Yungas Road

"Pleasant Journey, Drive Carefully"

The Yungas Road

Photos by Rodrigo Sanchez
Text by Jonathan Derksen

Let's face it. Travel on the east side of the Bolivian Andes isn't for the weak of heart. Case in point? The Yungas road.

Originally known as "The Grove's Road", named after the U.S. company that built it in the early seventies, this lifeline--some say it's more of a 'deathline'--to the tropical lowlands is reputed by many world travelers to be the most terrifying drive in the world. As one CARE worker astutely put it, "The Yungas road is not merely a passageway to the thick dense jungles of Bolivia, but is in itself a rite of passage."

Rising gently out of the dust bowl of La Paz at 12,000 feet, the road winds through rolling pastures of ichu grass grazed by herds of typically aloof llamas chased by earth-colored shepherds. Curiously, at every corner the traveler is met by one or two dogs. These are generally bushy, stalwart beasts that watch you pass with hunger-bred intensity. Some locals believe these canines to be spiritual extensions of Pachamama (Mother Earth) herself, and consider it bad luck not to feed them. So before ascending into the pass, it is customary to buy a few maraqueta bread rolls for the trip up to ensure safe passage.

As you continue to move skyward the landscape begins to change. Rocky outcroppings jut from the prickly carpet and streams chatter between sharp banks. The air, too, changes, cleansed by the cold and stabbed by the excitement of nearby glaciers and unknown heights. You're a bit light-headed, but it's not an unpleasant sensation. If you're suffering from altitude sickness, you're wondering if it can get any worse than this. Believe me, it can.

The Incas once traversed these rarefied haunts by way of spectacularly engineered roads of their own, and as you pass a water reservoir on the left, you can just make out the zig-zag of the Inca trail to Coroico etched against a scree slope.

As you round the last corner, the great sawridge of the high Andes sweeps into view. You pull over and scramble to the top of a hill where, marking the highest point along the road, la cumbre, a statue of Jesus with arms outstretched guards the majesty below. With head spinning and heart pounding in your ears you try to take it all in--the jagged peaks, the painfully bright snows and cloud rising from the valleys below. On the other side of the road you can see a few parked trucks. Above these, on the crown of a hill stands a cross hung with brightly colored streamers whipped by the wind; and huddled some distance from the cross are several truckers making a challa--an offering--to Pachamama for a safe journey. They burn their small plates of flotsam and tip beer onto the ground in supplication.

Until now, the trip has been pleasant, interesting, even placating, but the scene of these truckers puts you ill at ease. Why the compulsion to make an offering? What lies below that could warrant such deep respect?

Do you know that feeling you get as the roller-coaster climbs the first hill? Moments after you leave the Jesucristo behind, your vehicle nose dives and you feel the shift of weight in your seat. As you gather momentum, the land becomes a moving scroll of towering black cliffs and great ice wedges; to the west, rugged faces of rock march down to meet the upheaval of cloud, and the last roadside dogs whisk past before you have a chance to toss out your remaining maraquetas. Immediately on your right, the land drops into ear-popping oblivion. The only thing now separating you from the most thrilling free-fall of your life is a few cement barriers, and even those plan to disappear a few kilometers further on.

You pass through a tunnel. It's like moving through a portal into a different dimension. On the other side, you begin to notice vines curling down in long tendrils from rock protrusions and flowering shrubs clinging to the road's edge. By the time you screech to a halt at the military check-point at Unduavi, the smell of your burning brakes mixes with the sweet scent of tropical vegetation cascading down from above.

Roadside shops in Unduavi In the rainy season, when the road is at its worst, the military check-point is often closed. Cars line up behind the yellow barricade in anticipation, and people mill about the truck stop eating chicharrón (deep fried meat) and sipping on steaming glasses of api (a hot maize drink) at establishments teetering on the edge of the precipice boasting signs like "Viscachani Water: Proudly Bolivian". But the minute anyone in a green military overcoat moves toward the barricade people dash to their cars in the hope of getting through.

Unduavi used to mark the end of Grove's A bus hugs a cliffside on the Yungas road paved road. Today still, it represents the demarcation between comfort and terror. From this point on, many believe wearing a seatbelt is foolish. "If you go over the edge," one truck driver said, "jumping out of your door or window is sometimes your only chance." Beyond the town, the way suddenly narrows and winds into heavy black trees draped in mist. At every turn one catches glimpses of yawning chasms filled with cloud and crazy, slanted foliage.

Passenger Marisol grips her seatbelt Several things make this a ticklish passage. The constant rain typical of the cloud forests turn the road into a permanent quagmire and the only tribute to those cars, buses and trucks that have careened over the edge into disregard are the shrines and many wooden crosses wedged into cracks in the rock.

The only driving rule is that descending traffic must yield to the outside to ascending traffic. This may sound simple enough, but consider that, in many places, the road is rarely more than twelve feet wide. Try sitting on the outside passenger seat of a bus whose wheels are only inches away from a 2000 foot drop. It's an excellent exercise in panic-control. Meanwhile, upcoming vehicles face the danger of scraping against the inside rock face. Many people traveling in the back of trucks literally lose their heads due to a lack of vigilance.

Passing beneath a waterfall on the way back to La Paz Overhangs present the added danger of falling rock, while run off creates long cascades down cliff faces that shower you at intervals. Frequent landslides, too, pose an enormous threat.

Tales about travel on the Yungueña abound. Here are a few scenarios I experienced:

-We are driving past a recent landslide when a boulder the size of a truck tire careens into the back of the jeep, almost knocking us off the road.

-We crawl behind a bulldozer that is clearing the road while dirt and rocks are still sliding down the cut in the hillside.

-The bus I'm riding in slides to a stop. The driver asks us not to move. We realize that the front right wheel of the vehicle is hanging over the edge of a fathomless drop. We vacate through the driver's emergency door and fifteen of us help to pull the bus backwards onto the road again.

-One rainy night we haul our 4x4 over thirty landslides. At one of these a bus has gotten stuck in mud oozing down the mountainside. We spend an hour rescuing passengers who have, in some cases, gotten caught waste deep in the sludge.

-A friend of mine loses concentration for a moment at the wheel and rolls his car and its occupants 700 feet to the bottom of a gully. Some are badly injured, but, fortunately, all survive (this time, seatbelts save lives).

-Another friend gets out of her car to relieve herself and steps into thin air. Her body must be recovered by rockclimbers.

The most critical part of the road is marked by a semáforo, a The human stop light of the Yungas road human stoplight. This man detains cars if a landslide has completely blocked the road, or if their is blasting going on ahead. He, together with those who operate the bulldozers and do the blasting, are a different breed of men. It is hard to imagine a less fearful group with a more thankless job.

In the past five years, the road to the Yungas has improved dramatically, especially with the constructions of a somewhat safer, more direct route via the Huaranilla Valley. Nevertheless, the adventure of the old route to the North Yungas and the colonial town of Corioico is there for the taking.