CROOK AND CASHED OUT TO COOL AND CASHED UP

Sucre Bolivia

to 

Humahuaca Argentina

Listening to

 Friday On My Mind 

George Young and Harry Vanda

If you were a teenager growing up in Australia in the sixties or seventies there's every chance this pair would have knowingly or unknowingly touched and influenced you musically.  As producers and or writers of so many Aussie classics the passing of George Young serves to remind us of that rich window of fifties and sixties immigration that  released kids from all around the globe into a wide free land hungry for new sounds and talent. 

When the detour becomes the attraction!
I'm on my way to check out the famous salt flats at Uyuni. It's a must see if you're in Bolivia and a bit of a pain because as like Sucre you've got to go there and then backtrack 200k to Potosi before heading south. Well you don't if you want to take some serious dirt buuut not this time. Plan is to visit, do a one day tour and then get back to the plan and head south again. There's all sorts of hype regarding riding on the salt but to be honest, getting covered in salt and crap doesn't really interest me. I stay another night in Potosi before tackling the 200k to Uyuni. After the usual fuel runaround I finally clear Potosi onto one of the best roads I've ridden on the trip. Whoa, forget the salt getting there is almost as good. It's a sweeping perfect road that runs through mountains up to around 4200m before dropping onto plains and into valleys at around 3700m. The scenery is breathtaking and the road rises falls and sweeps giving plenty of time to appreciate the scenery. Jagged bare ranges sweep down to winding valleys covered in sparse almost lawn type vegetation with literally hundreds of grazing llamas. It's a shock when you arrive at Uyuni to be greeted by a bit of a wild west town with the perfect tarmac dissolving into a dusty dirt and potholed melee of swerving Land cruisers and crazy traffic. 

The Ride

I'm running too wide

My braking's all wrong

I should watch what I'm doin

but natures gala's full on

I conquer red mountains

'n wind through green valleys

Yeh the bike's on autopilot

indelible memory tape on 
Dean

This is in Potosi. The key to most South American towns is to
make your way to the centre. Getting through the outskirts is generally
a nightmare but nine times out of ten the centre squares are fine reward.

The road to Uyuni is racetrack quality with almost no vehicles.

Beautiful plains in between the ranges with Llamas as for as
the eye can see.

After a great ride this is the last range before Uyuni.

That's Uyuni down there on the plain. What a view.

Uyuni
I prebook my hotel for Uyuni the night before in Potosi and find it easily. As usual in Bolivia I have to haggle over the room as the one they try to give me isn't the one I booked. I have to admit that so far in Bolivia I get the feeling that I'm just here to be fleeced. Every time I buy something or ask a price I there's a hesitation as the Gringo price is applied with a healthy dose of attitude. Uyuni is full of tourists and competition amongst the tour operators is tight. I send an email to a tour operator and within fifteen minutes he turns up at my hotel...wow! Thirty dollars US gets me a day tour including lunch from 10.30 till 7.30 out on the salt including cactus island and an opportunity at sunset to take pictures at a wet area that provides unique reflections. The next morning I pile into an old Land cruiser...with five others...and the driver...hmm...kinda tightish...and off we go. First stop is the railway cemetery which is kinda cool but the thing that bowls me over most is the number of tour operators there and...they are all driving almost identical Land cruisers! Yep there would have been maybe thirty or forty Toyota Land cruisers, mostly around the same era of different colours and condition. As I scored the front seat it did not escape my notice the lack of attention our cruiser took to the steering input from the driver...definitely a plan ahead situation. Next we stop at the village of Colchani for tourist shopping and dozens of identical stalls. I have a wander past the tourist stalls and again am staggered by how hard life must be out here. Here we are at around 3800m, freezing cold, no vegetation, mud and block housing with no road or paving infrastructure...hmm...and only selling stuffed llamas to tourists for income
...how lucky are we.
Next we head across the salt. This is the worlds largest salt flat and erm well, that's what it is. I get kinda bored after an hour of so and start to drift off! We have an excellent lunch before another drive to take some crazy photos and then inspect Cactus Island. All the Land cruisers have descended on the island at once and there are hordes of people climbing around. The island itself is pretty remarkable as it just sticks out the salt and looks to be covered in volcanic rock and cacti. It's quite a formidable climb in high winds but the view of...erm...nothing... is quite spectacular. To finish the day we drive across to another corner of the lake, don rubber boots and stand in freezing salt water to capture the sunset. Its now six thirty and there is a freezing wind blowing. I'm totally gobsmacked by the temperature change as the sun sets. Wow, it went from cold to bl@#dy freezing in literally minutes! Time to pile back in the cruiser, crank the heaters and head home. 
Yep thirty dollars well spent!
(OK $39.04c Aussie OK)

The railway cemetery.

Have to admit I would have appreciated some commentary from
the driver  on the stuff we saw rather than...this is railway
cemetery twenty minutes only.

Serious steel on these babies. Even in this harsh environment
they will be here forever. 

Land cruiser world. I memorised the rego so I knew which on to
get back into!

The street behind all the tourist stalls in Colchani.

Yep I was here for half an hour. Just can't imagine surviving here.

This water bubbles up from 120m below the salt...couldn't help but
think it's a struggle to find things to look at in all this  vastness of nothing. 

Aaah yes the Dakar statue. A selfie must.

The lunch building had a full salt theme. The driver prepared the
lunch and took it very seriously not allowing anyone to sit down
till he was finished.

Crazy photo time. These photos took ages to get set up.

This Japanese guy and his friend had flown in from La Paz the night before
and were going back the next day as many people were doing. 

This is my favourite...not sure why.

There were rows of Land cruisers already at Cactus Island when we arrived.
Notably a crazy bicycle rider also turned up battling the wind...just
didn't look like fun!

Not a perfect picture but you can see how high we are here.

Yep cacti (not cactuses) of course.

Walking around in freezing ankle depth brine waiting for the sun to go down.

The salt under the water is hard and crusty. Still a worry when
slowly negotiating it in  the four wheel drive and rough as guts.

Ok the sun's almost gone...brrr time to go!

These two Husquavarnas are being ridden round the world by a Belgian couple.
They have been through Africa and are now headed north enjoying as much off road
as they can. Was a time on a Husky when you wouldn't make it round the block.

I've been better.
I'm staring at the oversize seat on the toilet bowl. Kinda odd...I've not seen one that big before...hmm then again lucky it's got one I guess.  My back's against the toilet door, my jacket and tank bag are stuffed as far away the the bowl as possible in the corner and my guts is about to do another round of heaving. Outside my  cubicle in the publica bano the lady on the door is doing a roaring trade at one Boliviano per sitting. I'm probably restricting trade as the doors on the two other stalls bang endlessly accompanied by the usual delightful sound effects. Great. I've just ridden from Uyuni to Potosi, refuelled and now arrived in  Tupiza. It's been a great ride...till fifty k's out from Tupiza when I suddenly fell crook...really crook. Hmm. Is it food, or altitude, or sun stroke from yesterday...or a bit of all? I've been up and down from 4200m to well below 3000m quite a few times today...who knows. I finally limp out of the toilet which is in the centre of a market crowded with shoppers and make my way back to the bike. I'm too sick to ride yet and lay on a park bench in the town square for an hour or so. I finally work up enough resolve and ride to  the Butch Cassidy Hostel. (Truly). I grab a room too sick to argue cost and spend the worst night of my trip. Hmm, I'm in a bind. I've not got enough money for another night and I'm too sick to ride. No one uses credit cards here and no banks will accept my Mastercard. Bloody Bolivia. I finally get a credit on my Visa (don't do this at home kiddies) for enough for another night...hmm
...gotta get over the border.

Listening to These Days Powderfinger
Some say one of the greatest Aussie bands ever.
I'm one of the some. Watch the performance of this classic
at their final concert on YouTube and join the some.

OK...what's in the bag...sorry no I'm crook don't show me.

I think there must be a template for Che Guevara as it's everywhere
and always similar.

I notice it's fashionable for arty blogs to do doorway pics so here's mine.
Yeh yeh it's a treddly repair shop OK...not arty enough?

If you look closely you'll see the toilet sign. There's a butcher shop
on one side and a florist on the other...just in case your guts wasn't
churning enough!

Street scene in Tupiza. I quite liked Tupiza as I did Sucre and
Potosi.  Unfortunately saddled with Bolivian logistics of fuel
attitude and money...yeh nah I'm headed for the border.

This went too easy...should I be worried?
 The Argentine border at La Quiaca. Hmm. Right. So I find out a little late I need compulsory insurance for the bike to enter Argentina and Chile. On top of that I get sick as a dog when I should be on my game arranging things. The net tells me that it's possible to enter Argentina myself, leave the bike in no man's land between the borders, and taxi into Argentina and buy insurance...but that info was six months old. Sooo what happens if I leave Bolivia, enter myself into Argentina, try for insurance in town and my card doesn't work or the insurance people don't exist anymore...meaning my bike and I can't go back and the bike can't go forward. Weeell nothing ventured....
I set off on the hundred K's to the border from Tupiza to La Quiaca with my tummy feeling OKish, the weather sunny, and the KLR purring on eighty octane. It's another great curvy road through the stunning red torn up Bolivian landscape. I have to admit I haven't encountered one bad tarmac road and multiple fantastic ones in Bolivia. Aaaah what can go wrong...well nothing actually! I ease through the Bolivian border side and when the Argentinian folk ask for insurance I just ask politely if it's OK to get it sorted in La Quiaca. The guy just nods no stress and I'm through. Awesome! I ride into town on a buzz, (getting through borders is actually fun...when it works out) find an insurance agent and get signed up for far less expense than expected...winner!

Listening to   The One I Love   R.E.M.
What a great 9o's band. Great riffs and big honky guitars. 
It's my grandsons christening this weekend and all the ones I love will be there. Hmm. This trip validates for me the seventeenth century quote from John Donne, "No man is an island". Open your mind for a sec, google it, and have a read of the passage this comes from...it's far larger and more humbling than personal loneliness. 

Squeezing in at the Humahuaca
It's kinda odd. For the first time when looking at my current location, right at the bottom of the map was my destination Santiago. Oddly I've been so caught up in everyday drama and planning I've not even thought about this part of the trip much. I figured the chance of getting to Patagonia was jeopardised  by the extra couple of weeks boarding the Stahlratte and then having to cross all of Columbia. I'm back at work on the eleventh December and it'd be clever to have maybe a week or two off before so...time's a ticking.  After I leave La Quiaca I'm itching to get into Argentina. I pull in to top up the tank and...aargh twenty five pesos a litre...out comes the calculator...a dollar seventy a litre. Ah great...well a least it's the same for everybody and they actually sell it to you. Better go easy on the throttle which is kinda hard with only around thirty horsepower at this altitude! I fire up Rattles and we head off across a hundred kilometres of high flat plain at around three thousand five hundred metres. It's a complete contrast to the torn up hills right across the border and oddly the road is not as good either. Beautiful coloured hills decorate each side of the plain and I make Humahuaca by about three thirty and find a hostel for the night. George the Argentinian guy running the hostel gives me a four bed dorm and assures me we can put the bike in the courtyard. The hostel owner who is away is a bit of a collector of antiques and motorcycle stuff.  Every nook and cranny is stuffed with odd GS BMWs and old radios and weird statues made from welded motorcycle parts. To get the KLR into the courtyard I strip the luggage and George and I spend a half hour smashing our way through doorways and halls scratching doors, walls, bikes, and doing a minor burnout getting the KLR up some steps. Although the bike gets knocked about a bit I haven't laughed so hard in ages with George in the tyre smoke behind me dragging the KLR about yelling "no no eeet weeel feeet eeet weeel feeet" as we bash into another wall or doorway. Finally Rattles is interned in the courtyard with Georges GN125, a bunch of old Argentinian two strokes, a rare first model GS800 and other elderly motorcycle relics
...now we just gotta get Rattles back out!

The crazy Humahuaca Hostel.

Eet weel feet eet weel feet. See that slot
of light...well...eet deet feet...kinda.

Finally in the yard...I'm worried the other relics are here
because they didn't fit back out the door.

With stray starving dogs everywhere throughout Bolivia and a
 few here as well this little guy has it made. Modelling a fitted
jumper a custom pillow and displaying a load of doggy attitude.

New attempt a an arty door shot. How easy is this!

I do need a hat...

Humahuaca is a dusty little tourist town with the wind picking up
in the afternoons and buses in and out all day.

These churches always remind me of spaghetti westerns. I keep
expecting to see Clint Eastwood hanging out of the bell tower with
a Winchester 1873 and a stick of dynamite.

Reality Check No.15
I'm out of Bolivia, it hasn't rained in a week or so, I'm feeling OK although I'm skinny as, and have some great roads ahead of me down to Mendoza. I'm really looking forward to having a look around and riding some great roads. Sunshine will do that to you! Had an interesting conversation with a Spanish lady at the hostel last night. I'm no expert on Bolivia as I only passed through, who knows, a day later and maybe a completely different vibe. She pointed out she likes Bolivia best because it is in control of it's economy, has no trouble feeding its people, retains its old charm and looks after itself and people before others. Hmm, I love talking and listening with people. Different perspectives forming different pictures. How often are we really right or really wrong...just take in what you see, mix it up with how you feel at the time, water it down with a little common sense and there it is, your own personal picture to share and discuss. 

Next Blog
I ride south through Argentina on truly fantastic roads. Haven't seen the famous steak on the menu here yet so I'll be looking out for that. Watch out! The only thing worse than a selfie is...a food photo! Sorry about some of the introspective stuff above...Push the button and send me a comment as I treasure every one.
 Cheers Dean