Make Travel Harder with Music

We saw these outside the bus station in Puerto Escondido. The tour van of an impoverished - and electrified - band. Strapped on the back of these oversize cycles were some guitars and a PA! It was a windless, coudless 35 degree day, and the musicians were inside the station asking about bus tickets.

Death Road Photos

Lake at the top

A crashed bus

Memorial rest stop

A macaw at the bottom

The Death Road

Us and La Paz

There is a stretch of dirt cut into the mountains between La Paz and Coroico that until recently held claim to the title of the World's Most Dangerous Road. Up to 300 people a year used to come to horrible ends on this road, hence the grizzly superlative. About a year ago a shiny new bitummen strip was installed on the opposite side of the valley, doing away with the need for vehicles to crawl around the slippery, guardrail-less curves perched atop hundreds of metres of rainforesty freefall. These days the Death Road is the almost exclusive domain of Gringo mountain bikers out for a day of supervised downhill death defiance.


Our party of four set out from La Paz and climbed in a van to the plus 4000 metre starting point. The road starts in the clouds and winds earthwards into a valley. The usual Bolivian roadside decorations of plastic bottles and nappies are replaced, almost in equal numbers, by crosses and memorials for those that didn't make it further. Skeletal wreckage of buses and other vehicles can be seen below this initial length of bitumen, and the cold wind stings your ears.


The scenery is bleak and massive; huge mountains covered in dark low vegetation are spoted with cloud. After a drug checkpoint or two, there is a chest-popping length of uphill (we are still above 3000 metres here), which Angie and Bre chose to negotiate in the support van (cheating).

The Road

This is us looking at the remains of a beer truck at the bottom of the valley

The real Death Road begins soon after. We left the bitumen, deflated our tyres and began the traverse down the loose gravel. By now we had left the lifelessness of the altiplano behind and were cautiously careening through the beginnings of the Amazonian jungle. Every now and then a single lane stretch of straight road would appear from the curves, and we could release the iron grips we held on the brake levers, but soon enough a bend would materialise and it was back to the overly cautious pace of a biking snail.



When not utilising every ounce of concentration on keeping from going over the edge, we were able to catch a look over the ever present edge and see the valley floor terrifying distances down. Our guide hurtled around the curves regardless, always keen to get ahead so he could snap photos of our steady descent.

Resting on the memorial of one poor biker who didn't get to the bottom

As the road continued our confidence grew, and Angie suprised everyone by having quite knack for steering a bike around the dirty, deadly curves. We rolled downward for about three hours, passing by waterfalls, rusting wreckage, memorials and slowpoke riders from other tour groups.

You're supposed to lift your bike above your head here, but our jelly arms were barely capable

By mid-afternoon we had finished and found ourselves lunching in a lush jungle resort, 3.5 kilometres below where we had started that morning. We could breathe again, and we had ridden the 'most dangerous stretch of road in the world'. High on achievement, adrenaline and air thick with oxygen we said bye to the guides and wobbled off to the next destination.

Rio Muchacho

We hired a couple of bikes- Super Huffies- top of the line k-mart tredlies- to cycle our way out to Rio Muchacho, a permaculture farm outside of Canoa. After a couple of hours pedal through some beautiful, green landscape, we were fed and then taken on a tour of the farm. The farm exists as both an educational example of how the land can be better used by farmers, and as a money raising project for the nearby primary school.

Super Huffy and another perilous water crossing

The farm has an abundance of animals, both in adult and baby form, the latter of which kept Angie enthralled the entire length of our stay. Perhaps the one species that did not win her heart were the roosters, who settled on a nice crowing position right outside our room at around 1 or 2 in the morning, and maintained that position until well after breakfast was served at 7:30 (!!!!!- it is a working farm so times are of a different, and rather unpleasant significance).

The farm house

Angie making chocolate

The ride back was going swimmingly, until the chain on my Super Huffy snapped about 2km from the main road. After pushing my disabled machine along to the highway, we flagged down a passing pickup, whose driver gave us a lift into town. Apparently he was in a desperate race against some clock to get to wherever he was going, and we had a high-velocity journey of pure terror in the back of a truck. The wind in my face has never been more horrifying than those five minutes, with total obliteration just a road-crossing animal away. But we made it back and just tin time too, five minutes later and we would have to pay for the full day rate for the bikes.

Bicicleta

I spent a hot afternoon punishing a hire bicyvle in the foothills above Cafayate. The altitude (I hope it was the altitude and not a severe lack of fitness) made the uphill climbs bearable only in short bursts. Much time was spent sitting on rocks and enjoying the view over the valley.

These manmade waterways shoot through the landscape down towards the wineries.

Mendoza- a Terrifying Hoax

Another restless night on a bus, and we arrived in Mendoza, a major blip on the backpacker circuit. Something about wine tours seem to attract people here...

The Great Bikes and Wines Tour Hoax

What could be more pleasant than spending a lazy Sunday afternoon pedaling our way along winding roads through lush green vineyards, stopping periodically to sample the delights of the local bodegas? That was the scenario we'd conjured up when deciding that pushbike would be the best way to do a tour of Mendozas famous wineries. The reality involved stark, bare, brown vineyards, wine samples well below par, and terrifyingly narrow concrete roads- unbending and roaring with the hellish sound of Argentinean motorists out for a Sunday afternoon drive to the tune of 120 kph.

More dangerous than it looks

These bikes and wine tours surely only stay afloat thanks to the delusions of thousands of idealistic and ignorant tourists- I haven't heard anyone come away with positive reports of the experience. I did come away with a new understanding of the wine making process- and two bottles of wine- but I'm still not sure that the mortal peril I put myself in was worth it.

The Andes are a pleasant backdrop to a unnerving afternoon.

Getting the kids to school in Uruguay

This is not an uncommon sight when school is about to restart after the lunchtime break.

Punta Del Este

Punta del Este is a beach city modeled on Miami as it appeared in the early 80's. Geometric brick highrises are sprinkled liberally over the peninsula and surrounding areas. It has the synthetic look and feel of any mid-sized city which exists solely for the summer month tourists. When we arrived, the off-season was in full swing, so barely a soul wandered the pebblecrete pavements or browsed the designer shops. However, plenty of old women were on hand to read our palms or receive money 'for the baby' (theirs, not ours).

I finally had my first surf in South America, and it was cold. The waves were definitely nothing special, but they were brown and tasted like riverwater.


Scooterising Punta Del Este.





Along with our Danish friend Isak, we hired a trio of mechanical ponies to explore the further reaches of this strange beach city. The little beasts were a blast- we zipped along the wide, smooth streets (all three had broken speedos, so I don't know how fast we were going) and had a look at Casa Pueblo, a huge mansion/hotel/museum, built on a hillside by a Uruguayan artist. The entire building was handmade; it had no straight lines or geometric curves. The whole structure is organic; fluorescent white under a stark Uruguayan sun. We also found the best bridge in the world, an exciting double-dip affair that Angie scootered over three times.

This confirmed for Angie that she will be purchasing a scooter upon returning home. One with a speedometer, though.