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posted October 20, 2006 07:28 AM
 Edited By: spam on 5 Nov 2006 07:58
South America part 6- The wilds of SW Bolivia and Culture Shock in Chile- Dec 22/04
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...
The wilds of SW Bolivia and Culture Shock in Chile- Dec 22/04
Hi all,
Everyone got their Christmas shopping done??? Ha ha.
We are in Villenar Chile. It has been a while since we've had much energy or opportunity to catch everyone up. We left off at the end of what we "thought" was a difficult dirt road in Bolivia, feeling high on ourselves and having signed up for a 3 day tour of the Salar de Uyuni and SW Bolivia. The roads couldn't be WORSE than the Uyuni road.... Sure, the roads weren't worse, it was where there weren't any roads that the going got tough... But first that Salar. The first day was wonderful. Flat, flat, flat and white for as far as you can see. I think we got lots of good pics of that and Isla de Pescados in the middle, an island in the salt with ancient cacti. It was quite surreal to be on this island, you look out of the scene in front of you and you automatically assume that the white is water because your brain can't quite wrap itself around what you know you are actually looking at, even though you know what it is.... and then a truck drives away on the "water". Wierd. We had a good bunch in the group: a very funny Brit, and very outspoken Swiss, an intellectual German and a great interpreter in a Chilean-born French guy. Cold, cold beers at the end of the day. Cold beers are very hard to find in Bolivia. "Helado" means it has been in the shade, not out in the sun. It isn't right.
DR on the Salar de Uyuni
Viewing the Salar from Isla de Pescados
Scott and Pam on the Salar
The next day, we ride from 7 am to 2 pm on pretty good dirt roads. Very beautiful, but we give the camera to the Brit so that we can focus on trying to keep up, which is a challenge, despite the fairly reasonable dirt roads (compared to the road to Uyuni). But we are pooped when we get to the "hard" part. The road basically disappears and the altiplano above 4000m is a wide scree between peaks with no road and deep coarse sand all the way across. The trucks can fly over the stuff and they don't stick to the same route, so there are no good tracks to follow. About 30 km short of our destination and only 30 minutes before sundown, we stash the bikes behind an abandoned shack, the only one we've seen on the altiplano and hop into the truck. We are jealous as the truck flies over this terrain, which is extremely difficult on the bikes, especially after riding for 11.5 hrs. That night we stay in very basic accommodations on the flamingo-filled Laguna Colorada, which is orange due to a weird algae with cakey white mineral shoreline.
Great scenery and easy roads, but now on our 9th hour or riding... and we have no idea that the "hard part" is yet to come
The Stone Tree in the Bolivian altiplano at Dusk- we're in the truck by now
Next am we get a ride back to the bikes at 5 am and find the riding much easier because the sand is all frozen (nights are minus 7 C or so at this altitude). We zip back to the camp over the frozen ground before the sun thaws it and nap until noon, when a second truck we have hired to carry the bikes the rest of the way to Chile arrives- we have pushed the first-world escape button. The truck is a much easier way to see the sights and we actually get to sightsee. We get through the Bolivian border (a new shack in the middle of nowhere) and do all the Adouanes paperwork on the spot, no problem. 10 km past the Bolivian border, we get to....a PAVED ROAD!!!! The most beautiful paved road we've ever seen and the first in almost a week. Arriving in San Pedro de Atacama, Scott says "look Pam, infrastructure!" There are telephone poles and ditches and paved roads and an extremely efficient border station where are made to step in a pan of yellow disinfectant liquid and the wheel wells of the truck are sprayed down (but not the bikes in the back, which are completely covered in Bolivian soil and salt). They confiscate our Peruvian sheepskins we bought at the market in Cusco to make the seats more comfy (sorry Janet). We are sad to see those go, they helped a lot, especially on Scott's skinny dirt bike seat. That evening, we eat a gourmet meal in SP and can barely believe the difference between the 2 countries that share a border. Worlds apart. We have culture shock at being back in civilization and have to escape San Pedro because there are too many gringos there.
Note: For the sake of our family receiving these email updates, we neglected to mention that we had to push the first world escape button and hire a truck to get out because Scott had a big wipeout and really hurt his ankle- we later figured he probably fractured it but in the middle of nowhere, sometimes it is better to not know such things... Not a lot of pictures of the bad roads (or lack thereof) that day because we were basically in survival riding mode and taking pictures did not make the cut
Pushing the First World Escape Button- they gave us no say in how the bikes got roped down...
We chilled out for a couple of days in Calama, discovered Chile's popular pop, Pap (say it, its fun) and then headed for the beach at Taltal. The ocean was amazing to see after a whole month away from it- the first view of it as we came out of the hills made me catch my breath. It is amazing how you can see something almost everyday for your whole life and be caught by surprise when you see it again. I hadn't noticed I had missed it. The next day we camped in Parc National Pan de Azucar in really nice campsites right on the Ocean. Very beautiful and less than a week before Christmas, we almost had the place to ourselves.
Presently we are in a little town called Villenar. They have a fake Christmas tree wrapped around the huge palm tree in the middle of the town square- very strange sight. This morning, the lady serving us breakfast at our hostel told us about another guy who had been through 3 days before who had travelled from Alaska. It seems our Swiss friend Martin made it through here and we happened to pick the very hotel he did days before. He is now in Santiago, staying in a nice hotel on BMWs nickel (we think) while they fix his busted shock.
Merry Christmas from the Southern Hemisphere
Scott and I will probably end up a couple hundred kms short of Santiago for Christmas- we'll take a rest day and try to get in touch with family if the town we think we'll be at by then is big enough to have a call centre and if anything is open. If we don't catch you before then, Merry Christmas to all!!!
Scott and Pam
  
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