spam
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posted September 18, 2006 06:43 AM
 Edited By: spam on 18 Sep 2006 07:51
South America Part 5- Bolivia 1, BMW 0- Dec 14/04
This post was originally an email sent to our friends and family during our travels in South America Nov 2004-Feb 2005- please see the "The next big adventure.... and the previous one..." thread for more details...
Bolivia 1, BMW 0- Dec 14/04
Hi all,
Where did we leave off...... I seriously can't remember. I think Puno..... Scott, Martin and I headed out from Puno, following the shores of Lake Titicaca towards the Bolivian border. Beautiful scenery. Farming land bumps right up to the shore and then the lake reed is growing in the water and is also harvested. In places, it is hard to tell where the land ends but the boats parked in the "middle" of the fields of green is a good hint.
Farmland meets Lago Titicaca
The border was a breeze. The Customs guy there cursed the customs guy who received the bikes into the country (remember him??) because he said we came in "by air" without specifying where we dropped out of the sky. Scott and I were not surprised that guy messed it up and had a laugh at his expense. But the border crossing was exceptionally smooth on both the Peru and Bolivian sides all in all. The day ended in a small Bolivian town called Copacabana where we stayed at the best place in town, La Cupula, at the top of the hill overlooking the bay and a gourmet meal including a bottle of wine and chocolate fondue... all for 217 bolivars (around $30 Can) for the 3 of us.
Bolivian Border- a pretty casual event
Next day was Martin's birthday, so we hung out with him in Copa. Very laid back town. It seems that they bless vehicles at this cathedral and people come from all over Bolivia in Jan, some sort of pilgrimage. There was just a drunk guy with his drunk friends there on that day with his bus covered in flowers and religiously pouring one gulp of beer down his gullet and another onto the ground in front of the bus. I guess the virgin of Copacabana favours Pilsner...
Bless this Bus
The next am, we left fairly early for Oruro. Scott writes:
We left Copacabana Dec. 10 and couldn't find any gas! 20 km into reserve, and just as I was thinking I would have to knock out Martin and steal some from his 40 L tank, we finally hit a gas station. Yea great, but we are out of Bolivars, the Bolivian currency, and the lady serving up the "Combustible" doesn't take US$! Doesn't take US$!! "What kind of goll dang country is this"! Lucky for us Banking is in the blood of our Swiss friend and he whips out a 100 Bol note.
Tanks topped and we head for Oruro, 400 KM south. Mostly uneventful droning with the occasional herd of sheep on the highway! One thing that, was somewhat amusing, happened near the end of the day. Pam was out front about 1/2 a klick and this herding dog started after her from about 200m off in the field. Now you wouldn't think that a dog could catch a bike going 110 km/h but the little bugger timed it perfectly and almost got her! I wanted to pull over and buy him of the Quechuan lady herding the sheep.
Oruro sort of stank-just another big city- so we headed for Uyuni, or so we thought. We parted ways with Martin for a while as we had some banking to do before we left town and he needed a 30 mm wrench to adjust his steering head but ran into him where the pavement ran out in Huari, about 150 km from Oruro and 190km to Uyuni. Scott writes:
They said it was paved, but then they say lot of things down here! A little ways into the dirt, I come over a crest and there's Martin in the middle of the road shaking his fist and thumbs downing his BMW. It turns out that with all the extra weight and the severely washboard dirt road he had blown the end cap right off the remote reservoir of his rear shock!! What do you do in the middle of the Bolivian Desert with all of your shock oil all over the ground!? Luckily I just happened to have a 5 mm tap in my tool kit so we unscrewed the remainder of the reservoir and tapped the inside of the fitting on the end of the hose and inserted a 5mm screw. This held the remainder of the oil in till we could retreat back to the town and get a place to stay. So we found a Casa for the night and removed all the luggage from Martins bike. I then thought " a shock is kind of like a syringe ..." so we removed the screw from the end of the hose and attached the breather tube from my bike, and a funnel and added some 10-40 motor oil to the funnel. Pam and Martin then stated to pump up and down on the back of the bike and lo and behold the shock started sucking in the oil! We tried pumping the shock different ways like short bursts and long strokes till no air would come out of the funnel then I pulled off the breather tube and replaced the 5mm, with a little locktite. After a short test ride Martin said it was 80-90 percent as before. Of course it would never be perfect but it would get him to Chile were he could get a new shock. Why did I have locktite and a 5mm tap on this trip? It must have been that survival training I had as a kid.
The Red Bitch
Tapping the Red Bitch
I think Martin was lucky to have Scott around when this happened. The next day, Martin headed North for a paved route to Chile, where you have a hope of finding a BMW shop and we carried on back to Huari, hoping to find a truck to put the bikes in to Uyuni. After an hour of so, we decided the truck option on a Sunday might not happen but hey, we have a tent and sleeping bags and water and plenty of calories in the form of packaged cookies, chocolate and freeze-dried soup, so we decided to give it a go. Now, Scott has ridden dirt for many years but I am a major newbie. But we figured we had 7 hours of daylight, 4 small towns enroute and gear to camp of all else failed and so we started out. Suffice to say that 9 hours later we arrived in Uyuni and according to the GPS, we were travelling for 6.5 hrs, catching our breath (or trying to arrange a ride in a truck in the in-between towns) for 2.5 hrs, the average speed of the day was around 30 km-hr and the max speed I attained (for around 2 or 3 minutes) was 64km-hr. Sand is hard to ride through and for some reason, 40 km away from our destination, the road was covered with sand to wash out the washboard and then graded so we couldn't see where it was deeper (harder to ride) and shallower. Diabolical. Luckily the last hour in dusky light was reasonably good, if not washboard, and we arrived in Uyuni, asked for and located the best hotel in the entire town and crashed after a meal and shower. Man, were we dusty and tired. So today was a rest day.
Tomorrow we are booked on a 3-day tour of the Salar de Uyuni and Lagunas Colorado and Verde, ending up at the Bolivian-Chilean border mid-day Thursday. The tour usually includes a ride in a 4-wheel drive truck but our arrangement is for accommodations, meals and transport of gas and our luggage so we will be free to roam the Salar without the extra weight. Yeehaw. After yesterdays ride, (aka trial by fire as Pam learns to ride dirt), I am pumped....
Deep in Bolivia,
Scott and Pam
note: we neglected to tell our parents about the trip across Lago Titicaca that we had to take by boat/barge between Copacabana and Ororu. A couple of pictures are worth a thousand words... check out the bus in the background- yes, it is on a similar quality barge as the one we're on, probably worse as we selected this one as the best of the 15 or so lined up on the shore....
gulp
  
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