The hard graft to get there was followed by a steep spiral downwards to cross a bridge spanning a tight crook in the valley fold. Similarly, I chuckled when I saw the name of the village beyond. ![]() So down and down we plummeted once more… before digging in for what transpired to be a long afternoon’s ascent, sweat soaking into T-shirts and pouring down our faces in these subtropical climes. There was a descent, sure, but the climb on the inside would only take 40mins by bike, we were reassured. Once harvested, its leaves are left drying out on tarpaulin rolled out across the road, before being packed tightly into enormous bags that stood up a high as our shoulders, roped comically to the roof of a family saloon, and driven off to market… or elsewhere…ĭespite the recommendations of Brian’s GPS, we followed local intel from Coripata to Chulumani, the capital of the South Yungas province. Wherever we rode, we saw terraced fields awash with row upon row of this divisive shrub. Perhaps by no coincidence, Bolivia’s current president, the ever popular Evo Morales, was head of the powerful coca farmers union before taking office. Cultivated in the Bolivian Andes since the time of the Incas, the Yungas is one of the few regions in the world in which the coca leaf can be legally grown. By now, there was also an abundance of coca carpeting the verdant mountain sides. When I stopped and asked to buy a half dozen tangerines from some farm workers, they were gifted to us with a shy smile. Fringing the roadside were oranges and coffee beans, then tight corridors of banana trees. In the space of just a few hours, we’d entered a different world. Except the terrain seemed twice as steep this time. From there, we followed an equally car free doubletrack towards San Pedro de la Loma – San Pedro of the Hill, another descriptive understatement – that had us frantically gaining some of our lost altitude. The Death Road – somewhat less dramatic than its name suggested, but enjoyable nonetheless – deposited us at Yolasa, a sweaty, ear popping 1100m in altitude. For added atmosphere, a giant blue butterfly – Morpho menelaus – flitted around me and some brightly coloured parrots appeared like perfectly timed movie props. With every metre that we descended, vegetation thickened, jungle tendrils grew in elaborate twirls, and water cascaded off rocky outcrops, dropping hundreds of metres to the valley floor below. Considered the transition zone between the high plateaux and the Amazon, the transformation was extraordinary. Aboard a motley collection of janky hardtails and high end full sussers, they wobble or race their way thousands of meters towards the jungly depths of the earth.Īnd jungly the Yungas certainly was, a contrast all the more marked given the dry, desert expanse of the altiplano that had been our home for the last few weeks. Each day, dozens of backpackers are shuttled out to the top. Instead, the Death Road is living out its retirement more benignly as a tourist cash cow. So named for the number of lives that this journey once claimed – up to 300 a year, by some accounts – this seemingly endless descent is now closed to vehicular traffic. Drawn by the allure of its prophetic title, we’d knitted the Camino de la Muerte into our much anticipated plunge ahead. Quoting figures for a moment, our first day alone clocked up 2000m in cumulative altitude gain – and that was just the climb out of La Paz to El Cumbre, the 4600m pass that divides the altiplano from the lush and balmy valleys of the Yungas below. Whenever we were sincerely promised a gentle, meandering traverse, the road climbed hundreds of metres. At least, that’s the conclusion I cam to after week’s riding in Bolivia’s most crumpled terrain. I can only assume this is the reason locals have blotted such a barmy notion – that of a horizontal road – from their consciousness, reinventing the word to mean something completely different. Which has resulted in a whole new shift in perspective. ![]() In the Yungas, a land of sheer sided mountains and impossibly rugged valleys, the concept of a road that doesn’t either zig zag upwards, or spiral precipitously down, simply doesn’t exist. The truth is that everything is relative. ![]() ![]() At least, that’s the word normally means.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |