Something in the Way

26 October 2007

Villa O’Higgins to El Chalten
17.02.07 - 19.02.07
42.51 miles, total 4987 miles
1 hermit, many sickbags

Eleanor: The next part of the journey sounded like it was going to be rather exciting. We’d reached the very end of the Careterra Austral. There was no more road south of here, and to avoid doubling back on ourselves we were instead going to attempt to cross over to Argentina by taking a combination of boats and rough hiking trails.

There were eight of us that morning, strapping our bikes together at the front of the boat as it bobbed around at the far north corner of Lago O’Higgins. It was to be a 5 hour crossing to the other side of the lake, with a detour to get a close-up view of a glacier on its western edge. The lake was a milky turquoise colour, almost inviting were it not for the icy wind that was blowing off the mountains. As the boat set sail, we tucked into bread rolls plastered with Dulce de Leche, sat back in our seats and remarked on how calm it was.

I was staring out at the view from the back of the boat when I noticed a crew member pumping up a life boat on the deck. Slightly alarmed, I searched for signs of an emergency. Was the engine making that noise before? I scoured the man's face for signs of panic; nothing but calm concentration as he pumped. Now he was loading boxes of wine, sugar, matches into the dinghy. As the ship's engines slowed, a rumour reached us that we were stopping here to make the six-monthly provisions delivery to a hermit. He lives on the shore of this lake, out of the reach of roads, surrounded by steep, snow-capped peaks. The laden dingy sped off into the distance towards the shore, and I could just make out a figure with a stick, limping along the beach, dogs jumping excitedly ahead of him. We watched the silent play as the crew arrived, the mime of shaking of hands and an animated conversation. Then the dinghy departed, and the man was left waving on the shore with his pile of boxes.

Our boat set off again, and the wind coming off the glacier picked up, creating some surprisingly peaky water. The waves seemed to be pointing against us and we climbed right to the top of each one before crashing violently down on the other side. I rued our decision to take the longer boat trip, even if it did mean seeing a glacier. An extra steep up, followed by vertiginous plunge the other side prompted some surprised 'oohs' that echoed around the cabin. That was too much for my stomach. Luckily I had anticipated this moment earlier and had a plastic bag at the ready. It was too rough to go outside, so I tucked myself away at the back of the cabin and spent the next two hours vomiting into plastic bags as quietly and politely as possible. I felt very grateful to the crew member with a wide sympathetic smile who took the bags away.

Suddenly, we had reached the glacier, the engines stopped, and all was calm. We stood on the roof of the boat, fat and orange in our lifejackets and jumpers, blinking in the blue reflected light from the vast wall of ice in front of us. Whisky all round, with ice from a passing ice-berg. It burnt my empty stomach, but I didn't care, so relieved was I to have stopped moving.

The next stage of the crossing was much calmer and late in the afternoon we were deposited at the far end of the lake at Candelario Mancilla, the Chilean border. It was a steep walk up through grassy tracks to the ‘Carabineros de Chile’, the Chilean border police, and their painted wooden building overlooking the lake. There was something incongruous about finding neatly pressed and shiny-shoed officials ready to stamp our passports here, at this outpost at the end of the world. The Carabineros were very hospitable though, and invited us to camp on their land and to use one of their outhouses to cook in. I can't imagine getting such a friendly reception if we turned up at a police station in the UK and asked to camp for the night in their garden. We shared the spot with four French cyclists, and spent the evening comparing food rations. Because of the unreliability of these ferry crossings –bad weather can stop them for days at a time; we’d all come prepared with enough food for several meals. Our 30 bread rolls were put to shame by one French couple’s 10 packets of biscuits, 2 kilos of porridge oats and vast tins of fruit.

The next stage of the crossing involved taking a 6 km track over hilly terrain, a ‘no-man’s land’ to get to the shore of Lago del Desierto, and the Argentinean border. We knew that a good portion of the track was not ride-able, and with our amount of heavy luggage, we decided to take up the offer of some horses to carry our things across. I was glad we did, because the next day I found that my energy had been almost entirely sapped by my exertions on the boat, and pushing my bike up those rocky paths tested my strength to its limits. After crossing some rivers, the track then wound its way down again through a forest, Tom rode this part, bouncing over roots, and down muddy slopes, happy to have a little taste of mountain-biking.

We eventually reached the shore of the next lake to find the others, and our bags waiting for us in the sun. In the background was the deep dark blue of Lago del Desierto and behind that, the peak of Mount Fitzroy and Argentina! We took our passports to be checked by the Argentinean customs officials. In keeping with Argentinean attitudes their approach to uniform was much more relaxed, one was even wearing jeans.

I had remembered to take my travel sickness tablets this time, but they were hardly needed, as this crossing was swift and flat. At the other side, we camped behind an Argentinean customs building this time, and the official brought us some shiny fresh trout he’d just caught from the lake. We made a campfire that night and ate well. After the trout, we made our way through most of the food in our bags in celebration of a successful border crossing.

Natural forces

17 May 2007

Coihaique to Villa O'Higgins, 05.02.07 - 16.02.07
360 miles, total 4945 miles
1 condor, 1 huemul, many caterpillars

After our regulation two days rest in Coihaique we were back on the road, on a cold and windy day. The wind started behind us, which led to an unnerving moment at the brow of a hill, where the road had been cut into a cleft. The wind was funnelled through, making us shoot forward and pop out the other side like very heavily laden corks. The tarmaced road initially wound its way through rolling farmland, but then the hill climbing started, and so did the snow, accompanied by an icy headwind to ensure a maximum chill-factor and general unpleasantness. The day was drawing on, and we were wrapped in our warmest layers, when the familiar profile of a cyclist appeared zooming down towards us.
“It is cold, yes?” the large Swiss man boomed, and then started cackling wildly. Looking at him, we suddenly felt warmer; he was wearing only a thin pair of lycra shorts with an old lumberjack shirt, and no gloves. His prescription sunglasses had also seen better days; they still had the glasses part, but not the sunglass lenses, and looked rather like futuristic pince nez. We chatted for a while, marvelling at his blue lips and fingers, chattering teeth, and general level of unconcern, before he continued his descent, leaving us to finish climbing to make it to our campsite for the night.

The reward for all that chilly climbing was a magnificent downhill the next day, with hairpins leading into a dramatic valley, presided over by the Torres Cerro Castillo, Mervyn Peake-esque pinnacles that had been shrouded in cloud the day before. However, our descent was complicated by biodiversity concerns; a mile long stretch was evidently a major caterpillar crossing, with thousands upon thousands of the black hairy things making their way slowly from left to right. Why did the caterpillar cross the road? We shall never know, but the constant weaving to avoid them certainly added to the excitement.
After a short day’s ride, we enjoyed another endearingly fledgling Chilean accommodation experience. Another granny had opened her house to passing cyclists and Israeli backpackers, and quite a house it was too; wooden, and apparently constructed from spare planks and leftovers, none of the walls quite met the ceilings. When the wind blew, the plastic sheeting windows billowed. However we had a cheery time huddling round her wood-fired stove cooking our frankfurters and instant mash.

At Cerro Castillo the pavement ran out again, and the going got slower as the bumpy road snaked alongside a river into the wind. We were consoled with some great scenery though; recent volcanic activity had diverted the river’s course into a wooded area, leaving only eerie silvered dead trunks rising up out of the water.

After two days riding and a wild camp somewhere down a loggers’ track, we made it to Lago General Carrera, South America’s second largest after Titicaca, and a strikingly violent electric blue. The god of cyclists (Madonna del Ghisallo, according to Google) was smiling on us that evening. Pulling into the ‘campsite’ (a cheery family’s garden given over to cyclists for the high season) we spotted a familiar tent, and, sure enough, Rebecca and Edouard, the Franco-English cyclists we’d met a while before, were sitting to eat at the table. “The pasta’s ready and there’s enough for you too!” Our tent was up in record time that evening.

The god of cyclists however clearly believes in karma; we raced off the next day, trying to make up some time, but in what was henceforth known as ‘the saddle day’, it was not to be. First-off, Eleanor, who after an experimental saddle position change was suffering pain in all the wrong places. She was wincing with every bump as a steady stream of cyclists passed us by. Some more adjusting and a lengthy lunch under a shady tree brought some relief, but then it was my turn. Flying down a particularly rutted hill there was a loud crack as the bolt holding my saddle on snapped under the tension. Must have been all those Argentinean high-cal snacks. Our Heath-Robinson skills came to the fore as we effected a roadside repair with zip-ties and string, and I finished the day with my saddle at a somewhat jaunty angle. We were unable to make it to our planned destination, and it was dusk before we spied a suitable lakeside camping spot. In fact we knew it was suitable because we were met by a slightly guilty-looking French cyclist armed with a fishing rod, off to catch his supper. It was only later we discovered the perils of pitching in the semi-darkness; the scattered piles of old toilet paper nearby told us others considered it a better spot for something else.

From there, two more days would take us to Cochrane, the last town of any real size on the Carretera Austral. The last day was scorchingly hot, and the road builders had clearly favoured going up and over, rather than around steep hills and obstacles, with parts almost impossible even to push. We ran out of water, and were getting anxious, but help was at hand, in the form of some Germans in a crazy vehicle; imagine a motorhome built by the Hummer factory, with vast tractor wheels and a metre of road clearance, painted a cheery yellow with a website splashed on the side, and you may have just about got it.
Cochrane when it arrived was a town with a definite frontiersy flavour. The one big shop in town stocked everything, and was full of ruddy-faced farmers filling their shopping trolleys with chainsaws and stirrups alongside their cornflakes. Metrically sized bolts, suitable for fixing saddles, though, were one of its omissions, and so my roadside bodge was to last me until England.

The last stretch of the Carretera Austral, from Cochrane to Villa O’Higgins, is the wildest and most remote of all. With a ferry crossing half way to bridge a fjord, and no roads after Villa O’Higgins where the huge Southern Ice fields start, people, traffic and shops were going to be scarce, but that wasn’t an excuse to go hungry. We loaded our bikes with a mountain of food; 30 bread rolls, a pound of chocolate, biscuits galore, and of course tin after tin of tuna.
We had the added motivation of a little competition; a middle-aged German couple armed with a very precise manual on the Carretera, all smart graphs and altitude tables, who would most annoyingly stop to make camp before us every day, then pass us again on the next.
After a pleasant day following a wide river, we were subjected to alternating drizzle, downpours and clouds as the road climbed steadily up. The vegetation became thick and overgrown, more tropical than wintery, and water was plentiful, from the waterfalls pouring down onto the road from the cliffs above, but orange-tinged from the soil. We also encountered various gangs of road workers armed with roadspoiling machines; giant plows designed to turn hard-packed dirt into rutted piles of mud for the enjoyment of passing cyclists. Despite the obstacles, we finally got to pick our way gingerly down the slippery rocks to the harbour (and little else) of Puerto Yungay, setting up our tent in the now customary semi-darkness on the beach, the lights of the waiting ferry less than a hundred metres away.

As we were waiting to board the ferry the next day we were treated to a little mean-spirited entertainment. A carload of intrepid, but ill-informed Israeli backpackers had arrived, and were quizzing their fellow travellers on the route into Argentina. “Yes, it’s a twenty kilometre hike, and I can guide you for a good price” one said, spotting a quick business opportunity. “No, that’s OK, we have a car” “But, there are no roads!” he pointed out. They took some convincing, and were slowly heading back the way they came as the boat finally left the harbour.
On the other side of the fjord, the landscape started as the same dank, overgrown swamp, saving the crisp air very similar to the Central American jungles of a year before. However the road then started climbing up into the hills, which were topped with shelves of ice, protruding from the icefields that lay just over the horizon. After one long climb we were rewarded with a great nature-spotting moment as a huge condor swooped low over our heads before soaring up to great heights above us on the thermals.

Our next nature moment occurred the following day; I was cycling ahead and all but ran into a Huemul, a critically endangered and emblematic Andean deer. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by us, so we stood in quiet contemplation while he nonchalantly munched on the grassy verge. It was only after several minutes of this that the peace was broken by two approaching cars. Despite waves and points from us, the first shot past without slowing, while the second braked slightly, peered through their windows briefly, then sped off impatiently in a shower of gravel. It’s always nice to have reminders of why we travel by bike.

That day was another one of stunning scenery as we made our way around a large lake to eventually arrive in Villa O’Higgins, the end of the road. And waiting for us as we pulled into the hostel that evening; 14 cyclists – every single one that we had met on the road for the past two weeks! Time for our last carton of Chilean red – the next day we were off on the ferry to start the adventurous crossing to Argentina.

Lonely road

25 March 2007

Futaleufu, Argentina to Coyhaique, Chile, 24.01.07 - 04.02.07
226 miles, total miles; 4585,

Eleanor: We sat on the grass outside Chilean customs eating cherries, cheese, coca sweets and all the other things we weren't allowed to take across the border because of food importing rules. Then came the forms. 'I am carrying meat, cheese, fruit, vegetables, honey or any other fresh produce. Tick Yes or No.'

"Oh...I've got honey in my bag!" I said loudly. "Just tick no." Tom whispered through clenched teeth, nudging me in the ribs.
"But I've got quite a lot of it!"
"Just tick no!" nudging harder in the ribs now. The customs official looked up from his paperwork.
"Do you need any help?"
"No, gracias, todo bien."
"But Tom...what about the honey! What if..."
Tom leaned over and ticked my "No" box, we handed in the forms and then I had a nervous wait while they decided whether or not to check through our bags. They didn't, and we were waved on through into Chile. I'd be a useless smuggler.

We'd heard about the rain, but we hadn't expected the weather to change quite as abruptly as it did. As we crossed the border, dark grey clouds loomed low, drizzling gently and we were reminded of home. Now, everything was greener, wetter and mistier and we were being chased by the river Futaleufu, a roaring mass of turquoise blue that is famous for white water rafting. Occaisonally a party of rafters would sail past, looking alarmingly out of control as their boat was whipped downstream.

It was a beautiful road, but hard work, and it was here that we first invented 'the jacket game'. Feeling a bit hot and sweaty after a long uphill? Stop and take your jacket off, maybe a jumper or two. That's better. Uh-oh, here comes a downhill, and a bit of drizzle, suddenly you're freezing. Dismount, rummage rummage, on goes the jacket for a while... but what's this, another uphill, stop, off with the jacket, but is that a bit of rain? I'll gamble and leave it off...and now I'm soaking. On with jacket. And repeat, several times an hour.

We had played one too many rounds of 'the jacket game' when we came across an intriguing sign that read: 'Sauna Camping'. The camp site had a cooking shelter, bathrooms and of course sauna all lovingly crafted out of wood, but it didn't look like anyone had camped there in a very long while. The reason for this was soon quite clear to us: the whole campsite was placed on a rather steep slope. We did find one sort-of-flat place to pitch our tent however, and soon the owner's family were unloading wheelbarrows of wood for us to power the sauna and shower. We sat inside and sweated for a bit, realised it felt a bit too much like a day in central america on the bikes, and then set about cooking dinner. No sooner had we got our cooking pots out than an army of piglets came running, ears flapping, through the long grass towards our camp and set about snuffling. Like small robots on a search and destroy programme they were checking every square inch of ground for something to snuffle up. We tested them on their food locating skills, flinging small strands of noodle far into the bushes and counting how many seconds it took them to pinpoint it. About 4 usually. We sealed the rest of our food safely away in our panniers and fell asleep to the white-noise roar of the Rio Futaleufú.

The next evening we found ourselves in the town of Villa Santa Lucia. It was raining, so we decided to find lodging for the night and knocked on the door of the first 'hospedaje' we could find. An elderly woman with a face that looked like it had done a lot of moaning over the years appeared around the door, and when we agreed to stay sighed heavily at the inconvenience this would entail.

At dinner, she sat opposite us at the table eyeing us intently whilst we ate, and then after heaving herself a few times to spit vigourously in the sink, she noticed our bulging carrier bags underneath the table containing food we hoped would see us through the next few days.

"Where did you buy your food from?" she demanded. "You didn't buy it from over there did you?" She said, gesturing to the shop across the road where we had just done our shopping.
She tutted disapprovingly "You didn't want to buy it from that place...the shop next door is much better!" . The shop next door it turned out, was owned by her son.
"Have you got cheese?"
"Yes, we've got cheese."
"From that other shop? The cheese next door is much better you know. Have you got biscuits?"
"Yes, we've got biscuits." Big sigh and shake of head.
"Crisps, do you have crisps?"
"No..." We did need crisps it was true, and I dutifully visited the superior next door shop to buy crisps, escorted by the son.

Later, the door swung open, a young Chilean cyclist strode into the old lady's house and without any form of introduction bellowed: "Bread? Bread!! DO YOU HAVE ANY BREAD?!" The old lady, instead of being offended at his brashness, presented him with some freshly baked bread and proceeded to haggle about the price. He proudly told us later his top tip for getting a hot lunch at a good price was to knock on a door at a village and ask if the owner would cook him some food. "Yesterday I got a piece of trout like this!" he said stretching out his arms. It wouldn't work at home, but maybe here in Chile we'd benefit from trying this more direct method of food shopping.

We were on the famed Careterra Austral at last. The contruction of this road was initiated by Pinochet in 1976 in order to open up this remote area of Southern Chile to settlers. It is 1100km long and we were to cycle the last 900km of it, to its end at Villa O'Higgins. We'd heard it was popular with cyclists, and sure enough we hadn't been on the road more than 15 minutes when we spotted the familiar shape of a loaded bicycle approaching. And then another, and another, all with tales of bad but beautiful roads ahead, and some with welding jobs to prove it.

After a few more gruelling gravel hills we found ourselves in a much more jungle-like environment. Temperate rainforest is the proper term and the greenery threatened to engulf the road at any minute. Giant rhubarb-like leaves jostled for space with road signs and great big fuchia bushes dripping with rainwater brushed against my helmet as I cycled. The air was so thick with the smell of plant matter that it felt like I was breathing in a heady brew of oxygenated goodness with every breath. We had the strong feeling that outside this winding dirt road, all that was out there was nature. For that whole day we didn't pass any houses, not even any fences. Humming birds buzzed up to inspect us. Frogs played wood-blocks in the ditches by the side of the road; but we didn't spot a single other person until: "Hooolaaa Chicoooooos!!" there went Ivan, the Chilean cyclist, seemingly motor-powered.

In the town of Coyhaique, about halfway along the Careterra we stopped to do some planning. We realised we had quite a challenge ahead of us to make it to Ushuaia in time. If we could just have a little bit less luggage then maybe we too could travel a little bit faster. We sat down with a large steak sandwich and chips to work out how to lose some weight.

Changes

9 March 2007

MENDOZA TO TREVELIN 22.12.06 – 23.01.07 588 miles, total 4275 miles 1 Christmas, 1 Birthday, 1 Horsefly killing spree; 116 in one day

Tom; Mendoza; a hot, leafy, big city – it was going to take a little effort to get into the Christmas spirit. We decided that a little luxury would definitely help put us in the mood, and were soon giggling behind our hands like schoolchildren as the concierge at the nice hotel we’d picked helped us with our many bags, smearing travel-dust on his smart trousers in the process. For such a big smart city, Mendoza seemed curiously quiet; shops shut, streets empty, and two days before Christmas too – perhaps we really had managed to find ourselves a paradise where Christmas shopping mania didn’t apply? But no, this is Argentina, and they take their siesta very seriously. 6pm, and the crowds magically appeared, elbowing each other to get at the bargains. I then noticed the extended Christmas shopping hours for the posh mall; 10pm till 2am; they really like their late nights here. Christmas day was spent lounging by the pool in our Santa hats, not a mince pie in sight; we felt a little cut off from both the hype, but also the comforting traditions of a home Christmas. The white wine helped of course.

After all that heat it was time for a change, so we skipped ahead to a windy dreary town called Zapala, and the start of the lake district. The air was immediately cooler and fresher, the scrubs and cacti replaced by flowers and odd, alien, monkey puzzle trees, with steep hills falling away to blue lakes. We started by taking a scenic route around Lago Ñorquinco, and were rewarded with a few peaceful days on gravel roads with lovely views and campsites with hot showers. Even New Years was a calm affair; we managed to squeeze ourselves into an otherwise full Parillada and ate our body-weight in grilled meat before a wobbly moonlit cycle home. Ah, peace and quiet! Had we realised at the time what a precious commodity it was …

A less welcome introduction occurred with the arrival of the lakes. Cyclists, meet Mr Horsefly. Horsefly, meet food. They’re mean, persistent things, some the size of bumble-bees, and they’re after your blood. After many not-to-be-recommended flailing, swatting moments whilst negotiating gravel roads, we eventually became quite proficient killers, so here’s the low-down. Stay calm, relaxed, find your inner core of peace as they fly around your head, climb over your sunglasses, bump off your beard. Continue to beam peace and love as they land on your hand or arm and prepare to unfurl their serrated mandibles to tear into your flesh, through your jacket if needs be, and lap up your blood. Then hit them, hard, and cycle off with a ‘Ha!’ as they spiral to the ground. The ‘hard’ bit is tricky though; not enough, and they fly off with an insouciant shrug, too hard, and, well, messy.

After a few days of this I felt somewhat hysterical as I saw what appeared to be hundreds of them heading towards me. I prepared myself to stand my ground and kill or be killed, but they deftly changed course, neatly flying up and over. It was then we noted the many hives on one side of the road, with the fields of blue lupins on the other, and realised we were negotiating a bee crossing.

Argentina is in many ways a very European country. The people are mainly of Spanish and Italian stock, and there is scant evidence of the indigenous populations who came before. And one continental tradition that has made its way here is the ‘let’s all jump in our cars and go on holiday on the same day’ phenomenon. Cars. SUV’s. Bigger SUV’s pulling caravans and boats. Mobile homes pulling cars, motorbikes strapped on the back. Convoys of every large, speeding, road-hogging vehicle conceivable, racing down gravel roads pushing us into the trees. The ‘Siete lagos’ (7 lakes) route is justifiably famous for its beauty, a dirt road winding its way around the edge of lakes and through forested valleys. We even caught occasional glimpses of it, through the thick, choking dust thrown up by the monster trucks. It allowed little mental space for thought, but I did have time to ponder how Ford had the gall to call one of their SUV’s the ‘ECOsport’.

After our first day of hair-raising riding, swatting horseflies whilst sweating up hills and dodging crazed holiday drivers, we were looking forward to a peaceful lakeside camp to unwind. It was not to be – hundreds of teenagers were milling around, tents crammed into every possible space like a latin Glastonbury festival.
“What’s going on?” we asked one of the passing trendy mullet-cut kids. “We usually go to the beaches up north for our Summer, but this year, the party’s at the lakes”.
We were glad for our earplugs that night, but it must be said the massed Argentinian youth are a little more docile than their British equivalent. They were reading books rather than drinking beer, and politely passing round the mate and thermos, rather than other, more controversial herbal extracts. [Yerba mate is the English cuppa and Japanese tea ceremony rolled into one; a bitter caffeinated herb drunk through a metal straw, constantly topped up with hot water from a thermos, the permutations of arranging, shaking, wetting and moulding the set-up seem endless] Of course, as we were readying ourselves for bed, they had just about got their campfires ready for the inevitable meat-grilling session. How exactly they travelled with grills and sides of lamb in their rucksacks is anyone’s guess. The next morning despite the traumas we were grateful to be on bikes as we passed them all, waiting by the side of the road, waving their thumbs hopefully at passing vehicles (including us).
Our reward at the end of the route was Bariloche, a very touristy lakeside town, but one that is famous for its handmade chocolates. Eleanor ate well that day.

Things calmed down somewhat after Bariloche as we headed South to El Bolson. El Bolson is known as a hippie town, proudly proclaiming itself ‘nuclear free’ (quite who was planning to arm them with Trident is not clear). We arrived at the end of market day, and discovered the nexus of Argentine hippie tat. As we have travelled through South America, we’ve often seen a strange breed of traveller, not European but not Peruvian (in Cusco) or Bolivian (in Copacabana), colourfully clad and always sitting on the pavement, trying to sell homemade jewellery, bangles, beads and charms, in a style that borrows from all cultures but is curiously invariant, from Camden market to Koh Samui. El Bolson was their Argentine spiritual home, where the bead necklaces were more plentiful and the wooden gnomes more brightly painted than anywhere else. Of more interest to us was the brewery with attached campsite. 11 different types of beer to try, and only one night…
Another species, previously unknown to us, that we encountered on that stretch of road, was the elderly French cyclist. Instantly recognisable by their white hair, mahogany skin stretched over rope-like muscles, and ‘1991 Tour de France’ lycra tops, they were inevitably riding old drop-handled tourers that were proving unsuited to the gravel roads and had been welded back together a few times already, but still managed to cover twice as many miles as us in a day. We would converse together haltingly in Spanish, theirs peppered by Gallic exclamations as they swatted yet another horsefly from their sinewy legs.

Trevelin was our final town in Argentina before we were due to cross to Chile, and it was only partially Argentinean at that. In the 1860’s Welsh settlers colonised part of the Patagonian Atlantic coast, keen to create a ‘little Wales beyond Wales’. Later arrivals, finding that, despite innovative irrigation schemes little suitable land existed, and that the similarities between the arid windswept pampas and the Welsh valleys had been perhaps overstated, launched expeditions to settle the Andean side. This wasn’t entirely popular with the existing Mapuche people, and one of the settlers, John Evans, was saved from the fate that befell his two friends, that included death, but also some extreme nastiness beforehand, by a prodigious leap over a ravine by his horse. Some intervention by the Argentinean military later, and Trevelin was founded.

The first immediately Welsh connection we noted was the drizzle, which started the moment we arrived and persisted throughout our stay. We then made our way around the museum containing the first settlers belongings, and the similarities continued; china dogs, decorative plates, Singer peddle sewing machines – it was like a car-boot sale in Pontypridd.
Later we moved on to our highlight of the stay; the compulsory visit to ‘Nain Maggie’s Tea Rooms’. The shock of being served by very Welsh-looking ladies, complete with dinner-lady outfits, but speaking Spanish, was soothed by our first decent cup of tea in eleven months. And then the food came… several rounds of bread thickly spread with butter, a plate of scones with jam, then five types of cake including welshcake, washed down with two large pots of tea. The waitresses looked increasingly admiring, then gave us a brief round of applause as the final morsel was swallowed. We noticed all the other diners eat a polite slice or two, then have the rest to take away, the cowards. Still, we needed the energy; we were off to Chile the next day, and the famous Carretera Austral, and from what we had read, it wasn’t going to be downhill all the way.

Friends and Foes

20 February 2007

Salta to Mendoza
01.12.06 - 22.12.06
600 miles, total 3687 miles
7 cyclists, 1 campsite, 5 bottles of wine

Salta, Buenos Aires, Madrid, London, Sussex. Sussex, London, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Salta. Phew, quite a week! What is comforting about travelling is that you can fly thousands of miles to surprise your parents (and they did look suitably surprised), but within minutes be sipping a cup of tea in the kitchen as if nothing had happened. To go from Summer to Winter to Summer again, though, that’s confusing. To compound the bodily confusion, we jumped on the bikes again at the first opportunity to catch our cycling muscles before they jellified. The next three days, through a dramatic valley, on to vineyards, introduced us to two themes; heat, and swimming pools with no water in.

“Over here!” We had just rolled into Cafayate and were standing in the main plaza, getting our bearings, and a familiar face was waving to us from one of the nearby cafes. It was Martin, the Swedish cyclist we had first met on the Bolivian Salar, looking relaxed and sipping a beer. He had already met an English cycling couple, Tom and Lisa, in his hotel, and later that evening his eagle eyes spotted the tell-tale signs of Ortleib panniers of a German couple, Joachim and Antje, across our campsite, leading to a lengthy wine-fuelled get-together around the campfire that evening. Comparing notes; we thought Tom and Lisa’s weekly bike maintenance sessions a little obsessive, they thought our ‘yet to get round to one’ attitude damn foolhardy. Only time will tell which is the better strategy.
Cafayate is famed for its wine, and so a vineyard tour was in order, along with Martin and two Frenchmen he had met. The setting, with fields of vines stretching to the Andean foothills, was certainly impressive, the tour itself though, was a little … lacking. “This is where we pour the grapes into the machine” – point to chute in ground, “stuff happens under there” – vague wave of hand towards tarmac, “these tanks contain the wine” – disinterested point to large industrial-looking white tanks, “automated bottling machine….” “and now – our Shop!” We enthusiastically helped ourselves to the free samples and bought ourselves the second-cheapest bottle, while the French muttered, glowered and pouted. “Too modern!” they huffed. “Too … New!”

He had taken a break, but couldn’t stay away for long. Our old friend the wind was back. Our second day out of Cafayate, after a brief climb onto a scrubby, featureless plain, and reduced to crawling speed. Even Martin’s thoughtful roadside rescue-banana couldn’t save us. Our ambitious plans for the day shelved, we spent the night camped in a kindly lady’s breezeblock hut. Another day of wind, compounded by gravel road beckoned, but we were rewarded with a day’s riding through dramatic, multicoloured rock formations and huge cacti to arrive in the sleepy oasis of Belen, where we were joined a day later by the Germans.

“What’s that funny rumbling noise?” We were packing up our tent at high speed, anxious to hit the road early before the wind hit again. “Uh-oh” I thought, “stomach troubles again.” But no, this time it was thunder. A minute later, it was raining hard, a minute after that, large hailstones were clattering off the tent. All was over in half an hour, but we later discovered those thirty minutes had destroyed a year’s work by the region’s fruit farmers.
Our efforts at efficiency were to no avail anyway, as the wind kicked in by 10am, coming from the side for a bit of novelty. The only way to proceed was by leaning at a distinctly rakish angle into the gale, leading to dramatic wobbles into the road or the ditch with every gust or passing lorry. After 40km we had had enough. Arriving into the lifeless plaza of a small village, half our faces caked with dust, we were wondering about how to get some food or a lift, when a man approached, with the equivalent of “so I expect you’ll be wanting the hostel too” and lead us to an unmarked house. We understood what he meant after we were greeted by Joachim and Antje in the garden, mending their punctures.

After that, the wind decided to go and bother some other cyclists for a while, and two days later we arrived in Chilecito, after a long hot approach through the scrubby desert, the trees of the town shimmering like an oasis. We pulled into the plaza, and spotted some coke signs, code word for ‘late lunch’. Our usual routine kicked in; stomp in in a cloud of dust, fling helmet and smelly gloves on the table, slump in seat, order too much food, with hopefully ice-cold ‘gaseosa’ to wash it down with. It was only when the waitress was carefully pouring said coke into our large, thin-glassed wine glasses as if she expected us to taste it and nod, that we began to look around, at the white linen napkins, tasteful decorations, air-conditioning, and bemused looks on the elegant, well-dressed diners as they looked at our dust-caked faces and bike shorts, that we realised that, perhaps, we were a little underdressed.

“Oi, tossers!” We were in the main plaza of San Juan, tired, befuddled, and looking for food as usual, and there was Martin, showing off his perfect command of idiomatic English. We had only a few days to get to Mendoza for a non-traditional hot Christmas, but had decided to complicate matters with a scenic detour via Callingasta and Ushpallata. It was worth it though, as the road snaked along a river valley with snowy mountains as a backdrop. For the first two stops there were even, gasps! Swimming pools with water in them! It all seemed too easy… Lulled by the initial tarmac, we found ourselves looking for somewhere, anywhere, to camp after a day of slogging through the gravel. We pulled off the road, into the scrub, to encounter a new problem; hundreds, thousands, of sandflies. Sandflies in the mouth, in the ears, almost invisibly small, but able to raise a blood-blister when they found bare skin. We pitched our tent with jackets on, trouser-legs in socks, and bandanas over the face. To further compound our misery, we were distracted into inventing a new camping culinary low; charcoal soup.

All that was a distant memory by the last day though. It had taken 30km of diligent, gravel uphill mind, but now all was down, and with a view of distant Aconcagua (tallest peak in South America) thrown in too. And what a downhill! The ‘hill of a year’, their moniker, not ours, for its 365 hairpin bends, taking us from the steep treeless mountains above, to the hot, er, treeless plains surrounding Mendoza. And we had to hurry too; we had Martin to meet, in the plaza, for Christmas drinks!

Change of Scene

5 February 2007

Villazón to Salta, Argentina

Eleanor: I don't normally find myself giggling with excitement in supermarkets, but we had been in Bolivia for a long time without even a whiff of a trolley or a deli counter. Who'd have thought we'd miss all of that. I wandered around stroking the by now unfamiliar wonders; cakes, cheese and yogurts and eventually emerged brandishing two full shopping bags, still grinning from ear to ear. It was to be a day of treats, for next came another we had been waiting for; paved roads. Tarmac, asphalt, pavemiento, whatever you like to call it, we had been dreaming of it. The barren, brown scenery wasn't much to look at, but my, we were going so fast past it, eating up the miles like never before. The other vehicles were going faster here too though. No trundling, smoke-belching trucks that you could hear for hours before they passed and smell for hours afterwards. Here, sleek Fiats with black tinted windows whipped past our handlebars before we could even spot them in our rear-view mirrors. Neeeoooooowwwwww.

The next day we climbed up over a pass and found ourselves flying down into a very wide and very beautiful valley. The sides were vividly-coloured stripy rock and the valley bottom was lush, flat pasture. We cycled past chestnut coloured horses swishing their tails in the knee-length grass, and tall thin trees. Trees! We hadn't noticed it but we'd been missing those as well. The altiplano had been devoid of any plant taller than knee-height, and even green Cochabamba had had nothing to rival these towering beauties. On top of all this, we were cycling downhill; for miles and miles there was not a single climb in sight. Was it a dream...? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

At 3.30pm we were awakened by a slap in the face from a 50mph wind. Suddenly, cycling downhill was next to impossible. Cyclists going the other way, smiled as they whizzed up the hill, pushed along by the gale. The wind had spoilt our fun; there was nothing for it but to push to the closest village and take shelter. Luckily the nearest town, Humahuaca was very close, and a good place to spend the night. We spent the evening eating pasta and listening to a small group of musicians playing Andean music on the quena (a sort of wooden flute) charanga (a tiny guitar) and a drum. They were captivating to watch because they didn't seem to care two hoots whether anyone was taking any notice of them or not; they were so obviously enjoying themselves. It gave me a new incentive to keep practising on the quena that I bought in the witches' market in La Paz; so far the noise it produces more closely resembles that of a troubled parrot than a haunting melody.

I found myself in the city of Salta on my own for a week whilst Tom made a lightening speed journey to London for his Dad's birthday. After an initial period of bewilderment at life in a strange city without the accompanying bearded one, I soon settled in to the cafe culture. I discovered a never-seen-before ability to sit still in a pavement cafe for hours on end sipping cappuchinos and watching the world go by. Lovely.

One morning, I was treating myself to a breakfast-with-everything in a very nice cafe on the square when along came the dog owned by the hostel I was staying at, and sat down under my chair. Now this dog would often be seen wandering around the city, and I'd already heard of his uncanny ability to recognize any gringo staying at his hostel. So that was fine, he could sit under my chair if he liked, and I set about eating my eggs. Then a shoe-shine boy approached my table -'Would I like my hiking boots polished?' but before I could reply, the dog under my chair had erupted in a frenzy of barking and snarling, snapping at the boy's heels, who turned and ran, tripping over chairs to get away from the monster. The dog, satisfied with his work, sat back down under my chair and folded his paws. Then along came a bracelet seller, who got the same treatment, the dog going for his legs with alarming ferocity. By now the whole cafe was staring, and all I could do was embarrassedly shrug my shoulders -"No es mi perro!" This continued until there was a large 'street seller no-go area' around my table -something I'd always craved, but it was a rather violent and very embarassing way to achieve it. I hurriedly ate the rest of my toast, and headed off, dog trotting happily at my side. I found out later at the hostel that the dog's name is 'Bodyguard' -I think I know why.

The next afternoon I did some studious ice-cream eating in the park, which led to a number of interesting conversations with locals. That would never happen in London; sit down on a park bench and before you know it, someone not all that weird or dangerous looking is helpfully telling you about all the best restaurants in town, and what his favourite food is. It turned out to be dulce de leche, an incredibly sweet caramel made from condensed milk and sugar that here in Argentina enjoys a near royal status. They fill their pastries with it, they eat it on their icecream and they smear it on their toast. He was incredulous that we didn't have it in the UK. "You mean to say, you live in your country without dulce de leche?!"

The week whizzed by, with some horseriding and traditional dancing thrown in for good measure and soon I was meeting Tom at the airport, ready for an early start the next morning to set off for wine country!

Headlights on dark roads

12 January 2007

Uyuni to Villazón, border with Argentina
188 miles, 1 goat stampede, many kms of pushing

Eleanor: Oh my Sainted Aunt the roads were bad. What shall it be? A bone-jarring washboard surface dusted with a light coating of gravel, or maybe a softer, flatter verge, with surprise patches of deep sand to keep you on your toes? Whichever I tried, the sand was always greener on the other side of the road, and I zigzagged back and forth, trying to find the best route, probably doubling my mileage.

By far the worst was the washboard, so named because the road is ridged like the old fashioned clothes-washing instrument. A few times on a downhill it made my bike bash up and down violently, gaining resonance until the panniers fell off. I shouted at the road, I shouted at my bike, but it didn't help. It was hard to remember that this was one of the main roads out of Bolivia. It was also sometimes hard to remember that this was meant to be fun.

But but, despite the difficulty of the road and the achingly slow speed we were making, it still felt worth it for the scenery it was taking us through. We passed through canyons filled with red pillars shaped like faces, climbed over desolate hills with misty volcano peaks in the distance, and skidded down through narrow gorges, hemmed in by slabs of multicoloured rock. At times I felt like we were lone extras in a geology documentary, set there simply for appreciation of scale.

Most days we could go for hours without being passed by a single vehicle. On the second day, we had stopped on the verge to let a 4 wheel drive pass us, it was speeding along, spraying gravel everywhere. At the last minute it swerved violently towards Tom, clipping his bike and breaking a pannier off it's fixing. I don't know what that horrible driver was thinking, but it's ironic that after all the hectic cities we've cycled through, the one collision with a car should happen in a barren wilderness. The pannier was temporarily fixed with a zip-tie (marvelous things).

On the fifth day, it was four o'clock and we were tantalisingly close to the border. A helpful cyclist advised that it was probably two, no perhaps three, actually make that four hours of cycling to get there. It was decision time; camp here or carry on to the border town Villazón, despite the fiery red sunset on the horizon. Stubbornness, and a strong desire to get to the fabled tarmac of Argentina took over rationality and we decided to carry on into the sunset. Minutes later, we were in trouble. I hadn't realised just how much I'd been relying on seeing the road, choosing my path carefully, dodging rocks and thick sandy patches. With the light all gone, my balance was suddenly all gone too, and my bike was skidding in unseen gravel ridges. After lots of falling off, I slowly worked out how to navigate by the sound and feel of my tyres on the road -it was like cycling with your eyes closed. Lorries threw up great clouds of dust as they passed that lasted for minutes, lit up by our head-torches in the dark. We cowered by the side of the road until the monsters had passed, then wobbled on.

After two hours we could make out the lights of the city in the distance, but this also brought problems of its own. The dogs. We could hear them barking, but in the pitch black, all we could see of them was their green eyes, shining back the light from our torches. There was a pack of them, they sounded big and were getting closer. Back to back, with our bikes as shields, we flung stones in all directions and shouted insults at the tops of our voices. My imagination raced with drooling mouths and gnashing teeth. But the stones worked, and the dogs fled. We pushed slowly onwards to the glimmering lights, vowing never to never get ourselves into such a silly silly situation again...

BOOM BOOM BOOM

7 January 2007

Sucre and Potosi
1 Hillside, 6 sticks of dynamite

After our grand Salar tour, we decided on a side-trip by bus to visit Sucre, the old colonial Capital, and Potosi, the old mining city and source of the Spanish wealth.
Sucre was pleasant enough, although the afternoon showers were evidence of the approaching wet season, but it was the mine visit in Potosi that stuck in the mind. At 4000metres, it is the highest city in the world, and dominated by the ‘Cerro rico’ or rich hill, from which first silver, then tin and other metals, have been mined since 1549. The mining companies pulled out years ago, and the hill is now in the hands of mining ‘cooperatives’, groups of 5 to 30 miners who buy the rights to small areas and hope to make it lucky. We donned our helmets and boots, and walked into the tunnel, and were immediately struck by how primitive the conditions were; a few wooden planks holding up the rough-hewn walls, tiny passageways disappearing off into the ground, and choking dust. We were proudly shown the electric winch, the only one in the mine, and owned by one of the larger cooperatives to haul buckets of ore up. Everyone else is still doing it the hard way; carrying 50kg loads on their backs up wooden ladders from the depths, then pushing trolleys or wheeling ancient wheelbarrows down the cramped tunnels. We clambered our way nervously down through tight squeezes, sliding down wooden chutes to get to the fourth level, where the air was noticeably dustier and thicker. The thought of what the 11th level must be like was horrifying.

Before we had entered we had visited the miners market, and now everywhere we went we distributed presents; a stick of dynamite here, a bottle of fanta there. The miners do 12 hour shifts, sometimes doing two shifts back to back, and for some reason believe it unlucky to eat, so fuel themselves on fizzy drinks and the inevitable huge pouches of coca leaves. They work 6 days a week, then on Saturday when the work ends go to one of the many ‘devils’ in the mines; devil idols with a suspiciously Spanish look who are presented with gifts for luck. There they drink the 96% strength ‘alcohol potable’, believing to mix it will result in mixed, not pure ore. None of that could have helped their health, but the main reason for the terrible average life-expectancy was the horrible, choking dust. After two hours we had had enough, coughing, our throats sore for days after, not helped by being cheerfully informed that the white stuff dripping down the walls was arsenic. The reason, as ever, that people endure such conditions, is money, more than twice what they could expect to earn working the land.

After the mine, it was time for a little light relief, and a chance to celebrate Guy Fawkes night, Bolivian style. That’s right, dynamite time. We were shown how to mould the putty-like stuff into a ball, stick the detonator-end of the fuse into the centre, then tie it up in a plastic bag with some fertilizer around for some added zing. We were all posing, laughing and joking around when we noticed our guide fiddling with the end of the fuse. The next thing we knew there was very tell-tale smoke coming from the end of the fuse, and a very alarming burning advancing rapidly towards the explosives still cupped in our hands. “Err … No, I don’t like this! What do we do with it now? Err … help please, this isn’t funny, I’ve got a bomb in my hand!” We rapidly lost our cool and started looking panickedly around for somewhere to throw our unwanted possessions as our guides chuckled unconcernedly. After what seemed like ages, and with the fuses half gone, we began our run down the road, dumped our fizzing packages among the rocks and sprinted back to safety. We didn’t have long to wait for the first explosion, shockingly loud and terrifying. In quick succession the other five went off (we had all obviously wanted a bomb each), one that had been buried slightly sending a shower of rocks into the air, somewhat unnervingly I’d imagine for the approaching bus. Indoor fireworks eat your heart out!
And now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, and especially techno-wizz Jack (now available for wedding videos) you can see the whole thing by clicking here!

Just a little bit salty

15 December 2006

Cochabamba – Uyuni
23.10.06 – 01.11.06
294miles, total 2653miles, 1 salt-lake, 2 islands, 36 litres of water

Tom; After our six weeks of work and play, it was finally time to remind ourselves that we were meant to be cycling – which meant another bus. We have decided there are enough miles left without repeating ourselves, so bussing it back up to where we left the main altiplano road for Cochabamba made sense; avoiding climbing back up 1500m wasn't a factor at all. We worried as ever for our bikes, but it was another passenger who had a lot more to lose; we watched in awe as he loaded his wares into the hold; 14,400 eggs. Every time we hit a pothole I had visions of torrents of yolk pouring onto the road, but both bikes and eggs made it safely without merging. Our trip was to start again in earnest from Oruro, back on the now familiar, dry Altiplano, which also meant a day getting used to the altitude again, spent wandering around the massive markets, buying bike honk-horns, and wondering over the uses for dried armadillos.

On returning to our hotel that afternoon we were greeted with the sight of a fellow cyclist in the middle of bike repairs. Werner was from Switzerland, had started in La Paz, and was heading South like us. We were then joined by an Austalian couple, owners of the huge BMW motorbike that we had admired earlier, which lead to a merry evening comparing notes on roads and meals.

For the next two days we slowly regained our cycling legs, meandering on flat asphalt roads, childishly amused by nearby lake Poopo. On both days we arrived in small towns to find Werner, who had generally finished his day's riding before we had started ours, despite owning an overloaded bike with the weight of a small hatchback. On the second evening we hatched a plan over local Huari beer; we would abandon our safe tarmac option towards Potosi, and head instead for the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. At 4,085 square miles, it is a trifle large, dry and empty, but with Werner's cool head, and our true British pluck, what could possibly go wrong?

As we set off on our grand adventure the next day the first 10km were unexpected tarmac, all important to ferry the precious Huari beer from its lakeside brewery. Once we had passed that though, we were on our own. The bumpy gravel road stretched to the horizon without a soul in sight, with only the odd llama and threatening rain-cloud to admire as we bumped over the endless washboard. The first victim was, surprisingly, a bolt on my front pannier rack, rather than our bottoms, but I was excited to make my first road-side zip-tie repair.

After a night’s rest in a small and simple village, in an even smaller and simpler room, we headed on, which involved crossing a wide, sandy river. Werner sensibly took his boots off for a paddle, I put too much faith in goretex, and spent a merry while wringing out my socks. As we bumped our way further from the main road, the occasional small settlements got smaller, as did the inhabitants; when we arrived in Tambo Tambillo, there was just a small group of somewhat wary children to greet us and lead us to the village pump. It was here we were introduced to one of the many toys filling out Werner’s voluminous luggage, as he used his UV pen to sterilise the water and further convince the children (and us) of his alien status.

We had been told to look out for some ‘holes’ after Tambo Tambillo. Now looking back I’m not quite sure what we were expecting, but certainly not huge craters, hundreds of metres across, with lakes at the base, testimony to some ancient meteor shower. From then on the scenery proceeded to get weirder; we started to see patches of multi-coloured salt and shallow pools, sculpted pumice hills rising abruptly from the plains, and then herds of vicuñas, that look like the living embodiment of Bambi, all dewy eyes and pencil-thin neck.

After three hard days we had finally made it to Salinas, the last sizeable village before the Salar. There was a promising-looking hostel in the square, but no owner, and as we waited for one to arrive we were presented with a spectacle of bad driving. Attracted by the horn-honking, I discovered a man slumped at his wheel, stuporously drunk, his car stalled. The drivers behind him eventually roused him and helpfully pushed his car forward, at which point it lurched suddenly forward, threatening to squash a passing family, and stalled again. The man promptly fell asleep again, his head lolling on the dashboard. Another wake up call, another jump start, and this time he shot backwards several metres, sliding around in his seat like a rag-doll as a dog barely got out of the way in time. One more cheerful push, and a last-minute swerve around a stationary bus, and he was tacking his way up the road, people scattering in all directions. It was only at that point I noticed the whole family he had in the back seat. I sincerely hope they arrived in one piece.

“18 bottles of water please …. And a tin of tuna”. We were stocking up for the Salar, and determined not to be caught short. Extremely overloaded, and leaving behind a very happy shopkeeper, we wobbled our way out of the village the next day. After a quick first 20km on smooth wet sand, we had to push and sweat our way up a short, sharp hill, but were finally rewarded with our first view of the Salar, a horizon of dazzling white that looked like someone had taken the scenery away. Once we were on the salt it was time for our first lesson in correct GPS use from Werner the professional. Various jeep tracks curved around the ‘shore’ or headed off for distant Colchani, but the island we were heading for that night meant a ‘cross-country’ traverse. Werner gave us an impromptu lesson, and we headed confidently off for a distant island. The salt was strange stuff, formed of rough hexagons, as though drawn by a small child. The going was initially smooth, but later the hexagons became more raised in the centre, meaning a bumpy painful ride as we pushed on. Then, as the going got smoother again, the wind started, and the distant island remained painfully distant. The freedom, though, of being in such a huge empty space gradually dawned on us though, as we experimented with riding for as long as possible with eyes closed, or weaving and circling around. Our brains also refused to compute what it was we were riding on; “the snow, err…sand … err … ice … no, that’s not it…” After being treated to a spectacular sunset, we were riding by moonlight on the surreal white landscape, finally pulling up on the ‘beach’ of the large cactus-covered pumice island. We had been expecting to find some buildings, as we had heard there was a visitors centre, but as we trudged around in the darkness, it was apparent we had the place to ourselves, so after a quick super-noodle supper, we crashed out in our tents, exhausted.

The next morning we woke to see Werner striding purposely up and down the beach, GPS in hand, peering at it and then the horizon. Eventually he came over and rather sheepishly explained; wrong island. A few experiments later and we discovered what had happened; compasses and bikes don’t mix. When stationary, the GPS relies on a magnetic compass, which had been made doolally by the big pile of steel we were carrying ourselves around on. Start moving, however, and the GPS cheerfully pointed to the small island, 20km away. Apologies accepted, we headed off for the right place, wrapped up from head to toe despite the heat to keep out the burning sun.

As we arrived at Isla Inkahuasi, we had a welcoming committee; three other cyclists! Martin the Swede, and the French couple were heading on their way on the very tough route to the Atacama desert, but had at least started in luxury; while we had been lashing our tents to rocks, they had been eating llama steaks and luxuriating in the hotel that now existed on the island! We found time to eat some delicious burgers before wishing them luck and heading off.

With the wind now behind us and the salt now perfectly smooth, we made up for lost burger time, riding 65km in three hours. We were amused to find we were part of the tourist experience, as traveller-filled jeeps passed and slowed, cameras pointed out of the windows, before speeding off, Werner chasing them shouting “cinco pesos!!”. We also tried and failed to solve the mystery of the holes; small water-filled holes disappearing down into the salt. An impromptu plumb-line (spanner and string) told us they were at least 4 metres deep.

That afternoon we arrived at the ‘Salt hotel’ to be greeted by a rather lost-looking and forlorn group of tourists. We had been told the hotel was closed, but it seemed not. They had booked into a tour, that had deposited them at the door in a jeep then sped off, telling them the owner would be there soon. We waited with them as the sun set and they got more anxious, calculating how well our pasta supplies would stretch to feeding 7, but eventually another jeep arrived, with the boss and other tourists. We were welcomed in for some unexpected luxury. The Salt hotel is exactly as the name suggests; the walls are salt, the tables and chairs, and so, unfortunately, are the beds. We spent a cheery night drinking beer and recounting cycling tales to the assembled international crowd.

The next morning, we left the hotel to find; more cyclists! Karen and Ryan were South Africans, now settled in Canada. We all headed off together to take our final salty pictures, before the final 20km to the shore, and 20km more through the sand to Uyuni. We had made it, and left the Salar with 6 of our 12 litres each of water intact!

Work and Play

24 October 2006

Tom: After our travels across the Altiplano we were pleased for the change of Cochabamba; trees! Flowers! Pizza! We had decided to spend a while in one place, doing some voluntary work, and hopefully working on our Spanish too.

Cochabamba is a pleasant medium sized city set in a long valley, and at a 'mere' 2500m, has a pleasant warm but not tropical climate. For us it offered a perfect 6 week break, with manageable portions of culture, socialising and nightlife, but for most backpackers it has no obvious draws, so is off the 'Gringo trail'. The gringos we met therefore tended to be longer-term residents or volunteers, or the occasional shady adventurer type, all making for a more interesting level of conversation than the usual 'relative merits of footprint over lonelyplanet guide' chat. Another interesting change was our escape from hotels to domesticity, as we rented a room in a pleasantly old family house, and enjoyed (occasionally) cooking for ourselves and giving the family dog a well-deserved haircut.

One thing that Cochabamba seemed to have a lot of was politics. Cochabamba has been dubbed by one writer as 'the place where the fightback against globalisation began', due to an episode in 2000 known as the 'Guerra del agua'. Bolivia had been pressured to privatise its public amenities by the IMF as a condition of further loans and La Paz and Cochabamba were chosen as the guinea pigs. Cochabamba has historically had chronic water supply problems, with a huge damming and tunnelling project ongoing for 50 years, with no end in sight. Some of the slack has been taken up by local water cooperatives and charities, who have installed local wells in dry areas. The water supply was sold to Bechtel, a giant US firm in 1999, and the 40 year contract included rights over all water, including that drawn from private wells. Even if a person had paid for a well to be dug in their own house, the company had a right to charge for the water or turn it off! Then when the company's first act was to double the water bills, the scene was set for a showdown. After 5 days of blockades, teargas and confrontations between troops and protesters, leaving one dead, Bechtel were forced out, (leaving a demand for $25 million compensation) and the water was put in the hand of a collaberative effort between the old state company, and local representatives of the water protesters. All is not yet well with Cochabamba's water yet though; when we were there the farmers switched off the city's supply for 24 hours, protesting about water rates.

Whether for its history or its climate, Cochabamba attracts a number of volunteers and activists interested in issues such as Globalisation and the IMF, centred around the Democracy Center (http://www.democracyctr.org), and living with two of their team, we were soon in the thick of a crash course in global politics. Bolivian politics itself continues in its turbulent way, and not everyone is happy with Evo and his left-wing course. The lowland regions, centred around Santa Cruz, are particularly antagonistic, and are threatening to break away from the more indigenous Altiplano, taking the gas, oil and wealth with them. Two people separately predicted civil war within 6 months.

Eleanor: We wanted to spend a while volunteering to have a chance to experience Bolivia on a different level and hopefully be useful to an organisation as well. We would have liked to have had more time, but with our punishing cycling schedule, six weeks it would have to be. We were posted to 'La Colonia Ecologica', a children's foster home and afternoon club on the edge of the city. Within minutes of us arriving, children were hanging off us like fruit from trees. I repeated the names in my head over and over, knowing I would not be allowed to forget them.

Kiko and Carmen, the couple who run the centre do an amazing job, fostering 21 orphans or former street children, and looking after the 30 or so more who come along in the afternoons. They try to create a family environment, successfully I think, and all the children, considering their circumstances seemed well adjusted and clearly enjoyed being there.

There's a very strong work ethic, with time set aside each day for reading, and a lot of importance placed on homework. It seems to be working very well; we were suprised at the eagerness the children showed to do their homework, and we heard that two of the oldest ones have recently started university.

They own a narrow strip of land in the village of Chiquicolla on the edge of Cochabamba. It's not a lot of space, but they've made the most of what they've got. Kiko has constructed a series of small classrooms, each with a different theme (there's a log cabin, a teepee, a traditional bolivian house and one treehouse) and in the future he plans to build further upwards into the eucalyptus trees that tower over the site, a sort of Ewok village. The incentive to do well at school will continue here, with only the children getting the highest marks allowed the privilege of access to the classrooms in the trees.

We were there in the afternoons to help out, and these followed the pattern of an hour of chores (cleaning, preparing vegetables or helping to finish the cobbling of the paths between classrooms) followed by reading and then homework. Once that was all done, then time was free and that was our opputunity to introduce some different activites.

Tom found a microscope languishing in the back of a cupboard, a gift from previous volunteers that had hardly been used. He set about setting it up and teaching some of the older children how to use it. Later that day, there was a big queue of small children outside the classroom. I went to see what was going on... roll up, roll up, to see the head-louse under the microscope! They were astonished to see this very familiar beast wriggling in close up, and took it in turns to look then run from the room, giggling hysterically.

I'd decided to try and organise some art activities, starting with making animal masks. My Spanish didn't really come to mind quickly enough to keep 20 children on track cutting, sticking and colouring, but notwithstanding a few glue accidents, maks were made, and I, if no-one else, enjoyed myself immensely. The other activity I tried on them was egg-shell people, with mustard seeds growing inside to make the 'hair'. It turned out that eggshells were a rather stressful material to work with. One lot of eggshells, investigated by the pet dog, came off rather flatter than before. The next batch didn't fare much better in the hands of the children as they carefully drew faces on them "Erm excuse me, my egg has broken" was a familiar refrain. Luckily, they ate a lot of eggs at La Colonia, so there were always plenty more.

Tom: We also used our 6 weeks to fill up on culture, both high and low. 'Savia Andina', an andean folk band, proved to be the acceptable face of pan-pipe music, and a piano duet concert was appreciated, even though we felt that 'Rhapsody in Blue' was a little beyond their grasp. The highlight however may have been seeing 'Miranda' at the local football stadium. Miranda are an Argentinian pop group who have caught our ear on our travels, a latin version of the 'Scissor sisters'. We were again given a reminder of the elasticity of Bolivian time-keeping, with two hours of cold waiting, and had to endure two local rock bands, but Miranda, in all their gold lamé and correographed dance routines, didn't disappoint. Our spanish wasn't good enough to discern their 'contraversial' lyrics (although the internet as ever provides) but we got the impression that the Pope would not approve.

Eleanor: The other cultural highlight was our visit to the village of Morochata on fiesta day. It was a long and twisty drive up to the village, precipitously perched on a hillside surrounded by trees. This was the big day out for everyone in the area and the streets were full with families, all in their best clothes. We sat a while in the square, watching some men in heavy cardboard costumes dancing, or rather lumbering past. The weight of the costumes and the style of the dance -slow and laborious with heads bowed is said to symbolise the oppression of the Conquistadors. We asked what the furry monkey and wolf costumes symbolised, apparently nothing, they just had those costumes spare, and everyone likes a good dance if they get the chance.

We got chatting to some villagers who suggested that we should come along to the 'paciente's' house where the real party was. The paciente is the member of the village who that year has taken on the honour of financing the fiesta. It sounded a rather onerous honour to me, but apparently it is gladly taken on, and thought to bring good luck and blessings in the coming year. The paciente's back garden was full -the men were swaying around in their costumes in time to the band who were playing rumbustiously in the corner, whilst the women sat in a circle on the floor, preparing vegetables for the dinner later.

I noticed that people were walking around with buckets of a suspicious looking yellow liquid. Floating in it was something resembling half a coconut shell, from which people were offered scoops to drink. Before long we were pounced upon by a bucket wielder, and there was no choice but to drink coconut-full. It turned out to be Chicha, a fermented maize drink that tastes a little like cider. It must have been fairly strong because soon we were dancing along, arm in arm through the streets behind the band. I jokingly said "I'd love a go on those cymbals" and the next thing I knew I was leading the musicians, crashing along in time (sort of) to the music.

Then it was time for dinner, and plates of chicken and rice were handed around. Once again we were surrounded by chicha-pushers, and I found that suddenly I could speak fluent Spanish. Unfortunately this ability wore off the next day just before Spanish class, about the same time that my headache really set in.

Tom: One visit definitely not mentioned in the Lonely Planet, that I managed to arrange with the help of our very well connected Spanish teacher, was to Cochabamba's psychiatric hospital, San Juan de Dios. It was to be a test of my fledgeling spanish, but I was very grateful for the opportunity to compare mental health systems, and the challenges facing them. My guide for the day was to be the very informative and patient Dr Velásquez, who took my stumbling explanation that he had been volunteered for the job by his boss without his knowledge with good grace, and kindly gave me three hours of his time for a complete tour. The hospital was an odd mix of public and private; the buildings were paid for by the Spanish Catholic charity 'San Juan de Dios', the staff paid for by the government, but patients were expected to pay for admission and medication if they could, otherwise this would be covered by contributions from Bolivian social services and various charities. I was assured that patients without the means to pay would still be treated, and it was apparent that many of them came from poor backgrounds.
The grounds themselves were attractive, and the acute and rehabilitation wards I saw, whilst somewhat spartan in decoration, were otherwise similar to some British examples. From my limited view however, the patients were quite a different mix from that at home. A high proportion seemed to have learning disabilities or underlying brain damage causing their symptoms. Several of the cases described to me had symptoms secondary to head trauma, or caused by poorly controlled epilepsy. It therefore seemed that the psychiatric system was treating the effects of a lack of good midwifery, medical, or learning disability services. The medical care that patients received seemed good, but the real tragedy was that all care was located in the hospitals, with no community services at all. This meant that without willing, supportive families to return to, patients became stuck and institutionalised in hospital. One man had been on the ward for 18 years, his family unwilling to take him back. Admittedly, he had killed his mother.
The hospital had a well equipped occupational therapy department, including woodwork workshop, but unfortunately no Occupational Therapist, the last one having headed back to Britain without a replacement. The physiotherapy students from the local university were gamely trying to make up the shortfall though, with a little art class going on as I visited. I also sat in on part of an interesting meeting. A group of psychologists were visiting from Sucre to set up a 'psychoballet' project in the hospital. Psychoballet, which is new to me, but apparently popular in Spain and Cuba, is the therapeutic use of ballet. It's supposedly successful, but I can't imagine it being a hit with some of the more steetwise patients I knew from South London! Overall I felt that the staff were doing a valient job in difficult circumstances, and that many of the problems they faced, especially with addictions disorders, were similar to those in London. However it brought home to me the importance not only of effective medical treatments, but also appropriate accomodation and non-medical care, in treating psychiatric disorders.

After 6 weeks, full of lots more Spanish grammatical concepts to stumble over, it was time to get back on the bikes, which meant, of course, one final excuse for drinks. It was gratifying to find a nice turnout, adding to our feeling that Cochabamba had welcomed us in warmly for our brief stay. We decided on a little bar crawl, and it was at the second venue that we met Brian and the prisoners. Brian is a US volunteer who had been working with a charity that helps out prisoners, and on that night three of his company were prisoners he had invited out for a night of drinking. (Prisoners allowed out for drinks is one of the least odd of the Bolivian prison systems oddnesses; for a great account read 'Marching Powder'. Other quirks; prisoners have to pay an 'entry fee' into the prison, have to buy their cells, and La Paz prison used to produce the highest quality cocaine in the country.) I tried my best Spanish on them but they were making up for lost time, and were largely unintelligable, so we went back to our game of dice.
They headed off for the next bar, then a while later it was our turn, at which point Eleanor and I realised that our 3 jumpers, the sum total of our warm clothing, had disappeared from the back of a chair. An awful gloom settled over us as we searched in vain; how could we have been so careless? Where will we buy anything warm and not llama wool based in Bolivia? Completely dispirited, we trudged to the next venue, where I was confronted by a glazed, swaying prisoner holding our precious gear in his outstretched arms. "I'm Peruvian!" was his only explanation. I was so happy I bought him another beer, which I suspect was punishment enough the next day anyway. The power of relief (and more beer) kept us going till 5am.

Crosses and Kerosine

15 October 2006

La Paz to Cochabamba
03.09.06 - 07.09.06
243 miles, total 2359 miles, 1 111 kilometre day, 1 sheep with earings

Tom: After our various excursions it was finally time to drag ourselves out of La Paz, which meant dragging ourselves back up the hill to El Alto. After a last few pancakes, during which time we were entertained by a wild-eyed young Irishman, just in from a nights drinking, we were off, back up the 'no cycling allowed' motorway. Incidentally the motorway, all five miles of it, cost the Bolivian Government $60 million. Some cynical types have alleged corruption.
It was freezing when we left, but we very shortly heated up on the slow climb. Two hours later we were back in El Alto, and after a few nerve-wracking kilometres dodging the 'micros' (white vans acting as buses, that pull in front of you then slam on the brakes to pick up another customer) we were back in the Altiplano.

We were going to be on the Altiplano for the next three days, before climbing over the mountains and plopping over the edge into Cochabamba, and therefore had plenty of time to get to know it, and plenty of time to look at the scenery as we cycled along the very straight, flat or gently undulating roads. The Altiplano is very high, never dipping below 3800m, is very flat, and very dry, with large amounts of nothing, which is quite stunning in its way. One thing that constantly surprised us was the way we could appear to be in the middle of nowhere, and then come across someone sitting by the road, or walking steadily along. What villages there were were tiny collections of mud-brick houses, with no signs of shops and little signs of life. Every village, however, had signs of NGO activity, with frequent UNICEF signs proclaiming 'proyecto de agua potable'. It was clear people needed all the help they could get to survive in such a harsh environment.

One thing to break the monotony was whirlwind spotting, as they would make their way across the plains, occasionally enveloping one in a column of dust and plastic bags before heading on. Another entertainment was our experiments in coca chewing. The experience is not entirely pleasant; somewhat like snacking on a hedgerow, but the numb mouth is then followed by a mild but discernible energy boost, that sped us on our way.
That evening we made it to a small town, Calamarca. As we pushed into town, looking for some villagers to ask about accommodation, I spotted a group of men sitting by the side of the road. "I read something about not approaching groups of men" Eleanor cautioned. "why ever not?" I scoffed. The answer; because they might be very, very drunk. One clung to my handlebars and started tugging, repeatedly demanding to ride. As he seemed to be having trouble standing, I wasn't keen, and we entered into a tug of war, me firmly holding onto the brakes, him with the power of his breath as a secret weapon. Fortunately eventually his equally drunk, but more polite friend broke off from dribbling on Eleanor's hand and saved me, and we pushed on up the hill looking for anyone sober. It turns out, of course, they were all in the church. We asked a few people about accomodation, and they all pointed to the same house. Unsure of what they were saying, we hung around awkwardly, until a man turned up. Seemingly unsurprised by our appearance, he ushered us into the courtyard and pointed us in the direction of a room where we could sleep; the Sunday school classroom.

We headed off out into the freezing cold the next morning, saying goodbye to the weird-eyed dog, and shortly after, saying hello to a Brazilian motorcyclist, making a tour from his home through the continent. From then we spent two more days crossing the Altiplano, stopping first at Sica Sica, then Caracollo, two small towns with small hotels and proportionally small beds. One problem we continued to encounter was a complete lack of vegetables on offer in any of the towns, a reflection, one supposes, of the dry and dusty earth. Throughout our third day the mountains were creeping closer, giving us an idea of what we would shortly have to traverse. We were going to have our work cut out for us if we were to make it to Cochabamba in two days.

Eleanor: We started out very early from Caracollo, noses and cheeks red, shocked by the cold. We had the road to ourselves at that time of the morning, and it was beautifully silent, flat cycling for the first few hours. The road then turned into the hills and we wound our way up through rolling countryside dotted with seemingly deserted villages and countless herds of llamas and sheep. We noticed that one choice sheep was wearing pink earrings made of wool, but there was no-one around to ask what was so special about her.

To get to Cochabamba in two days we knew we had to get as far as humanly possible before sunset. Each time we arrived at a village we would take one look at the sky, one look at each other, "Stick or twist?"... "Twist!" and we would carry on, pedalling furiously uphills, careering down them, daring to see how far we could get before it was too dark to ride.

We eventually decided to stick at the small village of Challa Grande -there were only a few scraps of light left, and we had spotted a sign in peeling paint declaring the existence of a 'Pension y Restaurante'. This village also looked desolate and rather run-down but as I approached the door of the restaurant and a woman appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. We enquired about a room, and she gestured for us to follow...into what appeared to be the kerosene storeroom. Great big vats of the stuff, and little puddles of it on the floor as well. It wasn't the most comfortable of bedrooms, but it would be better than camping in the biting wind outside. We put up our tent, while a gaggle of children peered around the door, taking it in turns to push each other into the room and run out again giggling, making little kerosene footprints across the floor. After a while, we closed the door to get changed, and some older boys started the game of 'rattle the gringoes' shouting insults throught the window and banging loudly on the metal door. From time to time Tom walked outside looking stern, and the boys scattered, only to come back minutes later, even louder than before.

Later, deciding that lighting our stove in the kerosene store would be a bad idea, I stepped out into the cold altiplano night to find out what sort of food the restaurant was serving. I ducked through the door to discover that the room was now bright, hot and packed with people. Eating, talking, on chairs, on the floor, leaning against the walls. Children on laps, all dressed in brightly coloured traditional clothing. A silence fell, everyone looked up and then started murmuring or laughing, some pointing at this strange creature that had just walked in. 'Buenas noches' I said quietly, and hurried over to what seemed to be the kitchen, where big scoops of brown stew were being slopped onto plates of rice.

I summoned Tom to come, and we ate as best we could whilst being eyed by everyone in the room. After a while some men gathered around us and we chatted about cycling, whilst we admired their beautifully bright embroidered waistcoats. I asked if I might take a picture of one of their costumes. They refused, but suggested that I draw one instead as I had my notebook in front of me. I've never drawn with such an audience before, and I don't think I did his waistcoat justice, but I was happy to offer some more entertainment.

Soon it was time to tuck ourselves up in our flammable abode, but before we left the restuarant, Tom asked where the toilets were. He was greeted with blank looks. I went to ask once again, and the woman apologetically replied that there weren't any in the whole village. She led me out of the door, and pointed to a wall at the far end of the village, next to the road. Tom: Yes, I'd been introduced to the village's sewerage system, and it was a little basic, to say the least. An exposed patch of ground, in full view of the road, with fighting dogs to keep me company. Well, at least it discourages lingering on the loo.

Eleanor: We got up earlier than we ever had before -we still had 112 km to go before Cochabamba, and we really wanted to make it that day. With little sleep, and little breakfast, the hill was hard-going, and kept on pulling the same old trick of fooling us into thinking we'd reached the top, before plucking another gruelling climb out of its sleeve. We stopped for supplies at a village called Pongo which very appropriately smelt of sewage, and now we understood exactly why. We passed miles and miles of gas pipelines, some being built as we cycled by.

Finally, and not a moment too soon, we were at the top of this range of mountains, and spread out before us were flat green plains fading into the hazy distance. However, it was not quite plain sailing from there on. The roads were fast and windy from there on, but as slow trucks chugged up towards us, faster trucks would overtake them. This meant that that on occasion, after zooming around a tight bend we would be greeted by the slightly hair-raising sight of two trucks coming towards us, one in each lane, forcing us to screech on the breaks and flatten ourselves against the rock as they passed.

The road eventually widened, and as we happily descended into the valley, each bend would bring a degree more heat, and with it a small change in the environment. It was like cycling into Spring. First grass appeared, then lush green trees. A bird flew overhead, then a bit later, a flock of parrots. Life was popping up all around us, and before long, great big fields of produce appeared; pineapples, potatoes and artichokes. We passed fields of onions emitting mouth-watering fresh oniony fumes and our stomachs growled for a hearty meal that evening -it looked like Cochabamba was in our grasp.

Chronicles of life and death

13 October 2006

La Paz, 'World's most dangerous road', Rurrenabaque
23.08.06 - 02-09.06
two full-suspension bikes, no panniers, plenty of alligators

Tom: After the beautiful loneliness of the Altiplano we were confronted by the mad bustle of La Paz. Sucre is still, for typically convoluted historical reasons, the Capital, but the government, the power, and lots of teeming people reside in La Paz, which spreads up the steep sides of its valley and spills over the top into El Alto, a huge slum city.
Having completed our brief burst as cycle-tourers, it was back to being backpackers for a while, to experience some of the thrills Bolivia had to offer, with an obvious first stop - the Coca Museum! The Museum is a rather charming little place dedicated to the magic leaf; its history, its use in ritual, its first commercial uses (coca-cola - which still imports undisclosed tons of bolivian Coca leaves a year to the US, and local anaesthetics), to cocaine production and the 'war on drugs'. Of greater interest though was the lady in charge, understandably hyperactive and cheerful as she repeatedly demonstrated the coca leaf chewing process to curious tourists, and sold bags of coca sweets.
It was at the museum that we met two cyclists, Dipo and Petra from Germany (Ortlieb panniers; the surefire way to identify long-distance tourers). We enjoyed a pleasant dinner with them that night as they recounted their lessons learnt in the dark art of bargaining, and a useful morning of hints and tips from their trip up from Patagonia through Argentina and Chile.

After a couple of days in La Paz, we were in the unusual position of paying someone to take us cycling. We decided to ride down 'the world's most dangerous road', and while we were content to risk our necks, we weren't going risk our bikes.
This soubriquet was not an advertiser's creation, but rather the accurate label given to the Yungas road by the Inter-American Development Bank. A new road is being slowly, painstakingly built through the mountains, but for now, the 10 foot wide dirt road with precipitous drops to one side is the only access to the Northern Bolivian jungle province of Beni. About 200 people a year die, with a vehicle going over the edge about once every two weeks. We joined a motley crew of gringos for an early breakfast and were then driven up to over 4700m. After a brief play with our fancy full-suspension bikes with terrifyingly powerful disk brakes, and a swig of vicious firewater to appease the gods, we were off.
The first twenty kilometres were on smooth tarmac through beautiful valleys. For once I was missing the weight of my panniers, as with less mass to speed my descent things seemed painfully slow. Things were however to change when, having cleared the second of two DEA anti-drug smuggling checkpoints, the tarmac ran out.

The road, as promised, became a dusty track clinging to the side of jungle-covered cliffs, with vertiginous drops to the left to focus the attention. The riding itself was not exactly a challenge, especially with four inches of springs to cushion any blows, but I had a young crazed German mountain-biker to try to keep up with, and Eleanor in particular, freed from worries about panniers, found the up-side of gravel roads. We screamed on down the hill, interrupted frequently by whistle blasts, our signal to pull into a layby on the cliff-edge, and let a vehicle pass. Vehicles coming up the hill have priority, and get to hug the cliff-face side. Unsurprisingly, mortality is greater on the way down. However a scheme to make the road one way on alternate days was overturned despite success in reducing deaths due to opposition by drivers trying to make their living. One stop was to stare ghoulishly at the site in the jungle far below where a bus had left the road two weeks previously, killing over twenty.

By mid-afternoon our riding was done without incident, and we enjoyed a meal in the steamy valley at the bottom, surrounded by tame monkeys in a restaurant-come-animal reserve, before it was time for the dreaded journey up. The driver was keen to finish the driving before nightfall, but it was not to be, as on rounding a corner we came across several vehicles stopped in the road. A small truck had gone over the edge that morning, remaining undiscovered until a passing driver stopped for an off-the-cliff toilet stop. By the time we arrived firemen were down at the scene, while other drivers and tourists were milling around, talking in hushed tones. Eventually a rope was thrown down and we helped to haul up the body of the unfortunate truck-driver. Later, as our journey back up the hill was resumed, everyone was silent, perhaps struck by the injustices of a road which to some can be a controlled dose of adrenaline, but to others is a way of making a living loaded with unacceptable risk.

Following swiftly on the heels of mountain-bike venture was a trip to Rurrenabaque, the jungle served by the Yungas road. Having had our fill of mortality reminders, we clambered into a small plane in chilly La Paz, and half an hour later were wrapped in the thick, rotting embrace of jungle air. I tried taking a photo of our plane, but could capture nothing but the dripping humidity collecting on the camera lens. The rest of the day consisted of lying under a ceiling fan trying not to raise our metabolism.

The next day we set off on our 'Pampas' tour, accompanied by two Irish girls, a Welshman, two other English, and a pleasant French couple who were in time going to come to regret holidaying with a characteristic sample of what The British Isles has to offer.
After two hours thrown about in a jeep on dusty roads, we piled into a wooden canoe on the Beni river. The first alligator came into view almost immediately, nonchalently yawning on the river bank, and over the next three days the site of them was to become commonplace, although the thrill for me never quite receded. The same could not be said for capibari; oversized guinea pig/rabbit experiments the size of pigs. Groups of them, frozen like tableau, littered the banks, offering little diversion when compared to killer reptiles.

Our riverside camp was simple but pleasant, and came with a house-trained alligator, who would obligingly snap at our enthusiatic guide Gori's hand on request. That night we headed out again on the river. Once the thrill of the eyes shining back at us had begun to pall, Gori waded off into the gloom, coming back with a baby alligator for us to manhandle. It seemed to accept the situation with good grace, lying limply until released back into the murk.

The next day we headed out on foot to search for anacondas, but were not greeted with the expected verdent vista. Farmers surrounding the National Park had allowed the burning off of their fields to run unchecked, and forest fires had swept through the area and were in some places still burning. We therefore found ourselves crunching through blackened grass and burnt stumps of trees. It was probably that and not our incessant talking that scared off the only signs of life; a lake-load of flamingos that wisely decided to take a hike. Otherwise, the fauna were ex-, and carbonised. A crispy alligator skull was admired, and a toasted toad made a good head ornament.

We reached the boggy lake that had previously been anacondaville, and most of the group settled down to rest, suspecting that one sizzled snake was as good as it was going to get. I went crashing on with the French couple, and after half an hour of getting wrapped up in thorns we were rewarded with a brief glimpse of the back half of a fat snake as it disappeared into the mud. We reported our findings to Gori and he set off with a determined look on his face, coming back half an hour later covered in stinking mud and what he assured us was anaconda poo, a two metre black snake coiled around his arm. This specimin wasn't quite so docile as his reptilian cousin, and put up a bit of a fight before curling up in a sulk. The sight as he eventually slithered back into the water was one to behold.

That evening we headed off to a riverside bar to admire the sunset with a beer or few. Come leaving time, a little supper accompaniment seemed a reasonable idea, and so we picked up two bottles of the local brandy-equivalent, Singani. They went down surprisingly well - so well in fact that at midnight the Irish girls concluded we needed more and wobbled off downriver in the canoe, accompanied by an equally wobbly Gori. They were back shortly after armed with two more bottles, having apparently had 'only one' crash into the riverbank. Things get a little unfocused from then on. I apparently developed an ability to speak Spanish, although about what no-one knows, and was found stumbling through the bush at 3am by Eleanor, leaves in hair.

The next morning, plans of dawn walks shelved, a little restorative fishing was in order - for piranhas of course.
After lunch, and a stop to help put out yet another forest fire, was our chance to swim with pink dolphins. Our fears had been that a stray alligator might fancy a nibble, but our focus was astray. Now I don't know whether pink dolphins feel they have some pansy reputation to live down, but they didn't exactly live up to the friendly frolicksome reputation of their salt-water brothers. After a while of splashing around with them, it was made very clear to us that our presence was no longer welcome. I was the first to be shown the door, when a very forceful plume of water from a tail stroke threatened to sink me. Others got similar treatment seconds later, and it had us front-crawling back to the canoe. Proof if needed that the English can make themselves unpopular anywhere.

From there it was back to the road and an interminable jeep journey back to Rurrenabaque. We had a brief stop to take in a local entertainment, where drunken men clambered onto the back of distressed bull and paraded around a ring. The score only briefly looked like swinging in the bull's favour once, when a drunken man perched on the fence, smugly jiggling to his mates, was nearly rectally impaled by a bull horn. Alas, it was not to be. The entertainment was last seen trotting down the road after someone left the door to the pen open, making me briefly panic that I might suddenly be on the wrong side of the fence.

The next day we were back in La Paz, taking our lives into our own hands every time we tried crossing the mini-bus choked streets and preparing ourselves for heading back out onto the altiplano, and, oh yes, the odd mountain too.

If I had a boat

13 October 2006

19.08.06 - 23.08.06 : Bolivian border to La Paz
128 miles, 1 blockade, 1000 Inca steps by bike

Eleanor: Our bus arrived at the Bolivian border, everyone climbed off to get our passports stamped, and formalities over with, almost everyone climbed back again, destination Copacabana, 18km away. We however, to the slight bemusement of the bus driver and other passengers, unloaded our bikes and bags from the baggage hold. It was important that we started cycling from the very border. We assembled our machines in front of a growing crowd of locals, and finally, with a firm push from our bus-pampered legs, set off! It felt very good to be on two wheels again. Lake Titicaca was sparkling to our left, the sun was shining, and we were cycling at last!

Cocacabana is a small town on the edge of Lake Titicaca, and a popular point of access for the 'Isla del Sol' the island held sacred by the Incas for being the birthplace of the sun. We decided to visit for the day and bring our bikes along to make the hike across the island a little faster. A relaxing day of gentle cycling around an island sounded like a lovely way to get our legs used to the concept of biking again. The man at the boat house said it would be a 'perfecto' place to cycle. As we later found out, he had either never visited the island, or had a very strange idea about what sort of terrain is good for bicycling. The island itself was in fact one steep peak, covered with narrow walking tracks and ancient Inca steps. The tracks we could just about deal with, though it was more of a hair raising mountain-bike scramble then the leisurely Sunday afternoon ride we had envisioned, and our heavy, suspension-less bikes were less than ideal for the job. The Inca steps however, were a different matter and required us carrying our bikes. I felt like I was on an army endurance training exercise. One quick glance at the view of sunset across the lake, then it was time for humping our steel steeds down another punishing set of steps, only just in time to catch the waiting boat. The rest of our tour group were already on it, probably wondering whether or not we were a little bit mad.

It was a long hard climb out of Copacabana, up into barren hills where the air was difficult to come by and every pedal stroke was a challenge. Then came one of the most beautiful views I have seen on this trip so far. We had reached the top and suddenly we were cycling along a spit of land between the two halves of the lake; Lago Grande to our left and Lago Menor to our right, far far beneath us. In the distance were the snowy peaks of the Cordillera Real. The expanse of lake to my left was so blue it made my mouth water. I wanted to drink it, I wanted to dive into it, and I stared and stared, trying to soak it up with my eyes instead. Far away a small white boat chugged its way across the lake, its distant engine being the only sound we could hear.

After a while, the road turned downhill, and having passed a gang of roadworkers sitting in the sun, we found ourselves speeding effortlessly along on their freshly laid tarmac. We snaked our way downwards, with not another vehicle in sight, sinking closer and closer to the lake as the sun sunk lower in the sky. The road petered out in a village by the lake's edge, and continued on the other side of the lake's narrowest point. To cross, we wheeled aboard a wooden 'ferry', more like some wooden planks with a motor attached. We shared this craft with a large lorry that made the ferry's nose dip alarmingly into the water. At the other side we had been promised a hotel, but alas it didn't exist. We knew that the next town was about 15 km away, and with the sun so low in the sky, it'd be unlikely we'd make it before dark. However, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to turn back to the village on the other side of the straights, so onwards and upwards it was.

After another stiff climb, down we zipped once more and the road flattened out and started following the water's edge. We were now cycling hell-for-leather through small villages and reedbeds tinged with red as the sun set to our right over the lake. It's a pity that one of the most beautiful times of the day should be also the most panic-inducing one for us on our bikes. I caught up with an old man pedalling slowly, squeakily along. How much further to Huatajata please? "About an hour by bike" he replied. I hoped that we'd be a bit quicker than him depsite our heavy loads and pushed down even harder on my pedals. It was properly dark now, and the road could only just be made out, but to my right the faint blue glow of the lake could still be seen. In the distance I could see the lights of what looked like a hotel, standing tall above the other buildings in the area. The 'spa and swimming pool' signs and electric gates that opened for us rang 'out of our price range' warning bells, but we were desperate. The woman in reception looked me up and down, and I suddenly felt very conscious of my sweaty cycling gear and helmet. "80 dollars", and she wasn't budging on the price. Tom said not even the promise of a full body scrub and pedicure was worth that.

We reluctantly cycled back to a scary looking petrol station we had passed a few minutes earlier and there the smiling, toothless owner beckoned for us to follow him. We did, down a dark lane, through a door into what seemed to be a derelict building. I think it had once been a hotel, but it had the deep-down-chill of a place that had not been inhabited in a while, and there was no running water. Suddenly I was very very cold. The cycling and panic generated heat had faded away, and I was left shivering violently. It took a while of wriggling inside my sleeping bag to warm myself back up again, and I stayed in my bag to eat the dinner that the owner's wife kindly offered to cook for us. Somewhere down the in the depths of the building we could hear pots and pans crashing, then a few minutes later, two plates of trout and rice appeared. Fresh trout from the lake, and it was delicious. Food achieved, the next objective was sleep, but first we wanted to snoop around this strange place a little. The owners left, and padlocked us in for the night, and so once the key had turned in the lock we tiptoed downstairs into the dark and shone our torches around. We were in the bar area, surrounded by dusty bottles of fizzy drinks and a calender from 1998 showing glossy picures of the hotel in its heyday. This is exactly how Howard Carter must have felt when discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun. We found a sink to brush our teeth in, but it turned out that the water the owner had left us was lemon flavoured, and mingled with spearmint, made for a very strange taste to end the day with. I awoke early the next morning, and on peering out of the cracked window discovered that the 'hotel' was right on the water's edge, and boats bobbed nearby in the sun. Attached was what used to be an indoor swimming pool, but the glass roof was broken, and trees were growing through it.

We weren't far down the road that day when we had an enthusiastic offer of breakfast from another empty lake-side hotel. We sat outside in the sun eating our eggs, squinting blindly at the sun but still wrapped up in all our warmest clothes. As if they had been placed there to appeal to our tourist sense of the scenic, two old women sat weaving at a ground-level loom. A grandchild watched with fascination, whilst behind them a ginger kitten rolled and played in balls of brightly coloured yarns.

A few metres down the road we came across the house/museum of Paulino Esteban, the man chosen by the explorer and archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl to make the reedboat "Ra II". It was sailed from Morocco to Barbados in order to explore the idea that ancient peoples may have made long voyages in these types of boats. We sat in one, and Paulino paddled us around the lake for a few minutes. Incredibly sturdy and buouyant, it felt a bit like sailing in a sofa. A lovely comfy way to cross the Atlantic I thought.

Our intended stop for the night Batallas didn't offer anywhere to stay, and we were advised to carry on a few kilometres down the road to a small village called Puerto Perez on the lakeside. It was well worth the detour, as here we found an idyll of a place, run by a Bolivian 'jazz fusion' musician and his wife. We were treated to a rendition on his zampoñas (panpipes) and then a delicious meal. There was even a selection of cheese and salami to start with, and Tom was in his cheese-eating element. We slept in our own little cabin with alpaca rugs and a medition platform up in the rafters. I could have stayed a week.

We started later than hoped for the next morning, as the owner advised us to listen to the news before setting off. There had been blockades on the roads to La Paz in recent days, but it sounded like all was clear, so off we set. The road was flat and straight, but with none of the beautiful views we'd had over the last few days. It did have the advantage of being very fast however, and we arrived at La Paz's suburb city of El Alto in good time. We looked down into the sprawling bowl of La Paz with some trepidation as memories of Tegucigalpa, the horribly hectic, bowl-like Honduran city surfaced. As it turned out, getting in there was no problem. A policeman directed us to the motorway or 'Autopista' that ran straight into the middle of the city, and down we sped, remarking on the 'no cycling' signs as we did so. At the end of the motorway was a protest. Only around a hundred people were involved, but they were still managing to completely block the main road into the city. We wheeled our bicycles through the throng, jumping every time a firecracker was set off. We didn't stop to find out what they were protesting about, our hotel-homing instincts had kicked in by that point and before long we were tucked up, dreaming of panpipes and pedalos.

Buses and trains

3 September 2006

28.07.06 - 19.08.06 : Macará, Peru to the Bolvian border
8 buses, 67 hours of bus travel, 1 country

Eleanor: We'd done our sums, and the cold hard facts told us that something had to give. There wasn't a way that we could cycle all the way to Patagonia by the end of March, leave enough time to enjoy the places we found along the way, as well as take time out to do some volunteering. Our optimistic selves at the beginning of all of this had not accounted for the complexities that bad roads and bad knees can add. So somewhat reluctantly, we decided that some buses would have to be taken, and Peru with its long stretches of desert seemed to be the best canditate.

I borded the bus to Piura with a niggle of excitement in my stomach. We were to be bus travellers for a while; arriving at places without having to slog up hills, no tousled hair stuck to our sweat covered foreheads, no beast-like hunger to satisfy before we could even think straight. I looked forward to being able to swan in, fresh and sparkly, with immaculate hair.

The bus ride itself wasn't as exciting as I had hoped. We were approaching the deserty coast of Peru now, and the scenery was flat, dusty and hot looking. Interest was added by the settlements we passed, but without the sounds, smells, and human encounters of our usual mode of transport, these all seemed the same after a while. That was until we passed a rubbish dump on the edge of Piura, and not even the coach windows could keep out the stench. At first I thought the black flapping shapes were vultures feasting on the litter, but on closer inspection they turned out to be black plastic bags; the wind on the flat plains had strewn them as far as the eye could see.

We stopped in Piura purely to change buses. We booked onto the night bus to Trujillo, just in time as it turned out, as we had unwittingly chosen the Independence Day weekend for our journey. The bus station was abuzz with people, packages, snack sellers and some shady characters lurking in the corners. Then the bad news came: there would be no room for our bikes on the bus. We could see why; everyone was travelling with a large entourage of bundles. Our bikes would have to go on the next bus we were told, leaving half an hour later. We very reluctantly agreed, feeling slightly reassured by the seeming poshness of this bus company. I was just sitting down in seat 9a, looking anxiously out of the window at our poor abandoned bikes, when I noticed a man wheeling my bike away. Up I jumped in a flash, down the bus steps, only to see him loading it into the baggage compartment. There was room after all. What a relief; maybe there would be a chance of me sleeping on this night bus now.

The journey passed in a haze of badly dubbed films, processed ham sandwiches and snippets of delirious sleep. We arrived in Trujillo, tousled, flushed and not in the best of moods. But before we could relax, we needed to find ourselves a bus that would take us to our final port of call: Huaraz. It took us five and a half hours of cycling around the ring-road system visiting various bus companies to eventually find one that would fit us and our bikes on the same bus. It wasn't to leave until 9 the next morning, so we found a hostel and slept.

The bus to Huaraz was the comfiest yet; this was the QE2 of buses. Plush seats coddled us, the toliets smelt of roses and the smiling bus steward served us Coke and crackers. We settled in to our seats and looked out of the window; we were now on the coastal road proper. Grey desert surrounded us, grey sand-dune hills loomed on the left hand side, a grey cold looking sea was on our right. Periodically, lurid yellow Inca Cola signs flew past us adding a dash of colour to the monochrome landscape. We read, ate and, looking up from time to time, were amazed to find that we were still surrounded by the same grey landscape.

Eventually, we turned left, left the coast behind and started climbing into the hills. The bus that had seemed quite at home thundering along the straight desert roads now swayed like a tall ship as it rounded increasingly tight bends and wound its way up, up into the heights of the Cordillera Blanca. Yet still the bus-steward teetered down the aisles clutching a tray of glasses filled with Coke without spilling a drop. I have no idea how. I suspect years of training on simulation machines. The views got increasingly dramatic, until we rounded a bend and saw a row of white peaks, with a lake beneath reflecting the blue sky perfectly. We put our books down and soaked in the strange and beautiful sights.

Huaraz is a base for climbers and trekkers exploring the Cordillera Blanca and wherever we went around town we saw people with grizzled faces sporting adventurous clothes. I wondered what exciting things they had been up to. We decided that our taste of adventure in the area was to be a 4 day trek around the 'Santa Cruz' Circuit. A trek known for spectacular scenery, yet not too taxing. We thought this a good option as we weren't sure how our legs would fare faced with the prospect of going up and down instead of the round and round that they'd become so very used to.

The first day started with a bumpy ride in a small van to the start of the trek. So bumpy that my head was thrust with vigour into the ceiling on some of the larger potholes. We strained our necks to follow the huge peaks as they passed, heads bashing against the windows as the van bounced and rolled over the mountain passes. We stopped to admire turquoise lakes far far below us, and could notice the air getting thinner, or was it just vertigo? We arrived, and sat exhasuted, eating bananas as our donkeys were loaded with our gear. Yes, this was the luxurious way to trek; donkeys to carry our tents, and a cook to prepare our meals. The first day's hiking was suprisingly hard work though. There just didn't seem to be enough air up there, and I found myself lagging behind the others as we clambered up the rocky paths. I didn't feel too bad about that later when I found out that one member of our group was a former member of the Swiss special forces and a 'iron-man' competition competitor. What a lovely sight our camp was at the end of the day, tents all set up ready for us, our