yeah i remember it was a group of four people yeah we got there and the girl just never showed up the
visibility was terrible so we couldn't see she was she was off the cliff welcome to the death road
this used to be the deadliest road in the world now they've created a bypass down the
other side of the valley but it's still pretty dangerous we're doing it on mountain bikes so
not as dangerous as taking a car or a motorcycle you're going to be pretty spicy and it used to be
a two-way highway so and we're going with the best company gravity so they take us up to i think 12
500 feet and the total descent should be about 10 000 feet over the day all downhill all
downhill so it's not too much work for me yeah we're feeling honestly a little bit jaded and
sick and when i was and we just kind of thought okay let's just do it while we're here
yeah you don't want to let these things go by so rob already gave us a solid recommendation
for this company this activity and now it's our turn to try the death road the last one downside
thank you
it's really really cold it's colder than i thought so i'm really glad they gave us all this gear
here we go
to get to the death road we're actually going to take the new road for a little while
and then we're going to start on the old dirt road but this road has cars on it so it does
make it a little bit more dangerous and this is 14 600 feet elevation we're going all the way down
oh
okay here we go on the death road party
you guys check this out this is the death road part you can see it winding over here and this
pretty straight down not super safe but definitely some adrenaline
a simple question
just for motivation
so we've already came down this whole part here down here down here
and this is the steepest cliff there goes emily that's gnarly apparently 400 meters
straight down this is the deadliest part of the road
questions
look at this corner
well we took our own little break here to see the view behind us i have had so much more fun than i
thought i would i thought i would be super scared the whole time i mean it's called death road
i've had a lot a lot of fun and it's not a lot of exercise so it's a really good transition
from being in a hospital bed to being active i feel very good yes since it's all downhill it
just feels like you're taking a nice easy bike ride yeah and the brakes are excellent oh so
you can just kind of go at your own pace yeah and with our group there's been some fast people ahead
and some slow people behind so we can just kind of do whatever the hell we want yeah
we've been so nice just in the middle so it's nothing minor but it's nothing
insane either you can really go at your own pace and yeah just a beautiful day i'm so
glad we did this i'm glad you know we did the local thing that's always the right thing to do
yeah like when we were back in peru and we thought oh should we just go to bolivia or
should we go back to austin gate or even the amazon yeah i'm really glad i just stopped
whenever we change plans just to do what's around that's the best way to van yeah
your chain fell off oops don't forget that bike patched up quick
a little bit easier than on a bmx when you have a derailleur you can just pull to the side
gives you a ton of slack in the chains to toss it on whoa this person hard
now we've come down so far that we're hearing tropical birds there's banana trees
it's just really nice to be warm after being up in la paz for two
weeks and being super cold bus is so far behind us i gotta keep wearing this oh wow
all done with the biking part of the death road we did it safe and sound wow so whenever
i read online that we would be going to an animal refuge i was a little nervous because sometimes
you know they aren't very fair to the animals but this place is so great i'm so happy we came
i love your hair are you serious i've never seen it these animals were victims
of trafficking they were found in an airport trying to be smuggled out of bolivia or in
homes as pet bolivia does not let trafficked animals back into the wild so these animals
will live out their days in a low stress environment with a lot of room to explore
oh my gosh
it's pretty obvious that everyone cares for these animals i'm glad we did the extra tour to go and
see the bears and the big cats because it's so hard to see them in the wild and
she was rescued from the black market in la pasi after the bike ride they take you here to this
reserve where they saved all these animals from trafficking from people who had him
as illegal pets from black markets it's really nice place here it's the humans in the cage here
the animals go where they please at least for the non-jaguars what's your step
2010 i was working another company and yeah i remember it was a group of four people
it was three guys from poland and one israeli girl and at some point where we had the sandwich
actually in the waterfalls yeah we got there and the girl just never showed up we drove up
to see if we could find her i remember it was a very super cloudy day visibility was terrible so
we couldn't see but she was she was off the cliff until i finally saw a couple of marks on the like
on the edge and the third couple of the stones that were recently moved and that was the only
clue we had because you fell on a spot that nobody could see and it was so dense visibility it's so
bad that it would have been very hard to to see somebody going off the edge actually i was in
that company and i was also kind of inexperienced so i i climbed down with no ropes and nothing but
the main thing at that point was try to save her right when i finally hit the bottom which was 100
meters more or less or a little more yeah i got there and she she was already gone by the time i
i phoned her maybe the darkest day i had just very traumatic so i decided to stop doing this
because i didn't know i didn't want to be on the road again but yeah after some time i don't know
things come down and i decided to start guiding again but you've had like thousands of rides that
went completely fine and yeah yeah that's that's why after like 15 years we're still doing this you
know it's yeah it's such a such a cool thing to do and in this pandemic we we had to find
different jobs and different things they are not as nearly as fun as these we missed it a lot so
time to head back to the van after an awesome day
thanks to our french traveler friends for watching some pretend grim for us
morning guys man that death road was sweet we had some good sleep last night and now we're planning
to head out of la paz really excited to see what's ahead a little bit more bolivia but even more
excited for chile and ski season we're going to go to santiago de skile we got to run the gauntlet
of coal on the way there is the salt flats and the temperatures get down to about 15 degrees at night
we've already been super cold here in la paz for two weeks right now i have you know tons of coats
on i even have the hot water bottle inside there we have this really sweet gasoline-powered heater
but it doesn't work at high elevation and this is twelve thousand feet as is the salar del uni
the biggest salt flats in the world i'm gonna have to do a little van project before we get
on the road if temperatures are gonna get that low our water system freezes up i have this uh
pretty cool stuff called 12 volt self regulating heat tape it's basically like a cable i removed
it because we haven't used it forever we don't have that many fuses but it's time to reinstall
so basically i have to put that cable from the water tank exit to the sink with some zip ties
to hold it there and then connect the electrical there's still a switch underneath the sink
that used to be for it it's not a hard project but with any electrical you just really got to
concentrate and do it right got all the tools out we'll need check this out this cable here
is the self-regulating heat tape one end is just terminated i'll put some extra electrical there
this one has the terminal on it that i did a long time ago so that exposes the electrical pretty
easy so go to a positive and negative put a switch on it look at the zip size here all my electrical
things for stripping cable uh extra cable we might need the multimeter it's nice that our van
has two side doors basically this is the faucet so we're gonna run the heat tape from there over here
to the pump down the line that goes to the tank and then for the electrical here's the
wires ready to connect to and these two go to the switch i got up there
so it should be pretty easy but you never know so on the inside here i'll remove this
gray water tank here's where the water tank exit is and we'll run this heat tape up here
and up to the faucet and then the last piece to the puzzle is the van's electrical system
so since the electrical's here that's why we put all the outlets here just makes it easy up
through the wall goes to the solar panels through the back it goes to the batteries in the inverter
but we do have the remote switch for the inverter here and a bluetooth thing to just check it
without having to open this there's the fuse box there no fuse in this one so i believe it's that
and i can see from the cable comes out here is labeled and that sticker verifies that that is
the cable so we're gonna be good i'll just have to look up what size fuse it was again
we got plenty of those so that cable there runs behind the fridge under there
we cut a special channel in the back there and comes out over here so before i go all
the trouble of installing this i'm just testing it out kind of and i feel this getting hot so
let's check the fuse make sure it's not burned out 100 sweet so the heat tape's still working
so here at this end you can kind of see how it works there's this outer sheath here that heats up
and then the inner cables carry the electricity if one portion of it's already warmed up
then it won't heat that area and it moves on to the next so that's the self-regulating part of the
self-regulating heat tape pretty fancy stuff and the amount of amps it draws depends on the length
here it's pretty short section so it doesn't use a ton of power okay so it's probably been an hour
since i took the last clip check this out so here we got the heat tape nice and zip tied to the line
up here around the pump you can see the heat tape goes around the pump keep that nice and warm
comes connected to the line here winds around with it here's the end of it which i'll secure up here
here's the cables for the vans electrical this is nothing's live right now here
but on the positive side i'll run it to this switch here which is up there easy to hit
and that will go to the other side of this time to do a bunch of wiring to make all those connections
i use these kind of things put the two cables together nice twisted and then you twist this
on the end and put electrical tape around it of course we want to insulate the exposed these
cables are looking a bit haggard so i'm going to cut off the ends and strip it back to get really
nice conductor show you what that looks like so here you see this one's already been used so i'm
going to cut it here and take off this part here you see i've already cut off the end time to strip
this off and this is the tool you used to do that so here you cut off the end and then depending on
what gauge or thickness of wire i got plenty of extra cable here if i mess up this is how you
want to see them nice and clean none got cut as i was stripping them split these into two put that
into two braid them and then braid everything together cap it electrical tape it that's a
wrap you can see got the fire extinguisher just in case here but this heat tape is feeling nice
and warm it really warms up good and it stops using power when it's warm really fancy stuff
tape with the zip ties runs up there comes over here around here and then up here got the
electrical connections the positive side goes over there to the switch everything's nice and cable
tied up to keep it from moving as we go on these crazy roads got the electrical tape on all the
the caps to extra insulate that so that's really awesome that we don't have to run the heater
constantly to keep the water system from freezing but that will be the next step of ski season
winterization getting this heater working again once we get all that done we're ski season
ready since we've been getting sick we cleaned out the whole water system recently
put some stuff used for cleaning vegetables in the water tank ran it through the system
kept having put fresh water to to get that all cleaned out end of an
era here we're leaving lapaz we're heading out and going on a nice long road trip well quite
a few hours now we're excited to keep moving on i'm excited to keep getting better along the way
thanks so much for joining us on this epic adventure please share this video if you
enjoyed it we have a patreon if you'd like to support us a little more see you guys next time
you