The Death Road

Day Biking Tour from La Paz to the “Death Road”. A 35km section of infamously dangerous road through a valley outside of the city. We drove first 45 minutes up to the summit La Cumbre at 4500m, surrounded by snowy peaks and barren high altitude slopes. Got our mountain bikes and cruises down the first warmup section of road, 22km on asphalt but still quite steep and twisty, with beautiful views down The valley. Then a quick bus ride further along to the start of the Death Road 💀. It is about 33km down a snaking, narrow, twisting road with huge drops of 100s of meters on the edge. Pretty scary, pretty cool! We biked down and it was safe as long as you go carefully and under control, but still scary when you think about being anywhere near the edge. I guess people have died falling from time to time… there is no normal traffic on the road anymore, since they built a new one in the next valley, and a big landslide had nearly destroyed a section that we had to walk our bikes through.

the ride took about 3 hours, it was Really fun and also super bumpy, my hands and butt are so sore despite the suspension. Also really cool to see the landscape change as we descended to about 1300m elevation, with the air warming and the area becoming thick jungle.

Then we had lunch and a beer at a jungle lodge thing and jumped in a pool before a long bus ride back to La Paz. Survived the Death Road! 🚵Read more