Patton,

I'll down a drink or 12 with you. Cheers.

Dan

Thanks, man.... cheers! I'm enjoying my favorite beer at the moment... Stone Brewing Company IPA. Joy in a bottle.

<------- college grad


no, not christine lakin.

woot! now you have something to put on the wall.

HBE,

I won't believe it until I see a a college summary video with you in cap and gown.

Congrats!

I will send $1 for said video

Hermes, age 14

erm... how do i do this? wii is the first game console ive ever had in my life, and i have no idea how to use it; only to crush at mario kart :P

anyway, little help, and i'll do it. i have the time these days.. my laptop broke and now i have to jump on when alex gets off his. mario kart has been filling my time

thanks yall

if i can find a way to get my hands on a video camera and an imac, ill make a video happen.

I was on this road last year. The articles linked are a bit out of date, and obviously sensationalized, but the statistics are correct that something like 8000 people had died there in 70 years.

It's no longer used much by cars since there has been a new road built on the other side of the Coroico Valley.

We went down it on mountain bikes. I had broken my leg 2 months previously and still needed crutches to walk. But I wasn't going to miss this experience and I figured cycling downhill would be a lot easier than walking.

The first 5 to 10 miles are on a paved road, where you can go very fast and it is hard to fall off the edge, but the views are magnificent. After that we reached the turn off for the Yungas Road proper. Our guide gave us some guidelines and told us a little about the history of the road. Vehicles drive on the left for most of the distance (although the cars are left-hand drive like the US) so that drivers can see how close they are to the left hand edge. We were told to slow down coming into corners, signal to the cyclists behind us if there was oncoming traffic, and watch out for clouds of dust in the distance.

The road is about 30 miles long. Inside the first mile, I cycled straight into a 6 inch high rock in the middle of the road. I didn't notice in time and came off the bike over the handlebars. Fortunately we were all wearing these big full-face helmets, or I would have split my face open.

(here's a picture of my friend warming up before the cycle, so you can see the safety gear. I can't find my photos of the descent itself but will take a look, because they are worth seeing)


Fortunately I didn't spill too far from the bike so I was able to climb back up on it and get back on the trail. We would stop every 15 minutes or so to make sure everyone was still there/the guide would tell us a little bit about the grisly history of that part of the road. When next I caught up with the group I'm pretty sure he was regretting allowing me to come. My friend who is also a very experienced cyclist had also come off the bike in the first mile, skidding iinto the rockface on the right hand side, but he also wasn't badly hurt.

Happily there were no other accidents and in fact having that little slip made the experience all the more exciting, even though the road is very safe for cyclists it made it feel more real -- what if I came off the bike again while coming round a corner or at the edge of a cliff?

Here are some generic photos of the road, like I say I really wish I could find the photos of my friends and me instead because these don't do it justice.





I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who is in La Paz, even if you aren't much of a cyclist you can still appreciate this trip. We went with a company called Downhill Madness who had very good bikes, equipment, and guides; the most famous company that does this trip is called Gravity who also have a very good reputation so I think you couldn't go wrong with either of them.

RT,

I might consider walking that road.

but ONLY in the day time...

and only when its dry and warm.... and closed off to cars.... and they give out free parachutes (just in case imo).... and if I had spoken with God and Miss Cleo recently and they BOTH told me I would make it....

then I might consider it.

lol wat, going down there with a still broken leg and being happy about actually crashing. I guess I'm risk averse for not seeing the point of that :P

ship the pics!!

For some reason this made me lol

Nice combo

Chile >Bolivia imo, at least they dont use our roads for adventure tourism.

Nice post RT, I hope you get to post the pics.

mmm..i feel like posting some pics from peru just to fit in the conversation, but I will do so in the photo thread.

Hi,

Posting from apartment in Vegas.

Let me know when people are down here.

I'm down here.

Im the only one who is actually down here!

edit: and maybe RT iirc.

im not sure where down here is but I don't think I am

i'm about 6 hours away

I here it's pretty hot down there.

EDIT: God, that's embarassing. Shame on me. Wow.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce POGs professional writer??