BOLIVIA: The Death Road

I´M AT: Las Brujas, see earlier.

I found out today that my mountain biking is pretty rubbish. I can't turn the damn things properly. So, despite the bedlike cushioning provided by the posh bikes we'd hired as part of the tour, I ambled and stumbled down the World's Most Dangerous Road.

And it was bloody dangerous. The urns and shrines at the side of the road pointed where lorries, and coaches, and other cyclists had met their death. The road is carved into the side of a mountain and is, in parts, only big enough for one vehicle. Signage is non-existent and the only help drivers get is a 'traffic light' system (handheld signs made of plastic and wood, turned by volunteers when a big truck approached a blind bend). 200 or so people are killed every year, sometimes in big lumps - like the coach that went over a month or so before we were there, killing about 40 - and sometimes solo, like the truck driver whose cab was later pulled out of the ravine and stripped by looters. The purple wreckage is still there at the side of the road only because there's no value in scrap, and no public facilities (or will) exist to clear it up.

So anyway, against this dramatic backdrop I shuffled down like an old lady and only held my own on the uphill bits, when fitness took me past most of the field, most of the time. Nice.

At the bottom we were given t-shirts in a small Oscar-type ceremony, and monkeys came over and bit people's ears, once pissing on the head of an American guy with a girl's face, called Rusty.

I sent Bud the t-shirt as a gift, but I bet it doesn't fit him, the fat fuck :)