolivia for a while. A few friends suggested I start a blog and I hope this is a better alternative to tagging people in Facebook notes. At the moment I'm actually sitting in the Fort Lauderdale airport on a three hour layover. If everything goes well I'll be in Lima by 10pm tonight. I'm pretty stoked to be heading to South America this time. I'll actually still be in the same time zone as everyone back home in NC or IN. I scored a sweet job guiding awesome mountain bike trips in the Andes near La Paz. I'm planning on sticking around a year or so and seeing what I feel like doing then. You can check out the company I'm working for here: http://gravitybolivia.com/index.php?mod=homeb or just google “World's Most Dangerous Road”. About 90% of our work is guiding tourists down the World's Most Dangerous Road. The “dangerous” part is mostly due to the amount of trucks and buses that have fallen off taking plenty of people with them. Don't worry, biker accidents are way less common. The road itself is a gravel road much like the roads we encounter in Pisgah National Forest. This gravel road has cliffs on the side that drop three thousand vertical feet though. The ride actually starts at about 15,400 and drops 11,800 vertical feet. Sweet! I'm really hoping I enjoy leading more touristy type trips since I've committed to coming to Bolivia and living here for a year. I also hope I get some friends to come visit to either ride the death road or not. We also have a bunch of other trails and rides that we take more experienced riders down.

Plane is loading soon. I hope to have lots of adventures while I'm down in South America and write about them here. Spread the word about the blog.