*Zoobomb-riding (bombing) little bikes downhill from the Portland zoo

The World´s Most Dangerous Road, from La Cumbre (elevation 4700 meters) to Yolosa, (1,100 meters) was determined to be the most dangerous road by some international organization some years ago because of the rather incredible number of deaths on it.

Good road for a couple of bikers to ride, no? However, the international community demanded that Bolivia build a new road, a safer road, and the old road has turned into…
A Mountain Bike Park.

I am not kidding.

Our plan was to perhaps ride it by ourselves instead of taking one of the many, many tours that were offered, but we learned that it was illegal to do it on your own as someone was unfortunately killed there a couple of weeks ago. So we researched several companies, and picked one that we thought we´d like to check out for perhaps possible future employment.

Now, it doesn´t get more gringo trail than this. The company, Gravity Assisted, didn´t even pretend to communicate with clients in Spanish. The guides were one gringo plus one Boliviano. The clientele was entirely gringo. But, the bikes were top notch and instead of ending at the same hotel every other company ended the tour at, they had a special facility (of which we will write extensively about in a future post) built for the end of the ride. In addition, the office staff was incredibly helpful, and they were able to store our bikes and gear in their workshop. Having a safe place in La Paz for bike storage was worth just about anything, and leaving it in a bike shop with bike people seemed like an excellent idea.

So at 7:30 am we met the other 12 gringos, loaded up on a bus, and drove up and up and up to La Cumbre. Our guide was a bit wary of us at first-we know that the people who think they know what they are doing on a bike are often the biggest pains in the rear-so we tried to stay really chill. I was very impressed with the guides and the logistics, I have to say. They took a very disparate group and managed to make everyone feel safe and still have a great ride.

The Beginning-27k of swoopy curves on a paved road. Two drug checks that amounted to nothing more than us paying a few bolivianos for the upkeep of the road (biker tax). Insane views of mountains above the clouds.

When we hit dirt road, we started to feel the air change. It got noticably thicker, for one. Thicker, wetter, and warmer. We started shedding layers rather quickly. The road got significantly more difficult-steeper, and the sheer drops got unimaginably huge.

On the road, the normal rules of driving on the right don´t apply. Instead, downhill traffic rides/drives on the left, or the outside, and uphill traffic drives on the inside/right. This means that downhill traffic has to yield, and they have the best view of the drop that is sometimes less than a meter off of their left tire.
So, we rode on the right.

The ride was incredible. Most of it was downhill, with the exception of a few kilometers. (It seemed that our tour group was the only one that gave riders the option to ride this section. We did, of course, until my chain broke. Then Andy pushed me for about 2k, until the bus caught up with us. The other guide rapidly replaced my chain, and because these were good people, assumed that we would continue riding up the hill.)

And, then at the end, after almost 60k of decending, and over 10,000 feet were lost, we ended up at La Senda Verde.

It was hella fun.