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It was an early morning in July and Alberto Olivera was manoeuvring his minibus along the treacherous mountain road from La Paz to Coroico. Rounding the notorious San Juan section, where the rough surface was still wet from a nearby waterfall, he saw fresh tyre tracks that veered abruptly off the unprotected edge. Alberto knew at once that this marked the scene of yet another tragedy. This time a high tonnage lorry had plummeted over the precipice in broad daylight and its mangled wreckage lay scattered in the steep wooded valley far below. Alberto and his passengers did what they could to help but 22 of the lorry’s 29 passengers lay dead. The shock was that seven survived.

Starting high in the rarefied Bolivian Andes, this steep and bumpy road plunges almost 3,600 metres of vertical in travelling the spectacular 64km to the lush, sub-tropical Yungas region and the sleepy town of Coroico. The narrow – occasionally very narrow – track hugs the sheer valley side as it snakes through dramatic, verdant scenery. Twisting beneath waterfalls and rocky overhangs, an unprotected drop-off to near certain death is a constant travel companion. A fatal accident every fortnight is not uncommon on the Coroico road (the July disaster brought the death toll during the previous eight months to 55) and in 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank declared this the world’s most dangerous road.

Five weeks after helping to pull bodies from the wrecked lorry, Alberto was once again on his way to Coroico, this time driving the support vehicle for a dozen mountain bikers about to dare Bolivia’s road of death.

My group of cyclists had assembled in the crisp early dawn in central La Paz. Alberto drove us and our two guides, Pancho and Tony, up to La Cumbre (which means “summit”). La Cumbre is a desolate and often-windswept point at a chilly 4,700 metres, surrounded by unclimbed, glaciated peaks. Along the way we encountered straggly herds of llamas and occasional wild dogs. The journey took just over an hour and as we climbed steadily towards the barren summit, the landscape became increasingly harsh and rugged, our mouths increasingly dry and our chatter increasingly nervous.

At La Cumbre, appropriately marked by a stark statue of Christ, Pancho distributed our sturdy mountain bikes, gloves and helmets, checked our saddle heights and tyre pressures and gave us basic instruction on riding technique. We circled a little to get used to the bikes and then suddenly we were off.

The ride started innocuously enough. Our bikes were fitted with 24 gears but Pancho urged us not to concern ourselves with them. “Get the bike into top gear and just leave it there,” he said and we found out almost at once the truth of this advice. A few turns of the pedals and we were swept away by gravity along the beautifully smooth tarmac of the road’s upper section. Even riders like me, who hadn’t ridden for many years, were soon reaching tear-streaming speeds approaching 80km/hr with barely a further push of the pedals.

Pancho rode at the front of the group, Tony at the rear and Alberto followed in the minibus. We encountered very little traffic and raced for several glorious kilometres at what we were sure was our bikes’ top speeds. We finally swooped first on a lorry and then a bus, overtaking both almost as if they were stationary. After 15km of effortless downhill gliding, slowing occasionally only to admire and photograph the serene magnificence of the Andean peaks, we passed through a tunnel and emerged at our breakfast stop – the ramshackle Unduavi drugs checkpoint.

Totally exhilarated we packed into one of the many small food kiosks and were soon tucking into freshly prepared fried chicken and chorizo baps and mugs of tea and coffee. We had already shed nearly 1,600 metres of altitude. With the sun having finally emerged over the high peaks, we could at last also shed some of our many layers of clothing before continuing.

During our stop many thoughts had turned towards how we might wring more speed from our bikes, but we were soon brought back to earth by two uphill sections. Riding alongside Pancho on one of these climbs the guide admitted that despite being fully acclimatised and having ridden the Coroico road 70 times, he still struggled on the climbs. “At over 3,000 metres, there simply isn’t enough oxygen in the air,” he explained.

The two climbs interrupted our enjoyment only briefly and we were soon hurtling downhill again, our main concern being how to maintain the most aerodynamic cycling position. All the while the Andes soared majestically all around us and turkey vultures hovered high above.

At just over 20km, the smooth road ended abruptly – so abruptly that even with advance warning, several of us didn’t manage to slow down sufficiently to tackle the transition with control, instead skidding over the first few yards of the stony track that had now replaced tarmac. This section of road was flat and not having the wind whistling through our helmets we became acutely aware of just how isolated and tranquil our surroundings were. Still enveloped in this strange calm, we arrived at a ridge at the head of a yawning valley. We could all see at once that this marked the start of the section known as “the world’s most dangerous road”.

We dismounted and gawked at the staggering vista. The landscape was still lofty and steep but had mellowed from bleak, high Andes to dense, lush cloud forest. The road was now a stony, unsurfaced single track that had been hewn out of the sheer mountainside, hundreds of metres above the valley floor. From our vantage point we could follow the descent of the thin brown strip for tens of kilometres as it meandered into the distant haze. Gazing along the length of the road we could see evidence of occasional, massive landslides (that somehow hadn’t swept the road into the abyss) and, as we already knew, an unprotected outer edge for as far as we could see.

We stopped not only to take in the wondrous scenery but also to allow Pancho to give us some important final advice on how to survive this unique section of road. Contrary to normal Bolivian driving rules, vehicles keep to the left, presumably so that the driver with the best view of his outside tyres drives closest to the precipice. Pancho’s advice was to ride in the left-hand tyre track which, according to him, gave a “good metre’s margin of error” to the unprotected edge. “Only ride to the very edge if something comes the other way,” he continued in all seriousness.

For the first time I chose to ignore Pancho’s hitherto excellent instructions. “No way,” I thought to myself. “I’m riding in the right-hand tyre track and if anything comes the other way I’m diving into the ditch and, if necessary, the rock face beyond.” My reasoning seemed sound enough: you could pick yourself out of a ditch, but if you erred the other side.....

Pancho’s final advice echoed in our ears as we pointed our bikes downhill once more: “Give way to anything larger than you, which basically means everything.”

The road had regained its gradient. Even with the brakes squeezed on for most of the time, we seemed to be going too fast for comfort over the loose gravel and skidded frequently. For the first few kilometres of the hazardous section, my attention never diverted from the track, despite the constant distraction of the beautiful dense forest all around me.

Yet, no matter how hard I concentrated on controlling my speed and maintaining a safe distance from the outer edge, it was impossible to ignore the poignant reminders of the many personal tragedies this road has inflicted. We passed crosses, memorials and bunches of flowers at chillingly-frequent intervals. A man who lost his family in a lorry crash a few years ago now maintains a solitary vigil showing stop and go signals at the blind corner where the accident occurred. He survives on donations from road users and, hoping to benefit from positive karma, we pressed coins into his palm as we passed.

One of the eeriest features of this road is that you can only hear traffic when it is far off. The dense foliage and blind corners smother the sound of nearby vehicles such that you can turn into a corner and suddenly find yourself confronting the massive grille of a lorry or bus that has materialised, seemingly ghost-like, out of nowhere. Even when you can hear other traffic, the shrill horns and groaning engines assume almost supernatural qualities as it’s impossible to tell which direction they’re coming from let alone how far away they are.

At its narrowest the road is barely wide enough for one vehicle let alone two. Fortunately we didn’t meet much traffic in either direction although it was invariably scary whenever we did. If there was time we manoeuvred to the outer edge as instructed, knowing that the slightest misjudgement by the driver might easily nudge us over the side. In this manner we let pass the occasional bus and trucks laden with oranges and noisy children.

After 46km we stopped for lunch under the welcome shade of some trees. We had now descended over 2,500 metres of vertical and the afternoon sun was fierce. We had started the ride in fleeces and mountain jackets but now wore only shorts and t-shirts - and were still warm. Just after lunch we rode joyously under a series of towering waterfalls. Cooling and refreshing they were for us but these falls wash away the surface and make the road slippery and even more treacherous for high tonnage vehicles.

We paused with morbid fascination at the scene of the recent lorry tragedy and peered cautiously over the edge. Wreckage still lay scattered about. Even though the drop here wasn’t the severest we’d seen on the road we were still amazed how anybody survived the fall.

Pancho reassured us that there had actually been relatively few cycling accidents on the Coroico road. Out of control cyclists have had to bale out before their bikes went over the side. A cyclist who rode over the edge incredibly survived with only broken ribs. Many have chosen to travel in back-up vehicles rather than cycle after seeing the road. But overall the odds were in our favour. We felt a little comforted. (However, in the few months after we cycled down the road, an inexperienced guide (not working with the company I travelled with) died in a crash with an oncoming vehicle, and a female cyclist fell to her death over the edge.)

The road was now bone dry and we lost visibility totally behind dust clouds whenever a vehicle passed. In the distance on the opposite side of the valley the unfinished new road to Coroico silently shadowed our progress. The new road was designed to make safe this important commercial route. However, an expensive tunnel section remains unfinished and Yungas farmers will have to continue risking their lives for some time to come if they want to sell their produce in the La Paz markets.

Eventually, as the afternoon shadows started to lengthen, the hillside town of Coroico came into view in the distance. We dismounted at a final waterfall to wash off some of the dust caked onto our faces. We rode through a stream, enjoyed a few final bursts of speed and skidding switchbacks and freewheeled into the shanty town of Yolosa. From here, the road continued its extraordinary journey to the steamy rainforests of the Amazon but this would be the final point of our ride. Alberto would drive us the short distance from here up to Coroico. We had survived!

In just one day we had crossed high, windswept Andean passes and snow-covered plains, plunged down through dense cloud forest and were now sipping margaritas in a bar in the tropics. We had descended nearly 3,600 thrilling metres, with barely a need to pedal, and had defied the spectre of death that had stalked us for most of the journey. But such an adrenaline rush comes at a price. Our bodies ached. We weren’t saddle-sore and it wasn’t even our legs or arms that ached. It was our hands that hurt from having had to brake for so much of the descent. Happily, though, our tired fingers just about managed to clutch onto our margarita glasses.

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