Day trip to Death Road

One of the most popular day trips from La Paz is a mountain bike tour to Death Road // Camino de la Muerte. This road got this name due to the large number of people who died on this road, approx. 200-300 per year. This road is important connection between La Paz and Amazon Region of Bolivia. The road was officially closed for cars in 2006 after new route was built. Why was this road so dangerous? As death road we refer a 31km long unpaved road between villages Chuspipata and Yolosa. The road is completely unpaved and in most of the sections only 1 car can pass. On the way there are several rivers one needs to cross and waterfalls. We are in the mountains so the weather is very unpredictable. Due tu strong rainfalls the landslides are also very common. Fog is very typical for the area so many drivers lost theirs lives as they could see the narrow road properly. Since 2006 the road is used only by people living in this remote area and by tour agencies. We book the trip with Barracuda travel agency and the trip with better bikes cost us around 430bs (60€) per person ~ quite pricey for Bolivia but we read some bad stories about cheap agencies not giving good bikes and not taking care of safety that much. We got picked up around 7:15 already a drove first a bit outside of La Paz for breakfast. After that we went by van slowly up to 4700m to the starting and highest point of this tour. First 21km downhill were on normal asphalt road and we used this time to get used to bikes and check our breaks. I was the slowest one, my breaks were making noise and I was bit scared. Flo was the first one clearly enjoying the experience and driving very fast. We get every 10-20 minutes small break and guides were always asking us how we feel and if everything is okay. Behind us was a driver with the van so we didn’t need to carry anything plus there was a possibility to get to the van in case you didn’t feel comfortable ect. Shortly before the end of asphalt road was a tunnel. Bicycle driver are not allowed to enter and has to bike around of rocky path. It was quite steep and Flo felt down quite badly 😢. Luckily nothing serious but he got bruises all over his body and hurt quite badly his elbow. After that we all got scared to bike on actual death road but the path was never that crazy as by that tunnel. Also our guides always stopped and told us if there was some more difficult part coming and what we should do. The scenery was amazing but we were 100% focused on the road so we could only observe it on each stop. Few weeks ago it was raining heavily and there was a big landslide. As it was not raining for few days we crossed the landslide by waking and our guides were carrying all our bikes one by one. It was definitely not the safest but we survived. After 31km we finished our death road bike tour in Yolosa by the pool followed by delicious lunch / dinner at 4 o’clock. The drive back was really long… Yolosa is located only 102 km from La Paz but due to the bad roads and few mountain passes it took us 3,5 hours to get back. It was amazing lifetime experience but do it once was definitely enough 😁🚵🏻‍♀️Read more