Bolivia

[30. Sept 2008]

Our welcome to Bolivia was in Copacabana, a small tourist town on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Together with us our friend Miriam from Switzerland arrived there to spend some days with us before she continues travelling through Bolivia, Chile and Peru. We took a day off to visit one of the famous islands in the Lake Titicaca together with her. In the morning when we wanted to leave Pius was not able to leave his bed: he had fever! The ride through the cold wind (without putting more clothes on, idiots) was too much for him and he needed to stay in the warmth of his bed.

The story of the following days is one of sickness here and there. After Pius cycled half sick for one day and then had to take a break for one day again, Stefan first was good but became ill exactly on the day when Pius was ready to ride again. After one day off for Stefan we cycled the last bit into La Paz, where Miriam was waiting for us for more than two days now. Stefan had to fight a lot during this day and fell into bed immediately after our arrival. There he stayed for the next days, coughed and coughed without an end. When he did not feel better after three days he went to see a doctor and had a bronchitis diagnosed. A one week antibiotics treatment was prescribed by the doctor...

We are lucky to have been able to stay at the house of a Couchsurfing friend here in La Paz. This way we could take our time to recover from our illnesses. We lived in an old house, in the very center of La Paz, our fairy-tale castle. For some days we did not do much more than sleep, go a little to the internet and eat in some good restaurants. There was no motivation do do something else. Miriam realized there would not be much to do with us and she continued her trip towards Uyuni where she will visit the salt flats and then continue to Chile.

In the right moment, after we had enough from doing nothing, Andrew cycled into La Paz. We hadn’t seen him in a while and there were tons of stories to be told and laughed about. Also he motivated us to go to learn to know La Paz night life. Stefan was still not feeling good enough for an evening of party but Pius joined Andrew and the Couchsurfing-climbers-gang around our host Ariel. Pius would later regret the decision... The beer is quite strong here and so he was in a very good mood after the concert evening. He was so positive, he thought the hamburgers from the street vendor were sure no problem – and he was wrong! He went through another tour-de-toilet, business as usual. Like in Arequipa the problems kept on a low level though. The stomach felt weird but he was able to participate in the daily program and was always hungry – a good sign.

Apart from the excellent restaurants, La Paz was nothing than another city for us. No beautiful parks or other tourist attractions (except churches and museums) were there to be explored. The real attraction was waiting for us outside the city: the most dangerous road in the world! The dirt road from La Paz down into the jungle of Bolivia is cut into a nearly vertical wall and so narrow that the crossing of two trucks becomes a thrilling (and unfortunately often deadly) manoeuvre.

For us the 3000 meters of pure downhill were a great pleasure. With the brother of our Couchsurfing host as guide and on top modern full suspension mountain bikes we raced down the narrow road and enjoyed the breathtaking views. After the racing we enjoyed a lunch buffet and took a dip in the swimming pool of our hotel. We had forgotten how nice it is to be in warm weather and recharged our batteries to be ready for the following days of cycling on the cold Altiplano.

And this is what we are going to do in the next days. We hope the cycling will bring us back the old spirit, will be exciting and beautiful. We would like to learn to know the interesting and love-worthy part of Bolivia, feel as good as we did most of the time in Peru!

[19. October 2008]

Still under the influence of his medicaments against his bronchitis, Stefan had a hard time climbing up the hill out of La Paz. Still, cycling felt like the best medication for us, after all the days of sickness and laziness. We once again realized how much we love cycling and felt our motivation rocketing into the sky. The fact that Andrew was now cycling with us again also raised our mood as with him there is always an interesting discussion or something to laugh about.

For some days we were cycling on what “Altiplano” sounds like, on very flat ground and always between 3800 and 4000 meters high. Unlike the Altiplano in Peru it here is very beautiful. Yellow grass, some Llamas grazing on it, all surrounded by colorful hills make a perfect scenery together with the always blue sky. There still is an incredibly cold and mostly pretty strong wind constantly blowing but at least we had it from the back sometimes too and not always into our face as before.

When the “plano”-part of the Altiplano ended and we came into the mountainous region around Potosi, the landscape became even more beautiful, sometimes breathtaking! We often cycled high up along a mountain and just stared at the beauty of a thousand colors; we stopped to enjoy the spectacle offered by mother nature. Only few times on our trip have we been impressed that much by the nature we were cycling through.

The not-so-nice part of Bolivia’s Altiplano is when it comes to small towns and the people living there. We are sorry we have to write something like this here and we want to make sure nobody understands this as a personal affront but we did not have a good impression in these places. Asking the people how many kilometers it is to the next town, one says “5 to 6”, the other 15. Both seem totally convinced they are telling the truth. It were 26… We are (were) so polite to ask before taking a picture of persons. The answer was always “no” without hesitating. When we asked why, they could not explain. It’s no, just because it is. All things are like they are because they just are that way, there need not be a reason or explanation. Want to see a nice example? Look at this guy!

We understand that the cause of these circumstances is a total lack of education and we pity these people for not getting the chances we have. These people never really “learned to think”. We now, more than ever, realize of how great value our education in Europe is.

It’s easy to write these things now and feel pity, but it became one of our challenges to always think this way and stay patient in these specific situations. Not to laugh or place a bitter comment was sometimes difficult, especially for not very patient Pius…

After a wonderfully relaxing rest day in Potosi with a tour through the famous mines – including Dynamite demonstration, and “give a gift (alcohol, coca leaves or dynamite) to a miner” option – it was time to say good bye to pavement and hit the hard road towards Uyuni. The road was in the end surprisingly good and we therefore in best riding mood – well, not all of us. Andrew was still talking about the additional rest day we could have taken in Potosi and the part where his body comes in contact with his bike, a very small area compared to ours, was sending him a message of pain all day long.

At fife we had only 50 kilometers on our odometer when we arrived at a small town with a hotel. Andrew wanted to stay there; we preferred to go on a little bit to keep the door to our plan open: cycle directly onto the Salar two days later. After a short discussion we decided to split up for some days and meet again later in Uyuni.

As so many things in Bolivia the distance numbers in our map are sometimes right, sometimes completely wrong. Our plan was to cycle a good distance on the second day so we could cycle into Uyuni and then directly on to the Salar on the third day. It became a long day, a very long one even. We got up at six, were on the bikes at seven and took hardly any brakes. Our map proved more and more wrong and the hills did not want to end. After 9:45 hours on the bikes, the last hour pushing our bikes in the dark up the last climb, we arrived in a small mining town just to find out there were no hotels there anymore… We were so tired, we had problems staying upright during the last minutes of bike pushing. You can imagine that we were not at all in the mood for going a little further and camp somewhere in the wild! In this moment we once more could benefit from the hospitality and helpfulness of the people here in Bolivia. We were brought to the local tourist bureau and could sleep one night on our sleeping pads in their office, under the various posters of beautiful Bolivia.

The following day we could harvest what we seeded the day before: we will probably never in our lives forget the moment when we cycled over the last pass in the early morning and for the first time saw the Salar de Uyuni. The biggest salt flat in the world, 12’000 sqkm large, lay in front of us like a white sea. This was one of the moments we were dreaming of long before we even started cycling up in Alaska. When we cycled down the road to Uyuni Pius was really happy, he was crying tears of happiness!

[19. October 2008]

After a short break in Uyuni we directly continued towards the endless flat salt and after an hour more of cycling the big moment had come: we were riding on the salt! Our tires produced a crackling noise as we headed out into the white ocean towards our camping spot, between nothing and nowhere. For several minutes we were riding with closed eyes – an unforgettable feeling. The camping on the Salar, the cooking in the beautiful sunset and the morning after, all was as perfect as we imagined it. One of the, maybe THE highlight of our tour that will be in our minds for a very very long time.

Back in Uyuni we teamed up with Andrew to book a tour for the famous Lagoon’s Route, a three day trip over the Salar and through a valley of colorful lagoons. While the Salar was not that special for us anymore, during the following two days we several times had to pause for a moment and ask ourselves: “How is this possible?” Green and yellow grass, black sand, blue, red and green water and the endless colors of the mountains in the background – our eyes suffered from an overflow of colors! All the text we could write here will not explain closely the beauty of this part of the world. May the pictures speak.

[19. October 2008]

Deeply impressed, full with emotions of the last days we had to go back to cyclist’s workday life again and cycle the long and hard path towards Argentina. This road is famous for being a hard piece of work and we now know why. Road description: only four wheel driven cars can pass it, it’s too sandy for normal cars and buses. Topography description: some of the steepest climbs we ever cycled (pushed). Nearly one day of extra riding because we were sent in the wrong direction and thunderstorm-like headwinds could not depress us. We were in a good mood because we discovered a new, very surprising part of Bolivia that pleased us very much. There were kids on the road, swarming around us a usual – BUT – not throwing stones and asking for money, no, they were super friendly, well behaving, very interested in what we are doing here with these strange vehicles. The adults were of a totally different kind too: they greeted us warmly when we entered a restaurant, really did not put salad on the plate like we asked for, were visibly more “awake and active” than their fellow countrymen further north. A very welcome surprise. In the last moment Bolivia could win back many points it had lost during the last month. Maybe it’s just a problem of the Altiplano, maybe the cold wind, to which we said good bye shortly after Uyuni…

By leaving Bolivia we end the stretch of our trip through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, a part we were looking forward to with mixed feelings. We can now say that this time was sure the most difficult and exhausting one and we think – compared to other biker’s stories – that we were lucky and could enjoy most of the time in these three “problem countries”. Still we are happy to enter an “easy” country now again. Huge piles of cheap high-quality meat are waiting for us, yeah! Time to regain the weight we lost during the periods of shits & cycling…