Copacabana, Bolivia to Villazon, Bolivia (border of Argentina)10-14-08 thru 11-11-08

It was raining hard and a pleasant change when we crossed into Bolivia from Peru near Copacabana on Lake Titicaca!  After paying $135 U.S. for a visa into Bolivia (because we were US citizens - but good for 10 years!) and getting our entrance stamp, we climbed up the barren-dry landscape of the penninsula on the southern end of the lake.   After climbing for about 2 hours, we topped out and came around a corner of the mountain to see the most incredible view.  There was the turquiouse blue waters of Lake Titicaca at 12,600´ and the snow-capped peaks behind it rising to nearly 20,000 feet.  We were fortunate to have clear skies, a full moon rising over the Andes and a perfect campsite with this amazing view!  It doesn´t get much better than that (with a can of tuna and some ramen noodles to share for dinner)!!!!

From here we had a smooth ride downhill for another 15 miles to the end of the peninsula, where we boarded a cargo barge to cross to the mainland only a half mile away.  These rickety wooden barges, looking like they were built 100 years ago, carry cars and even buses across all day long creaking to and fro, taking 30 minutes to cross!

From here we rode 80 miles south of the lake (had a great tailwind) and stayed in El Alto on the flats above LaPaz, the capitol city of Bolivia.  The next morning there was a protest march through the streets.  Thousands and thousands of indigeous farmers were marching for land reform.  They took up 3 solid lanes of traffic and marched past our hotel for almost an hour.  (Many of them marched from Lake Titicaca, 80 miles, during the few days before).  By the time they reached Lapaz, they were over 1 million strong!  Their march was sucessful in getting congress to address their issues!  The protest and marching continued for the next 3 days! We didn´t mind the marching because it totally stopped traffic, so we were able to bike on traffice-free roads to Potosi, over 400 miles into Bolivia, in a quick 6 days! 

 From Potosi we bused back to Cusco, Peru to meet Ralph´s sister Linda and her friend, Maggie to hike with us on a trek in the Andes.  We spent the next 5 days hiking the Salkantay trail to the amazing Inca site of Machu Picchu.  Machu Picchu is one of the 7 wonders of the world, built in the 1400´s and then abondoned when the Spanish invaded in the early 1500´s.  It was grown over with vines from the nearby jungle thus was hidden and never destroyed by the Spaniards, then re-discovered by an archeologist from the U.S. in 1911.  Amazing how they built this city on top of a nearly vertical-sided mountain 600 years ago with very intelligent precision!  (This is hard to undertstand when modern-day Peru still has toilets that do not even flush in most places and most people live in mud houses with dirt floors!) 

 

Ralph and Lin above 15,000 feet! (air is thin!)

 

 

Machupicchu 11-30-08

After busing back to Potosi, we biked southwest for 3 more days to Uyuni on dirt-gravel roads through high red rock desert country at between 11,000 and 13,000 feet with a strong headwind and of course, lots of dust in our face!  Uyuni is at the edge of the ¨Solar de Uyuni¨ (Uyuni salt flats).   From here we took a 3 day round trip tour in a jeep, covering 500 miles of desert in southwest Bolivia. 

The Salt flats are the biggest in the world covering about 7,000 square miles!  It reminded us of the frozen lakes we use to go ice fishing and skating on in North Dakota — flat and white for miles and miles!  We visited an island of amazing giant cactus in the middle of the salt flats and stayed in a hotel made completely out of salt blocks (beautiful white walls!).  From here we travelled south onto stark rolling desert hills with steaming volcanoes.  The colors were surreal pastels (pinks, yellows, oranges, moss greens, white, tans).  We visited Lago Colorado with snowbanks of white mineralization (borax) that looked like ice and snow on the red water!  In the shallow lake were hundreds of pink flamingos!  We also visited an aquamarine colored lake, as geyser basin with boiling mudpots and sulfurous fumaroles, sat in nearby hotsprings- sipping wine, saw many llamas, vicunas (a wild cousin of the llama) and even a couple of emus (cousin of the ostrich!).  It was a wonderful 3 day tour booked through Andes Salt Expeditions.  We got to just sit back and enjoy the ride for a change!!!  They did all the meals (llama for lunch one day!) and provided places to sleep.  We were fortunate enough to have 2 other couples on the trip to share great stories, music and wine.  Mirka and Maciek from Poland and Sue and Rob from London were all great company to share on this long and rough adventure ride!  It was great fun and thank you all for making the trip a life-time memory for us!

 

 

Salt, not snow!

Cactus island looking out onto Salt flats!

Ready, set, fly!

Salvador Dali painting?

surreal landscape

From Uyuni, Pat met up with Mirka and Maceik for the 6 hour train ride to Tupiza, while Ralph biked the next 2 days thru the canyons where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid were gunned down by the Bolivian army after a robbery 100 years ago on Nov 8th!  This area is reminiscent of the wild west in the U.S. with bizarre geological formations, deep gorges, cactus forests against red rocks, dry dusty roads and endless wind!!!!  The bike route Ralph rode yoyoed between 11,000 and 14,000 feet – yahoo!!!  (Pat made a good choice!) 

Tupiza was the low point (elevation -wise) of our trip through Bolivia.  It sits way down at 10,000 feet!  From Tupiza we headed for the border climbing out of a beautiful red rock river canyon back up onto the altiplano, crossed through Villazon and into Argentina at dusk.  There we were greeted by a sign, “Ushuia 5131 Km”.  It is amazing to think that we only have about 3000 miles left to ride on this amazing journey!

Bolivia was a very unique country.  Most of it was high, dry altiplano desert.  We usually had a flat, straight road ahead of us with mountains far in the distance on either side.  We almost always were above 11,000 feet!  NIghts were cold and crisp and days were warm, but certainly not hot.  The air was parched dry and we both developed the “Bolivian hack”, a cough brought on by super dry air and lots of dust.  The landscape of southern Bolivia, especially the salt flats area, was surreal in its pastel colors and stark expansiveness.  It is like no other place we have ever been.  Harsh, stark beauty! 

Bolivia had far fewer people than Peru, but they appeared to be more poverty-stricken.  The people were much friendlier, which was a welcome switch.  The food was very bland and most meals were devoid of anything green.  Definitely, the stark scenery was the contry´s highlight for us. 

Only 2 countries to go!!!!!     Bikin´ On!      Ralph & Pat

Ayacucho, Peru to Bolivia border (13,454 Miles to date!!!)a

Ayacucho, Peru to Border of Bolivia  (9-27-08 to 10-15-08)

Views, views and more views!!

A two day rest in Ayacucho was much appreciated.  Ayachucho is a small city with a nice colonial central area.  The town was rather touristy – which was a pleasant switch for us, since we`ve been out in the high country for a while and away from civilization.  Touristy town translates to international restaurants!   At this point we can´t even think about tolerating another typical Peruvian meal:  tough thin steak,  greasy fried chicken or equally greasy trout, over a bed of white rice, accompanied by the greasiest french fries you can imagine and not a green thing in sight!   This seems so bizarre to us when we are riding past fields of fruits and vegies every day!  Peruvian food has been the worst of our whole trip, so we took advantage of the restaurants here and had some great food!  We finally had spinach and green salads, great hamburgers (we hope it was beef and not llama or guinea pig!), and super desserts –Peru does know how to make desserts!  Their lemon pie stands  5” tall and is out of this world!!   We were also able to spend more time here with Anna and Alberto, the bikers from Spain we met. 

After leaving Ayacucho we headed into more high country to the south, and  climbed to 14,000´ onto the Pampa (high, grass-covered rolling hills at or above 13,000´).  We really enjoy the regions of Peru that are above 13,000´ because there are very few people living that high.  We see many elderly women here hearding their small flock of sheep and watching them graze day in and day out and at night hearding them back to their pen near the small rock and grass covered roof that she lives in!  This high country is much less decimated by overfarming and overgrazing and consequently is much more natural and pristine. 

 

Candy for the little boys!

The lofty altitude, although very pristine, also exposes us to big weather.  We spent a few tense late afternoons outpedaling  gargantuan thunderheads.  One night, literally seconds after setting up our tent and diving in we got caught in a major hailstorm.  When it was all over there was 2” of pea-sized hail covering the ground everywhere and our tent almost flattened!

after the hailstorm at 13,500´feet

Our week of camping and biking between Ayacucho and Abancay, made us feel much like yo-yos on bikes, climbing up to 14,000´, plunging down to 6,500´ at river crossings, then you guessed it, climbing back up to 14,000´.  We did this 3 times throughout the week, all on dirt and gravel roads that ranged from rough 4×4 type to super-smooth hardpacked dirt roads.  The scenery was incredible,  with snow-capped peaks in the distance and a feeling like we were biking on top of the world!   We finally hit pavement near Abancay, where we regrouped for a day at a beautiful  hotel.  It had endless hot water!!!  After days of camping we took some long showers!  We also got free wireless there, which is almost totally unheard of in Latin America.  It was wonderful to order bike parts, surf the web and make Skype calls in the comfort of a quiet hotel  lobby instead of the typically insanely noisy, dirty, hot internet cafes.

crosses in the sky

Peruvian lady weaving with backstrap loom

 

carrot washing process by stomping with feet in ditch of water along side of road

 

 

After Abancay the biking seemed so easy.  Pavement makes a huge difference!  We got to Cuzco in a couple of  days and once again enjoyed all the tourist town food.   We had never really enjoyed the tourist towns on this trip until Peru.  Now we look forward to them for our sanity, allowing us to hide in the crowd of white faces.  While in Cuzco we ran into a lady from Aspen, 2 guys from Telluride, friends we had met in Ecuador and their friend, and Dominique, a British biker  whose blog we had followed earlier on our trip.  He rode a tandem bike from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and invited anyone to join him for an hour, a day , a week or longer, riding on the tandem with him.  He finished his trip several months ago and is now in Cuzco working as a guide.  Was great to share stories with him!

 

 

From Cuzco we decided to bolt for the border at Lake Titicaca.  At this point we  were really ready to be done with Peru:  the greasy food, the poor quality  of service and of any goods we bought, but most of all we were fed up with the typical Peruvian´s predjudiced attitude toward us.  It was relatively flat, easy riding.  I guess we are used to the altitude – I just said “easy riding” – we biked the whole time between 11,000´ and 14,500´ on this section!  The rural locals got particularly nasty along this stretch.  Middle school-age and high school-age kids would throw rocks at us and even tried a makeshift roadblock to stop us.  Ralph´s 4´stick (for dogs and the occasional Peruvian) came in handy to rapidly dissolve the roadblock.  Waving it high above his head while barrelling toward them at 20 mph worked nicely.  After riding through this section, we ran into 3 Argentinian riders that were trying to hitch a ride north to avoid this area, because the kids would actually rob cyclists who stopped at the roadblocks.  I guess we were lucky. 

 

After that incident we decided to hop a bus to the border.  Ralph was really fed up with Peruvian “hospitality”  and was ready to bust heads.  We don´t know what the inside of a Peruvian prison is like and Ralph decided he didn´t want to find out.  So we ended up at the border the next day, paid our $135 entrance fee (most other countries along the way have been free or at most $35!), and biked into Bolivia, the 12th country on our great adventure!  We biked along Lake Titicaca, a place whose wild name ranks right up there with Tegucigalpa and Timbuktu!   We will bike into Bolivia as far as possible before bussing back to Cuzco to meet Ralph´s sister and friend to hike to Machu Picchu near the end of the month.

 

Bike on!  Pat and Ralph