Onwards into cowboy country

The route south from the Salar took me to Uyuni. It's a small touristy town filled with Italian themed restaurants, and little charm or local character. I made a brief stop to get fed and to stock up on supplies. None of the shops sell bread. They all sell Pringles though. The bread sellers come to the market in the evening and I got a big bag of heart shaped bite-sized rolls to supliment my supplies. Suitably stocked up, I set off for Atocha the next morning.

The road to Atocha is very bumpy. There is a secondary road that parallels the worn and bumpy asphalt main road every few km, when the main road gets particularly bumpy. The second road has been created by the trucks and jeeps that have opted to drive on the dry earth at the side of the asphalt. It is much smother than the asphalt, but has deep sandy sections which the bike sinks into and needs some hard pushing to get the 40 odd kilo bulk through. It's a tough choice between the two roads but the sandy option was mostly quicker and I stuck with that for most of the way. There were some very bumpy asphalt sections, with no alternative route through the land to the side, which left the fingers tingling for extended periods.

I camped out on the way to Atocha at around 4,200m. The view over the rolling altiplano there was beautiful and much prefferred to dwelling in the town centre.

After Atocha, Tupiza was the next town south on the map. The route to Tupiza from Atocha started with a cycle along the dry river bed. That was very sandy and tough going. 5km along or so, and the riverbed met with the road to Tupiza and that was refreshingly solid and reasonably smooth. My speed went up from 4km per hour to 12km per hour - not tarmac speed but progress could be felt.

30-10-2010 The sandy scenery on the road to Atocha

31-10-2010 The sandy road that joins the riverbed path to the road to Tupiza

31-10-2010 The solid road to Tupiza

31-10-2010 Sunset at the 4,200m campsite between Uyuni and Atocha



Big, white, salty and behind me

Getting to and from the Bolivian salt flats was remarkably difficult. A broken pannier, sandy paths, bumpy hard-packed soil and stretches of sinusoidal asphalt. Getting accross the 110km of the Salar De Uyuni was remarkably easy. Not just because the amazing views kept my mind on things other than cycling, but the salt flats are not just flat, but also very smooth. The most bumpy parts are those where the ridges that form between the salt plates, when the salt solidifies in the dry season, have not yet been flattened by the passing jeeps. It is a bit like cycling on a pedestrian precinct that has big hexagonal paving stones. The rest of the route is very smooth and a joy to cycle on. Navigating is simple. There is an island near the middle of the salt, Isla Incahuasi, and there are easy to spot tracks from the jeeps that have taken that route since the start of the dry season.

26-10-2010 Starting Out on the Salt Flats

26-10-2010 The view from the edge towards the Isa Incahuasi



26-10-2010 Approaching the Isla Incahuasi

26-10-2010 The view from the island

26-10-2010 Could anything be better than simply sitting down to take in the magnificent view of the Salar? Well...

I stayed at a hotel made from the rough salt which was 10km from the edge of the salt flats that I was due to exit at. For a mere 14 quid I got dinner, a room made of salt, and breakfast. There was no electricity, so candlelight was the source of lumination and a remarkably clear view of the sky was seen with the cloud free night. My one A4 page sky map came out and a few likely suspects were identified on it before it got uncomfortably cold to stay out.

26-10-2010 The Salt Hotel

26-10-2010 Inside the Salt Hotel

I got chatting to the only other resident that evening, a Japanese tourist, over dinner. There were a 10 or so other tourists who turned up in the moring to look at the hotel made of salt and it was then that I started feeling a little bit like a celeb. I´ve had a photo of me taken with each of the tourists after explaining my trip.

Departing Oruro for the second time...nearly....

I visited 7 bus offices today. The main one is easy to find and goes to some big or popular towns and cities including La Paz and Uyuni. There are lots of bus companies however which own just one or two buses and those are the sort of ones which go to Salinas De Garci Mendoza. There is in fact just one company which does that and runs one bus only on some days of the week.

The bus was running today, at 5pm. The sign outside the office said a 6pm departure. Luckily I´d turned up at 4pm to try and secure a ticket for a seat. I was told to come back at 5pm and see if there was one free. So, I dash back to the hotel to get my bike and gear. The bike is in a small garage and there is a 4x4 parked tightly in front of it and I cannot get by. There is a taxi with no driver in it parked against the garage door, so after finding the guy with the 4x4 keys, he cannot reverse out. Time is marching on, so I decide that we need to move the taxi. Luckily he has left his handbrake off, so me and the 4x4 driver give it a push along the street a few metres. That´s when the police turn up. They stop their car and ask us what we are up to. We explain, and they get out and give us a hand pushing it clear. I get on my bike, with my new pannier and whiz to the bus station office. I get there about 4:50 but am told that there is no room for my bike and bags, so I cannot get on. I book a ticket for the next bus, which is not today, nor tomorrow, but Sunday.

Oh well, I have some time to do my blog now...

22-10-2010 The view from the hotel Monarca in Oruro
There are no strict systems here. If you want to set up your market stall on the railway line then that´s perfectly fine. When the train comes along it gives a polite toot and the market trader moves his or her stall enough for it to get by. The same happens on the road. The car horn is not used in anger, a toot-toot is issued some way before a car gets to an obstacle, be it a bike or a blind corner on a single lane road. It looks like  chaos at first, but the low speed and common sense seem to keep the country´s transport system in working order.

The trusty steed´s condition at Oruro

I left Oruro one week ago and attempted to leave again today. In between, I cycled south to Pazna on Lago Poopo, where I sheered one of the rear pannier bolts again. I asked a local guy if there was a mechanic in the village and 5 minutes later I was in a yard with a guy with an arc welder, one hour later I was back on the road with the sheered bolt removed and a spare one that I had with me having secured the pannier back on. A very convenient place to have the bad luck.

15-10-2010 The removed bolt with the welded lever on it.

From there it was on to the brewing town of Huari, which brews some of the best beer in Bolivia. I then turned south west to Tambillo, 10 km from where I broke one of the aluminium forks that holds my rear pannier on. I splinted that with an allen key then Duck-taped it up, which did a good on the go repair. Then on towards Salinas De Garci Mendoza, 15km from where I sheered another one of the bolts that holds the pannier on. I Duck-taped that to the bike frame and carried onwards. The clearance between the rear tyre and the pannier was very narrow and on the very bumpy road the tyre rubbed almost continuously. Slow riding was the only way to go.

16-10-2010 The clearance with the rear pannier Duck taped to the bike frame.

I took the bike to the mechanic at Salinas to see if he could do anything with it, ideally remove the snapped bolt and fix the broken fork. He had an arc welder but the electricity supply to the town, which is normally cut off to the town for a few hours in the afternoon, was off for an extended period - no arc welding could be done without electricity. I waited a day to see if the electricity would come back on and late the next evening it did. I got the bolt removed, but he could do nothing for the snapped fork as it was made of Aluminium and he could not weld that. The splint was put back in and I was wondering whether to continue and attempt the 30 bumpy km to the salt flats and the 110km distance across them.

My decision was made for me. Going through the village of Salinas De Garci Mendoza, the pannier fork on the other side snapped too, and the whole pannier lowered itself onto the back tyre. The bike was going no further.

16-10-2010 The snapped pannier fork.

I asked the village mechanic if he could get a spare pannier or could make one, so that I could get back on my way, but he could not do anything to help. I had to find a new pannier and returning to a decent sized town, Oruru I decided, was the only thing to do. I took the bus there and planned to take the bus back to Salinas to continue my cycle once I had a reliable pannier.

The now broken pannier was bought to carry a day pack on the Bike-Dreams tour with my main gear in the truck. It clearly wasn´t up to the job of carrying the whole lot, maybe 30kg at times. What is needed is something more chunky, and made of steel, so that it can be repaired on the go if need be.

At Oruro, there are 20 bike shops on the same street. That´s how Bolivia works. If you want a haircut, then you need to find the street with all the barber shops on it. All the bus windscreens are sold on another street and all the eggs are sold on another. There are shops with nothing but eggs in them, piled as high as the walls and all organised into sizes and priced accordingly. So, I found the bike shop street. The thing about the 20 shops is that they all sell the same thing, so having been to one and found that the pannier did not fit my bike meant that I had pretty much the same conversation in the next 19.

I found a welder in Oruro and asked him if he would cut and fit a pannier to my bike if I bought the chunkiest one in the shop(s). He agreed, and what I have now is one rather impressive steel pannier. We had to fit it on backwards to fit around the disc brake, cut the rear off it so that it would fit behind the seat post, weld a new bar on it to support it after the cut, and make a custom tube and bolt to attach it to frame below the seat. The steel tubing is so thick that my pannier bags hooks do not fit over it, so there is 1cm thick nylon rope attached to the frame which the pannier hooks click into nicely. How long will it last on the bumpiest roads that I´ve ever been on with a pannier? Fingers crossed...

The rest of the bike is holding up quite well thankfully. Two little problems will require some TLC a little later, but not for now. The first one is the rear disc brake. The disc has got a little out of true with the pannier problem having knocked the wheel off. The rear brake rubs slightly, so I´ll replace that when I get a disc. I left a spare one on the Bike-Dreams truck, so I´ll hopefully swap that out in Argentina. The second issue is the small chain ring. Not an issue just yet, but all those up-hills have meant that it´s got an awful lot of use and being the smallest one, it wears the quickest. The teeth are worn to pointed sharks teeth and although the chain is not slipping yet, I recon I´ll need to replace that in Argentina too. I optimistically took a spare middle chain ring with me and not a spare granny ring. Since getting to Bolivia, getting out of granny has been easy. The Altiplano is high but flat, and the middle and big chain rings are getting the most use now. I´ll need to find a decent bike shop in Argentina to replace the granny ring as there are more hills still to come as I go south.

16-10-2010. The sharks teeth on the granny ring

The bumpiest road

Oruro to Salinas De Garci Mendoza

15-10-2010 The dangers of the Bolivian Altiplano. The main ones that I saw were: running into llamas or rheas, getting sand in your eyes, or shaking your bike apart on the bumpy roads. I guess the sign covers these and more.

16-10-2010 The typical Bolivian scenery near Lago Poopo: Dark brown mountains, dry brown soil, here with some salt as it is in the vicinity of the salt flats, and some very blue skies.

15-10-2010 The lamb kept in the back of the hostal in Pazna

16-10-2010 The train heading north from Argentina to Oruro

17-10-2010 The church in Quillacas

17-10-2010 The river in the dry season

17-10-2010 The new road. Nice to cycle on, no cars and fairly smooth

17-10-2010 Starting to get a little less smooth

17-10-2010 Damn bumpy by now

16-10-2010 Classic cowboy gravestones

18-10-2010 Two rheas that I almost ran over on the road when looking at my rear wheel

17-10-2010 The meteor crater ouside Tambillo

17-10-2010 Whirlwind alley on the road between Huari and Salinas

The small whirlwinds could be seen, and occasionally experienced, all through the day.

17-10-2010 Bed is a straw stuffed fishmeal sack in a shed out the back of a house in Tambillo

18-10-2010 The light and colours approaching the Salar De Uyuni

18-10-2010 Sunset approaching Salinas De Garci Mendoza and the flat Salar De Uyuni in the distance

18-10-2010 Salinas De Garci Mendoza

After stopping for an hour to get a beached pick-up off a rock, I arrived in Salinas in the dark. Where I was staying is on the left and the main street to the centre is on the right.

The dark skies remain

One day gone in Oruro. The camera is not well as expected, so it´s fall back to the mobile phone until the Nikon doctor makes it better.

13-10-2010 The sky above Oruro has water in it and it´s coming down. More scheduled for tomorrow too.

13-10-2010 The view from the hotel in Oruro

I got a 2GB SD card for my phone to store photos until my SLR is fixed. Similar price to Amazon back home, under $10 so fair enough. The two above are the first to go on it.

Lahauchaca

The town of Lahauchaca lies midway between the Bolivian capital of La Paz and the mining town of Oruro to the south. I got there in the afternoon having had to cycle through the bad weather around La Paz in the morning, but the sun had come out in the afternoon and the town was seen at it´s best. Except for the drunk mechanic. I was cycling slowly towards him and my hotel. As I got close he shouted something very profound sounding. My Castellano is still very lightweight, so I´m not sure quite what it was. It may have been about the size of the universe, the incoming of spring, or the endless job of servicing diesel engines. Whatever it was, I stopped to shake his hand and assured him that ésta bien´. Something was good. He hugged me firmly, or perhaps he was just stopping himself from falling over. I hugged him back and reconfirmed ésta bien´. He then jestured to me with two arms to be on my way, giving me his blessing to cycle through his country, which he did do without toppling, so I though I´d better do just that and that was the last that I saw of him. He was the third most drunk person that I´ve met on my travels.

The person at number two has to be the old lady who swung me around the improvised town centre dance floor, fuelled with the cicha from what looked very like a paint tin. I had one glass and it wasn´t all that bad at all. The chica that is, not the dancing, that wasn´t so pretty.

Number one is unlikely to be beaten. He was crossing the road, facing in the wrong direction, around lunchtime, both arms outstretched in opposing directions, one firmly attached to an orange plastic cup containing, I´m guessing, the thing which was causing him to be doing a star in the middle of the main road. As I approached, he swung his leg that was furthest from the direction that he was going in and pointing in the opposite direction, heavily, like is was make of lead, through 180 degrees and successfully made the half way line on the road, now facing towards his destination. He stopped for a good 10 seconds to be steady. Not moving, except for his arms cycling in mid air, without spillage. He didn´t see me as I cycled past. It was a long straight stretch of road, so I recon the chances that he didn´t get run over are fairly high. He was going in the direction of a house, the only thing, never mind building, that I could see for a mile around. I´m not sure where he´d come from. Unless his wife had thrown him out of the house. In which case, if he did make it back there, then I should worry for his safety after all as his outdoors experience didn´t seem to have shown him the error of his ways.

The hotel at Lahauchaca was pleasantly different. Small adobe brick dormitory buildings were spread around pleasant archways. I got a whole dormitory to myself for B/30, about $5. I asked about a good restaurant and the oldish chap asked me what I wanted. I said chicken, and he said that he´d ask The Seniora. That he did, and The Seniora said that she´d make me dinner and sent her old fella out to buy a chicken. I´ve eaten a few chickens since I got to South America. Everywhere fries them for lunch, dinner and sometimes breakfast, but this was the most succulent bit of chicken that I´ve had since I arrived. Complete with rice, papas fritas and very juicy tomato. All shopped for and cooked within an hour. A very good dinner for less than the price of the room. All three of us ate chicken that evening, I´m guessing due to my funding, and I once again explained my trip and the route ahead. The chap, from what I understand, said that he was nearly 70 and had only been to one country, Bolivia, but that it was a good country. There is a contentment seen in a lot of the people here which is just not so common in the west. In the morning The Senora had gone into town and I paid the bill to the chap. His wife ran the business - she´d given him the money for the chicken on the evening before and she´d written a note of what had to be paid on a bit of paper. The chap asked me to write the items, dinner, room and breakfast in the carbon copy receipt book that they keep. I assume that he never learned to write, not a practical thing for him to do working on the land, or maybe his glasses were not handy. Whichever it was, I got a good breakfast and a warm goodbye on my 60 miler to Oruro.