Shake, Rattle And Roll

Days 151-152

Finally back on both bikes, we enjoyed riding the hardtop South to Potosi, along the altiplano through desolate valleys and canyons. Potosi is a nice enough colonial town, famous for its cooperative mine where we had a brief tour of the harsh mining conditions the following morning. From Potosi the roads quickly deteriorated as we headed towards Uyuni - we started with 20 miles of new tarmac but then had another 100 miles of roadworks, gravel, sand and dirt to contend with. Little did we know then, but this road was great compared with what was to come. Our day was brightened up with a couple of chance encounters with some german bikers coming the other way, though - two guys on some old BMWs done up in a mock-wartime style and later on a couple on a fantastic Ural with sidecar.

Day 153

The Salar de Uyuni really deserves its own day in this account as it is so spectacular a thing! We met up with our French friends in Uyuni and the four of us rode up to the salt plane together and had a fantastic day taking the obligatory photo shoot on the salt and riding in any direction we felt like, at any speed (a fully-laden BMW will do over 110 mph on salt, in case you´re interested), practicing some red arrows style formation riding, without danger of hitting anyone or anything - really, it´s just salt for miles! We all spent the next morning picking the white stuff off our bikes and hoping the corrosion would be delayed by the amount of dirt already on there, at least until we get to Santiago and have the bikes cleaned properly!

Days 154-156

From Uyuni we all wanted to travel South, via some lakes, geysers and desert scenery into Chile and we`d both gathered vaguely collabatory information on which roads were better than others to get there. The Frenchies wanted to go with the "easy" route and although Ric was quite keen on the difficult but more scenic route we decided company was best. We had been told that the road to Laguna Colorada would take around 5 hours, and the Frenchies were told it was a day´s ride so we all felt reasonably confident heading out from Uyuni that we should make it ok. However it soon became apparent that this was highly optimistic for big, laden motorbikes such as ours, especially as we, in keeping with recent times, encountered problems with the bikes...

In the end it took us two days to reach Laguna Colorada and it was a difficult two days to say the least. Emily´s pannier rack broke: the first time we just tied the broken joint up with string; the second time we needed to take the panniers off the rack, tying one to the top of Emily´s bike and the other to the top of Ric´s bike; and the third time we had to take the pannier off Emily´s bike altogether and strap both to the top of Ric´s bike, leaving Emily with just the tail bag. When we stopped for lunch on the first day we also noticed that Ric´s tyre was low on air. We couldn´t find any puncture and it was losing air slowly so we just resolved to pump it up... except that our pump was having difficulties. At just this moment we were very lucky to find a passing 4WD running a tour of the area (the traffic here is almost exclusively 4WDs running tours and an occasional lorry). We were able to borrow their compressor to pump up the tyre and they agreed to cook us some rice and egg as they were preparing lunch for their tour group and there was absolutely nowhere open to buy food in the town! The following morning we were lucky to be able to borrow the hostel´s track pump to get the bike ready for another day´s riding. It wasn´t just our bikes causing problems though. The road (the "easy" road) was either washboard (corrugated dirt which is very uncomfortable and slow to ride on) or sand. In many places the sand was so deep that we were wading the bikes through, buried half a wheel deep. Thom and Flo had it the hardest as their bike is the heaviest to begin with, plus there are two of them on it, and they dropped their bike 5 or more times. Ric had the worst tyres for the sand, having road tyres front and back, and was also carrying a lot of extra luggage - he dropped his bike twice. Emily took full advantage of her lighter bike, superiour tyres, and position at the back of the group giving her the most warning of the terrain and managed to keep her bike pretty much upright the whole time. It wasn´t easy for anyone though, and we can´t begin to imagine what the "difficult" road would have been like!

When we finally reached Lago Colorado it was a beautiful sight, but we were reluctant to go around to the refuge on the other side, knowing we would have to backtrack on the same sand road the following day, so decided to try to camp up near some geysers that we wanted to see on our way out toward Chile. First though, we had to go to Bolivian customs to check the bikes out of the country, which is strangely located 60 miles from the border, and pretty close to the geysers. The customs office is heated by thermal water running in pipes around the building, which comprised the office and living quarters of the single customs officer, and at over 5000m with howling winds we were pleased for the respite. So pleased in fact that asked if we could stay, realising that camping might be chilly (we´d been warned on the way that temperatures were down at -5C in the night). After some deliberation and clearing out of a small room, we were told that we could stay the night, use the kitchen to make our food, and generally make ourselves at home!

The next morning we woke up early to visit the geysers in the dawn light (apparently the best time). We knew this would be difficult for us as we´d need to use the pump which was really on it´s last legs, and indeed it proved impossible when the time came. So we sent the Frenchies on their way and came up with a new plan to ride very carefully without the panniers to try to find someone with a pump... which immediately failed because Ric´s bike wouldn´t even fire up. We tried a push start but there was only a certain distance that Emily could push the bike at 5.30am, in -5C temperature, over 5000m of altitude, and in many layers of clothing, and this wasn´t enough. So we went to the geysers on Emily´s bike leaving everything else at the customs office. We found the Frenchies before we found the geysers - they were still looking for them too. When we eventually found the bubbling mud pots and steaming geysers (no 100-foot water shoots as promised) they were a bit of a disappointment after all the hassle! While the Frenchies pushed on to Chile, we returned to customs, and put Ric´s bike in the sun while we had a hot drink... after 20 minutes of warming up the bike started! Ric found a lorry with a compressor at the chemical plant next to the customs office (the only two buildings for miles around) and we were finally on our way. A few hours of sand and gravel (and admittedly some very stunning scenery when you stop and can look beyond the 10m of road in front of you) later we were elated to reach the Chilean border.

The change in road conditions was immediate: the dirt suddenly became perfectly smooth and sand-free and gave way in just a few miles to a beautiful stretch of smooth dark tarmac, all of which was perfectly signposted and delivered us in no time to the very civilised (and comparatively very expensive) town of San Pedro de Atacama. We washed everything we owned, including all our soft bags whose zips had all ceased up in the dust, and finally settled down with the laptop to discover... it was broken! Possibly by all the bumping around, but we´re down to using internet cafes for the moment until we can find someone to take a look for us.