October 4
Our two nice senoras fed us a lovely breakfast and we were out of no-mans-land by 9 am. The road to La Paz (Bolivia’s capital) was straight and fast. About 30 km outside La Paz the garbage started, and it was steady and excessive for the entire 30 km. I couldn’t help but think of Northern Peru. It's a desert here, and to my ecological knowledge, the planet would be OK without desert. i.e., I know “its all connected”, but unlike rain forests or marine algae, the planet doesn’t depend on desert ecosystems. And maybe the people here, with their deep and ancient knowledge, know this about the Earth. And if it doesn’t rain/wash stuff to ocean and the wind blows west to east/never pushing stuff to the ocean, maybe it doesn’t actually matter that this is where they put their trash…
La Paz. It is not peaceful (paz means peace). Without contest, La Paz is the worst air conditions we have encountered. The pollution that came from most trucks and buses was opaque. I didn’t know exhaust could be opaque. On our way into La Paz we pulled over to take a picture of the road into La Paz, and we both thought the layer of haze was natural or temperature driven, not due to pollution. We we were wrong. At one point Ernesto said he really wished he had a video of this one particular pass of me riding past a bus… covered in black exhaust.
After La Paz we had about 200 km of high desert. Bunch grasses, Bolivian women with their sheep, and roadkill perros. One hypothesis is that there really are more perros and dead perros here than since we entered Mexico. The other and more likely hypothesis is that the decomposition of animals in the cold and dry is very slow, so we are seeing years of perros...
We arrived to Oruro and had our hotel route memorized. Unfortunately a major road we wanted to use was completely dug up/impassible, so we improvised. I love flat cities without steep intersections. Upon arriving to our hotel (which advertised a garage), we were to park in the lobby. The little man goes and gets planks. Here we go again, more opportunities to fuck up… But as is with 99% of the time, siga si claro bueno ok. Our bikes are in the lobby.
I have been thoroughly enjoying a new-to-me snack. It's a corn kernel that has the taste and light texture of popped corn but the appearance and shape of unpopped corn. How do they do that? There is a good chance I’m buying and eating chicken food and not human food, but it is very good. Hopefully it is available in Argentina so I can fill a side case with the stuff and bring it back to Portland.
In our winding down, we read this about Darwin. “This fox, peculiar to the island and rare in it.” So fox is rare and endemic, got it. Then he writes, “it is more curious but less wise than his brethren… I have knocked him on the head with my geological hammer. It is now mounted at the museum of the Zoological Society.”
October 5
Beautiful and happy day. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful stretch of road through any type of desert. It is called the “Altiplano” (for high plain). After some research we have learned it is the widest part of the Andes and the second largest altiplano outside of Tibet. The first 100 km was very flat and nothing particularly special. But it wasn’t very cold, and we had blue sky and bright sun and good tarmac. Then we hit Challapata, where one can either ride directly south to Uyuni or head SE to Potosi and then SW to Uyuni. After our stadium snack break, we choose Potosi. It was a stunning 200 km ride. In addition to the usual red and brown shades of desert rocks we saw hues of yellow, orange, green, purple, blue-gray. And not only that, but we saw them in vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, pebbles, boulders, or just patches of colorful dirt and dust. I am surprised this area isn’t referred to as something that has “rainbow” in the title. There wasn’t much for wildlife (other than herds and herds of alpacas!), but the landscape and topography and geology (which I didn’t understand) more than made up for it. In addition to sand and salt we had cliffs, caves, canyons, and peaks. On one range there were peaks on top and then the lower half looked like waves; multicolored layers of rock that had been compressed laterally, giving the appearance of waving up and down over the base of the mountain. Another stretch had a small cliff off to our right that alternated between the green and purple shades of rock, very powdery or calcium or silica looking. And the most bizarre was this layered rock that I think was then flipped 90 degrees to be vertical and then somehow squished into a circle with a cave in the middle. Kristin - I’ll draw it for you and you can explain it to me. There were a few good places to pull over so we did, and we are pretty sure all of the other adventure riders we met on the Stahlratte or going to take the same pictures we did today. Ha!
We got our first gas in Bolivia today (actually we got gas both this morning and this afternoon), and it all went smoothly. Yes! More proof of hyped up internet rubbish… Bolivia subsidizes its gas, but not for foreigners. So locals pay one price, and non-Bolivians pay another. This is totally understandable and swell, but we had read many stories that this system has led to laziness and/or corruption. Because gas pumps aren’t equipped to handle a two priced system, either the gas station has to have a “system” for easily allowing the gas attendants to do their thing or the attendant has to be willing to go the extra mile to do the paperwork for you to get gas. There are video cameras at gas stations (because the government is funding them), so at stations without permanent systems in check, often times the gas attendant doesn’t want to deal with it and just sends non-Bolivians away. Luckily there have been many gas options in the towns we were in last night and tonight, so we chose some large and fancy ones, hoping they would be stations with built in “systems” for selling gas to non-Bolivians. And indeed they were! We had to provide our passports and they took down our plate numbers and entered quite a bit of items into their computer system. Amazing.
Potosi isn’t a gringo town, but it has gringo bits sparkling all around it. Still, we both heart it. It is clean, friendly, cobblestoned. Churches and plazas - stadiums and universities. It is a charming and welcoming and tranquilo place. It is not on any type of grid system, so despite the map I memorized in my head, we made a wrong turn and it was a doozy! We went the wrong way on a very narrow one way street; so narrow even a moto and car couldn’t pass. It was so steep that we couldn’t do a u-turn until a taxi moved. The whole scene probably lasted 20 minutes, which is a long time when we were blocking all traffic ha ha! Perhaps that was payback for the border crossing…
We arrive at our hotel, which as always, was chosen based on three factors: parking, price, and location. They advertised parking, but no. Motos go in lobby. That probably took an hour of more chances to fuck up. Since Ernesto and I are well versed in “si siga claro no problemo” we knew what to look out for. We had them rig up a few small ramps and made them wait to take off our side cases so we could fit through the doors more easily. Eventually, yes, all is “si siga claro no problemo”.
With an expensive town ahead, we hit the grocery store here in Potosi. We had to check our empty reusable Walmart bag upon entry. The policeman made us put it in a locker. Hilarious. In addition to some sundries, we bought some more of the beer we had at dinner - Potosina. It is locally brewed and the brewery is the highest in the world. Elevation must not mean much for brewing, because it takes just like every other pilsener we have had since leaving our flavorful friend Tecate in Mexico. Talk about perspective...
Our two nice senoras fed us a lovely breakfast and we were out of no-mans-land by 9 am. The road to La Paz (Bolivia’s capital) was straight and fast. About 30 km outside La Paz the garbage started, and it was steady and excessive for the entire 30 km. I couldn’t help but think of Northern Peru. It's a desert here, and to my ecological knowledge, the planet would be OK without desert. i.e., I know “its all connected”, but unlike rain forests or marine algae, the planet doesn’t depend on desert ecosystems. And maybe the people here, with their deep and ancient knowledge, know this about the Earth. And if it doesn’t rain/wash stuff to ocean and the wind blows west to east/never pushing stuff to the ocean, maybe it doesn’t actually matter that this is where they put their trash…
La Paz. It is not peaceful (paz means peace). Without contest, La Paz is the worst air conditions we have encountered. The pollution that came from most trucks and buses was opaque. I didn’t know exhaust could be opaque. On our way into La Paz we pulled over to take a picture of the road into La Paz, and we both thought the layer of haze was natural or temperature driven, not due to pollution. We we were wrong. At one point Ernesto said he really wished he had a video of this one particular pass of me riding past a bus… covered in black exhaust.
After La Paz we had about 200 km of high desert. Bunch grasses, Bolivian women with their sheep, and roadkill perros. One hypothesis is that there really are more perros and dead perros here than since we entered Mexico. The other and more likely hypothesis is that the decomposition of animals in the cold and dry is very slow, so we are seeing years of perros...
We arrived to Oruro and had our hotel route memorized. Unfortunately a major road we wanted to use was completely dug up/impassible, so we improvised. I love flat cities without steep intersections. Upon arriving to our hotel (which advertised a garage), we were to park in the lobby. The little man goes and gets planks. Here we go again, more opportunities to fuck up… But as is with 99% of the time, siga si claro bueno ok. Our bikes are in the lobby.
I have been thoroughly enjoying a new-to-me snack. It's a corn kernel that has the taste and light texture of popped corn but the appearance and shape of unpopped corn. How do they do that? There is a good chance I’m buying and eating chicken food and not human food, but it is very good. Hopefully it is available in Argentina so I can fill a side case with the stuff and bring it back to Portland.
In our winding down, we read this about Darwin. “This fox, peculiar to the island and rare in it.” So fox is rare and endemic, got it. Then he writes, “it is more curious but less wise than his brethren… I have knocked him on the head with my geological hammer. It is now mounted at the museum of the Zoological Society.”
October 5
Beautiful and happy day. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful stretch of road through any type of desert. It is called the “Altiplano” (for high plain). After some research we have learned it is the widest part of the Andes and the second largest altiplano outside of Tibet. The first 100 km was very flat and nothing particularly special. But it wasn’t very cold, and we had blue sky and bright sun and good tarmac. Then we hit Challapata, where one can either ride directly south to Uyuni or head SE to Potosi and then SW to Uyuni. After our stadium snack break, we choose Potosi. It was a stunning 200 km ride. In addition to the usual red and brown shades of desert rocks we saw hues of yellow, orange, green, purple, blue-gray. And not only that, but we saw them in vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, pebbles, boulders, or just patches of colorful dirt and dust. I am surprised this area isn’t referred to as something that has “rainbow” in the title. There wasn’t much for wildlife (other than herds and herds of alpacas!), but the landscape and topography and geology (which I didn’t understand) more than made up for it. In addition to sand and salt we had cliffs, caves, canyons, and peaks. On one range there were peaks on top and then the lower half looked like waves; multicolored layers of rock that had been compressed laterally, giving the appearance of waving up and down over the base of the mountain. Another stretch had a small cliff off to our right that alternated between the green and purple shades of rock, very powdery or calcium or silica looking. And the most bizarre was this layered rock that I think was then flipped 90 degrees to be vertical and then somehow squished into a circle with a cave in the middle. Kristin - I’ll draw it for you and you can explain it to me. There were a few good places to pull over so we did, and we are pretty sure all of the other adventure riders we met on the Stahlratte or going to take the same pictures we did today. Ha!
We got our first gas in Bolivia today (actually we got gas both this morning and this afternoon), and it all went smoothly. Yes! More proof of hyped up internet rubbish… Bolivia subsidizes its gas, but not for foreigners. So locals pay one price, and non-Bolivians pay another. This is totally understandable and swell, but we had read many stories that this system has led to laziness and/or corruption. Because gas pumps aren’t equipped to handle a two priced system, either the gas station has to have a “system” for easily allowing the gas attendants to do their thing or the attendant has to be willing to go the extra mile to do the paperwork for you to get gas. There are video cameras at gas stations (because the government is funding them), so at stations without permanent systems in check, often times the gas attendant doesn’t want to deal with it and just sends non-Bolivians away. Luckily there have been many gas options in the towns we were in last night and tonight, so we chose some large and fancy ones, hoping they would be stations with built in “systems” for selling gas to non-Bolivians. And indeed they were! We had to provide our passports and they took down our plate numbers and entered quite a bit of items into their computer system. Amazing.
Potosi isn’t a gringo town, but it has gringo bits sparkling all around it. Still, we both heart it. It is clean, friendly, cobblestoned. Churches and plazas - stadiums and universities. It is a charming and welcoming and tranquilo place. It is not on any type of grid system, so despite the map I memorized in my head, we made a wrong turn and it was a doozy! We went the wrong way on a very narrow one way street; so narrow even a moto and car couldn’t pass. It was so steep that we couldn’t do a u-turn until a taxi moved. The whole scene probably lasted 20 minutes, which is a long time when we were blocking all traffic ha ha! Perhaps that was payback for the border crossing…
We arrive at our hotel, which as always, was chosen based on three factors: parking, price, and location. They advertised parking, but no. Motos go in lobby. That probably took an hour of more chances to fuck up. Since Ernesto and I are well versed in “si siga claro no problemo” we knew what to look out for. We had them rig up a few small ramps and made them wait to take off our side cases so we could fit through the doors more easily. Eventually, yes, all is “si siga claro no problemo”.
With an expensive town ahead, we hit the grocery store here in Potosi. We had to check our empty reusable Walmart bag upon entry. The policeman made us put it in a locker. Hilarious. In addition to some sundries, we bought some more of the beer we had at dinner - Potosina. It is locally brewed and the brewery is the highest in the world. Elevation must not mean much for brewing, because it takes just like every other pilsener we have had since leaving our flavorful friend Tecate in Mexico. Talk about perspective...