I survived the death road.....
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2010
1
20
65
Trip End
Mar 29, 2011
The death road, La Paz, Bolivia
Monday, October 25, 2010
i did not do that. i went by bus to rurrenabaque - the first part is on that road.
i think they should give you such a t-shirt after the bus trip. because going by bike is easy. you ride it and you are thin...you have lots of space on the road.
going by bus.......well, i think i would not do it again.
the road is sometimes so narrow that the outer lane for the tires (on the edge) is already "broken". that means that there are some parts where not the entire tire hits the ground anymore if the driver does not drive so close to the rock that the bus nearly touches it. i talk about some centimeters that could mean driving or falling.
well, i was in a big bus, you know, the ones who carry the passengers in the "first floor" and you have that lovely window up in the front.
i sometimes nearly shit into my pants.
not only because of the street itself, which is partly in a very bad condition, but also because it is NOT a one way street. there are a lot of buses and trucks on this road. and our driver seemed to know the street very well, because he drove animated and not always on sight.
that means that sometimes he had to brake so hard - always in curves, of course - because there was a vehicle upcoming (nearly crashing into us, because the other drivers drove the same style), that the tires blocked and we were slipping just a little bit on the dirt road.
ah, i should mention that you drive on the left side, which i do not really understand, because the one who goes down the road is nearly the whole time on the scary side, where you can fall down a couple of hundreds of meters, if you are lucky...
i saw a couple of crosses along the road (people who died). i saw a rescue truck pulling up a vehicle that went down. i saw the road. i saw the people driving on that road.....
next time i will basejump down this mountain, seems more safe to me.
or maybe i am just too old or still too european for that shit.
the people who were sitting on the left side were sometimes joking and laughing: "look, you cannot see the road anymore (down the window), haha..."
funny
as i was the only greenhorn in the bus i was really hoping that the driver would take care of his people...
well, i survived the death road....(ok, there are daily buses and probably accidents are rare)
