El Camino de la Muerte

Literally that means "The Road of Death" . Or, as it is also known, ¨The World´s Most Dangerous Road¨.

With names like that I couldn´t resist .

It was a facinating ride.

The road is some 50kms long and drops some 3500m. At the top there were patches of snow and ice and at the bottom nice tropical heat. It was interesting to see the changes in vegetation, the waterfalls lower down and the impossibly steep valleys that someone decided to put a road through.

The road, or track, is basically a gravel road about 4m wide. In itself it is actually quite easy to ride. However the consequences of if something goes wrong can and is fatal. Often there are steep drops right at the edge, sometimes for hundreds of metres.

On average 100 people a year loose their lives on this road. However a new road (which is equally spectacular) has been built, diverting most of the traffic so I expect that figure to be less now. That said, only last month a couple cyclists died out here. - This road has now become quite a tourist attraction and you are more likely be needing to overtake a cyclist than to get out of the way of a speeding taxi.