Check the Pics!

Bolivia...southwest somewhere


Laguna Colorada


Arbol de Piedra or Piedra de Arbol


Salar de Uyuni


Sometimes when the road disappears you take the tracks less traveled

Wow. I don´t even know where to begin. We´re so behind on blogging! Well, the quick and dirty is that we left La Paz at the very end of February, made our way through the vast, empty southwest of Bolivia, dropped into Chile for a few days, climbed back UP to Argentina, continued our way on lots of sand and shale roads, crossed our last pass over 4000 meters, and are now in Cachi eating lots of goat cheese, cookies and other treats to gain a bit of weight back - yay for food and water supplies!

Alright, well I´ll break this up into a few blogs so that if you get bored reading it all you can come back later when you have some more energy :c)
We were definitely ready to get back on the road after spending a month in La Paz. We stayed in several schools along the way to keep out of the afternoon rain and the evening chill. We passed Oruro just before it´s famous Carnaval celebration, so we were able to see some locals in nearby towns practicing their traditional dances, and we caught a few glimpses of the Anata Andina parade. The costumes are amazingly beautiful and elaborate!

Just south of there we met two French people, Marion and Xavier, and we kept running into them all throughout the rest of Bolivia. The road to Uyuni, a major tourist hub for 4x4 tours in the SW, was quite difficult, and we arrived completely caked in mud. There are strict water rations everywhere, so our bikes more or less have been dirty ever since. We had really hoped to ride across the Salar de Uyuni, but we were too early in the season, and it was covered with water. So, for the first time on this trip, we went on an organized tour. We hopped in a Toyota Land Cruiser with 4 Germans and headed out to see this bizaare, surreal, can´t-believe-your-eyes sight. Reaching the salar has been a landmark for our trip, and when I finally saw it I found myself so overwhelmed with emotion that I started crying in the passenger seat! After that I started taking photos like mad, and Eric actually enjoyed having some taken of him as well, which is quite unusual :c)

From Uyuni we headed south toward no-man´s-land and more tourists than we had ever seen anywhere. The roads were brutally difficult at times; completely ungraded, sandy, no clear tracks to choose from, and constantly having to get off the path to let 4x4s go flying by. Plus we were carrying about 10-20 kilos of extra weight each of food and water because there is virtually none to be had during 2 weeks of cycling, and I was still sick from volunteering at the school in La Paz. But, at night, we had the whole place to ourselves. Despite having spent time backpacking in the NW, I had never seen such light-pollution free skies in my life. However, we could only enjoy the view from inside the tent with our sleeping bags pulled up to our noses. The bitter wind and cold at over 4000 meters of altiplano is unforgiving! So we were always huddling behind some rock or old llama corral to get a bit of shelter.

Overall it was a fantastic experience, but I did have my moments where I lost it, kicking my bike, screaming thinking what the hell am I doing because I am not enjoying this at all. That moment came at a day spent pushing my bike up a 4900 meter pass with 50 mph wind in our faces and virtually no food. We couldn´t find anywhere to get out of the wind, so we had to shimmy inside a dry pump house through a 1x1 foot opening on the ground and hope that no water would start gushing in on us. Ah, the life.

We subsisted mostly on rice, quinoa, potatoes, carrots, and cans of tuna fish. We also purchased 30 candy bars in La Paz and carefully rationed them all the way through our ride. That was hard, especially for two Jonses. During the day, in exchange for all our hard work, we passed by beautifully colored lakes, geysers, hot springs, saw lots of wildlife, and now have the satisfaction of knowing that we did it. Hell yeah! Pat on the back :c)




Sad update...our computer is dying a slow death. We cannot fix it, therefore photo uploads are now dependant on internet cafes. The cafes are not so reliable, but it appears photos will be fewer and far between :( We have many good ones too.