Technically itwas a road ride.Though in Bolivia — land of the most ter-rifying roads the world has ever known —that wasn’t exactly reassuring. In reality, itwas a ragged, serpentine ribbon of mudand rock that rockets down 11,000 feet in49 miles. Starting from Le Cumbre, afrozen, desolate pass at 16,000 feet, itplummets through cloud and cloudforestand waterfalls that land mid-road, intomuggy tangles of jungle that spill over theroadside like groping green tentacles.Astoundingly, it is the main “highway”between the capital of La Paz and the cloudforest town of Corioco. Declared the“World’s Most Dangerous Road” by theInter-American Bank, it features 10-footwidths, sheer 1,000-foot drops, and a mul-titude of small white crosses to reminddrivers of the motorcycles, jeeps, and busesthat routinely pitch off its precipices. Call itroad biking Bolivian style.

Alistair Matthew, owner and chiefguide of Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking(GAMB), stood atop Le Cumbre preparinga dozen clients for their upcoming plunge.Without cracking a smile he said, “If youdo find yourself going off the edge, pleasetry to leave the bike behind as they’re quitedifficult to come by down here.”

We — myself and two of Alistair’soff-duty guides who’d offered to show mearound — broke off from the larger groupand dropped in. The top several miles ofthe road are paved black and smooth, so wetucked tightly in streaking competition forpole position, leaning turns hard as theroad snaked through rows of sky-scratch-ing summits. Then, while stopping toshoot photos, we saw it. Ahead, where thevalley floor broadened, a mountainsiderose wall-like for a near vertical mile into asavage cluster of 17,000-foot, shark-tooth

Wild RidesStory and Photos by Aaron Teasdale

Bolivia’s

Exploring one of the last greatunexplored cycling destinations

28 A D V E N T U R E C Y C L I S T M A Y 2003 A D V E N T U R E C Y C L I N G.O R G A D V E N T U R E C Y C L I S T M A Y 2003 A D V E N T U R E C Y C L I N G.O R G 29

peaks — and up its face carved a trail. Weall stopped and stared. It was a horrible,magnificent etching, cutting back and forthon itself up the impossible. Later welearned it was an old mule trail thatreached a high cirque, where locals entre-preneurs chipped ice from a glacier. Weknew it had to be ridden.

Muscling our way up with bikes onshoulders felt like a form of Inca punish-ment. The bad news was that there wasn’tenough oxygen in the air to keep a gerbilconscious. The good news was that weeventually notched a likely first-descentdown one of the most spectacular single-tracks on the face of the earth.

Bolivia is one of the world’s last greatunexplored cycling destinations. The high-est and most isolated country in SouthAmerica, Bolivia has 1,000 peaks over16,000 feet.

I was there for five weeks, withAlistair as my host and frequent adventurepartner. His house in La Paz was amakeshift adventure hostel, with a nearlyconstant flow of climbers, bikers, and allmanner of globetrotting vagabonds.Alistair himself, a transplant from NewZealand, had been exploring Bolivia’sbackcountry by bike for over a year.

Though Bolivia has a wild and turbu-lent past, in recent years it has become oneof South America’s most stable democra-cies. Yes, La Paz has fairly consistent riotsand there’s the occasional country-widetransportation strike. Consider it localcolor. In general, travel in Bolivia is safe —and always an adventure.

Consider the La Paz airport. At13,100 feet, it’s the highest in the world.The first thing you notice after landingthere is the spectacular row of white-crowned peaks in the distance. The secondthing you notice is the distinct lack of oxy-gen in air. I spent my first week in thecountry wheezing around La Paz — theworld’s highest capital at 12,000 feet.

A good tactic for increasing youradventure quotient is to know as littleSpanish as possible. With this strategy,every mealtime becomes a journey into theunknown. Take my first day roamingalone in La Paz, where some restaurants

are good and others are earth-shatteringlybad. I warily sized up my options, unableto read the daily specials written on chalk-boards setup on the sidewalk. Finally Itook the plunge and chose one thatappeared to have tablecloths and no bloodyanimals hanging in its window. A mancame to my table and started blabberinggibberish. I tried to say a few things, real-ized I was completely unable to communi-cate, and finally broke down and just said,“food good.” Which seemed to work as hebrought me a fine bowl of soup.

After five days of navigating restau-rants and acclimatizing to rarefied air, myfirst cycling excursion was the World’sMost Dangerous Road. Like almost all ofBolivia’s roads it’s much more fun, not tomention safer, on a bike than in a car. Ona bike, it’s bone-rattling endorphin-plungenonpareil. In a car, it’s borderline suicidal.

In time, I learned to relax during theperpetually near-death experience of driv-ing Bolivia’s roadways. The situationimproved somewhat with Alistair’s acqui-sition of a 1974 two-door Land Cruiser.An ambitious 29-year-old with visions ofmountain bike guiding grandeur, hebought the stout little rig to serve as theofficial GAMB support and shuttle vehicle.With that in mind, he had local weldersconstruct an enormous metal roof rackthat ran the length of the vehicle with sup-porting legs welded to the front and rearbumpers. The result was a kind of pon-toon-jeep. I suggested we put a couch on itfor long drives. Befitting a mountain bikeguide in Bolivia’s bigger than big land-scape, Alistair admitted, “I have a hardtime thinking small.”

Our plan for most of our rides was totake the jeep as high as the Andes wouldallow, then hike up thin-aired passes, andplunge down hanging footpaths on theother side. Long the sole travel arteries forvillagers, and often built by Inca or pre-Inca“road builders,” these trails web Bolivia’shigh mountains and cloudforest valleys.Walking these trails, and also roads, is stillhow most Bolivians get around. Cycling,however, is a close second. Children,adults, old men — all can be seen pedalingbattered, brakeless bicycles along roughdirt roads and roadside trails.

As we pontooned through the smallmud-brick villages that dot the Altiplano— the high, barren plain that serves as thefoundation for many of Bolivia’s greatestpeaks — a few campesinos andcampesinas, smiled and waved at the sightof our six colorful bikes lashed to the roof.Children ran alongside us pointing, “bices,bices!”

With Alistair and me on the pon-toon’s virgin voyage was Alistair’s girl-friend Nicola, and three men from NewZealand on an adventure vacation. Ourdestination was Sorata. An idyllic town ofpalm trees and cobblestone streets, it sitsin a steep valley beneath the white-crowned eminence of 21,000-foot MountAncohuma.

The next day’s ride was initially foiledwhen, in classic Bolivian fashion, Sorata’slone gas station had no gas. Nor did any-one have any idea when more gas might becoming. Which would be fine if we werehard-driving yuppie stockbroker burn-outslooking for a new way of life, but we justwanted to point our bikes down theirmountains and fly. Fortunately we hadLouie, our vaguely French-accented hotelowner — or more accurately, Louie’sfriends.

After a small crowd gathered aroundAlistair’s energetic attempts to find some-one on the street with fuel to spare, Louie

took charge. Success was had at hisamigo’s lush, eco-friendly campground onthe banks of a small river. A quick siphonjob later, we weaved up the mountainsideon a steep, rough, intestine of a road. Soon,the hard-charging Kiwis came into viewahead. They had opted to pedal up the6,000 feet to the pass. I had left my machis-mo in the toilet in La Paz and was morethan happy to sit in the Land Cruiser andbounce my head against the roof of the cab.

Now, at a lunch break overlooking theedge of the world, sharp blue ridgelinesstacked in fading layers to the horizon likewaves in a tempestuous sea. A singletrackdropped from the road and contoured thevast mountainside ahead of us. Twocampesinos, or Indian men, came trudgingup the trail several minutes apart. I sud-denly felt much less tough for being on abike.

Louie pointed to the mountains, say-ing, “It’s somewhere between those twomountains — The City of Lost Women.”

Local legend had it that there is a townwhere the men all left for some unknownbut surely important reason, and nevercame back. Louie has been trying to find itfor 11 years.

“Excellent,” I said. “That’s my kind ofmountain town. Let’s go.”

“Except they eat the men that come,”said Louie.

RRiiddiinngg wwiitthh tthhee aanncciieennttss Inca paving leads riders down an all-day descent on the timelessTakesi Trail.

YYeess,, wwee hhaavvee bbaannaannaass Venders share a laugh in the ubiquitous La Paz street markets.

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“Oh. OK. Let’s not,” I replied.Louie pulled a large bottle of soda

from his pack and offered some to thegroup. It was a local brand that featured adrawing of a dancing Inca beneath thewords “Inca Cola.”

“It’s got Coca in it,” he grinned.“Well, alright! Coca-Cola for real.” I grabbed the bottle of carbonated

elixir and started guzzling.

Coca, grown in the lower regionswhere the Andes sweep into jungle, is thedriving force behind the fragile and debt-ridden Bolivian economy. A bowling-ball-sized bag of it will set you back about a dol-lar at any local market. Bolivians, particu-larly in the countryside regard coca as a giftfrom Pachamama, the earth mother, andchew coca leaves for their stabilizing ener-gies, hunger suppression, and to ward offevil spirits. I thought it made a fine tea thathelped quell the ill-effects of altitude.

There, at 16,000 feet I needed all theCoca-Power I could get. I handed the won-der-cola back to Louie, who was stayingwith Nicola and the Land Cruiser, and wedropped into a narrow, off-camber single-track that angled down the valley. Forhours the valley walls rose higher, as wepicked our way down Inca staircases andspun through smooth green pastures.Llamas, sloppily masticating tufts of grass,were indifferent to our passing.

Pedaling into Sorata’s stone streets atride’s end—brightly-clothed Indianwoman were selling goods from rickety,roadside stands; a stooped, wrinkled cou-ple carefully building a home of earthenbricks; laughing children running to andfro—we were aliens on parade. Our high-tech cycle-wear and exotic, space-age bicy-cles accentuated the cultural gulf betweenus. Though we shared the same trails,there was no hiding that we gringos werefrom a very different world.

The next morning, children clamber-ing all over the jeep, hanging from the win-

dows, peering inside, climbing on the roof,we were reminded that wide-eyed kidsknow not of gulfs. They, like nearly all thelocals, laughed in astonishment (or was itdisbelief?) at our plans to bike the ancienttrails that laced their mountains.

After high-fives and goodbyes withthe little clamberers, Nicola piloted thepontoon up another precipitous ledginglined with stands of eucalyptus and palm.

Nearing the top of a verdant valley, thehorizon above us rose into a jagged line ofglaciated massifs. A hairpin turn seemed toextend out into space itself, and Nicolaglanced across the bottomless valley andmountains beyond, and quietly said, “It’slike looking down on the sky.”

In the U.S. this would be preserved asa showpiece national park and be teemingwith retirees in Oldsmobiles. Instead, thevalley walls are dotted with small villages;green, gold, and tan agricultural plots;grandmothers and granddaughters herdingllamas and sheep; and entire families tillingsoil on 40-degree hillsides. And then, as onevery Bolivian road — no matter how highor remote, there was a leathery old manwith a bulging rice sack sitting on thetoad’s edge staring off across the roof of theworld.

After a frigid night camping in highAndean nowhere, we marched, bikes-on-backs, up to a 16,400-foot pass.Surrounded by icy alps with spear-tip sum-mits, we looked down on the clouds beforedescending an ages-old footpath into atwisting, bottomless gorge. As sheer,water-stained rock walls vaulted up thou-sands of feet on either side of our rockytrail, tilled earth began appearing on thevalley floor. Then a herd of sheep. Then anold man sitting above the sheep on a steep,grassy slope. I waved to him as we passed,recognizing we were likely the first moun-tain bikers he’d ever seen, and certainly thefirst cyclists to ever ride this trail.

Bolivia may be the most culturally

intact, i.e. least Westernized, country inSouth America. Many Bolivians, particu-larly in the countryside, live just as theirancestors did centuries ago. Theirs is ahardscrabble agrarian existence, marked byan earth-worshipping spirituality and analmost total absence of modern technolo-gy. Perhaps not coincidentally, its citizensare also some of the, monetarily at least,poorest people in the world. For most ruralBolivians, who live largely outside the for-mal economic structure, this may not be aproblem, but it’s more difficult to romanti-cize the squalid living conditions of theburgeoning number of urban poor.

These problems aside, the simplicityof life in Bolivia — much like the simplici-ty of traveling by bicycle — is no small partof its overall beauty. Midway through mytrip, I attempted to share this sentimentwith friends in an email:

It’s easy to get wrapped up in society. Theinternet, the CD’s, the salaries, the politics. It’sall so interesting. But at what cost? If youdon’t have the time to realize you’re happy, areyou happy? I’m living so simply down here itis opening my eyes. It is liberating. I have thetime and the headspace to explore, breathe,write philosophical emails. In the States I keptbuilding more things and expenses and com-forts and conveniences into my lifestyle. Butthey just required more income to sustain,which left me little time to enjoy life. This iswhat I know: the more opulent the lifestyle, themore work is needed to sustain it. Things maynot be as comfortable down here, but I feel bet-ter, more alive.

Adding a complimentary zing to thisreconnection with the marrow of life, wasthe fact that I was having the most incred-ible cycling adventures of my life on analmost daily basis. Over the next fewweeks, with a revolving cast of compan-ions, I was able to: ride a self-supportedtour across the world’s largest salt flat;pedal to a remote stone-age village and staywith a beautiful local family; exploreancient ruinsites and caves, and find anintact human skeleton alongside severalhuman skulls; ski the world’s highest skiarea and then bike down a 2,000-foot screeslope on its backside; flip over the handle-bars three times on said scree slope; pay a

young boy one dollar to carry my bike forme to the top of a high Andean pass beforeplunging 9,000-drunkenly-scenic-feetdown an Inca trail; decide that Boliviacould easily add one more superlative to itssizable collection—wildest cycling destina-tion on earth.

Along the way I witnessed Bolivia’slimitless potential for mountain bike tour-ing. Besides the rough-and-tumble roadnetwork connecting most towns and vil-lages, centuries of mining activity andexploration has laced its highlands withdirt roads and mining tracks that offer bikeaccess to magnificently remote pockets ofthe Andes. Though the country’s moun-tain “highways” are often narrow andexposed, cars are so few that cyclists aregenerally quite safe. Make no mistake how-

ever, it’s all mountain biking. With only5% of Bolivian roads paved, a road bikethere would be about as useful as skis inthe Sahara. But for those willing to acceptthe lack of luxury and the often challengingconditions, Bolivia is a cultural and adven-ture bonanza.

The day before my flight home, aftermore than a month of pedaling other-worldly landscapes and dropping thebiggest descents on the planet, Alistair andI became savagely lost on an exploratoryride deep in the jungle. Attempting to fol-low an Inca trail that Alistair’s mapshowed carving down a cloudforest ravine,we learned two things: 1. Bolivian cartog-raphers are not to be trusted, and 2. Nomatter how good a trailbuilder you are, inthe end the jungle always wins.

Eventually, we made it out, thoughonly after many hours of riding, and a fewexpletives, after nightfall. Sitting on theplane 12 hours later, muscles I never knewI had aching from the previous day’s beat-ing, I couldn’t help but smile. In thatmoment, I understood oxygen deprivation,street riots, gas stations with no gas, evilmaps, and near-death wilderness mishapsare all just a part of the adventure inBolivia, cycling’s wildest frontier.

This is Aaron Teasdale’s first story for AdventureCyclist.

The top several miles of the road are pavedblack and smooth, so we tucked tightlyin competition for pole position.

NNuuttss && BBoollttss:: BBoolliivviiaa

WWhheenn TToo GGoo::

April to September is the dry

season. During summer, our

winter, it rains almost daily.

HHooww TToo GGeett TThheerree::

American Airlines has daily

flights from Miami to La Paz.

WWhhaatt TToo BBrriinngg::

It can be hard to find basic

items in Bolivia. If, for instance,

you lose your fleece, destroy

your headset, and snap your

Oakleys, all in the first three

days of arriving (thank you

very much), you are up a cer-

tain well-known creek. If, on

the other hand, you need

llama fetuses, Panoasonic (sic)

radios, or coca leaves, simply

head to the chaotic street

markets. In other words: bring

all your own gear, for bike and

body.

HHeeaalltthh CCoonnssiiddeerraattiioonnss::

The primary concern is the

diabolic lack of oxygen

throughout the high country.

Plan a minimum of 3-4

acclimatization days. It may

take you several weeks to feel

completely “normal.” Drink

only bottled water. Be pre-

pared to get sick anyway. You’ll

likely feel better, though enfee-

bled, in 24 hours. Also, try real-

ly hard to avoid injury —

health-care outside of La Paz

is suspect. Bolivia is one of

those rare countries that is so

grand, so culturally intact, so

unscathed by the modern

world, that you can’t help but

tell everyone about it, as you

secretly hope the masses

never arrive lest its innocence

be trampled.

GGuuiiddeess::

Alistair’s Gravity Assisted

Mountain Biking (gravity@

unete.com, www.gravity

bolivia.com) is the only legiti-

mate option for the serious

mountain biker. He also leads

dirt-road tours and rides

across the Salar de Uyuni, the

world’s largest salt flat. He can

help with parts or repairs and

is a great resource for all

Bolivia cycle — and travel—

related questions.

KE Adventure Travel

(www.keadventure.com) leads

a 19-day tour of the country’s

jeep and mining roads every

summer.

MMoorree IInnffoorrmmaattiioonn::

Bolivia Handbook, by Alan

Murphy (Footprint Handbooks)

is the best, most dependable

guide-book to Bolivia. The

South American Explorers

(www.samexplo.org) is an

invaluable resource for anyone

traveling anywhere in South

America.

Land-locked Bolivia sits high in the center of South America.

BBrraazziill

CCoolloommbbiiaa

VVeenneezzuueellaa

EEccuuaaddoorr

BBoolliivviiaa

PPeerruu

AArrggeennttiinnaa

CChhiilleePPaarraagguuaayy

PacificOcean

Atlantic Ocean

32 A D V E N T U R E C Y C L I S T M A Y 2003 A D V E N T U R E C Y C L I N G.O R G

WWhhaatt ttoo LLooookk ffoorr iinn aa GGuuiiddeedd TToouurrIt’s a testament to the increasing popu-

larity and global reach of cycling adven-

ture travel that guides are leading trips in

places as far-flung as Bolivia, but there

are ever-increasing numbers of close-to-

home options as well.

Whether you’re looking to go to

Minnesota or Mozambique, there are a

few key questions to ask yourself before

you book a guided tour. Remember, every

company is different. Some emphasize

luxury, others local color. Some tours fea-

ture difficult riding and stress self-suffi-

ciency, while others are more leisurely

and well-supported. Some feature golf on

days off the bike, others hiking.

The first question to ask yourself,

then, is how posh do you want to go?

Many tours camp at night, but just as

many stay in luxury hotels. Then consider

the kind of riding you want to do. Are you

looking for an intense physical challenge

or a mellow cruise? How many miles a

day does the tour average, and over what

kind of terrain? What will the weather be

like? Is it vehicle supported?

Another important factor is the size

of the group. Some organized tours fea-

ture hundreds of riders and are a verita-

ble festivals on wheels. Others are more

intimate, with maybe a guide or two and

a handful of clients. Both can be great —

it’s a question of preference. Also, make

sure you know what gear is expected of

you. Some outfitters provide bikes (just

make sure they’re not junkers) while oth-

ers don’t.

In the end, nothing is more valuable

than a reputable company and experi-

enced guides. Don’t be afraid to ask lots

of questions.

How long has the company been in

business? Do their guides have advanced

mechanical skills? Look for testimonials

in the company’s literature and consider

contacting a past customer or two if

you’re unsure. A good company will be

happy to help you with all of these ques-

tions and will leave you confident in your

choice.

-A.T.

PPrreeccaarriioouuss PPeerrcchh An engine house hangs on fordear life at the 16,000-base of the world’s highest skiarea on Mount Chacaltaya.