The Bolivian altiplano Altiplano
This is the altiplano! You won’t drop below 4000 m. It’s cold and the wind dehydrates the skin of my face. It looks like parchment and I definately can use the baby cream in my toilet bag. I pass the Laguna Verde and I am so impressed by the breathtaking view. Flamingos over the water and volcanos in the background. This is jaw dropping! These are the most spectacular view I have seen so far.
The road is in a terrible condition. It consists of totally ruined washboard piste. You either ride it very slow or very fast. Something in between is just not bearable. I choose the fast approach and the bike is shaken pretty well. This is not very good for the equipment and I am afraid my laptop will be ruined. A bit further down the road, a 4×4 is stranded with an engine breakdown so I stop. ‘Tu ne vas pas me dire que t’es belge toi?’ a guy says to me as he opens the window. Guillaume, Isabelle, Valerie en Yanika are a jolly bunch of people from Belgium, France and Holland that I will encounter again and again further up the road the next days. I further continue until Laguna Colorada and I know I can spend the night here somewhere, but I choose the wrong side of the laguna and again I have to pay. This time for the access to the nature reserve. Again without any receipt of course… It is getting dark already and menacing clouds are hanging over the other side of the laguna. All of a sudden I barely see where I ride. Tons of snow come falling out of the sky and there’s a pretty violent wind as well. The road conditions are getting worse. I take off my goggles and continue at a slow pace. Where the hell are these hostals?!!! I can’t see ANYTHING anymore and I am fucking FREEZING! I start panicking because if I have to spend half an hour more in these conditions they will probably find me tomorrow morning, frozen on my bike under a pile of snow. And then finally, a remote light! It seems I have passed two hostals just like that without even noticing them and that this was my last chance. Quite some backpackers spend the night here and it’s all nice and cosy. But the food is crap and the sanitary installations are horror!
The next day brings a clear blue sky and the sunrise above Laguna Colorada is magnificent. I’m on the road for only 10 minutes as my first tyre puncture is a fact. The jolly group of people I met the day before cross my path and help me repair the tyre. Guillaume is also a biking die hard and my trip seems to be his ultimate dream. Back on the road now, off to the mandatory stop at the Arbol de Piedra (the stone tree) and I meet a nice hurd of vecunias.
A bit further a great group of french tourists offer me free food and drinks. They don’t believe that I have done a stretch of difficult piste without even putting a foot down. They had stopped, let all the passengers out of the car and only the driver went down at a very slow pace. I spend the night in a salt hotel in San Juan and play a well aroused game of yathsee with a couple of Dutchmen, an Argentinan guy and two French. It’s going to be a cosy night.
Salar de Uyuni, Potosi and Sucre
There I meet Pjotr, a Polish guy who once started his trip on a pushbike and was riding a KLR now, allbeit with a complete pushbike on the back! How crazy can one be! But he’s a great guy and we decide to ride together for a while. First till the impressive train cemetary of Uyuni and then through to Potosi and Sucre. Potosi is very nice and you meet lots of interesting people. You never feel on your own and the food is relatively(!) good too. Against the advice of many locals, we decide to ride to the Potosi mine. Everyone tells us it is impossible to visit the mine without an organised trip, but we are able to find our guide there and he shows us around in the afternoon at a fraction of the official price. The mine is impressive but the story behind it is all it is about: 13 year old kids work there and from the moment one starts working in the mine it takes about 15 years before one gets silicosis. This is horrible… All of a sudden I don’t feel too well anymore. Bolivian reality that’s called…
I head for Sucre now and the piste is fast and great fun. I do a bit of sand riding along the road and then Pjotr and I enter the white colonial town. There’s some nice company and it’s going to be a nice and boozy night.
Struggling and pain
I leave Sucre without Pjotr as his travelers rhytm is a bit different than mine. He decides to stay in Sucre for a whole week, while I want to go to Samaipata. Luckiliy for him he did’t follow me because the roads appear to be even worse than the Altiplano. It has rained a whole lot, the tracks are muddy and the rivers water levels are high. Some parts of the roads are just washed away. What seemed a day ride on the map, appears to be a two day trip due to the numerous curves and the bad road conditions. This is hard work at times. I spend the night in a public telephone house for about 40 eurocents, meal included. The name of the place says it all: Nuevo Mundo…or NOT 🙂
Cochabamba and La Paz
The first section of the road is sealed and I regularly scrape my footpegs. Later on, there’s a whole stretch of fast gravel. Standing up the pegs still hurts but it’s a great ride. A bit of drifting in the curves and pretty fast over the straight gravel. Lovely! The three flats along the road cannot spoil all that fun and a nice music in my ears makes it all a bit more digestible. I am getting good at this. Two short tyre levers and the tyre is off and back on in no time. My inner tube looks like a huge patchwork now but in Cochabamba I find a ‘made in China’ inner tube of almost the right size. It’s still going strong at this very moment :-). My rear tyre is totally worn and torn to pieces now but there should be some fresh rubber waiting for me in La Paz…
I get a taste of Cochabambas night life and pretty drunk I sleep till late in the morning. I go visit the lively and colourful market which is a must see, and by noon my steel horse and me are heading to La Paz, the city all travelers are talking about. It should be a four hour ride but I am slowed down by a bunch of agressive drunk Bolivianos and somemore tyre punctures. The ride finally takes about 8 hours in the freezing cold, but the curves are really nice! As I enter the courtyard of the hotel in La Paz, an English girl named Sarah says hello: ‘Hey man you look shit! Do you want a vodka?’ I don’t refuse and what should have been an early sleep turns out to be a pretty messy night in La Paz. I meet a whole lot of nice people.
I just go shopping for some sillicone to repair my panniers and for full synthetic oil, which I was unable to find in Cochabamba. The tyres arrive three days late but then I choose direction north with some nice, fresh rubber around my rims. Cocafields, here I come!