Life-affirming discoveries near Bolivia’s Death Road

Travelling and adventure can mean all sorts of things to different people – from the challenge to the places it takes you. For BASE Collective member Sami Sauri, it’s about discovery and connection. And the tool she uses to make that happen is the bike.

‘Through the bike, you can approach people and landscapes in a way like nothing else. I think it’s the fact that it can take you to these places that you’d never reach by a car. You can be totally in the middle of nowhere, like really out there. Especially if you’re riding gravel,’ she explains. ‘I’ve surfed and done other sports but nothing else provides me the same feelings and curiosity with people that the bike does.’

Born and raised in Barcelona, Sami discovered cycling relatively late on in her life. Hooked initially by the city’s fixed gear scene in her mid-20s, she discovered the connection between body and machine and soon the communities that simply turning the pedals provided. Hours in the saddle became weeks and from riding the hills close to home, she moved around Europe and later to the US in the pursuit of a professional career as a racer.

‘In La Paz, you’re really up there. These people are living all year at altitude. We saw a football match – can you imagine the guys who are from the city down at sea level? To come and play in La Paz, they have to do altitude training!’

Based for the past several years out of the European cycling mecca of Girona – with an elevation of just 76m – Sami knew that riding the gravel trails up into the Yungas that surround La Paz (a narrow band of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes) would mean undergoing some altitude training of her own.

‘I did two and a half weeks of training with a coach at the Cenit Sports Centre here in Girona,’ she says. ‘First I went to Andorra for a long weekend to ride around and sleep on the top and then he gave me the altitude machine. I was doing all the workouts wearing the mask, spending between two and four hours a day with it set to 3,500 to 4,500m. So I’d be sat down with this thing on and my housemate was like what the…?!’

Heading up out of La Paz into the Yungas, straight from the off, Sami was grinding her way up remote, challenging gravel tracks well above 4000m.

‘I was really happy to have that help because I don’t think I would have been able to even sleep one moment or even just walk around La Paz without it. Put into perspective, my route was going up to 4,700m on the first day. That’s nearly the same as Mont Blanc.’

A reminder of the rawness and volatility of this landscape, that same day Sami and the support vehicle became separated by a recent rockfall across the road.

‘It was the only day that I left my suncream in the car too,’ she says. ‘I carried on past the block and about two hours later I was like, Oh, this is really hot and realised I was starting to get really burnt. All I had with me was this little stick for lip protection and just started rubbing it all over my body. It took me nearly five hours to find them again because they had to do a massive detour.’

Once again, subject to the steep valleys of the Yungas, Sami was soon descending into the villages below.

‘The climb back up was absolutely mental. I think it was from 1600m and I had to go back to that track at 3,500m. I was like, guys, I can’t do this. There’s no way. I’m absolutely cooked!’