Road of Death

I feel like my blog is about to slip into the same ol’ same ol’ kind of routine, so I hope to mix it up a little. 

So I almost died this weekend. For those of you who don’t know, the other volunteers and I decided it would be fun to bike the road of death in Bolivia. A great idea for us adventurous types who really want to experience all that Bolivia has to offer. I don’t think that I will ever be able to forget such a trip. The views were amazing to behold as we descended somewhere around 3000m in about 5 hours.

Obviously this means that there is a lot of downhill riding (well really all of it) at a pretty fast pace. Definitely enough to keep your heart pumping if you’re in to that sort of thing. As we descend with the mountains the climate changed and it changed fast! We started in the cold and arid mountains just east of La Paz and made our way down to a very green, humid and warm tropical area of Bolivia with our final destination being Coroico.

Getting ready to begin the adventure!

The curvy road that leads to the valley below

Now, they don’t call this the road of death for no reason. I can attest to this – because I almost died. Yea, that’s right, I was clumsy enough to fall over the edge of the cliff and almost plummet to my death. I, being the risk taker that I am, decided to stop too close to the edge and when I put my foot down (on what I thought was solid ground covered by grass)slipped right on over edge. No joke. Both me and the bike. So I fell about 5 feet and then slid another 5 before coming to a stop (about 5 more feet and I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now) and I did all of this while holding on to the bike – because hey… if I lived, I didn’t want to have to walk the rest of the way! But by the grace of God I stopped just in time. What’s more is that I didn’t even have a scratch on me. They rescued me and the bike (the bike first of course) by rope with pretty much no problems. Needless to say, everyone was a little shocked that it had happened – but for some reason I was hardly phased. My heart didn’t start beating out of my chest or anything. I just remained calm through the entire thing – which probably helped a lot. For some reason I just had a peace about me and I knew nothing terrible was going to happen to me. I knew it even as I was falling – it’s hard to even explain! I feel as though God’s got my back (although I won’t continue to crazy things like that anymore)!

Me being rescued

But the ride afterwards was great! Some of the best scenery you could hope for. When we were done with the bike ride the tour included a trip to a hotel in Coroico where we got to eat a great buffet had have a shower – even a pool to swim in if we wanted. The view from the hotel was perfection. I hope you enjoy the pics half as much as I enjoyed this trip. It was really a once in a lifetime experience! 

And yeah… I will be staying away from cliffs for a while… at least until Machu Pichu.