Day39-If this was easy, anyone could do it!, Fri, Feb 4, 2011

Start & Stop: La Paz, Bolivia to Salinas de Garci-Mendoz, Bolivia

Mileage: 325 miles

Hotel:  Zuk’ arani, on a hillside overlooking town and the Salar, $6/person

Fuel: Peru: Best grade 95 = S/16.69 Sol/Gal ($2.33 USD/gal)

Currency Exchange: $1 USD = 7.01 Boliviano

Toll Roads:  No charge for motocicletas!

Lisa: We sorta took our time getting out of the hotel in the morning. We had a nice little detour that would let us avoid morning traffic in the city and we just didn’t have a sense of urgency.  The night before, as we went in to dinner, the little dining room was packed with Japanese tourists.  They were in there own little world and either didn’t see us come in or were just involved in their own conversations.  This morning was a different story.  Most all of them spoke some English and they alllll wanted to chat while we were packing the bikes.  Nice people, all trying really hard to communicate and we had a nice visit.  They were rather disappointed that Dean speaks no Japanese though.

Dean: Our hotel is in Mallasa, on the outskirts way up in the hills on the southeast side of La Paz.

Lisa: As we entered our little bypass route, it was just too good to be true.  A wide, well paved road with no traffic and no lights or stop lights.  Sweet.  As we wound thru the outskirts we got to see another part of Lima and it was really scenic.  And then reality reared its ugly head and the dreaded Desvio (detour) sign appeared, just about 2 miles from our turn off.  Well, how bad can this be?  HAHAHAHA – lessee … a one lane, very windy, very hilly both uphill and down, extremely wet goat path is what they called a detour.  I was up on the pegs and really concentrating so as to not fall down in the path of an oncoming tour bus (did I mention it was a two way road on only one lane) when I rounded a corner and had to laugh out loud.  A farmer was chasing his two run away cows, each dragging a thick length of twine behind it.  Oh my gosh.  I seriously didn’t know what to do.  The cows were zig zagging back and forth up the hill, trying to avoid capture.  The farmer was yelling and waving his arms (not an effective strategy, clearly) and all I wanted to do was not fall down or get run down by one of these fugitive bovines.  It was hysterical.

Lisa: We made it to the PanAm Highway and had a really awesome ride, not a lot of traffic, the rain let up in just a short time and on we went. The plan was to try to get to the the little town of Uyuni, next to the Solar de Uyuni (the great salt lake).

PanAm Hwy 1 outside of Oruro.

Dean: We rode the PanAm Hwy 1 from La Paz to Oruoru in scattered rain showers.  Hwy 4 continues on to Potosi.  Hwy 1 continues south to Challapata where the paved road ends!  We made a left heading for Uyuni.  Approx 100 miles of gravel, dirt and washboard road.

Lisa: About 2 miles down the washboard road I bailed.  Nope, I do not want to trash myself and my bike.  It just wasn’t possible for me to get enough speed to diminish the bumps and either me or the bike or both was going to suffer long term repercussion.  Dean reluctantly acquiesced and we decide to head for the coast.

Dean: GPS & paper maps.  Some times the decision you make are just plain wrong.  My GPS showed a route along the north edge of the Salar de Uyuni to the Bolivia/Chile border.  My paper map showed a major paved road all the way to Iquique, Chile.  A check later on my Chile map showed this was a unimproved country road!

Lisa: I routed a path to Iquique which had us going North first, backtracking about 50 miles or so to Challapata, and then west.  Dean had something else.  Both of our GPS’s have suffered brain freeze so sometimes it’s really a crapshoot which one to believe.  We chose to follow Dean’s which on our map looked like a nice road, Bolivia 603, major road, paved.  For, oh, about the first 2 or 3 miles.  At that point, road construction took us off the pavement so we stopped and asked a road crew what the deal was. “Oh senora, 70 kilometers then fine. No problem.”

For the record, that was the sort of advice we got the rest of the day as we foolishly pressed on and the road continued to deteriorate until we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere on a horrible excuse for a road: alternately rocky, sandy, rutted, muddy, deep water crossings, at one point we were riding through the flooded Salar on volcanic gravel that had been dumped as a sort of break through the area.

Dean: The cycles of heavy rain continue. My gut feeling was this is bad, we should turn around.  But for the sense of adventure, this road has got to get better.

Lisa: It was so ridiculously crazy, I can’t believe it myself.  Everyone we stopped said the same thing – “oh no, the road changes in only 3 km.”  Yes, it did, but they neglected to inform us that it got worse, not better.  And the town everyone mentioned never materialized.  About 4:30PM we stopped to chat and I said that we should go a bit more and then stop and find shelter somewhere before dark.  Dean had taken a nasty spill in a sandy area and his lights weren’t working.  There were lots of big drainage pipes along the side of the road and I was hoping to find a dry(ish) one in which to try to stay warm.

No need, we finally came to the town everyone talked about – Salinas de Garci-Mendoza.  I stopped a couple of Bolivian police to ask directions to a hotel in town and they sent us toward the plaza.  We wound through the dirt and cobblestone streets and were in back of a large truck stopped at the entrance to the square when all of a sudden loud music and fireworks started.  Oh man, yet another celebration and we are stuck.  Since we couldn’t get around the truck, we backed the bikes up one block (no u turns on these narrow streets) and tried another direction to enter the craziness of the square just as the procession was passing.

Dean: Apparently we stumbled into The festival of the Virgen de la Candelaria, celebrated on February 2 and throughout the week.

Lisa: A very inebriated celebrant came over to ask me to wait for a few minutes before I went through but then he fell on the ground (you can’t make this stuff up) so I took that opportunity to move through the revelers and Dean (with no lights and it’s very dark by now) followed me to what we thought was the only hotel in town.   Meanwhile, the scene there is absolute chaos – huge marching bands, women and men dancing, confetti, parades, fireworks, and a whole bunch of people who will not feel well in the morning.

This street vendor told me of the second hotel. Turn left at the church and up the road. Turns out it was 1/4-mile uphill overlooking the town.

This is no bueno – the hotel is PACKED with drunks and, sorry, no rooms, senora.  Ok, so while I was telling Dean that we’d just sleep in the bar/restaurant room, a street vendor told us of another place.  “just around the corner and straight.“   Wow, the uphill walk to the end of the road darn near killed me.  I’m not sure if I have pleurisy or am simply suffering in the altitude but I am really dealing with it.  I’m really looking forward to spending some time below 12,ooo feet.

Yep, rooms available so I walked allll the way back to get Dean and we rode back up the hill.  It’s super spartan but clean, no heat but lots of blankets, no towels but a little hot water but I know it is a little slice of heaven compared to the drainage pipe I was considering a few short hours ago and each of us paid $6.

Dean: It is now dark.  I have no headlights. The hotel is on a steep hill a ¼-mile from the town center.  Left hand turn through iron gate into a rocky, angled parking area.  No level spot for bikes.   Did I say we were quite happy to be here!

Today’s ride showed I need to make some revisions.

1. The throttle lock was acting up in the rains.  Remove and bag.
2. Visibility through the windshield was bad in heavy rains.  Lower windshield
3. Headlights stopped working when I when down in the sand.
4. Fix Jesse luggage racks and saddlebags
5. Realign and secure mirrors