Cycling Adventure in Bolivia

You will notice the highway dropping quite sharply down the mountainside. The pavements here are quite slick dude to the rains and the hail.  Cars are usually always passing in both directions.

When you are in Bolivia, don’t be fooled by the weather, there are many things that you could do that will keep you on your adventure seat for most of your journey, if not all of it. That too depends on whether you are a hardcore adventure fan.

One of the first things you should do here is going on a cycling trip which is promoted on the famously advertised ‘Most dangerous Road’ (also called death road). This road descends about twelve thousand feel for a stretch of about forty thousand miles along a mountain pass called La Paz. As you go down the road you will come to the beautiful resort town of Coroico.  This apparently sued to be a third world structure which has been turned into a major tourist attraction.

The nickname comes in from a report which was made in the early nineteen eighties, which was in a time where Bolivia had been trying to find funding to build a road to replace this very one.  This was because this road had the most number of traffic fatalities compared to anywhere else in the world. There were about three hundred people dead in just one single year. Although, since the road has been built the number of accidents and fatalities have reduced quite drastically.

It is always advisable to enroll with a tour guide company that brings a van with you. The guides ask you to wait around the first shoulder as the van could catch up with you and follow you through the stretch, in case; there are any injuries or any breakdowns.

Once you reach one hour into riding you cycle on this road, you would start feeling the warm air kicking in; which  would seem to be quite a blessing after the cold icy weather; while you are riding your way down.  Also, once this happens; you would leave the pavement of the new road and start on the older one.

This road is a ten foot wide cliff hugging track which is infested with gravel. Bolivia seems to be the land of extremes which is because of the twenty thousand feet peaks. Over the past ten years, this country which was a bothersome pass between Peru and Argentina has now begun to make good use of its extreme terrain. This advantage has paid off as the country is now a major hub for adventure tourism and eco tourism as well.