Bolivia

The border crossing from Peru into Bolivia was painless, but once again we had a small wait while the Peruvian customs guy had his lunch. Iain went to check a few times and each time just got the look. In the end all the customs guy did was take the bike importation papers from Iain and waved him on, so no idea what all the fuss was about.

The ride to the border was along the shores of Lake Titicaca; it was stunning. We had stopped on the brow of a hill to take some photos when over the brow came a lone cyclist. Rob, a Londoner, had left London over two years ago and had ridden from London to Australia, and was now riding from Ushuaia at the bottom of Argentina North, maybe all the way to the top of Alaska.

Our first night in Bolivia was in the small town of Copacabana, just 8km from the border and right on the shore. We had a lovely room with a view of the town and lake for only $25, with parking and breakfast.

We were now 3,800m above sea level, having been at high altitude for well over a week now, but still even walking up the smallest inclines raised our heart rate, sleeping without waking up gasping was still an issue and we both seemed to have a constantly dry nose.

I had a bright idea that we should walk up the hill overlooking the town and the lake for the views. It was a steep climb that was to take us up to 4,000m. Iain seemed to skip up, while I huffed and puffed my way up, with lots of rest, how had I managed high altitude walking in the past? The view at the top was worth it, the lake is enormous, and more like an inland ocean than a lake, it is so wide at some points you can’t see the other side.

The next stop was to be La Paz, which at 3,600m is the highest capital city in the world. But first we had a lake crossing by boat, after spending an hour sweeping along a peninsula that almost splits the lake into two, all but an 800m strait. Wooden barges ferry buses, cars and people across the strait. The bike was crammed onto a small barge with two mini-buses, leaving the back wheel precariously close to the edge.

On the way to La Paz you first pass through the new city of El Alto which sits on the ring of mountains around the capital. It was a shock – the exhaust fumes were horrible and navigating the bike through what seemed like thousands of mini-buses was a challenge, especially with people dashing across the road in front of us. La Paz itself sits at the bottom of a steep canyon and is ringed by snow-capped mountains; it is a stunning sight, but that’s about it. With the fumes and the high altitude it makes you feel pretty rubbish. Oh, and then there was the woman who lifted her skirt, squatted and had a poo on the pavement outside our hotel. The only redeeming feature was the awesome curry at The Star of India restaurant.

Our departure from La Paz was made difficult by a street market that sprang up outside our hotel on the morning we chose to leave. Lots of Bolivian women wearing traditional hats and seemingly compulsory aprons were selling fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of the street.

The main trip we wanted to do in Bolivia was onto the Salar de Uyuni, the largest and highest salt lake in the world. We had three days of riding to get there. La Paz to Oruro, Oruro to Puno and Puno to Uyuni. Luckily the first two days were paved, the second day a lovely new road. We have found through most of the journey that roads are constantly being upgraded. We were high now, always above 3,500m and some passes up over 4,500m. The trip to Potosi had us on a high altiplano, life is certainly tough up there, I have no idea where they got their water. It was really sad to see very young children on the side of the road with their hands out begging for money as they saw us coming. Sometimes the young boys would pick up a stone and aim for us as we rode past.

Potosi is the highest city of its size in the world, at 4,090m. It leaves you breathless! It took us over an hour to get out of Potosi the following morning, with locals sending us across the city several times looking for the road to Uyuni. Finally we were heading in the right direction, but unlike most other cities there was no fuel on the outskirts, petrol stations were still being built. So it was back into the centre, and out the other side as the central petrol station was being re-fuelled.

My nerves were frazzled; I could feel a squawk coming on, a pretty decent one exacerbated by surging hormones. We were laughing and joking an hour later when I had to find a rock to hide behind for a wee. We had 200km of a mixture of paved and unpaved roads ahead of us. It was another stunning ride, passing plains full of hundreds of llamas. Coming over the ridge of the last hill before descending down into Uyuni we had a fabulous view out across the salt flats, coloured orange and brown in the late afternoon light.

Uyuni itself is nothing special, formerly an important railway junction but now existing mainly to service tourists wanting to visit the salt flats. We now had the task of finding ourselves a tour. After going around in circles trying to decide on a one, two or three day tour, we opted for just a day on the salt flats. For us, riding the bike is our adventure; we didn’t need over 1,000km in a jeep.It rained hard that night – I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to go. But hey it is the rainy season, and you just have to take what you can get.

Luckily it wasn’t too much rain. The experience was fantastic – new for Iain and different for me. In the dry season the bright blue skies contrast with the blinding white salt crust, but in the wet season it is covered with a thin sheet of water that has reflections of the sky. It was very surreal, as you cannot really distinguish the ground form the sky.

From Uyuni we had our longest unpaved journey of over 200km to Tupiza, before heading the following day to the border with Argentina, land of steaks and red wine. So, fully laden and ready to go we headed to the gas station, only to see that re-fuelling of the tanks was taking place. So we headed to the other station, again no gasoline for at least an hour. We backtracked because at least the first one was in the process of re-fuelling, but no, it was going to take at least another two hours. We had enough petrol for at least 100km. Iain asked around if the next town, 100km away, had petrol, yes we were told, about 2km the other side. We didn’t want to be caught out, so we sought a couple of confirmations to be on the safe side.

The ride was so much fun, if there had been much more rain in the preceding days I would have probably thought differently, it would have been a very different journey. We had many river crossings; most of them were still dry, one with deep water. Iain wanted me to walk across so he could see how deep it was, I declined, told him to go for it, while I walked up to the railway tracks and walked across the nearby railway bridge. All was fine. There were a couple of muddy sections, nothing some revs didn’t help with.

Finding the petrol was an experience. Now usually you would expect the petrol station to be in or very close to the town. But no, in the end we had to ride up a muddy and sandy river-bed for about 2km. I have no idea how you would get there if it had been raining for a few days. Anyway it was our first sand experience but all went fine. I only got off and walked the last 100m or so.

Back on the road it was a stunning ride with so many different landscapes and sights along the way. From the flat altiplano, to deep gorges, to green valleys, to tree eating goats, llamas with pink bobbles tied to their ears and finally a landscape of colourful eroded mountains and stands of huge cacti. One of the best days of the trip.

A bottle of Bolivian Malbec and a pizza was our final evening meal before the border. Food was not that great in Bolivia, thank goodness for one of life’s staples, the pizza.

After a rather lengthy and arduous border crossing we were into Argentina and greeted by a sign telling us that it was 2,000km to Buenos Aires and over 5,000km to Ushuaia. We had lots of riding still ahead of us.