"Que paso hombre?" asked the camionero seeing my tools, tyres and wheels spread over the dirt on the side of the road as he pissed into a bush. I explain I'm just changing tyres for more suitable ones, pointing down the trail which drops off sharply through the clouds on our left.
"Jajajaja! LA RUTA DE LA MUERTE" chuckles the man, now looking over my obviously ill-equipped moto.
It's an easy start and I'm following all the rules: my headlight's on, I'm riding on the left and using my horn at every blind bend. But visibility is practically zero as I descend through the cloud, and I have to hope I'll hear any oncoming traffic and vice-versa.
Then it appears.
The mountainous, jungly valley stretches out to my left with a small rocky trail clearly visible, winding over and under itself impossibly, clinging to the near vertical sides. I've seen only arid scrubland for the last three weeks in Bolivia, and desert for a week before that, so this rich, lush, jungly forest is especially breathtaking.
Waterfalls, tiny and huge cross, cover, drop under and dribble over the track as it stretches out of sight. As soon as I have my breath back I'm bombing down, a cloud of dust behind me, stones pinging off the hundreds-of-metres drop on my left.
As the back wheel drifts out, and what looks like a banked edge slides away, turning out to be displaced stones, I surmise that the right-hand bends are the most dangerous, as your momentum is pushing your weight over the certain-death edge.
Then the back wheel drops as it cuts over a gap that crumbled away from the inside of a left-hand bend and I realise - at this speed it's all the most dangerous.
There are signs every kilometre or so reminding me to stay on the left, but I'm there anyway. Nothing could take me away from the tantelising edge - I'm addicted to the speed and peril and am going faster and faster. Kicking stones off the edge with the back wheel is a game that gets easy and the real challenge becomes using the front wheel.
Looking across the valley through a rainbow made by a waterfall ahead steals my concentration and I nearly crash having drifted into the central bank of stones. I realise it's one thing at a time here, and stop to admire.
"Diez Bolivianos?" Asks the policeman quietly at the barrier checkpoint leading to the paved road back to civilisation. "No thanks!" I reply with a smile and snatch back my driving licence, feeling silly for having given it to this extortionist in the first place.
"Diez Bolivianitos?" He tries again, but I just smile and by now I'm raising the barrier by myself, thinking he's not very well practised at this shakedown routine.
Back at the fuel station on the outskirts of La Paz I resume negotiations with the young attendant I'd managed to buy two litres of gasolina from that morning after borrowing a bottle from an old lady. Usefully foreign vehicles aren't allowed to be supplied fuel in the whole region, so I have to resort to bribing people or finding locals to fill an oil can for me.
I agree to pay double price (it's still only sixty pence a litre) if he can get my whole tank full, and he devises a plan to get me past the cameras so he can't get into trouble. He fetches another attendant and I walk the moto to a pump while they each cover a number plate (my Chilean moto has one on the front and another on the back) from the cameras view with their bodies.
I swap out for one of them while he fills the tank, then we swap back and walk out of the forecourt in our bizzare procession. I roll back into the city tired, but satisfied.
And promptly get lost.
"Jajajaja! LA RUTA DE LA MUERTE" chuckles the man, now looking over my obviously ill-equipped moto.
It's an easy start and I'm following all the rules: my headlight's on, I'm riding on the left and using my horn at every blind bend. But visibility is practically zero as I descend through the cloud, and I have to hope I'll hear any oncoming traffic and vice-versa.
Then it appears.
The mountainous, jungly valley stretches out to my left with a small rocky trail clearly visible, winding over and under itself impossibly, clinging to the near vertical sides. I've seen only arid scrubland for the last three weeks in Bolivia, and desert for a week before that, so this rich, lush, jungly forest is especially breathtaking.
Waterfalls, tiny and huge cross, cover, drop under and dribble over the track as it stretches out of sight. As soon as I have my breath back I'm bombing down, a cloud of dust behind me, stones pinging off the hundreds-of-metres drop on my left.
As the back wheel drifts out, and what looks like a banked edge slides away, turning out to be displaced stones, I surmise that the right-hand bends are the most dangerous, as your momentum is pushing your weight over the certain-death edge.
Then the back wheel drops as it cuts over a gap that crumbled away from the inside of a left-hand bend and I realise - at this speed it's all the most dangerous.
There are signs every kilometre or so reminding me to stay on the left, but I'm there anyway. Nothing could take me away from the tantelising edge - I'm addicted to the speed and peril and am going faster and faster. Kicking stones off the edge with the back wheel is a game that gets easy and the real challenge becomes using the front wheel.
Looking across the valley through a rainbow made by a waterfall ahead steals my concentration and I nearly crash having drifted into the central bank of stones. I realise it's one thing at a time here, and stop to admire.
"Diez Bolivianos?" Asks the policeman quietly at the barrier checkpoint leading to the paved road back to civilisation. "No thanks!" I reply with a smile and snatch back my driving licence, feeling silly for having given it to this extortionist in the first place.
"Diez Bolivianitos?" He tries again, but I just smile and by now I'm raising the barrier by myself, thinking he's not very well practised at this shakedown routine.
Back at the fuel station on the outskirts of La Paz I resume negotiations with the young attendant I'd managed to buy two litres of gasolina from that morning after borrowing a bottle from an old lady. Usefully foreign vehicles aren't allowed to be supplied fuel in the whole region, so I have to resort to bribing people or finding locals to fill an oil can for me.
I agree to pay double price (it's still only sixty pence a litre) if he can get my whole tank full, and he devises a plan to get me past the cameras so he can't get into trouble. He fetches another attendant and I walk the moto to a pump while they each cover a number plate (my Chilean moto has one on the front and another on the back) from the cameras view with their bodies.
I swap out for one of them while he fills the tank, then we swap back and walk out of the forecourt in our bizzare procession. I roll back into the city tired, but satisfied.
And promptly get lost.
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