We headed out around 9, We planned on riding the new bypass road down to the bottom and then ride the Death road back. We had good instructions on getting out of La Paz and for a change we cruise right out of town on the right road. It quickly wound its way up into the highlands outside of Lapaz and we reached an altitude of over 15,000 feet. Then the descent started. It was a beautiful road, nice pavement, lots of curves and switch backs. After about 90 clicks we reached the town of Coroico. This was at the bottom of the road of death. After a few minutes searching we located the turn off and started up. Within a 1/4 mile we had our first of many river crossings of the day.
We also had met a guy named Shelton at the hostel and he told us about a neat resort right on the way so we swung in there for a cool drink and a look around. The place was pretty nice with a few cabins and huts with lots of animals running around. Monkeys all over the place and a half dozen tucans. We had a couple of cokes, walked around and watched the monkeys and birds.
After a hour or so we saddled up and headed up THE road. We both were curious about this road. Are thoughts were how bad can it be. They let hundreds of mountain bikers go down it every week and we passed many of them on the way up too. And just like bicyclist back in the states they feel like they own the road. We were all the way on our side and still got the MOVE OVER sign from them… Sorry but most bicyclist’s are pre-maddonna’s!! Notice I said most.
This is a typical water crossing…..
You do not go too slow or the current starts to change your line…
Anyway we head up the road and things were going good. However both our bikes were making the noise again. We suspect our chains are worn out…After many river crossings the road began to gain serious altitude. We started seeing the edge of the road getting steeper and steeper of a drop off. Then the rain came, and came and came. At one point it was raining soo damn hard you could not see much past about 6 feet in front of you. About 2 miles later it stopped, just like that! The ascent continued. We began getting up into the clouds and off the side of the road you could look down and see nothing. The drop off went down into fog/cloud like aybiss. The road surface really was not that bad. In the rainy area it was a little muddy/slippery but less so than that mountain road we were on back in Peru. One of the coolest parts was the spot where the waterfalls were on the cliff side of the road and you had to ride behind them.
We continued on without to much trouble to the top and both us thought, “thats it?” 
It hard to tell here but that is the drop from the edge of the road next to my boot….
After we got back on the main road back towards town. We saw another gravel road that lead down the other side of the canyon…. We thought what the hell.. So we headed down it to have a look around. We saw a map on a sign that “kinda” showed after 25 miles or so the road hooking back up with the road we just came off of. Well we went about 30 miles down this DUSTY gravel road and still found no hook up to the other road. Our GPS showed us not very far from our track on the death road. (the GPS keeps a line of where you ride) However our GPS has only the big roads, even them are pretty vague. However none of the roads we have been riding on today are on it. We had a chat and decided it must be shorter to continue then go back so we pushed on hoping to find the connector road back to the main road. Oh ya, It was also starting to get dark….We rode another 30 miles/1.5 hours or so on dusty mountain roads in the dark. Throw in a bunch of river crossings, muddy sections and lots of sheer cliff type drop offs. The drops weren’t really a problem as you couldn’t see much in the dark that wasn’t in your headlights. Oh and dust, dust and more dust. When a car/bus/truck would go by you have to stop because in the dark with your headlights on the dust cloud you could see nothing, and I mean nothing… We never did find the connector road, but we did find a city finally. However it was at the farthest point away from La Paz we had been today. Right near the resort we had stopped at for soda's this morning. It was now 8 pm and we had a about 90 minutes of riding to get back to the hostel. This also included a pass of over 15,000 feet. We were both shot to hell and tired of riding in the dark. Also our bikes were making the noise worse than ever….
So we cranked out the trip back to the hostel. Got there about 10 pm… Both of us were wasted and covered in dust. We went straight to the bar in our riding gear. Boy did we get the looks. We were sooo dry and thirsty I don’t think the first beer even touched the sides on the way down. We had a couple of beers and bad burgers and went to bed…..
When looking at these remember our jackets are black…
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