I signed up for a mountain bike excursion down the most dangerous road on earth. Well, I've survived. And I hurt. I'm 30, haven't exercised in about 3 years, suffering from occasional diarea because things are really dirty in Bolivia, afraid of heights, never been mountain biking, got a bad knee and didn't get more than about 5 hours of sleep the night before.
We started at about 8am as we got into the van and drove to the spot. By the time we arrived, I needed to go to the bathroom. No go. Had to hold it. The first hour was downhill on a safe highway. We reached a point and rested. Good thing too because the next hour was all uphill. And with the altitude being somewhere around 3500 metres above sea level, breathing was VERY difficult. I did most of the first part and ended up walking the bike up the steepest region. There were two more uphill sections on pavement, which I chickened out, mainly because I couldn't breathe at that altitude, and went up in the van that trailed all the bikers.
Once we reached the unpaved area, I jumped back on the bike to go downhill on the dusty gravel road. The rest of the group flew down the hill. I rode my brakes the whoooooooooooooooole way. Maybe going about 1 km per hour. Maybe even 1/2 km per hour. You see, there is traffic coming both ways. Big trucks. It is so narrow on some parts of the road, it barely fits one vehicle. Statistics are that hundreds of people die on this road each year. Bus loads of people can fall over the cliff. Plus tourists riding down and slipping off the edge. The road has no shoulder and it is a straight drop, ranging from 4000 metres to 1500 metres above sea level, depending on where you are on the trail. Yeah, so I braked the whole way down. My hands were so sore yesterday that I could barely move my fingers. And my palms hurt like a S.O.B. today. I'm also very saddle sore. Most people with functional knees, can stand on the bike. I can just barely but I certainly can NOT pedal standing up. My bad knee wouldn't let me. Considering all this, I'm quite proud of myself for doing this. Even though I arrived dead last, keeping the rest of the group waiting for a good 45 minutes.
After the biking, we headed to a hotel where we ate at a buffet. I was in some state of shock, I think. I couldn't eat much at all and kept drinking warm liquids. It was about 27 degrees but I was shivering in my fleece jacket. I also made the mistake of eating the jello. I didn't get much sleep last night either. For other reasons. Man, I miss Pepto Bismal.
I can't say I felt scared while I was biking down. Adrenaline, probably. Plus I was concentrating on the road ahead of me and trying to see through my very fuzzy contact lenses. It's really difficult when you can't focus on anything. I was cursing like a sailor in English and Spanish on the ride back though. We took the same route back by van. We almost got into one accident because the oncoming bus wasn't doing the correct safety warning when it reached a bend. And then needing to share the NARROW road with oncoming semi-trucks coming the opposite direction. That was the scary part.
So, now I'm sore. But I survived. Plus, I got a free t-shirt and a CD with all the pics from the excursion. The pics are on my photo log (link in the sidebar). The company I went through was http://www.thedeathroad.com/. It cost $36 USD, but it was well worth it. I was the most physically demanding thing I have ever done in my life and now I'm all teeth.
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