Posted by Dick on Sunday, July 23, 2006 at 4:15PM :
In Reply to: Here's a road for your Power Wagon! posted by Todd Wilson on Sunday, July 23, 2006 at 2:44PM :
THE HIGHWAY OF THE YUNGAS
By Jordi Camí (UPIFC) and Gemma Freixas
… “This news article reflects the life that that runs around the wagon endiablada one it unites La Paz and the region of the Yungas in Bolivia. Their users are in their majority humble people who take her merchandise or that go better to the capital in search of a life.”
There is one who says that it is the most dangerous highway of the world, that in their curves and defiles spirits inhabit who struggle among them to distract the conductor and to attract it the fatal abyss. But the certain thing is that the supernatural aid is not necessary to explain the danger of this route that unites the Bolivian plateau with the subtropical zone of the Yungas.
Few routes in the world save a so extreme unevenness, of almost 3,000 meters of height in hardly two hours of passage, and in addition they are used to newspaper by all type of transport.
From La Paz the highway ascends smoothly, asphalted and without great curves, like giving confidence to the traveller. The passage passes between desolate the landscape of the plateau with the permanent presence of summits of the Real perpetual snow Mountain range speckled and smooth knolls in which flocks of flames and alpacas graze.
To few kilometers of La Paz the police control of Kalajahuira forces to stop all the conductors to review the papers and the load. A cluster of salesmen surrounds the vehicles by passengers, has of everything to take or to eat right here: chicken fried with Popes and rice, fruit, cakes, refreshments.
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
To travel in the boxes of the trucks is cheaper than in the buses, but at the same time much more uncomfortable by the cold and rain, in addition to dangerous.
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
The Bolivian motor pool is compound in its majority of old vehicles of import of which often it is difficult to obtain spare parts.
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
The little short while Wilson, our conductor, it enters smiling with his food and we continued the ascent. To the flocks of flames tens of solitary dogs have been united that as sentries bet themselves almost to each 100 meters of the road. “They are the representatives of achachillas, the spirits who inhabit mountains, we took care of them and we give them to eat so that they protect our walkings” says to Wilson throwing to them bread by the window.
To him it has gone to him well, it explains to us with his toothless smile, it takes to 24 years doing this passage, has had scares but never a serious accident although has seen too many vehicles despeñados like not thanking to God whenever the passage finishes.
With the benevolent appearance of one more a highway, the line of asphalt leads us to the Summit, the point upper of the passage to 4,600 meters of altitude. All the conductors santiguan when initiating the reduction, also they will do before all and each one of the crossings that lay out the route, testimonies of the accidents that have had in the highway.
A new control of police, the one of Chusquipata, makes us stop and again they review the coffers of the bus in looks for, say to us, of illegal cocaine leaves. A pole regulates the access. As of May of 1999, and before the worrisome index of accidents, the regional authorities decreed to the emergency situation and the unique sense of circulation according to the hour strip. Thus by the mornings it is only possible to enter in the zone of the Yungas and in the evening to only leave. And it is that here all precaution is enough.
The track is endiablada: only one narrow tape drilled in the steep walls, in which as soon as it is left space for a truck. One thickens vegetation upholsters the walls of the abyss, the humidity and the water jumps in certain turns make the ground tremendously slippery. And the highway descends constantly, from the 4,600 meters of the Summit to the 1,750 of the population of Coroico, all it in hardly 90 kilometers. The sensation is vertiginous and nonapt for cardiac.
The windows of the bus seem to open themselves to the cliff and in the curves it gives the impression that some wheel could not touch the ground firmly. The conductor tries to draw for to the water pools looking for the place where the Earth takes hold more, “and this is not nothing, in summer with rains all this is a then slough and yes that there is to be very capable and to entrust itself to the virgin.”
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
But by very dangerous which it is the highway she is the unique one via which it unites the capital and the plateau with fertile humid valleys of the Yungas, where among other things is cultivated most of the plant of cocaine destined to the Andean traditional use. Every day hundreds of trucks and stuffed buses of people circulate around this way of trail or merchandise, many of them in precarious state of wheels or brakes.
And to top it all the pays of the drivers of these vehicles are so low that they are forced to work more hours of the recommendable ones. All it forms a mortal cocktail. There are no global statistics on the amount of accidents that has had in this route, but a report of the Inter-American Development bank catalogued it like the most dangerous highway of the world. In the memory of all it is the accident that in 1983 took the life of 100 travellers when the truck that transported them fell to the emptiness.
Thousands of people daily risk their life in this dangerous one via, but also there are them live on her. In a considered country as one of the poorest of Latin America anything is failed to take advantage of. Lucas is pattern of a brigade that dedicates itself to rescue and to recover the rest of the vehicles victims. With old cords they are hung of cliffs to make raise to wheels, axes of communications and plates, “we raised all those that we can, practically everything is recoverable, the bad thing is that there are things that you must leave, to lower to by them is to touch the devil”.
The traffic is continuous. There are few deprived automobiles, the flow mainly is of great vehicles that do the times of public transport: trucks that alternate the load with passengers who travel in the discovered box, weakened buses, crowded vans. There are shutdowns no established in the highway. Whatever it needs a “mobility” as alí they call to him, it only must stop a vehicle.
It is a good way to clear the thin pay of the carriers and the reason of the high loss of life when there is a wreck. Yolosa is the population at the end of the endiablada succession of curves. The locality is only a handful of factories, positions of food and rudimentary pensions that economically depend exclusively on the highway. From the way one goes here to Coroico going into in the subtropical region of the Yungas.
Gemma Freixas
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
A bus assistant whistles to call to the conductor in a shutdown to refuel combustible.
© JORDI CAMÍ (UPIFC)
Numerous crossings remember the tragedies happened throughout the highway of the Yungas.