Advertisement
Published: January 14th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Bolivia
Getting into Bolivia was like going back in time it's not the most modern and well kept country, but the again I think Bolivia is the country with most revolutions of any country.
La Paz is found in a big hole in the ground but before you get there you have to fight your way through endless queues.
And of course it's grown, big time.
This queues are there because all the mini bus drivers take up two out of three lanes on their impromptu bus stops.
Any way I get to rim and don't really know where to go so yet again I enlist the police, so I drive into La Paz center with my recently press ganged police.
i wanted a hotel with a parking place for the mighty KTM and I got it, thjere are many hostels all over but very few that are willing or able to get a big bike inside.
And the hotel had central heating!
So back to basics, walk about, standard fare, Plaza de Armas, cathedral so on and so forth.
A bit to cold to have a beer, but finally I find a nice warm place and have my beer.
La Paz is a lot tidier since I was here back in the seventies, lots of shops selling the ususal tourist stuff, everything knitted, and of course all is Alpaca wool.
Second day consists mainly of a longer walk about and talking with some Americans and Argentinians.
Dinner was crap and Bolivian wine makers should work on their wares, it's red, it's liquid it has alcohol and it tastes a bit like wine, I can't wait until Argentina.
The next morning greets me with rain, but being a Viking I put on my rain gear and get going, my boots are NOT water proof, not to self buy new ones!
Mssrs Gramin are not up to date the, proposed road is one way, and going the wrong way.
In the end I get on to the road that will take me to the brim of the La Pazian bowl and of course if it's started to rain it might as well piss down and it did.
Mist and rain and bad light makes for slow driving and so I did, thank Dog that most Bolivians were still asleep otherwise I would have been driven of the road.
I was going
to Potosi, the town who provided Spain and a large part of the world with lots of silver in it's hey days.
It's also the city located at the highest place in the world, 4070 m.
The trip treated me to massive doses of rain, mud, as there were lots of road work going on, sunshine for about 5 min, a hail storm, a thunder storm.
539 km might not seem a lot on a nice summers day but on this trip it was for ever.
I got stopped by the police a couple of times, Sweden = Zlatan Ibrahimovich and one copper said that the Swedes are tall, so i got my fett of the foot pegs and stood on the ground.
To his and everybodies delight I towered him by two heads.
So far so good all the Latin American police have been very nice and helpful.
Pizza for dinner with some nice kids from Argentina, company good, pizza bad, they put sugar in the dough, a sweet pizza is not nice.
And no beer either, loads of coke, mind you the brown stuff you drink, NOT Bolivian marching powder.
Potosi was traeted to a walk about and
against better judgement I went to a museum,
La Casa de la Moneda or to you who don't know Spanish the house of money, the place where they made coins out of silver mined in the local mines.
The have two prices, 10 bolivianos for natives and 40 for foreigners.
I said that I was Bolivian and got away with it, a free lunch for me.
Potosi is nice and I met a French couple who of course beiong French could speak nothing but French so I got to practise that again, good for me.
A long coffe break later and then walkabout and then we met for dinner and the did a good show of being happy to see me.
After dinner we ended up going to one of the local hang outs which was about to be closed so we went to another plkace with a couiple of Americans whó I invited along.
Had a great time being chief interpreter and gettin pissed at that.
The next day I was going to go to Uyuni, the worlds biggest salt flats, I did not go, slightly hung over I took the bus to Sucre, the capital of Bolivia.
A very nice center with lots of colonial buildings, all pretty as a new penny.
Walk about and a nice lunch and then back to Potosi.
Met up with the Froggies yet again and we were joined by another Froggie couple and went to the same restaurant where we got sloshed the first time.
I had barely sat down and the waitress had a glass of plonk by my side, according to her she had not forgotten me, hmm, very strange a nondescript person like me...
Well being slightly wiser than the previous evening I had less wine and went to bed early.
Smart guy eh?
So the next morning Uyuni time, the whole of Potosi and Uyuni were in uproar about the Dakar rally, loads of people and and functionaries and Dakar banners and flags and and and.
I went out to the salt flats and on the way I met two motor bikers who dragged me along to a hotel built of salt blocks and had salt floor and a good view of the flats and exorbitant prices.
In a fit of madness I agreed to go out on the salt flats with the bike, the first 100
m or so was covered with water and the rest with a salt and water mixture and some dry salt, when we got back to Uyuni we all looked like Lot and his wife with the the difference that we were alive but looked as made out of salt.
Being ot there was like being on a frozen lake covered with snow, lots of white light from every direction.
Just about everyone of the not so brave( or smart) who stayed on tierra firma, wanted to have their pictures taken with us and the bikes, I must have had 50 pics taken of me and the bike, even got interviewed and videoed.
A very famous person in Bolivia now!
A good wash sorted that out, hope fully any way because the bikes looked like shti.
An Argentinian had joined us for our venture to the salt flats and we got to share a shitty room with a crappy almost warm shower and nowhere to put the luggage.
Met up with the bikers who got me into the madness of having my bike and me all covered with salt and had dinner and a couple of beers, 1,5 exactly.
The Argentinian
bloke suffered from altitude sickness and sun burn and stayed in bed.
In the morning the Argie and me left for Tarija close to the Argentinian border a nice little trek, almost 600 km across a lot of mountains.
Sometimes it feels as the Andes are endless, it took us 11 hrs of hard driving to get there.
The weather changed with every ridge we crossed, nice, bad, hot, cold, windy and calm up into the sky and then down into the valleys and repeat.
It was nice to have company and the Argie was/ is a very nice chap.
We almost make it to a hotel in Tarija before it starts to piss down, so we sat outside a 4 star hotel and waited for the rain to stop. Annd as rain normally does it stopped when it was through
Beer, food and sleep,a very familiar way to finish a day on the bike.
Tarija to the Argie border was a nice little trip going down all the time and loads of little white butterflies in the air looking like snow flakes which thank Dog were not.
As we descended the temperature went up and suddenly mayhem
= border crossing.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 10; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0471s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb