Opening the tent entrance a sunny morning greets us from outside. A flock of an estimated 40 lamas is standing around eating leaves from the nearby bushes.

Morning view through the tent door on lamas

We start our daily routine enjoying the warm sunshine that’s warming up the nice spot in front of the chapel. While we’re dallying around a man arrives, walking.

Tent pitched in front of tiny church

He seems to be totally exhausted. We immediately know something has gone wrong. He’s not the guy from the countryside with woolen clothes, but a city guy with red down jacket and other outdoor equipment which we’ve never seen being used by the altiplano population. He carries a mobile phone and comes up to us, telling a story about him, his wife and 9 year old son getting stuck at a river crossing with their 4WD.

The mobile phone doesn’t work here, of course. No major active mines around and it would not make sense to build a mobile phone infrastructure for the few lama farmers in the area. He had been walking for 1.5 hours already and not being used to that he was totally exhausted.

Now we think what to do. I tell him to write down a message to the back of my diary, addressed to the police or anyone else who could help him in this situation. And I give him the advice to DON’T PANIC, I assure him that we’ve seen several cars a day on the lonely road, so it’d be just a matter of time till somebody would come and help them out.

 

Message from lost Fernando to police

He still had enough water and there’s water in the creek the car got stuck in … we had passed it the evening before. So I give him a water purification tablet good for 20 liters of water and ensure that we’ll give our best to get his message to the law enforcement officers.

Thereafter we have a short breakfast, then we hit the gravel road. After cycling 20 minutes I spot a truck on a parallel road coming towards our road at maybe 30 km/h. I tell my father on the recumbent that I’ll try to catch it and start a sprint on the bumpy road. The pulse rapidly rises to above 150, the lung cells are trying to suck every oxygen atom out of the thin air on more than 4000 m altitude. A 1.5 liter plastic bottle filled with water falls of the rack, I ignore it, trying to keep up with the truck - Dad will find it and bring it. Now the truck is only 100 m away from me heading to the same crossing I’m heading towards: I start waving my arms, signaling the driver to stop. The lorry doesn’t slow down, I give all I have to reach the crossing before the truck … but miss it by maybe 20 m.

Now a downhill follows, gravel 5 cm deep, my bike starts floating, but I manage to stay on top. I get closer, ride at the left side of the road to give signals which the driver might recognize in the mirror. But either he doesn’t recognize or he doesn’t care. I surcease the truck, my pulse is at 180+ and I have done what I could.

Cycling towards the mountains

After a minute or two Elmar arrives and we continue through a tiny valley, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, always looking for settlements which might have phone connection and for phone lines beside the road. No villages for the next 2 hours, no cars, no power lines, nothing except many lamas.

lama drove close to us

We stop a pick-up loaded with 10 indigenous people, men, women and children. 4 of them are sleeping below blankets at the loading space at the back. I hand them the message, but the driver can’t read. The woman beside the driver tells me to show the message to a man on the back of the pickup, but he doesn’t understand the written words either - maybe Fernando, the father of the stuck family, should have written a bit clearer?

They continue without helping us with “our”problem. 2 minutes later we arrive in a small village, there are big antennas in the center but nobody’s opening at the corresponding buildings. I stop another 4×4 packed with people, but they somehow mistrust me in my strange outfit on the strange vehicle. We go to the post office, closed. Finally a truck arrives going the same direction as we go: towards the bigger town Colchane.

This is the first friendly and helpful driver we meet. He can read and after a short time copies the message from my diary to some paper he has and tells us that he’ll tell the police in Colchane about it.

lunch on a rock in an empty village

Relief. Not a 100% for sure. But we’re convinced that the driver will stop at the next police station to tell the policia about the misadventure that had happened to his compatriot. Time for us to slow down a bit, so we start cooking lunch at the entrance of the brown adobe village. There’s water available from a tap only 100 m away where an old marked woman answers with a short and shy “Si” to my question for water.

high plateau birds

We cook for an hour, always being on the lookout for a white and green police car passing. But nothing. Slowly doubt settles down in our minds. Colchane can’t be that far … maybe the driver has forgotten what we had told him? Half an hour after leaving the village, in fact only 1 minute from the next village, a police car with three police officers shows up in front of us. I signal them to stop and show them the message Fernando had put into my diary. The driver nods and leaves us behind in a cloud of dust only seconds later.

Then something unexpected happens: 40 minutes later the police car passes us again from behind. They can’t be that fast, I think. Another minute later a red 4×4 shows up to my left and slows down. It’s Fernando with his wife and son. He asks us whether we want to come for comida, he invites us. We say yes and make an appointment to show up at a restaurant in Colchane.

happy to have his car (and family) back

Fernando’s really happy but probably pretty tired. His son, 9 years old and better in English than he, has altitude sickness and starts crying for no reason while we’re at lunch. For them it’s time to leave the high plateau, probably not a good idea to come up here that fast. Had they only cycled … their bodies could have got used to the altitude slowly.

Bolivian man testing recumbent at the border

We thank him for lunch and only minutes later after the hasta luego they’re gone.

On the border they put in the necessary exit stamps into the passports, then we continue (back) to Bolivia. We have tailwinds blowing from west when we cross the nobody land between the two border checkpoints. Additionally the winds are blowing thousands of plastic bags and paper from Chile to Bolivia and almost every bush is coated into a jacket of plastic or paper. What an environmental mess.

litter caught by bushes on Chile - Bolivia border

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removing night shelter

After quarter an hour on the bike we arrived at a national park ranger station. Not a lot of people there, but two cyclists from Germany, Tardis and Arno. They told us that inside the station we could refill the water and that there was a television team in the area at the moment to make a documentary about the wildlife up here.

The two took two months off from work to ride in the area Bolivia - Chile - Argentina. They had already been to Salar Uyuni and could tell us quite a bit. We were very lucky to meet them, not only because of the interesting chatting but also because they gave us maps they didn’t need anymore for Bolivia and detailed Russian maps for the laguna route. Thanks a lot! I could even copy a detailed description of the remote area around the lagunas from a small book they had with them.

Arno had been in South America before but not on a bike if I remember correctly.

Meeting cyclists Tardis & Arne

While I talked to them my Dad followed one of the vizcachas, small chinchilla and rabbit like animals hopping around the national park house. I guess they would make nice accessories for the tent at night when your feet get cold, maybe a good idea for touring cyclist pets Just don’t think about the trouble you might have at borders.

Vizcacha, relative with chinchilla

Now with the information they supplied we got into a small dilemma: There were two options to get to the next village: 1) Pretty flat along the Salar de Surire. Taking this one we would have to cross the border to Bolivia for a short stretch without a visa for Bolivia! Risky in my eyes. I had heart from other cyclists (namely Wilbert from the Netherlands) who have payed a lot of money because they have been caught in other countries without the needed entry stamp. Now I guess it’d be even worse without a visa.

Option number 2) was to cycle up a really bad gravel road, sometimes really sandy, to a 4700 m pass.

I guess your character and mentality, the way you’re thinking, influences a lot now, how you decide. Coming from Germany and being raised in a pretty strict and conservative culture I am used not to see things that relaxed (as for example some French friends of mine did or many cultures I came in contact with in South America). Additionally our budget at the time couldn’t have coped with a several hundred or even thousand �?� loss, so we opt for number 2).

Cycling between sky and earth

Not a bad decision if we don’t take into account the tough road. Almost no traffic with the exception on one 4×4, and amazingly colorful mountains and vicunas beside the road every now and then.

Colorful mountains

horrendous road but incredible place to be

After the tough uphill a similarly tough downhill followed, all filled with bumps in the road every 50 cm. A tough job not only for the rider, but also causing material fatigue.

view to Bolivia after 4700 m pass

Reaching the bottom of the wide valley we continued south. In the evening the same game as the day before: 4 or 5 pm: Strong sidewinds from the coast start to make cycling harder and harder. Add the exhaustion from riding 4 or 5 hours on above 4000 m and you can understand why we take the next opportunity to pitch the tent: A small deserted village with a nice, locked church serves fine as a wind shield. At least till we’ve pitched the tent, then the wind turns and the tent starts shaking like a flag in the wind.

inner view from sleeping bag position in freezing night

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Even before we had started the day many trucks carrying heavy loads and producing clouds of dust, had already passed. The tent therefore under a thin and light layer of brown dust. We were lucky that it was not volcanic dust.

At the time we couldn’t really understand where everybody was going.

Guallatire, the tiny little village we were heading for, was obviously not the reason for the rush of lorries, no way. At the police station a friendly officer, a carabiñero, filled the strange black water sack with water, so we could continue. No shops, no new chocolate reserves for us, no reason to stay here any longer … life is so easy.

Now what better reason could there be to continue than the clouds emitted by the smoking Guallatire volcano (6060 m) right next to you? All the trouble we already had with all the dust lorries, we didn’t want it to get any worse on a much bigger dimension. So, lets go!

At the bottom of the valley now. Time for a short snack break. The day should get a pretty hard one for both of us. The terrible road, the big trucks, strong sunlight, fully loaded bikes, the altitude and only mediocre food supply … what an outlook. An exhausted body easily spreads this fatigue on and weighs heavily on your mind!

Trivia start to matter and they’ll keep your mind tied up. That’s pretty hard when you’re alone but it’s a thousand times harder when you’re a group! In these situations silence is golden. Your mental capabilities are not 100%  - far from that - so you have to find a way to control your thoughts. In these situations a bit of intuition can help a lot!

I went to the river, picked up some stones and threw them into the water. Later I slung them into the water and watched them disturb the otherwise harmonious flow of the water.

These interruptions, these turbulences caused by my stones make me think. What are we, I mean we humans? Are we also not just some turbulences in the flow of time on this planet? Some may think they’re great but in the end the stream will compensate the differences. A big manager lying in the flow of time like a giant rock in a dangerous current somewhere in the mountains. When his time as individual is over maybe his ideas will live on for some time, but these times are limited like the lifetime of a rock in a strong current. Tiny little sand particles in the water will hit it and make it to sand itself over time. All the big names of today, for how long will they be known, for how long will people talk about them? So what should we focus on in life? Is it important to pass on your wealth? What about your genes and ideas? Or might it be better to live in a meaningful way, connected to others, living a life of love and peace and unifying with what you’ll be one with anyway when you’ve passed?

We continued, leaving volcano Guallatire behind. Now slowly we got the idea why the trucks came here. Must be the salt lake Surire because at certain places on the road we found what they had lost, 5 cm big parts of the salt lake. From above 4000 m altitude they were bringing this white crust down to the ocean it seemed.

The police officer in Guallatire replied to my question about what the camiones had laden with an answer I could not understand. But I surely couldn’t make out the word sal in his reply, so I was mislead the first half of the day. Probably he had answered something about the industrial usage of the salt. There’s another word which I’ve just found on the dictionary right now: clorhidrico.

Finally we make out the lake of salt directly in front of us. Tiny little things, smaller than ant for sure, are slowly wandering over the surface of the great white plain. That’s the trucks, these tiny little bastards

Due to the heavy winds that came up in the late afternoon we decide to pitch the tent quickly. Cycling is getting too frustrating if you can’t make the progress you’ve planned in your head.

Securing the tent from the furious winds has first priority! Better take 10 minutes longer and have a safe shelter for the night than risking to lose the precious 600 �?� shelter, the only shelter we had.

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Wie waren die Aussichten am Morgen des 29.10.? Miserabel, wenn man zeitliche Vorgaben hat. Denn wir hatten noch viel vor, jedoch nur noch etwas mehr als einen Monat Zeit für einige der Höhepunkte, wie die Salzseen und Lagunen-Route.

1000 Meter in vertikaler Richtung standen direkt bevor. Verteilt auf vielleicht 25 bis 30 km. Diese Strecke waren wir ein paar Tage zuvor auf dem Weg hinab nach Putre schon gefahren. Noch einmal und dazu noch viel langsamer und mit weitaus mehr Gewicht in den Taschen wollten wir das nicht, auf keinen Fall!

Ohne Anwendung irgendwelcher �?berredungskünste überzeugten wir einander also davon, nach 100 zurückgelegten Höhenmetern, per Anhalter weiterzufahren. Und welch ein Glück: Gleich der erste Laster stoppte für uns, wir hievten zusammen die voll beladenen Tourenräder hoch. Hinten auf der Ladefläche fehlten einige Abtrenn-Klappen, so dass wir die Räder zur Sicherheit immer festhielten.

Denn was uns bevorstand, war eine spritzige Fahrt auf kurvenreicher Asphaltstra�?e, danach ein kurzer Abstecher zu einem hei�?en Bad, wo die Arbeiter etwas zu besprechen hatten. Nach insgesamt 600 bis 700 gewonnenen Höhenmetern setzte man uns neben einem Militärcamp ab.

Ich glaube, dass dies das erste Mal war, dass ich zusammen mit meinem Vater per Anhalter gefahren bin … und dann gleich so unkonventionell und wie ich eingestehen muss ziemlich gefährlich.

Wir dankten den freundlichen Chilenen und verabschiedeten uns sogleich. Weitere 250 Meter mussten wir hoch, jetzt wieder ganz alleine. Gefährliche Gefährten schleppten sich neben uns den Pass hinauf: Voll be- und oft auch überladene Lastwagen mit Gütern für Bolivien und Argentinien. Einige mit alten chilenischen Autos für die Städte Boliviens, andere gewährten keine Einsicht, sondern verdeckten den Blick auf ihre Güter durch Planen.

Zweimal auf nur wenigen Kilometern kam es zu grob fahrlässigen �?berholmanövern, einmal musste ich notgedrungen die Stra�?e verlassen um nicht tuschiert zu werden.

Endlich hatten wir ohne Schaden zu nehmen die Abzweigung nach Guallatire (Gualjatire gesprochen) und zum Salar de Surire (Salzsee Surire) erreicht. Von nun an weiter auf Schotter, mehr Abenteuer und weniger Verkehr.

Doch mit einer Sache hatten wir beim Stricken dieser sü�?en Gedanken in unseren Köpfen nicht gerechnet: Nämlich, dass die Chilenen am Salzsee unermüdlich Rohstoffe abbauen würden und zwar im industriellen Ma�?stab. Infolgedessen hatten wir alle 10 Minuten  Konfrontationen mit rasenden Monstern, die hinter sich eine Wolke aus Staub herzogen wie ein brennendes Auto in Hollywood-Streifen eine Fahne aus Feuer und Staub hinter sich herzieht. Eingestaubt wurden wir heute jedoch zum Glück nur wenig, denn �?olus lie�? die Winde aus westlicher Richtung wehen - wir waren am rechten Rand der Schotterpiste nach Süden unterwegs.

Diesen wei�? gepuderten Vulkan hatten wir immer zur Linken. Während wir von Anstrengung und Höhe erschöpft keuchten emittierte er ihn einer sagenhaften Ruhe immer diese Rauchfahnen. Doch recht trauen konnten wir der zahmen Pafferei nicht wirklich … lieber ein bisschen schneller fahren.

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So verbrachten wir einige Zeit beim Relaxen vor unserem Zimmer. Ich jedoch immer mit schlechtem Gewissen … eigentlich würde ich ja lieber die Bilder hochladen oder erfahren, was sonst so los ist in der Welt.

Unsere Zimmernachbarn, drei nette Franzosen, genossen die knapp bemessene Urlaubszeit und sonnten sich manchmal stundenlang. Lustige Gespräche ergaben sich, besonders bei dem sü�?en Dialekt der zwei Mädels.

Das war Frustration pur! Ständig musste ich mich mit diesen Steinzeit-Maschinen herumärgern. Erfolgserlebnisse waren äu�?erst selten, Programmfehler und Abstürze stellten selbst meine stoische Natur hart auf die Probe.

Als wir montags von der Bank Geld abheben konnte, wurde erst einmal ein Rückspiegel-Projekt realisiert. Den Spiegel dazu hatte ich einem Trucker in Bolivien knapp eine Woche zuvor vom Laster weggenommen, wo er als Dekoration angebracht war.

Hier in Putre konnten wir endlich die nötige Klobürste kaufen und uns ihres Stiels bemächtigen.

Das Fertige Gerüst wurde an den leichten Giro Helm von Elmar angeschraubt - et viola!

Hier die Vorräte, mit welchen wir uns für die nächsten Tage eindeckten. Es sollte wieder zurück nach Bolivien gehen, also lieber ‘n bissl mehr eingepackt, solange die Qualität noch stimmt.

Auf die Kapazität unserer Taschen nahmen wir beim Einkauf nicht wirklich Rücksicht … musste einfach passen. Denn dies waren die Dinge, welche wir benötigen würden. Zelt, Schlafsäcke und Kleider konnten prima oben auf den Gepäckträger ausgelagert werden.

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Early morning, still above 4000 m of altitude. This is when we think today will get an easy day. Only downhill, down to 3500 m, to the town of Putre

The very sandy ground brought us a good nights sleep. We later met the 3 French again who had tried to sleep up here, too, but didn’t succeed and had to go down to Putre and get a hotel there. We on the other hand were used to this high altitudes as we’ve been cycling above 3800 m since Lago Titicaca.

I was in a nice photo shooting mood, so I went around the campsite and took these pictures. Up here on the altiplano there’s basically no media, no trouble, just a few people and a few more animals living mostly in peace, not like in the latest James Bond movie with all the violence.

Straight down towards Putre. That’s what this sign suggests, when the road in front of us is diving down into the valley. But fast we couldn’t go because of a steady strong headwind blowing towards us from the coast. What we had hoped that it would get an easy ride took us hours!

The internet or ciber coffee in putre (note, coffee, not cafe!). The signs are actually made from wood, not just cheap painting. But they should have rather put some more time and money into the hardware as I got so upset with the slow computers that I didn’t go there again the second day and especially not the third day, when we had found out that the public library has much faster computers and internet and even for free!

We were forced to spend some time there because the bank was closed over the weekend. We had arrived on a Saturday. All the hostels and hotels were booked out. Strange, no tourist season.

Elections, that’s what brought the people here from very remote areas. So on Sunday the roads were crowded with indigenous people and also more Western looking locals.

“HAY PAN” indicated that they had bread. Sometimes self made but also very often only bought from a bigger bakery.

In our hostel, which we had found after a 3/4 hour search we could negociate a good price and had some friendly company from many French, Swiss and even Ozzies and Kiwis. But nobody stayed for the same period as we did. And everyone was surprised that we had just been there to relax, not to explore the area with salt lakes, volcanoes and national parks.

We were surprised by the fast speed with which the other travelers went out to explore and came back from exploration. Too fast for us. We want to experience the size of a big salt lake by riding slowly past it. How big appears a 40 km wide area covered with NaCl for you if you’re passing at 80 km/h. Can you really appreciate it?

Info Putre: Wikipedia (english) (deutsch)

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We wanted to ride to the town of Parinacota today. 50 to 70 kilometer probably. There we would have internet, shops and even ATMs we had been told. Nice outlook.

Altiplano population in Chile

Nice gravel roads on the way. Mostly police traffic checking the nearby border for illegal immirgants from poor Bolivia.

Facing the enemy

Once they offered us a ride not knowing that we had come here especially to ride. And how could one jump on the back of  a pick-up truck in this amazing atmosphere? The volcanoes always to our left, the dusty road under our tires. A dream for every adventure touring cyclist!

Cycling beside volcanoes

We arrive in Parinacota. Parinacota is empty! No shops, no people. I make out a bus with about 14 computer terminals … to develope the area. But probably everyone’s gone. We’re hungry, we’re exhausted and disappointed. We made a mistake: Having a strict goal for the day and looking forward to it too much.

Until three French scientists who explore the area, pick us up we prepare a soup with spaghetti. They’re really helpful, friendly and entertaining chaps and take us to the next truck-stop where we can change US $ to the local currency, Chilean Pesos, and get some energy, pure (food) and solved (juices and soda).

Funny French meteorologists

We then continue due to the high price and low quality of the habitacion and pitch our tent 100 m away from the road, on the southern side. The GPS map at the end of the article shows the spot exactly. Again Google has made really high resolution data available, really nice.

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Notice: There are high resolution sattelite data available from Google Maps, so click the link title of this article and scroll to the end of it to see the included Google Maps applet. You can zoom in and see the houses, trails, river crossings and a lot more. Check out the border barracks of Visviri for example.

The clouds of the previous evening had been gone in the morning. We put the sleeping bags in their little protection and compression sacks, rolled the Thermarests and put the tent in it’s green bag to protect it from the dust of the road and the hardships of the day.

After 1.5 hours of cycling we reached the town of Charaña (pronounced charanya with the “a” pronounced like the ‘oo’ in blood). A lot more had we expected. At least we found a somewhat reasonable small shop with hundreds of different items and easily spent our last money there, about 20 �?�. Probably the biggest deal for the young woman owner of the show with her small, 1 year old boy.

We tried to get on the Internet but asked the owner of this small, 3 computer cybercafe for the speed and whether it’d make more sense to postpone the visit to the other world, to the world of NOW. He explained we should get NOW later on in Chile. That saved us a lot of headaches I guess.

So now we’re at the border, ready to get a 90 days tourist visa for Chile and have our luggage checked to protect the country from diseases. Diseases for their vulnerable mono culture growing food industry that is. All the cyclist coming here know that the Chileans don’t want that stuff, so we, too, had been prepared and didn’t buy any fresh fruit or vegetables.

In the early afternoon we started following road I-123 down south. The road follows the Chile-Bolivia border pretty close as you can see if you zoom in on the map. The Chileans were just upgrading the road to a new level and I guess in a year’s time it’ll be sealed. That was the first part only, then it got worse, in parts really sandy.

The colors from the evening sun got softer and softer and put the area into a nice yellow-orangish mood. With a wonderful view onto distant 6,348 m high Parinacota volcano we continued cycling. But the winds got harder, so hard actually that occasionally we had a really hard time staying on our bikes!

We decided to pitch the tent at a place where they were just upgrading the road. We put it right behind some little hills for wind protection. But then the wind changed direction and we had already put big stones on the leashes. The tent got deformed heavily while we were packing our stuff inside. The bikes got fixed to the head and foot of the tent both for the protection of the tent and bicycles.

We had dinner inside and a small dessert: Chocolate. The latter one we had every evening these days, not very healthy but calories. It came in the same silver foil as the chocolate in Peru, probably imported. We had bought a whole box for 4�?� containing about 20 units. To get it the previous day we had to bargain with the woman. First she didn’t want to sell it to us at all, but then she realized she could make profit from the sale

While we had dinner the lamas went on their way home to the paddock. I didn’t see anyone bringing them there, so I guess for them it’s a routine and they profit from the paddock because the stone walls give them protection from the cold winds and by sitting side by side they won’t get cold at night.

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Wei�?e Felsformationen stechen hervor

Wir hatten uns in dieser Ortschaft eingedeckt, da wir nicht wussten, wie weit es zur darauffolgenden sein würde - und sicher ist sicher! Noch eine kühle, bolivianische Cola für umgerechnet 20 Euro Cent getrunken, konnte es weitergehen. So sahen die Wege aus, wenn wir nicht die viel zu grob geschotterte “Stra�?e” fuhren.

Viel Spa�? auf engen Pfaden

Und hier nun die Verpflegung Station am Mittag: Vier Frauen aus einem ansonsten ausgestorben wirkenden Dorf, die mit ein paar Styropor-Behältern und jeder Menge isolierenden Wolltüchern aus Eigenproduktion die Vorbeireisenden mit Nahrung versorgten. Das hei�?t, viel Verkehr gab es hier nicht wirklich. Das Geschäft lief gut, wenn alle 10 Minuten einmal ein LKW seine Staubwolke mit sich brachte und anhielt.

Imbiss Stand an der Hauptstra�?e

Denn das Klima war trocken, Sonnenschein, dünne Luft. Da zog jedes grö�?ere motorisierte Vehikel seine Staubwolke hinter sich her. Wir Radler durften entweder Staub inhalieren oder mussten kurzzeitig anhalten … denn Luft anhalten und zugleich weiterfahren, daran war in diesen Höhen wahrlich nicht zu denken!

Steinerne Dorfkirche auf Bolivianisch

Plötzlich fanden wir uns in einer sehr skurrilen Felslandschaft wider, die sich über mehrere Kilometer unserer Fahrstrecke hinzog. Nur für die Stra�?e wurde richtig Platz gemacht, selbst wenn sie sich noch immer in Schlangen-Kurven durch die Felslandschaft zog. Prima Klettermöglichkeiten für Entdecker aller Couleur gab es hier und ich nahm mir natürlich alle Zeit dafür - eine willkommene Abwechslung zu den langen Stunden im Sattel.

Skurile Felslandschaft am Abend

Das Zelt wurde mit prima Ausblick, windgeschützt und mit Sichtschutz vor den Blicken der ab und an Vorbeifahrenden errichtet, direkt neben einem Wegstück der ehemaligen Stra�?e. Mit fast allen verfügbaren Spannseilen gesichert und “ruhig gestellt”.

Bei der alltäglichen Camping-Routine

Danach hie�? es nur noch Kalorien bunkern und die überwältigende Landschaft und Atmosphäre auf sich einwirken lassen:

Der Blick zum Rande der Hochebene

Camp inmitten der Felsen

Beim Nachverfolgen der Route bin ich diesmal auf einige Probleme gesto�?en. Die Karten-Kacheln bei Google Maps waren leider nicht höher aufgelöst, so konnte ich den Weg nicht gut verfolgen. Ich hoffe, dass ich im nächsten Beitrag wieder Witterung bekomme. Bis dann.

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�?ber den Wolken

Trotz des Erstaunens über das plötzliche Verschwinden von La Paz kullerten wir nicht einfach von der Strecke, wie es dem folgenden Genossen en route passiert ist. Die gelben Männlein sind übrigens Stra�?enarbeiter, die dem verdutzten LKW-Fahrer beim Abfüllen des restlichen Treibstoffes helfen. Könnte ja geklaut werden.

Nebenbei eine an uns gerichtete Frage: “Habt ihr Wasser?”. Wir überlegen kurz, wofür die Männer wohl Wasser brauchen könnten und kommen zum Entschluss, dass es wohl nicht für den Eigenkonsum ist. Zudem neigen sich unsere Reserven der Erschöpfung; in nicht allzu christlicher Manier teilen wir also diesmal nicht.

Neben der Stra�?e

Unsere ständigen Begleiter auf der Hochebene: Lamas. Dies sind die domestizierten Tierchen, die nicht gleich abhauen, wenn man sie mal schief anguckt. Nach uns gespuckt haben sie übrigens nicht, zum Glück.

Vorbei an den Lamas

Jetzt die Herausforderung des Tages: Geradeaus, schnurstracks geradeaus. Zig Kilometer weit immer geradeaus. Kurven waren bei dieser Etappe Mangelware und sehnsuchtsvoll ersehnten wir uns eine jede schon Kilometer vorher herbei.

Ewig lang gerade aus im Hochland Boliviens

Die Schotterpiste oder pista de grava compactada, wie man auf Spanisch sagen würde, war technisch äu�?erst anspruchsvoll zu fahren. Selbst mit den breiten 2 Zoll Schlappen, die aufgezogen waren, “schwammen” die Räder manchmal geradezu im Schotter und Sand.

“Hinter dem nächsten Hügel wird es bestimmt besser”, sprachen wir uns Mut zu. “Jetzt aber wirklich hinter dem nächsten, garantiert!” Und wieder nicht. Dazu noch ein Platten am Hinterreifen des Mountainbikes.

Kleiner schwarzer Punkt = Elmar eine Minute voraus

Gegen Abend endlich Besserung. Zwar immer noch schnurgerade Strecke, doch wenigstens ein paar Wolken, ein bisschen Abwechslung wettermä�?ig. Weiter radeln wir mehr schlecht als recht durch Schotter oder auf engen Pfaden neben diesen. Radfahrer aus der Region haben diese Alternative erschaffen auf dem Weg ins nächste Dorf, zur Arbeit, zum Markt (mercado) oder zur escuela, Schule zu Deutsch.

Wir genie�?en diese Radwege, erstellt von Radfahrern für Radfahrer. Ein Hochgefühl diese mit 20 km/h entlangzuflitzen, scharfe Kurve links um einen Busch, dann gleich wieder Ausweichmaneuver nach rechts um einem Sandfeld auszuweichen. Action, hurra!

Kampiert wird diese Nacht 200 m entfernt von der eh schon wenigst befahrenen Hauptverbindungsroute der Region, die in Deutschland locker als grö�?tes Bundesland durchgehn würde … flächenmä�?ig.

P.S. Der erste Teil der Route im Karten-Feld unten ist hoch aufgelöst. Hier ist wirklich jeder Kuhstall zu sehen. Bei der Auflösung macht das Nachverfolgen der Route bei Google Maps richtig Spa�?.

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