A Safe Biking Path to Corioco

I made the mistake of telling my mother about the most dangerous road in the world bike ride before even leaving Panama, but I promised I wouldn't tell her when I was actually going to go. Now that I have survived and have the T-shirt to prove it I can happy jump up and down, fist pumping, and talk about having played chicken with fate and lived to tell about it. Ignorance is bliss, right ma?

In all reality as a biking on the road is not all that dangerous. The infamous road was built in the 1930's by some POWs from Paraguay who put the POW in gun POWder as they blasted the road out of the side of the mountain. The new road that goes through another valley has made the Yungas road obsolete, thus leaving the wide gravel path to a throng of daily tourists. Most of the souls haunting the area are drivers who made the mistake of try to pass another large vehicle at an inopportune moment. It also claimed the lives of several politicians who made the mistake of trusting their political rivals when they said, ¨Hey Vinny, take our friend here fer a ride.¨

That is not to say that the rider can break concentration, and the crosses that line the cliffside are a constant reminder of that fact. The road is very wide for a cyclist even the poorest ones, but if one falls of the road there is no ditch to land it. You might find on the way down the 500 ft straight drop that the helmet is wearing you for protection in stead of the other way around.

Mistakes are also more common at high speed, and of the 60-odd km of the trail all but seven klicks are downhill. Usually the tour begins at the top of the 4700 m pass and ends in Corioco at 1700 meters above sea level which works out roughly to be a 1.5 mile vertical drop. It reminds me of a pearl of wisdom my father gave so many years ago: It's not so important how well it goes, but how well it stops.

The concept, difficulty, and beauty of the ride could be compared to what I did in Huaraz, Perú. That I did all by myself this I did as a part of a tour, and there is no comparing the two. As a part of the tour other people were getting mad at me for taking my time, taking pictures, and generally enjoying where I was. The other two guys in the group just bee-lined staight down the road with the guide leaving Dave and I happily in the dust. They didn't seem to realize that it was not about journey to the goal, but rather the journey is the goal. (insert momentary pause of witty philosphical banter while reader discovers that this may have a parallel to life in general.) So in the end I felt bad for being slow, but not too bad.

That night there was a huge party near our hotel in Corioco. We were going to go to bed early, but there is no such thing as noise pollution in Latin America and one might have thought that the speaker was actually in the room with us. So, for rudely keeping us up that night we did the only logical thing, we crashed the party. Initailly we thought it was a wedding and were wondering how we were going to get ourselves invited in to go bridesmaid hunting. Upon arriving we discovered that it was actually the high school end of year party. One might compare it to prom, only with your entire family, and drinking is allowed. That's right, cultural difference number 48379: it shall be socially acceptable to drink and get drunk at your child's 10th grade graduation party. When in Rome...