I got home halfway through a History Channel documentary on Bolivia’s Death Road. I wish I’d known about it ahead of time; I would have taped it so that I could watch the whole thing and so that I could send it to Debra Snellen. I searched the listings, but can’t find any other airings in the near future.

The Death Road, or el camino de la muerte, is a notorious mountain road which hugs the edge of cliffs from La Paz east to Coroico. As far as I can tell, we will not have to take the death road on our way to Cochabamba, which is southeast of La Paz. (I’m assuming we will fly into La Paz, though I don’t know that for a fact.) It has taken its name because of the danger of skidding off over the cliff, especially on unpaved sections of the road. The road is so narrow that there are sometimes problems with traffic passing in both directions. The common protocol is that downhill traffic must yield to uphill traffic, even if that involves the downhill traffic having to back up to the nearest wide spot.

Amazingly, as the documentary reveals, there is a thriving tourist industry for cyclists who want to ride the death road.

UPDATE: According to the Wikipedia entry linked above, the road has been named the world’s most dangerous by the Inter-American Development Bank and is responsible for 200-300 deaths each year.