A Deadly Bus On Death Road

After an incredible three days freezing in the desert, I decided to head north to the Amazon for some warmth and humidity. Mariska, a lovely Dutch girl that I have been travelling with since Cafayate, decided to join me on the trip, so we boarded a bumpy 12 hour overnight bus towards La Paz where I was reunited with Jen and Anita, two english girls that I had met in Rio.

Most people fly from La Paz to Rurrenabaque, the gateway to the Bolivian side of the Amazon. We had heard that the bus journey to Rurrenabaque was horribly dangerous and so preferred to take a flight, however there were no flights available that we week so we thought we would risk it and take the bus along Death Road to Rurrenabaque. The tour operators told us that the majority of accidents happened in rainy season and given that we are currently in the height of the dry season, eveything should be fine.

We turned up at the chaotic 'bus station' for our 11am bus, only to stand and watch the chaos of people running around, busily packing the buses with wooden crates, climbing on the roof to tie huge boxes and bags to the top of the bus whilst chidren boarded the bus with live animals. Ninety minutes later and we finally left la Paz, all a little nervous about the journey, but grateful that it was a dry sunny day. Ten minutes into our journey out of La Paz, it started to snow. Heavily. As the bus struggled to move past 15 miles per hour, chugging along the high mountans in the heavy snow, we all started to get very worried.

Two hours later, the snow finally stopped as Death Road became narrower with more deadly drops. I was unluckily enough to have window seat so was able to see the bus hanging over the edge of he cliffs, and even spotted a couple of memorials where people had previously died on this terrifying road. Four hours into our journey and we forced to stop due to a mudslide on the road. As we waited for a truck to resolve the problem, we watched nervously as the sun began to set, as we knew we would have to do the remainder of the death threatening journey in the dark.

After an hour and a half of waiting on the dusty side of a cliff, we finally reboarded our rickety bus to complete our journey. The driver was not too happy that we had lost precious time because of the mudslide and so began to drive along the narrow, 300 ft high cliffs at an erratic speed. With hearts pounding, hands shaking and palms sweating, Jen and I furiously argued with bus driver about his dangerous driving (thank goodness for those Spanish classes), as Anita and Mariska cried with uncontrolable fear. The driver continued at an erratic pace and as night fell we considered our options. 1. we get off the bus as soon as possible, only to get squashed by another bus on the insanely narrow roads. 2. we wait until the next village to get off the bus and try to get someone to drive us the rest of the way. Option number 2 was looking more preferrable.

We waited a long and extremely terrifying two hours as the driver swerved and shreiked along the scary roads. Finally we arrived at the next small, chaotic town and as we stepped off the death bus with complete relieve, another bus crashed into our bus. We were thanking God, karma, fate and anyone and anything else that was looking down on us that night. Needless to say, we took the flight back.