The Road Of Death

I think i will not say anything after i knew about this dangerous and most dangerous road in the world. Exactly, it runs in the Bolivian Andes, 70 km from La Paz to Coroico, and plungs down almost 3,600 metres in an orgy of extremely narrow hairpin bends and 800 metress a gaping chasm which ready to pounce on anything that falls. Every year it is estimated 200 to 300 people die on a stretch of road less than 50 miles long. In one year alone, 25 vehicles plunged off the road and into the ravine. That is one every two weeks. This Journey blog never recommend you to go there, but if you curious you might enough see it from far.

It seems so weird and fear that one of the main roads out of one of the highest cities on Earth should actually climb as it leaves town. Then climb it does sapping 5 kilometres (three miles) above sea level, where even the internal combustion engine is forced to toil and splutter. Then it pauses for a while on the snow-flecked crest of the Andes before pitching - like a giant white knuckle ride - into the abyss.

That dangerous road is starting from Bolivia's main city, La Paz to a region known as the Yungas. The "road of death"-that it's name-was built by Paraguayan prisoners of war back in the 1930s.

Then about the hairpin bends. Perched on hairpin bends over dizzying precipices, crosses and stone cairns mark the places where travellers' prayers went unheeded. Where, for someone - the road ended. But even these stark warnings are all too often ignored. Because of impatient motorist.

When the dry season in Bolivia gone, soon the rains will come cascading down the walls of the chasm and huge waterfalls will drench the road turning it's surface to be slime.

Then will come those heart-stopping moments when wheels skid and brakes fail to grip. There are stories told of truckers too tired - or too afraid - to continue, who pull over for the night, hoping to see out an Andean storm. But they have parked too close to the edge. And as they sleep in their cabs, the road is washed away around them.

But for now the road is a ribbon of dust. Every vehicle passing along it churns up a sandstorm in its wake.

Choking, blinding clouds obscure the way ahead. Around one hairpin, a cloud of debris was beginning to clear.
As it did, it seems people milling around in the road. Passengers from one of the overloaded and decrepit buses which run the gauntlet of this road.

There was nothing anyone could do. Mobile phones do not work here. In any case, who would you call? There are no emergency services. It is so fear. And no way of getting help through, even if any were to be found. The bus driver bled to death.

Thats way the road is named the "Road of Death".