Mountain Biking on the World's most Dangerous Road

I've heard quiet a bit about this journey since I've arrived in South America, and since I love to ride, I thought that I'd give it a go. I haven't done any mountain biking before, but surely it has to be pretty similar to road...yeah right.
We left La Paz at 7.30am and headed up to La Cumbre, which is about 1 1/2 hr away from La Paz, and is 4700m above sea level. After getting all our gear prepared and the bikes sorted we were ready to go by about 10pm. The first section was fairly straight forward, we had to travel a few kms to get to the hairy bit, this was on a sealed road that you not use to see in Bolivia. So I managed to built up some serious speed by getting into a crouching position.
Everything was going swimmingly until we reached a small section where the sealed road turned into gravel, and this is where I did my best somersault in years. Actually it wasn't that dramatic, but I did come off at a fair whack, and wasn't feeling the best for awhile after. Actually about a minute after it happen, my eyes when all funny and it felt like I was looking through broken glass. Thank god it only lasted for about 10 minutes, because it really was freaking me out! After this will had a few uphill moments to test our fitness, but the real fun was just around the corner.
The North Yungas Road is named the World most Dangerous Road due to the 100s of people that use to die each year on the road, it isn't used as much by vehicles anymore due to a new road being built. It still has fatalities, but this is reserved by Mountain bikers now, I think about 11 people have died over the last 10 years, and some poor Israeli lost their life in March this year.
I'm actually surprised more people haven't kicked the bucket, because it really is a bloody scary experience. The 64km ride has so many parts where less than a metre to the left you have a 100m drop. The road isn't sealed either, it's made up of lots of rocks, so your bouncing up all over the place. I think I was a bit shaking from the earlier experience, a fall here could of meant much more than a few scratches.
Anyway looking back on it it was a fun experience, but it was great to get to the end without more bruises to the body.