Firstly please let me say dont click on the link if your upset easily...
It also shows an incredibly brave, hereoic bus driver trying desperatly to save his double decker bus from a landslide...He dident make it, but fortuenally he off loaded his 50 passengers, in effect saving their lives, before attempting the move. May God bless this poor man! its just such a shame his insane bravery cost him the biggest price of all...I felt my heart break when I saw this yesterday, and it even brought me to tears as I began to have vivid flashbacks of our incredibly lucky (perhaps lucky is the wrong word!) bus crash on the Chinese/Tibetian highway in the Autumn of 1995
***In respect for the dead driver, I have decided to remove this horrific clip***
This is the notorious Camina De la Murerte, literally translated as the "Death road!" even the locals pray and make offerings to their gods for their safety before travelling on here. And the one thing I have learnt fom my years on the road and thats if the locals are praying for safe passage then you KNOW your in trouble...Uptoo 200 people die annually on this highway to hell and thank goodness I haven't been there!! Which is just as well because Dereks taste for adventure travel can be just as insane as the bus drivers we encountered on our Asia oddesy. I can well remember watching the Bolivian Top-Gear special with him and he kept saying how exciting it looks! "We must go somtime!" he grinned at me *not bloody likely* I thought...Thankfully the nearest we got was our tour of Costa Rica some years ago, and even that included some very hairraising rides though the jungle.
But oddly enough there is a thriving tourist buisness that centers around this road!! Mountain bikers looking for the ultimate challenge (Derek loves mountain biking) Backpackers just taking the bus for the hell of it and then tell their friends "we travelled on the death road!" There is a huge ammount of travel snobbery between backpackers...So I am really happy to say this is one area of the world that wont be seeing my ever widening backside, anytime soon!!
All the same last night I could not sleep as the memories came flooding back.
And I pray God bless the soul of this brave driver who saved 50 lives! he was a true hero!
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Bolivian bus horror...and flashbacks...
by
Victoria Short
on Thu 05 Jan 2012 12:49 PM GMT | Permanent Link
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