If I said the word ‘sand’, what types of thoughts does that elicit in you?  Thinking about the beach already, aren’t you.  Sipping a Corona, listening to the waves crash in, drunk on oxygen filling your lungs, sitting there with your girl, both of your toes buried deep in the warm sand.  Normally when I think of sand, that’s what I think of too.

But in southwest Bolivia, sand takes on a different meaning.  It became an obstacle by which a motorbike wheel must be navigated through. It was to be done with no Corona, alone, and while unable to breathe in a frigidity that only 13,000 feet above sea level provides.  Bolivia, you have such a beauty and a harshness with nothing in between.  I don’t know how else to describe you.

Southwest Bolivia has a national park called the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve.  It certainly looks beautiful from the pictures I’ve seen.  Flamingos inhabiting it’s lagoons, natural rock sculptures and picturesque mountains making up the landscape.  I’ve heard it’s impressive.  That said, I’ve also heard that the road that goes through it is very sandy.  This was such a shame, as I have no experience riding motorbikes through sand.  I’d tried to find other people that may be riding through the area, but with no luck.  If I was going to do it, I’d have to do it alone.

The road through the national park reaches altitudes up around 15,000 feet. This seemed a bad place to learn to ride in sand, so I decided against it.  This decision was tough, but was justified by me, to myself, as my reason to come back.  Doing it alone would be too dangerous.  I’m not superman, and dropping this heavy bike on my leg could be a real disaster.  I made the decision against it, and that was final.  But as I sit here three months later and write this, I regret this decision wholeheartedly.

Leaving Uyuni, there were two gravel roads out of town.  They were just a stone’s throw from one of Uyuni’s three gas stations.  I stood there staring at them from the gas pump while a guy at the station filled up my tank and spare gas can.  It truly was a crossroads.  One went to Chile by means of the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, the other to the southern Bolivian town of Tupiza.  Both paths trailed off into the distance much further than than the eye could see.  I wanted to see the national reserve, but instead I took what I thought would be the safe route.

The road through the national reserve to Chile was sandy, I had a lot of good information about that road.  But, I really had no idea what condition the road to Tupiza was in.  My determination that it would be easier and safer was based on looking at a map.  This route was denoted on the map as being the same quality as the nicely paved road that I took from Potosi into Uyuni.  Boy was the map wrong.  This route turned out to have patches of sand strewn throughout it, the longest and muddiest river crossing of the entire trip, and endless miles of washboard bumps in the road, the vibration of which can literally knock your vision out of whack!

The road started out easy enough though, an occasional small sandy patch here and there.  The endless washboard surface was really the only tough thing to deal with.

But about an hour or so after the crossroads, I ran into a sandy patch that took me down.  I must have been asleep at the handlebars, because it was marked with red flags that didn’t catch my attention.

These red flags should have been a red flag

I had the helmet camera operating on the time lapse feature at the time snapping a shot every couple seconds.  So, I can’t forget about this fall.

Here’s a shot of my head on it’s way to the ground.

We were both just vertical a minute ago.  

Falling over in the middle of nowhere really gets the adrenaline pumping.  But even with all the adrenaline going, I didn’t have the strength to pick up the bike by myself at this altitude.  It’s absolutely amazing the way the high altitudes zap your strength.  Fortunately, there were three road workers sitting on the side of the road.  They came over to help me pick it up.

Funny how help shows up when you need it…even when you’re in the middle of nowhere.  Things work out, they always do…you really start to believe it after taking a trip like this.

So we got the machine upright.

Thanks for the help buddy

The bike started back up, so off I went.  There were more sandy patches that were far longer and far worse than this one, but I’d learned my lesson from the fall.  I was on high alert from that point on, spotting the sandy sections well in advance of hitting them, and taking great caution to pass through.  There was an inordinate amount of cursing going on in the helmet, as this road couldn’t have been much worse than the road through the national reserve that I had wanted so badly to take.  When I approached a river crossing that was certainly the deepest, muddiest river crossing of the trip, I nearly blew my lid.  I didn’t stop to find the best place to cross or even to turn on the camera.  Just picked a line, gunned the throttle, and powered though with anger.  Now that I’m sitting at home writing this, it’s easy to say that I should have turned back to Uyuni, spent the night, and taken the road to Chile the next day.  But at the time I was squirreling the bike through that muddy river bed, backtracking didn’t seem like the right thing to do.  Life on the road was wearing me out, and I wanted to go home.

So I rode on and on, admiring the Bolivian countryside

And on and on

Just me and my shadow

Parts of the countryside here had quite a unique look.  Sometimes I was pretty sure a teradactyl was going to swoop down, grab me with its talons, and eat me for dinner.

It was well into the night before I arrived in Tupiza.  The lingering sunset I saw while riding on this road was one of the most interesting I’ve seen in all my life.  There were horizontal layers of white, green and purple.  I really should have stopped for pictures with the good camera, but I didn’t.  The washboard surface continued to be relentless, even as darkness fell around me.  As I got closer to the city of Tupiza, I also had dogs chasing me again.  I never saw any of them in the darkness, but I could hear them barking at my ankles as I rode along.

There’s a few days on this trip I’ll never forget.  This particular day tested me, and will always be burned vividly into my memory.

Half the reason I went on this trip was to see the largest salt flat in the world.  It’s located in Uyuni, Bolivia, and it was definitely on the list.  Please Wikipedia, tell us more:

Salar de Uyuni (or Salar de Tunupa) is the world’s largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq mi). It is located in the Potosi and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, and is at an elevation of 3,656 meters (11,995 ft) above mean sea level. The Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average altitude variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of salt and covers a pool of brine, which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world’s lithium reserves, which is in the process of being extracted. The large area, clear skies and the exceptional flatness of the surface make the Salar an ideal object for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites. The Salar serves as the major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano and is a major breeding ground for several species of pink flamingos. Salar de Uyuni is also a climatological transitional zone, for towering tropical cumulus congestus and cumulus incus clouds that form in the eastern part of the massive salt flat during the summer, cannot permeate beyond the salt flat’s considerably more arid western edges, near the Chilean border and the Atacama Desert.

Is it just me, or is this the neatest thing on earth?  My god, I’m a dork.  Who cares, pulling into town was exciting….really exciting.

The big white nothingness on the right just below the horizon is the Salar

Just like all the Bolivian cities before it, my expectations were completely wrong.  Thinking Uyuni would be a unique tourist town, it turned out to be desolate town with a certain look of abandonment to it.  Had there been any nearby vegetation, there would have been tumbleweeds blowing down the streets.  Instead it was just salty dust blowing around, and rabid dogs chasing me down the street.  And it was damn cold….have I complained about the cold weather in Bolivia lately.

Right after pulling into town, I accidentally found the train graveyard Uyuni is known to have, so pictures were taken

After visiting the train graveyard, I went looking for gasoline but the only station I found had already sold out for the day. Didn’t have enough gas in the tank to drive out to the Salar, so I just found a hotel instead.  Figured I’d find gas in the morning, go out on the Salar, and maybe even camp in the cold.  Instead, a third bout of stomach troubles would plague me here.  Fortunately this was the last round of stomach problems of this trip.

Fast forward a couple days later, it was off to the Salar.  Filled up on gas in the morning before riding 15 miles down a washboard grooved road.  It took a few tries to find a solid track out to the Salar from the main road, but I managed to find one which got me out to the salt flat so as to avoid paying to get through the main entrance.  There were some spots where the bike wanted to sink into the ground, so you’ve got to use some caution.  But once you’re on the nice, smooth, almost crispy salt flat, you can just hit the throttle and go as fast as you’d like.

Been waiting quite awhile to get here

Only stayed in La Paz for one night even though I planned to stay there longer.  I was impressed with how modern parts of the city were.  I really had no idea what to expect, but my expectations were low.  They shouldn’t have been.  Big cities everywhere have any amenity you’re willing to pay for.  I should have already learned that by now.  I wasn’t too sad about leaving La Paz early though. I’d been breathing thin air for quite awhile, and was ready for warmer weather.  Denser air would eventually come in Argentina, but warm weather didn’t arrive til I got home.

From La Paz, it was south to a town called Oruro.  There’s no reason to go to Oruro unless you have to, but mileage-wise it’s a good stopping point after La Paz.  I found a cheap hotel without heat for the night.  Lack of heat in buildings is not uncommon in Bolivia.  Coincidentally, the people of Bolivia (and Peru for that matter) are excellent makers of heavy blankets that will keep you warm in the coldest of temperatures.  And when I say heavy, I mean they weigh a lot.  Laying in bed at night, you feel like you’re in the dentist’s chair getting x-rays with the lead blanket smothering you.

And while Oruro didn’t have much worth mentioning, I was able to find a new gas can in the local market.  This was a big deal as I had been looking to pick up a gas can ever since Ecuador.  People in hardware stores look at you like you have two heads when you ask them for a gas can.  Gas cans get classified as a ‘plastic goods’ item in South America.  They’re not something you’d find in a hardware store.  You have to find someone selling all sorts of pastic buckets, containers and the like to have a chance of finding a gas can.  They don’t even sell gas cans at stores that sell chainsaws and weed-eaters….I checked.

Did I mention it’s cold in Bolivia? The 60 mph wind chill you have to endure while riding doesn’t help either.

The cold weather required frequent stops to warm up.  While stopping you can do things like….. take pictures of an occasional lake

Take pictures of passing trucks

Everybody waves

Photos of yourself and llamas is another option

One thing you need to learn quickly while traveling the Bolivian altiplano is this…HEED ALL LLAMA CROSSING SIGNS!

These animals are all over 

After Oruro, I traveled to the city of Potosi which is a little more touristy.  Potosi is also one of the highest cities in the world at 13,420 ft.  It has silver mines to tour, but I didn’t do anything touristy.  I found a cheap hotel with heat in Potosi, and I think I stayed there three nights.  I’d been on the road 5 months at this point.  The length of time on the road, the cold, and the lack of oxygen were definitely starting to wear on me at this point

I was also considering riding some really high altitude, desolate roads in southwest Bolivia, and was researching whether they were too dangerous to do alone.  I had been able to contact a couple other guys motorcycling through Bolivia, and was hoping they were headed to southwest Bolivia as well.

So after Pieterjan and I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, I set off to ride a short 100 miles to La Paz, Bolivia.  Ever since I arrived in the high mountains of Southern Peru, there’s been no need to get started early in the morning anymore.  Being south of the equator, seasons are reversed which means it’s the middle of winter here for most of South America.  Couple that with high altitudes, and you end up with some freezing cold nights and mornings.  Fortunately the sun almost always comes out during the day, and it warms the air into the 50′s or 60’s Fahrenheit.

This would be the last bit of riding I’d do along the banks of Lake Titicaca.  Set in front of snowcapped mountains, the lake took on a different look in Bolivia that was far more scenic than in Peru.  And after stopping on several occasions along the banks of this mighty body of water, I can attest that the best way to look at Lake Titicaca is from a distance.  You couldn’t pay me to drink a thimble full of unfiltered water straight from this pond.

Views were really pretty.  The pictures just don’t do it justice.

On my way to La Paz, not only did I get to drive alongside the lake, but I got to cross a section of it as well.  If you had never learned to swim, you’d think twice before boarding one of the ferries that take you across Lake Titicaca.  These flatboats constructed of rotten wood and powered by 10hp Evinrudes looked like they were constructed 75 years ago.  The ferry’s movement with every little wave inspired no confidence.  In fact, I’d say the hull of the boat I was riding on had more flex than a bodybuilding competition.

Fortunately the car in front of me had just been blessed at the church back in Copacabana, so I knew I’d make it to the other side alive.

Here’s the ferry captain pushing us away from the shore with a big pole.  Nice guy who was more than helpful when I had to back my bike off the ferry, but I doubt he’s ever heard of lifejackets.  Shortly after this picture was taken, he spent 15 minutes getting the boat’s motor started.

Proper footing was very important. I didn’t want to get wet falling into the lower deck of the vessel.  

After the boat ride, it was 70 miles or so before I arrived in La Paz.  But before getting lost in the city, I had my first experience purchasing…or attempting to purchase…Bolivian gasoline.

Bolivia has three prices for gas.  The first is the price for nationals which is by far the cheapest of the three.  The second price is about three times the price of the first, and is levied on any individual driving a vehicle without Bolivian plates.  The third price is only for non-nationals, and is somewhere between what nationals pay and what non-nationals are supposed to pay.  Price #3 is always negotiated with the guy or gal pumping the gas.  They ring up the sale based on the price for nationals, and the pumper gets the difference between the price you pay and the cost for nationals.  Assuming you were smart enough to negotiate a price lower than the price for non-nationals, you pocket difference between the cost for non-nationals and the price you paid the pumper.

The real problem turned out to be honest gas pumpers.  They’re required to fill out additional paperwork when ringing up a sale to a non-national.  More often than not, they refused to sell me gas because they were too lazy to fill out the additional paperwork.  So many times in Bolivia, I was denied gasoline even though I was willing to pay the full price non-national are obligated to pay.

But I eventually made it to La Paz, and I even pulled into town with a full tank of gas.  La Paz sits at an elevation of 12,000 ft which is 600 ft below Copacabana.  It sure was nice to breathe easier.

La Paz.  A city way down in a bowl, surrounded by mountains.

I spent a good deal of time lost and looking for a hotel in La Paz.  When I was stopped on the side of the road looking at maps, a  motorcyclist stopped, asked where I was going, and led me to the hotel I was looking for.  It made my day.