new country, same drab landscape, to begin with anyway: La Quiaca to Tupiza.

July 13, 2016

The temperature this morning is minus 8. This effectively is km1975 on route 9: its that distance south on 9 to km0 in Buenos Aires. Then from km0, 3146km south on route 3 to Ushuaia. I took a slightly longer route.

Is this it? Is all Bolivia like this? No! There's greener foothills and jungle to the east and north. Oh? Can't wait to get there, down off this damn mountain.

One other guest turned up sometime. Must've been after I'd gone to bed. A woman in her early sixties. Oh, what am I going to find of interest to talk about with her, I think as she takes her place at the breakfast table. But I mightn't have worried, because no sooner had she taken her place than the patron come out and she asks "I would like some information on Bolivia"

In Spanish I listen as she asks where the border crossing is. Where can she change money. Where can she catch the train and will it take her all the way to La Paz. And how long will it take by train to La Paz. She keeps asking questions the whole time at breakfast and is still asking questions on Bolivia when she checks out, walking out the door with a huge wheelie luggage case in-toe. By now the Patron, a Frenchwoman expat, is irritated, because when the door is shut behind her, turn to me and says "This a stupid woman! Where does she think she's going? To Bolivia. It isn't Neau York."

My recently acquired "Argenguide" Bolivia map with Villazon, the part of town separated from La Quiaca by a dry river, which is the border, and the road on north, a continuation of route 9 becomes route 14, a panamerican route is shown as being a paved road, whereas when I rode the same road in 2007, it was dusty though ride-able compacted natural surface 90km north to the town of Tupiza. Then continued a rough dusty unpaved road the approximately 250km to the regional capital, Potosi. According to my map, this too is now paved. But all the same I ask the hostel woman here in La Quiaca, what the road is like ahead in Bolivia. She describes the 90km of road from Villazon to Tupiza as a new road. Then thought I'd be continuing to the town of Uyuni, it being part of the Bolivia tourist trail: the road that way she describes as very rough. I put her straight, saying I wish to continue on route 14 to Potosi. She confirms it is all tarmacked nowadays like its shown in my map, but advices me to take a bus as there's an awful lot of climbing. Indeed Potosi is at 4200masl altitude, supposedly the highest city in the world.

My main fear is the cold. She informs me it is minus 8 out this morning and higher up ahead in Bolivia, certain areas are as low as minus 20. Not great to be camping out in. I ask about towns en-route between Tupiza and Potosi, where there may be accomodation. She replies, there's nothing, that it is very rural and "the people are inward looking, indigenes that don't like outsiders". Sure enough on another trip in 2010, I found the mainly indigenes people of Andean rural areas hostile.

It surely is cold as I ride along the street from the hostel. Puddles on the street from shop front washing are ice. My front tyre is soft as the rim touches the curbed edges of cracked and broken surface. Worrying because if it goes completely flat, its too cold to be fiddling taking off the tyre and changing the inner-tube. There's enough pressure in the tyre to keep riding if I'm careful not to touch an edge too hard. Later in warm sunshine I pump it up solid.

The border crossing goes quickly. However on a slip of paper, the tourist visa folded between the pages of my passport, 30 is written in pen, meaning 30 days, which is hardly enough time in the country. I will have to query that.

I won't drag on further with mundane facts, apart from the sun warmed the day up to a pleasant day. The road as expected a good sealed road across bleak ochre altoplano to begin with, but by early afternoon dropping down to red rock river valley.

I arrive in Tupiza shortly after 5, an hour before sunset; incidentally, the time here is an hour behind Argentina; and check into the same family run hostel I stayed in back in 2007. Glad to be here as I really feel tired even though the road was mainly downhill, there were lots of short steep inclines whereupon my legs felt like jelly.

The new road. New since I was here last in 2007 when it was unpaved. Notice already its furrowed by truck wheels.

This and next shots are taken in late afternoon shade.

Today's ride: 93 km (58 miles)
Total: 11,695 km (7,263 miles)

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