From Sucre we went to Cochabamba, and then traveled to La Paz. There is a road north of La Paz known as the World´s Most Dangerous Road. Fortunately, there has been a better road built now but a few trucks still use this narrow, scary road. The most popular thing now is for tour agencies to take groups down the road on mountain bikes. We were told by a few fellow travelers we had to do this, so we signed up. The agency we went with is extremely reliable. They have been in operation for almost 10 years, and they have taken over 35,000 people down the road. Of course there only death happened just last month, but they think he had a heart attack...that is always comforting. The ride was 60 some km total. We start at 4,750 meters high and ride on pavement for the first 30 some km. On the pavement bikes can get up to 80 km/hr since it is such a steep downhill. The second half of the ride is on the actual Death Road. Luckily most cars choose to take the new road, so we were very fortunate and didn´t pass one car until the very end. At the end of the ride we go to an animal refuge called La Senda Verda, which was an amazing place. Here are A LOT of pictures of you to see.
A house driving into Cochabamba. This city is definitely doing well economically. This is a mansion for South America!
The valley leaving Cochabamba. I unfortunately didn´t take any pictures in the city due to the high level of thieves.
The drive to La Paz turned into really flat plains, and then all of a sudden this huge mountain covered in snow came into view.
Beautiful La Paz. We have really been enjoying this city!
Here we go!!! This is the start of our ride. We are all getting fit to our bikes, and warming them up. They provided extremely nice full suspension bikes. The brakes are very touchy!!!
The scenery around the starting point. It is very high and very cold!!
This is where we are headed...kind of...
Nick in front of a huge mountain at one of our many stops.
A tunnel in the road that cyclist are no longer allowed to go through. This is because a girl went flying into the tunnel with her sunglasses on and ran straight into the wall going 40km/hr. She was in a coma for 3 weeks, but recovered without any problems.
This is the official start of The Death Road! Everybody is having a snack before they risk their lives.
Our guide prepping us for the next section of road. The guide would stop us every little bit to regroup and inform us of the upcoming challenges. He also had to always tell us a horror story of somebody getting hurt in the upcoming section. This was to make us aware of the danger of this road, not to scare us to death...supposedly.
Nick taking a picture of himself. I hope he is not on his bike right now!!
Me and couple of other riders coming into our next stop. As you can see the road is pretty wide most of the time, but that is an extremely steep edge to the right. I couldn´t really tell how steep though, since we were riding in the clouds.
The clouds lingering in the valley.
The wet section of road that the riders are approaching on the left side of the picture is the most dangerous part of the most dangerous road. This is because there is a waterfall right there that makes the ground very slick and unstable.
A pretty waterfall way down the steep cliff.
The beautiful, huge valley!
Me standing on the edge of the lookout point.
Nick and me looking sexy in our orange vests.
Another pictures of the huge valley.
A little house at the official end of The Death Road. We made it down alive!!!!
The bikes are all packed up.
Nick´s first friend at the animal refuge. This is the free t-shirt we received for surviving the road.
The pool at the refuge. It was really nice!!
A beautiful flower in the jungle.
Our cute, little cabin we got to stay the night in.
This is Willy. 
Two macaws that had their wings clipped. They only speak Spanish...pretty much just Hola.
This little guy is getting prepped for release. He was a curious bird.
A spider monkey. She is only 1 year old, and acts like it too. She tried to push our door open to our cabin to come and visit us, but we were concerned she would pee or poop on our beds.
Three monkeys monkeying around.
One spider monkey using my hand as a branch.
The little girl that lives at the refuge, because her mom works here not because she was abandoned. She is trying to feed the monkeys. They really loved her.
This capuchin monkey is tied up because she bites, but at the moment she is at the very end of her leash giving the evil eye to a puppy. Before she was using a stick to try to hit him.
The same mean monkey showing how much she loves the little girl.
Chica, the howler monkey, was pretty interesting. She would be very anti-social, and then all of a sudden she would crawl under my legs. At one time she tried to grab Nick from a tree...it was pretty funny.
A type of jungle raccoon trying to get down the pole by jumping on me.
A little, cute, darling, squirrel monkey. These guys were pretty shy, but they were so damn cute!
Last shot of the valley heading back into La Paz.
Nick likes pictures of the moon. This is right before entering La Paz.
1 comment:
That is so cool about the animal refuge. The bike ride looked pretty intense. I'm sure I cannot even begin to realize how scary it was. I like that waterfall picture, looks really neat. I wish I could have stayed in the cabin with you two and we could party with the monkeys yes!!!!
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