This wide, paved road winds into the interior toward the peak of Cerro Ricco, visible in the distance.
The road is approximately 10 miles long, and often runs a 7% grade, reaching 10% in some places, rising 3500 feet into the central mountains. It's generally quite broad, twenty feet at it's narrowest, and well banked and drained. Clearly someone has invested a lot of effort in this roadway.
The first section of five miles or so is heavily jungled, and after five years of lack of maintenance the jungle is beginning to reclaim the roadway. However as the road gains in elevation it crosses into an old lava flow and the landscape becomes a boulder field. The road crosses the lava flow westward for three miles or so and then turns north toward the mountain. Despite leaving the lava flow, the rain-shadow of the mountain makes this region almost desert, sporting little vegetation other then hardy bushes and patches of tough grass