Yungas Road in Bolivia
Have you ever felt your heart leap through your chest as you slammed on your brakes to avoid an accident on the highway? If so, chances are high that you were on a paved road marked with white and yellow lines, perhaps with bumps to wake up drivers that may swerve outside the lines or reflectors to help you find your lane in the dark. Imagine slamming on your brakes to avoid an accident on a single-lane dirt road with a ravine dropping 2,000 feet on one side of your car and an enormous rock wall rising up on the other side.
There are no lines or signs to direct traffic on this road. There's nothing to warn you if your tires slip toward the edge of the road which measures less than 120 inches in width. During the rainy season, the road washes out with downpours that create waterfalls along the steep ravine, but there are no reflectors to help you see the road clearly. It's not even safe to pull to the side of the road to wait out the storm because other vehicles are likely to push you into the rock wall. If you're parked on the outer edge of the road, the rain may wash the earth from beneath you, sending your vehicle crashing down the ravine with little warning.
Welcome to North Yungas Road, otherwise known as Death Road or the Road of Fate. In 1995, the Inter American Development Bank simply called it the world's most dangerous road. The deadliest sections of the road have since been bypassed with the creation of a new two-lane, paved roadway, but many visitors still flock to Bolivia each year to see the original Yungas Road. Some tour companies make money off the attraction, and many thrill seekers head down the road on mountain bikes to test fate.
Where is Yungas Road Located?
There are actually two Yungas Roads in Bolivia. The starting point for North Yungas Road is Bolivia's capital, La Paz. This city is located in Western Bolivia in the middle of the La Cumbre mountain pass, and the city's elevations stretch up to 13,500 feet above sea level. The road ends less than 45 miles away in Coroico. This city is in an area known as the Yungas resting on the Eastern edge of the Andes Mountains. This is the Yungas Road referred to as the most dangerous road in the world.
South Yungas Road connects La Paz to Chulumani and is also referred to as Chulumani Road. It's approximately 40 miles long, and while it doesn't have the deadly reputation of North Yungas Road, it has also claimed its fair share of lives over the years.
What Makes North Yungas Road so Dangerous?
When you hear about dangerous roads in your neighborhood, you often hear about one intersection with an obstructed view or a slick curve where accidents frequently occur after a heavy rain or snowstorm. What makes Yungas Road different is the combination of many dangerous elements. Take every risky driving condition that you can imagine and place them on one roadway. That explains the risk in general terms, but let's get a bit more descriptive.
You've finished a pleasant visit to La Paz and are ready to venture down North Yungas Road with a local as your escort. He stops just before entering the narrow gravel road and says a silent prayer. You may expect to head downhill considering you're already high on the side of a mountain, but instead, the car starts a grueling upward climb for approximately three miles. You level out to a straight passage and try to focus on the beautiful scenery outside your window, but the steep ravines to your left and the high rock wall to your right keep your heart racing.
Suddenly, that fast heartbeat turns into a throbbing explosion of fear as the car speeds into a seemingly never-ending downward spiral with one curve after the other. It feels much like flying down the rails of a roller coaster, except your track is dirt path, large trucks are making their way up the mountain toward you, and there's a good chance you can't stop fast enough to avoid a collision if another vehicle appears around one of the curves.
Break that wild ride into pieces, and you have a long list of factors that make Yungas Road downright deadly:
1. Narrow Two-Way Passage
North Yungas Road is less than 10-feet wide, which doesn't give even a small car much room to move. Yet, this is a two-way road which requires drivers to pull close to the stone wall or veer to the edge of the ravine when passing one another. Due to the limited room and the danger of falling off the cliff, there are special driving rules for the road:
- Drive on the left side of the road, although the rest of Bolivia drives on the right side of the road.
- The driver headed uphill always has the right of way.
- Downhill drivers must pull to the outer edge of the road to allow safe passage of uphill drivers.
You naturally travel faster when headed downhill, and pulling to the outer edge of the road puts you at risk of falling off a cliff. This may explain why more than 20 vehicles were estimated to go over the edge of the ravine every year that the road was heavily used by motorists. Driving on the left side of the road is an advantage to downhill drivers because it puts them closer to the outer edge of the road, allowing them to better estimate how far they can pull over when passing traffic is encountered.
When North Yungas Road was heavily used by locals, there were many large trucks and buses traveling amongst smaller cars. Since these larger vehicles took up more space on the road, they increased the chances of downhill drivers going over the edge when pulling to the side for passing traffic.
2. Admirable Elevation
At its highest point, the road is more than 15,200 feet above sea level. It drops nearly 4,000 feet before you reach the rainforests below. Add the other dangerous elements listed here, and you see why the road claimed between 200 and 300 lives each year that it was heavily traveled.
3. Extreme Curves
Speeding down the side of a mountain of this size is scary enough, but Yungas Road doesn't even give you a straight path to follow. It contains a series of harsh turns which make it difficult to see vehicles coming from the other direction, increasing the chances of head-on collisions. Bolivian drivers were known to speed down the road after sending up their prayers, so there was often little time to slow down when a vehicle appeared unexpectedly on a curve.
4. Steep Cliffs and Ravines
The outer edge of Yungas Road is a steep ravine that drops approximately 2,000 feet at its steepest point. Even the cliffs encountered at lower elevations are deadly for vehicles unlucky enough to include them in their ride. A large percentage of the deaths suffered on the road were due to vehicles falling over the edge.
5. Lack of Security Features
This is a single-lane road accommodating two-way traffic without traffic lights, painted lines or even guardrails. Once you start the downward roll on Yungas Road, you have nothing to depend on but your driving skills, luck and faith.
6. Enormous Wall of Rock
The wall of hard rock rising high above the road isn't quite as threatening as the steep ravine on the other side, but it's still a risky factor that makes this road deadly. Accidents often send vehicles crashing into the rock, leading to some of the deaths reported on the road.
7. Dry Season Dust Storms
Since Yungas Road is a dirt path with some gravel and cars travel at high speeds, the dry Bolivian seasons create large clouds of dust that make it even more difficult to see surrounding obstacles. Even the straight passages are more dangerous when your vision is impaired by a dust storm kicked up by the tires of the vehicles traveling in front of you. The risk of rear-ending another vehicle is high during this season of the year.
8. Wet Season Obstacles
You get a break from the dust storms when the rain starts to fall, but torrents of rain make Yungas Road even deadlier. The rain pours down the rocky mountain, sometimes knocking rocks loose and sending them down into the road. It flows over the dirt road, turning it into a slick, muddy surface where cars are more likely to slide over the edge or into the rocky wall when trying to avoid accidents or simply stay on the path while maneuvering curves.
Finally, the water rushes over the edge, creating spectacular waterfalls on its way down the ravine. While this makes the natural beauty of Yungas Road even more amazing to see, it's difficult to focus on that beauty when you're busy praying.
9. Top Speeds
There's no speed limit on Yungas Road, and no one wants to spend more time on it than necessary. The urgency to get off the road encourages drivers to go as fast as possible, but that only increases the risk of collisions. There's no cellphone service on the mountain, so help is never on its way when accidents do occur. When the road was heavily used by motorists and was the only way to get to Coroico, there were often so many cars lining the road that there simply wasn't room for the passage of an ambulance even if there were a way to call for help.
10. Poorly Maintained Vehicles
Many of the vehicles traveling Yungas Road in the 1900s weren't in the best condition. It's difficult for modern cars that are properly maintained to handle the extreme elevations at the top of the road, and these older, poorly-maintained vehicles had an even more difficult time. This isn't the place to find yourself sitting on the side of the road with your thumb out, and bald tires only make it even more difficult to come to a quick stop on a gravel and dirt path.
The Lost Souls of Yungas Road
The exact number of deaths endured on Yungas Road throughout history is unknown, but the most commonly cited estimate is 200-300 lives for every year that the road was in heavy use. The road is now lined with piled rocks and crosses, marking the spots where many of those lives were taken. This makes traveling the road feel much like taking a roller coaster through a graveyard, and the crosses are constant reminders that no one is safe on this road.
The Bus Accident No One Can Forget
One of the most frightening accidents ever recorded on Yungas Road involved a bus carrying more than 100 passengers. The bus went over the edge of the ravine, and most of the passengers lost their lives. This accident is still remembered by locals and is widely reported online. Accidents involving buses falling over the edge continue to occur on the old and new Yungas Road, and many of those accidents were videotaped and are now featured online.
The Redeeming Beauty of Yungas Road
Are you wondering why thrill seekers continue to test fate by traveling down Yungas Road? Many do so because they enjoy the thrill that comes from putting their lives on the line and surviving an experience that many others didn't survive, but it also has to do with the amazing views enjoyed in this area of Bolivia. You travel from plateaus into the rainforest, and the mountain views on the cliff side of the road are unbeatable. Of course, many visitors head for this road just to see if it's really as deadly as they've heard.