Leg 7 - Santiago to Uyuni

Route summary: Santiago, Valparaiso, Mendoza, La Serena, Copiapo, Belen, Salta, Cachi, Cafayate, Purmamarca, Humahuaca, Yavi, Tupiza, Uyuni.
Days: 28
Zero mileage days: 9
Distance (point to point): 1,485km
Distance (driven): 4,987km
Inefficiency factor (Driven/P2P): 3.36
Avg. speed: 178km/day

Click here for detail.

It’s strange how inertia affects you. Leaving Santiago should have been no different from any of the other places I’ve left, but after a month it was almost like leaving again for the first time. Mainly because all of my kit had been unpacked at some stage and needed to get back into some semblance of order before I could go. I was also a bit jittery about leaving – would I have forgotten how to ride the bike with the weight, and I was now net heading north for the first time in the trip, the ride was heading into unchartered territory, even if it was just latitudes that began with a slightly smaller number. It was also the first time I didn’t have a clear destination in mind. From Buenos Aires it had always been south to Ushuaia down the east coast and north to Santiago along the west(ish) side. I didn’t have a clear idea where I’d go from here, would it be north through Argentina or on up the Chilean coast. How and where would I get into Bolivia, or would I skip it and head straight to Peru. These were the thoughts going through my head as I rolled into Los Andes, past a couple of kilometres of back to back trucks parked on the hard shoulder. Their presence was explained when I rode up to a police car parked at the junction up to Paso Los Libertadores. The pass was closed because of heavy snow and wasn’t expected to be open for a few days. Well, that made one decision for me and I turned the bike towards to coast and rode for Valparaiso. Then the weather turned. Another thing about being off the bike for a while is that you lose some of your routines. Normally I’d be all over the weather forecast, but after a month of  “if it rains, just sit in a coffee shop until it stops”, had made me lazy. So I got wet.

Rain, rain, go away [1]

Valparaiso is built on a crescent of hills. There are so many of them I’ve forgotten but it puts Rome’s seven to shame. And they’re steep hills – one of the attractions of the city is its collection of funiculars in varying states of repair. You don’t get funiculars on gentle hills. So, when I arrived in Valparaiso, I was soaked through and all of the accommodation I had addresses for were up on the hills. Fortunately my GPS mapping was great, but it still made for an interesting ride up and down cobbled streets that more closely resembled water-park flume rides than roads. After a few failed attempts (place didn’t exist, place had nowhere to park the bike), I found a hostel on the top of one of the hills where, as I the drips coming off me formed puddles in the reception area, they took pity on me and said I could securely park my bike in the grounds of the church across the road and dry my clothing in one of the rooms. Then it was food and I was recommended a bar, except although they had a food menu, they didn’t do any food, but they recommended a kebab place and said that I could eat it there and have a beer. It proved to be a fairly apt introduction to the city. Nothing seems to work as you’ expect it to, but people are relaxed and work around it without much fuss, and don’t see why they should change that.

Funicular - one of the not working ones

I spent some time over the next few days wandering around the city and taking some of the fabled funiculars (although some were out of action), enjoying the views and the colour of the city, visiting Pablo Neruda’s house here as well as the naval museum [2].

Graffiti on graffiti. I think one has more artistic merit than the other though 

One day I took the bike up the coast. As I was getting on the bike a random person cam up to me and started chatting (this happens a lot) and he suggested a route south which turned out to be an amazing road which twisted along the coast and dropped down to a small town and a beach. From there I worked my way back to Valparaiso along some dirt roads, before returning to the coast and riding up through Vina del Mar (Vaparaiso’s slightly more respectable neighbour) and past waterfront developments that wouldn’t look out of place on the south coast of Spain to Concon.

Terremoto - bodycount, 1

The traffic on the ride back was noticeably quieter. It was shortly before Chile’s first World Cup match (against Australia) and people were making sure they were at home or in a bar. I wanted to do the same and after securing Lena went to a bar that had been recommended to me. I’m not a football fan. I’d watched most of the Chile-Ireland game when I was in Santiago as it was on in the hostel, but before that, the last football game that I watched most of was probably in 1999 when Manchester United won the treble (one of my housemates was a fan). That said, I enjoyed the Chile-Australia match, or rather it’s probably more accurate to say I enjoyed watching that match, with that result, in that bar and by the end of it I was chanting “CHI, CHI, CHI, LE, LE, LE, VIVA CHILE!” with the rest of them. This euphoria no doubt had an effect on my choice of a terremoto later in the evening (it’s a alcoholic beverage that involves ice-cream). As the barman was making it he asked me who I was sharing it with. I was on my own and told him so. “Oh” he replied, “It comes in a litre jug”. By the time it was done, so was I and it was time for home and I didn’t leave Valparaiso as planned the next day.

A rainbow adds an (excessive) additional splash of colour to Valparaiso's already kaleidoscopic hillsides

Knowing that going over that is the only way to get to Mendoza, focuses the mind somewhat

Switchbacks in the snow

While enjoying Valparaiso I’d been keeping an eye on the weather forecast and monitoring the @CFLosLibertador twitter account. Travelling can give you some niche interests and for a few months I was an avid follower of a number of twitter accounts starting with CF, the accounts of the border police and they’d tell you whether they were open or not. If not, they’d usually attach a photo of the invariably hideous snow storm that they were working in in order to clear the route. After 1 day of being opened, the pass had closed again, but then seemed to be open again. I left Valparaiso and made my way back through Los Andes and this time had a clear run the remaining 60km to the border. However, I didn’t have a clue what the road conditions would be like and as snow became a permanent fixture beside the road as I rode above 1,300m I was becoming more nervous – the road goes to just over 3,000m before it drops down into Argentina. As it turned out the road was fine, although I wouldn’t have wanted to do it at night when the temperature would have fallen significantly. The road climbs quite steeply on the Chilean side and there’s one section with nearly 30 (numbered) switchbacks as it climbs to the pass, or rather the tunnel that takes you through the mountain under the pass.



The border is efficient and doesn’t take much time and then I’m on the long ride down into Argentina through valleys and gorges that turn red as the sun starts to set behind me.

And down, down, down, into Argentina

The house "penguin" on the right

Mendoza is a city pretty much dominated by wine - something like 80% of the country's wine comes from the city, and that production is dominated by Malbec. Many of the best bodegas are in the Lujan de Cuyo region, the only problem is that this is some way out of town, and as a result many do not normally expect visitors. Unwilling to have to arrange individual (i.e. expensive) tours and hire a taxi to go out there, wait and take me back (there was no way I was going to ride out there and not be able to sample any of their wines), I did what every backpacker did, caught a bus to Maipu and did a bicycle tour of the vineyards. It's by no means exclusive, and they may not be the best wines in the region, but it was fun. Cycling around on a mountain bike that has seen better days from vineyard to olive press to vineyard to bar was good fun, and the tours were pretty interesting, covering different aspects and different approaches, from the boutique, family vineyard that produced wines to the (occasionally unusual) palate of the owners to the larger scale wine producers who had industrialised and consolidated, but as a result had a large museum, showing how wine was made in the region going back nearly half a millenia (the Spanish brought vines to the continent as well as smallpox). On the way I met two guys, an Irishman and a Colombian and we fell in together for the rest of the afternoon, splitting a case of wine between us at one place and then going to a bar to have a flight of wines to taste. We got on well with the owner of the last place and so he gave us a couple of other wines to try, including the "penguin", his own, young, sweet and fortified wine, served chilled that was delicious, but you wouldn't want to have too much of it, and finally a local craft beer. As we were the last people in the bar he handed us some of the half drunk bottles "for the road". I don't think the other passengers on the bus were particularly impressed as we got on, clinking from bottles we'd purchased on the way round, clutching a bottle with a cork in it.

The flight of wines, most from the
Lujan de Cuyo area of Mendoza

The following day was a day of admin and a short run up to the hill in the park in town - my first run in a long time, and at altitude so I won't be bragging about the pace to anyone, but it was nice to get out. In the evening I went to a bar in town called The Vines of Mendoza where you could taste wines from around the area. I met the Irishman there and we went for the blind tasting, 5 wines (one white, four red) which we were to taste, write down our thoughts and then the sommelier would talk us through each one and reveal the grape and producer. It was a fun experiment, to see if we could remember what we'd been taught the previous day, and also to see how much was the result of suggestion ("oh, yes, I can taste grapefruit now that you've said it"). And for entertainment purposes he'd thrown in a couple of curve-balls, like the white wine that was 50% Cabernet Sauvignon and 50% Malbec (both red grapes) - which gave it a "light, slightly pink / copper tinge" (my comments, pre-reveal. I guessed one grape variety correctly (it was a malbec, so almost guaranteed to be in there but it was the only one I'd said was a malbec, so I should get some credit). A good evening and fun experience, I have to say that my appreciation for wine has increased significantly in the time I've been here.

In Mendoza I also had some route choices to make. I found out that Scotland were playing Argentina the following weekend in Cordoba which I could get to without much trouble, but apart from the question of who I should support. It was during the World Cup group stages and some Scottish friends were advocating an "Anyone but England" approach and I wasn't sure how to respond. I was also keen to go to La Serena (in Chile) but skipping between Argentina and Chile was going to become significantly tougher than further south as the Andes had become a real obstacle [3]. I then discovered that a friend of mine from the UK was going to be in Salta at the weekend, but just for the weekend. This resolved my Scotland/Argentina support problem, rather than go and watch the game I'd go and see my Scottish friend in an Argentinian city.

Look at the size of that mountain, no, not the first or second one, the third one you thought was a cloud...

Still, this decision didn't really help with the route I'd take to get there (simple route straight north, or longer route via La Serena, crossing the Andes twice) and an hour before setting off I still hadn't made my mind up. It was nearly time to toss a coin but in the end I decided that I wanted to see La Serena, and I thought that the route that way would be doable (although there were still some grey areas around getting fuel). So, back over the Los Libertador pass, except I got to see the Argentinian side in daylight this time and it was stunning, especially some of the partial (usually cloud obscured) views of Cerro Aconcagua with it's 6,962m summit.

Then it was back to the snow and up towards the pass. Just short of the border there is the Puente del Inca, a natural bridge across a fairly fast flowing small (and no doubt very cold) river. It was also the source of a hot spring, the minerals of which had created yellow and red rocks coloured rocks (out of which you could purchase a range of items at the adjacent stalls). The building in the photo was part of a hotel and hot spring complex set up by an Englishman but which was closed after (I think) a landslide.


Arriving at the Argentinian side of the border I'm told that all the formalities are on the other side of the mountain, but after a brief chat with the border officers I find out that Chile have scored twice against Spain in their second World Cup match. I want to get across to the other side to see the final score. As I pull into the Chilean border offices, I see a crowd gathered in the customs area, and some people reluctantly come out to see what I want. I tell them not to bother, that I want to see the game and join them to watch the last 20 minutes. "Happy" doesn't go anywhere near to describe the reaction after the game, with dancing and fireworks going off in the middle of the road, at nearly 3,000m.

5, 4, 3...

However, it's also getting dark and so I need to head on, down the steep side into Chile with it's 29 corners, then to the coast and up to La Serena. Once I'm down it's pretty straight and almost all on good tarmac, so relatively quick but I wonder what the scenery is like outside of the small spot that's illuminated by my front headlight - am I missing something stunning and berate myself for not leaving Mendoza earlier. The sky's amazingly clear and I pull the bike over at one point and lie by the side of the road, looking at the countless stars. It's going to be late by the time I get to La Serena so a little later isn't going to be much more of a problem. It's around 2am when I get into La Serena and find somewhere to sleep.

Not for long though, as I'm keen to go up the Elqui valley to visit a Pisco distillery and an observatory. Get a bus up and promptly fall asleep on the window (one of the benefits of not being the driver) and wake up as we're passing through some stunning scenery towards the top of the valley (I'd no doubt missed some - one of the drawbacks of being a passenger). Pisco Elqui is a nice small village at the head of the valley with a Mistral (a brand of Pisco) distillery, although it's only a small one, I think predominantly for tourism purposes. Not the most informative tour, but what I could gather was interesting enough (essentially Pisco is white wine, distilled three times and then aged for varying periods, in or outside of oak, depending on what flavour and price range you're aiming for). A tasting flight of four different Piscos with a Glaswegian girl I'd met on the tour (who was able to educate me on comparisons with the whisky process) and I have to say, it's not my favourite spirit, but I can appreciate it a bit more than I did before.

Vicuna

Then back on the bus down to Vicuna, an attractive small town where I learnt that England had effectively been knocked out of the World Cup by losing to Uruguay. I find out that the company that I was going to do the observatory tour has decided not to run it due to lack of interest (apparently when it's a bit cloudy in La Serena people panic that it's going to be the same in Vicuna and you won't see anything - that's very rarely the case). So instead I make my own way to the observatory and am part of a four-person tour in English (rather than the much larger groups in Spanish), which means a lot more time looking through the telescope. The guide is excellent, not only very knowledgable but it's apparent he's actually interested in the subject, and as well as being told about the constellations and shown the visible planets (I saw Saturn's rings for the first time not in a photo) he explained how other cultures viewed they sky and the constellations. My favourite was hearing that the Incan cultures didn't look at the constellations, but at the dark patches of sky between the constellations (I seem to remember that these are massive dust clouds that absorb the light from the stars behind). These dark constellations are named after animals, there's a mother llama and her child, that are going to drink at the river (the milky way) whilst being followed by a fox. A snake is close by and there were others that we couldn't see. Although interested in how other cultures viewed the sky, and used it as a calendar, needless to say he was entirely dismissive of astrology [4].

This wasn't the only hole...

New shoes

The next day I wanted to get up to Copiapo, which was going to be my launch point to cross the Andes back into Argentina. I had a look around La Serena in the morning and was just preparing to set off, shortly before lunchtime when I noticed my tyres... The rears had only done 8,600km (the front 19,300km) which was annoying. I wondered whether the altitude was causing the problem / wear but no one that I've spoken to before or since has suggested that this should cause any additional wear (since then I've checked tyre pressures at least daily if I'm seeing significant changes in altitude). Fortunately there's a Yamaha place in town and I go there and buy a new set of tyres (the guys at the garage blame the tyres for the wear, they seemed generally dismissive of any tyres made in Latin America) but it's just before lunch so I'm not going to get my bike back until 4pm at the earliest. Eventually get the bike back, load up and on the road with what daylight is left, until back in the dark I make my way north to Copiapo, getting there around midnight.

Do the maths: The furthest I've got on my bike
without refueling is around 350km. By the time
I got here I'd done about 60. The next petrol
station was 100km after Paso San Francisco

I had planned a pre-dawn start the next day, it was the winter solstice and I'd planned on seeing the sun rise and set over the Andes on the same (short day). However, my plan was foiled by my alarm clock having other ideas, or possibly more likely the cumulative effect of several long days and short nights on the trot. So a hurried breakfast, brim the tank at the last petrol station before leaving town and off to the mountains. The mine where the collapse and rescue of Los 33 is a little to the north of Copiapo and you could see some of the mines and processing plants on the early stage of the route. I was thankful of this as it meant roads in largely decent condition. Tarmac gave way to dirt roads, but the dirt was hard and smooth, so almost as good as tarmac in the dry environment I was driving through.



Then the road turned away from the mine tracks and started to become narrower and more noticeably work their way uphill and then you get to some plains, with ice clad volcanoes on the horizons and the frost-free hills start to take on a multi-coloured appearance. Then the road curves round a salt flat and I'm at the Chilean customs at about 3,700m, with another kilometre of altitude to gain before I'm at the pass. The border takes a bit longer than usual, but not too bad and then I'm on a short stretch of tarmac before the dirt road returns and I climb pass greenish lakes and abandoned buildings. Even just being sat on the bike you notice the altitude and lack of oxygen. While I'm still aware that I'm not thinking as quickly as normal and my reactions will be slowed and dulled by the lack of oxygen I slow down to avoid any stupid mistakes.

Fuel at 4,700m

The altitude climbs a couple of hundred metres, then drops, then we climb again as we sneak past 4,000m and I'm aware that neither Lena nor I have been at this altitude before. My GPS says the altitude peaks at 4,768 at the Argentinian side of the border and around here I wheezily call my brother to wish him a happy birthday. At the border, as I'd read elsewhere, there was fuel sold out of barrels and I buy 10 litres which should comfortably get me to the next petrol station another 100 or so kilometres away. Then immigration and customs. They seem very interested in whether I saw a particular vehicle on the road (I was asked on the way the same question), but I'd only seen one vehicle since leaving the Chilean customs. It didn't seem the most sensible place to make a break for the border, but there you go. Then customs took an age, which boiled down to him looking in the wrong place for the bike's home country [5].

Limite internacional, and the start of tarmac

With that sorted it was downhill now into Argentina with the sun setting behind me again. I have a feeling the ride would have been amazing in the daylight, with lots of sinuous bends through (I think) a series of canyons and gorges. However, it was dark by now and if I wanted to see my friend at all (delays had reduced the weekend, to an evening, to lunch and even that looked threatened now) I needed to press on. And try and make good time, but the weaving road limited your speed, bends would appear almost out of nowhere and by now I was tired. I stopped for fuel for both Lena and me, and a rest, enabling the tyres to cool so that I could check the tyre pressures and add some more air (I'd let out some air as I got higher and thought that I was going to be on ripio, so now that I was back at lower altitudes and back on tarmac I'd need to add some more). Then back onto the road. The frustrating thing about the route is that you cross the border not far south (latitude) from Salta, but the (only) road takes you south a long way before it turns back north. It's getting late now (past midnight) and I'm getting very tired and contemplating wild camping by the side of the road but keep going to the next village, Londres, which would have been nice to stay in just for amusement value, but the place is dead and end up in Belen, not much further down the road where I find a hostel to sleep in for 4 hours before getting up. It's one of those stops where almost nothing comes off the bike - I'll need a Le Mans style start in the morning if I'm to make lunch.

Up and on my way before dawn the next day which is beautiful, and freezing cold. I want to make good time (i.e. go fast when I can), but that just worsens the wind chill, even in the waterproof gloves and at one point I have to stop as I'm in danger of losing all feeling in them.



Then it warms and I'm driving up a beautiful valley past vineyards (I didn't realise they had wine here) and through a small town called Cafayate. After this I take Ruta 68 through the quebrada named after the town, which again I wasn't expecting. The most beautiful tarmac with some wide sweeping bends that then open onto some of the most amazing and surreal rock formations I'd ever seen, which threatened to make me crash with my mouth agape. After stopping a couple of times to take photos I realised that if I carried on stopping I'd never make it to Salta, so promising to return I focused on making good time.

Mission accomplished!

The amazing road eventually straightened somewhat, making for a faster road and then I hit the outskirts of Salta, found somewhere to stay in pretty much record time, unloaded, showered, changed and bolted into town, getting to lunch with my friend and two of her colleagues 15 minutes after the time we'd agreed, 2,225km after leaving Mendoza [6].

After lunch my friend heads off to the airport and I have a short walk around town (there's a big religious ceremony going on outside the cathedral), have a coffee then head back to the hostel and collapse - the ride from Mendoza had taken it out of me and Santiago had leeched away any riding conditioning which I'd gained. I ended up spending around a week in Salta. I'm not sure the city warranted that amount of time but I did some routine maintenance on the bike, looked around the city, sorted out insurance [7]. It also rained a bit which delayed me going as well, resulting in snow-capped hills surrounding the city.

I wanted to go back to the road near Cafayate but had also heard that the route to a small town called Cachi was worthwhile. It was the Brasil-Chile game the day that I left and I was keen to watch the match (although I didn't know who I wanted to win). I thought that I'd have a better chance to see the game if I did the shorter road to Cachi. As it turned out the shorter road to Cachi probably took as long. 

After a good stretch of tarmac, including through a village where a parade was going on, complete with gauchos on horseback, it turned to ripio with frozen and semi frozen streams crossing it, working its way up the right hand side of the valley in the shade. Finally it reached the pass at about 3,500m where I found Argentinian families playing in the snow.

I pushed on, across a plateau and then onto a plain with lots of cacti, where I learnt how slowly they grow so that the tallest ones are hundreds of years old and saw remnants of one of the old Incan roads before it dropped down to Cachi where I found out the result of the match, had some lunch, had a look around the museum and found somewhere to stay.

The next day I headed down ruta 40 (the same road I'd been on in Patagonia) to Cafayate and although only a short day (about 160km) it had some of the most amazing scenery, chains of spiky mountains and canyons that looked like something out of a Star Wars film. The relatively short day meant that I didn't have to worry too much about daylight and fuel, so was able to stop and walk around some of the scenery. Not for too long though, you never know what the road conditions are going to turn into, so there's always a quiet voice going "you should get moving really".

 

El Esteco bodego

Pucara at Quilmes

Into Cafayate, another attractive small town, surrounded by vineyards. An easy few days, to the wine museum (which seems to be more about the climate and grape growing conditions), to a pre-Hispanic fort (which I think was successfully defended against the Spanish for over 100 years, and given it's location you can understand why) at Quilmes and another vineyard and an asado, complete with wine out of a 5 and a bit litre bottle... In hindsight I should have spend less time in Salta and more time in Cachi and Cafayate, although maybe not a month as a friend did, although he was "waiting for a part"!

Then it was back north (or "heading in the right direction for once" as my mum, who seems to be despairing of my tendency to digress, would say) up the 68 and it's stunning scenery, although this time at a slightly more sedate pace.

One more night in Salta - I needed to go to a camera shop after dropping my helmet and breaking the GoPro mount. It turned into a night of two halves, the first half (another asado, and a late night visit to a bar decorated in homage to the Simpsons) fun, the second half (3 hours in a bed with bed-bugs before I couldn't take it any more and got up), not so much.

After leaving some of my clothes in the sun for a couple of hours [8] I then got on the road (a little later than planned) north-ish. I'd chatted to some people in Cafayate who'd recommended I head towards San Antonio de los Cobres. This followed the railway line up (El Tren a las Nubes) the valleys and through some beautiful countryside. I contemplated staying the night in San Antonio de los Cobres - I wasn't sure what the route to Purmamarca would be like - but after he first place I went to said they were full, or shut, and the second place had no sign of life, I decided to head on out of town and onto the ripio again. Fortunately it was decent quality (i.e. not too deep, rutted, corrugated etc) and I was able to enjoy the ride where you felt like you were in the middle of nowhere. I can't recall any other vehicles on the road and little sign of life at all (other than the occasional herd of llamas).
 

However, it wasn't too long before I reached the shore of the salar which the track skirted round. I wanted to have a quick look at the salar, and I was doing alright for daylight so drove on the road across it, and it's exactly how the photos look, massive flat expanse, perfectly hexagonal cells. I didn't drive onto it, I didn't know what the condition was like and I read on a board that one of the methods of salt harvesting there is to dig large holes and fill them with water - I didn't fancy driving into one of those - so I headed back east towards Purmamarca. However, before I was to get there, there was the small question of the 4,170m Jujuy pass. The sun was casting a shadow up the hill as I rode up to the pass and I raced the sun to get above the line and into the sun again.

On the other side was the Cuesta Lipan - this stunning road zig zags down the hill into Purmamarca. For the cyclists, imagine the Alpe d'Huez (which I think is 740m to 1,850m, i.e. a climb of 1,110m, in 13.8km, or 80.4m/km) but where the climb is from 2,192m in Purmamarca to 4,170m at el Abra de Potrerillos, a climb of 1,978m over 17km (or 143.3m/km), and remember, you're starting 300m higher than Alpe d"Huez finishes. 

About a month later I met a British guy who's cycling round the world - he did this climb in a touring bike with all his kit, and then camped at the top. Regardless of the other 30+ thousand kilometres he's done already, I think this deserves a donation. He's riding for Unicef and you can find his Facebook page here.

No one leaves baby in the corner

Riding down it was fun, and then it got dark and you become very aware that the headlights (which are fixed to the fairing) are not pointing where you're going... I arrived in Purmamarca after dark. A very touristy small town I wasn't holding out much hope of finding somewhere I could park the bike. The first place I stopped had a bed in a dorm. When I asked if there was somewhere I could park the bike, he pointed to the corner of the room. Sometimes there's some confusion as to whether I'm on a bicycle or a motorbike (even though I'm wearing motorcycle clothing and helmet), but I wasn't going to risk him changing his mind, so he opened the door, and I drove my bike into the front room, parking it behind the breakfast tables.

Cerro de los Siete Colores

Lower section on the Cuesta Lipan

And bright yellow hills as well

The next morning I retraced my route along the bottom of the quebrada to see what I'd missed in the dark, took a quick look at the Cerro de los Siete Colores (Hill of the seven colours) and then headed on north. I passed through Tilcara but decided that although I wanted to have a look around it felt too busy and touristy to want to stay, so pushed on north to Humahuaca.

Astride the Tropic -
sounds better than
astride a goat

On the way there's another milestone, at 23° 26' 52" S I cross the Tropic of Capricorn, where there's a monument by the side of the road which is shaped like it should directly face the sun at dawn and sunset, and cast no shadow at midday on the (southern hemisphere's) summer solstice. I was now in the Tropics.

I spend two nights in Humahuaca, after briefly bumping into a friend from Cafayate when I first arrived. This meant that I could take the panniers off Lena and do some day trips, down to Tilcara to have a look at the museum and the partially restored hilltop fort or pukara, and another ride out to have a look at the Cerro de los Catorze colores (this one had 14), a fun ride, once I found the right road (for once my GPS was wrong), and an amazing view.

Cerro de los Catorze colores - worth the ride

The ride home

The view from the Tilcara pucara

In Maimara even the cemetery has a great view

If you go the boring way...
...it was more like 12,800km for me

I'm getting closer to Bolivia and hearing mixed reports. Some talk of hideous roads and general chaos, others love it (potentially because they like hideous roads and general chaos). I'm a little nervous about the border crossing and want to get to Tupiza, about 150km north of the border the same day, and have no idea what the road's like, so I head to the border and stay just short in Yavi (having been told that La Quiaca, the Argentinian border town is what you'd expect from a border town with few, if any, redeeming features. As it turns out the border crossing, although quite long, is relatively painless (i.e. I don't have to unpack the bike). I think things were helped by the fact that for 15 minutes I gained slight celebrity status, with a steady stream of adults and children coming up and asking questions about the bike and the trip, and then wanting photos taken. After a while I think the border officers just wanted to get rid of me.

Cross the border into Bolivia, say goodbye to Argentina (and symbolically change my remaining Argentinian pesos into Bolivianos) and head on north. And the road is great, beautiful new tarmac all the way to Tupiza, although I was to learn that it was to be the last tarmac I'd see in a while.

The best cheese and marmite
sandwich in the world 

Yet another amazing quebrada,
I might have lost track of the names
but not my sense of amazement

There's a common route that people do around Uyuni, which takes in the salt flats and also a ribbon of lakes, geysers, hot springs and generally crazy scenery that runs south from the flats. Tours either do loops where you finish back where you started, or you can do trips where you start at one place and finish a another. Tupiza is at one end of one of these trips (Uyuni and San Pedro de Atacama are the other ends) and you couldn't move in town without someone asking if you want to go on a tour (usually the next day). Some poor girl asked me three times in one evening, I really hope she managed to find someone.

Tupiza was a nice enough place though with some typically weird rock formations to see in the area - accessible by tour but I decided I'd wing it and try and get to them on my bike instead, which nearly ended up with me axle deep in sand.

Bolivia's future - in safe hands

I climbed the big hill to watch the sun go down and met a group of small children (about 7 or 8 years old) who were fascinated by my binoculars (I don't think they'd seen any before) and asked me lots of questions, mostly "have you been to..." which became a little embarrassing after a while - I've been lucky enough to travel to quite a lot of places, and they taught me some Quechuan, which they learn as well as Spanish in schools. They were a lovely group of kids and a promising sign for the future with their desires to become vets and doctors, rather than pop stars and supermodels.

Just pretend I'm not here...

I'd been warned that the road from Tupiza to Uyuni, although not long (so no refueling required) was horrible and advised to give it a full day. So, fueled, with some snacks for the ride I set off. The first third was twisty, stony ripio. A little tiring to ride but not technically very difficult and not particularly uncomfortable - apart from when you go round a blind left hand corner and find a large bus coming the opposite direction at speed, and apparently unwilling to give you any space.

Trial by sand...

...washboarding...

Then it straightened out and for a short while you could get some speed up, and then sand started to appear. Not much at first, a little blown across the road, then some short dunes. I'd worried about sand for a while - I'd not come across it on the ride so far and didn't know how Lena would cope with all the weight, and my nightmare scenario was having to take off all the weight, shuttle-running bags across sand in order to be able to move the bike. Then some bigger dunes. I found that if I kept the revs high enough the bike kept going forwards, albeit slowly and with me having to paddle with my feet to ensure it kept upright. There's probably a school of thought that says "power" and I should have gone quicker, but the front wheel was very skittish and I was riding along tracks made by 4x4's and didn't like to think what would happen if the front wheel bogged down into one of the walls at speed. It probably wasn't that far, a couple of kilometres, but it felt further and I didn't know when it would end, so I was grateful when it did. Until the corrugations started. Some people call them washboard roads, but I'm not sure that does justice to the severity! If they're small, and the roads in decent condition, you can go faster and skim across the surface. However, these were too big for that and faster just felt like the bike was going to disintegrate. In sections cars had decided to head off the main road and create a parallel path, so I had a go at these. Sometimes they were okay, frequently they were as badly rutted as the main road with the added spice of sand. After a couple of goes on that I decided to suck it up and go back to the main road. So the arrival of Uyuni on the horizon came as a relief.

...and water.

 Talk to anyone about Uyuni in the rest of Bolivia and you can almost see them shiver and the goosepimples rise, but as I arrived it was sunny, warm and I found somewhere for me and Lena to stay. The ride from Tupiza was tough, but I was to learn over the next five days that there were harder days to come. Bolivia was not going to reveal it's stunning scenery without effort.

The railway graveyard at Uyuni

Notes

1. I can't really complain. This was the last time that I experienced heavy rain for over 2 months, and the last time I got rained on while I was on the bike until - not sure, still hasn't happened yet [he says, frantically touch wood]!
2. Where I learnt that it was a Royal Navy office on sabbatical who masterminded the creation of Chile’s navy and it’s successes in the fight for independence against the Spanish. They also had a large room set aside for Arturo Prat, the commander of the Esmeralda, a ship that sank in Iquique when it engaged with the much more modern Peruvian ironclad Huascar as part of the Pacific War. Arturo Prat died in the battle. You might think that dying and your ship sinking shouldn’t be a claim to fame, but the events were seized upon by the Chilean’s and mobilised the country for war. Even now the day of the battle is a national holiday (21 May) and in pretty much every city in Chile you go to you will find a street names after him, the date of the battle, or his ship.
3. I found out that the next pass north of Los Libertador was Paso del Agua Negra was closed outside of summer (it's the highest vehicle pass between Chile and Argentina that I can see at 4,779m). The next further north is Paso San Francisco (only 4,725m high) and drops you into Argentina between Salta (to the north) and Tucuman (to the south).
4. Although this is bang on... http://goodmenproject.com/moustacheclubofamerica/astrology-for-bitter-single-people-who-dont-believe-in-astrology/
5.I. love being from the UK but sometimes the variety of different names (UK, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) which are each used and recognised to varying degrees by other countries tends to create confusion at borders, and some degree of suspicion by the border authorities who tend to doubt that you're telling the truth when you say that I am from all of the UK, GB and England...
6. I've flown to Washington for a roast dinner before, but this has to be the furthest I've driven for a meal.
7.This brought home the fact that I'd been away for a while. And to think when I bought the insurance in Buenos Aires I'd thought that by this time I'd be in Peru, where the insurance would no longer cover me...
8. I'd heard in Asia that this was a good way to get rid of bed bugs and I was paranoid about taking them with me. I had not had an enjoyable night.