We’re not in Kansas anymore!
This sure ain’t Kansas!
We leave Salta and make the short 158km run north to the quirky and charming village of Purmamarca. We start the day in cool rain and fog as we ascend the hills via some great twisting roads edged by lush rainforest. Quickly we transition out of the rain and then out of the forest into a landscape of dramatic, barren mountains dotted with giant saguaro cacti.
The contrast is abrupt and complete. We have started in a jungle and ended in a desert! We have also gained quite a bit of altitude but it’s nothing compared to what is in store. After we book into our very funky hotel which is part Moroccan village, part hobbit town and all very comfortable,
Hobbit town?
JC leads us a few km out of town to a race trac…err road like none I have ever seen. It twists and zigzags it’s way up a mountainside and in a few Km rises from 2400m to 4200.
Now that’s a road!
The view (and the altitude) are breath taking as we look west toward San Pedro de Atacama and a small salt flat (more of those to come later). We only stay a few minutes as it is bloody freezing, the air is quite thin and a couple of the group start to feel a little lightheaded from the rapid altitude change. On the way back down I switch off the engine and coast all the way to the bottom in almost total silence. We even manage to overtake a bus without using the engine! Our green credentials are now officially impeccable.
It’s now 50 days since we hit the road with https://compassexpeditions.com, the official halfway mark so a small celebration is held on the roof of our Cabana under a perfect night sky and with the Seven Colored Mountain as our background.
Roof top celebration
Next morning we head out of town and ride right into the middle of a religious pilgrimage complete with drums and pan pipes. They will march in relays, playing and praying to the ‘Virgin Mountain” for 45km to the next village.
As we climb to a plateau at around 3500m the landscape becomes flat, barren and inhospitable. We stop in front of a cafe/bar in a tiny village to take a photo of the giant llama statue when we notice the odometer reading on the Tiger is 99,999km!
99,999km and a giant Llama
Soon we reach the border to Bolivia and the culture changes noticeably. We are definitely in the third world now. Suddenly there are Tuk Tuks on the streets which are very rough and very narrow with almost no footpath.
The people are predominantly indigenous and of rather short, stout stature. And they resent foreigners with a thinly veiled passion. These people have been invaded and dominated by everyone from the Incas to the Spanish and now they have finally broken all ties with their colonial masters and are determined to maintain control of their own destiny. At service stations we are charged three times the going rate for petrol, if they will serve us at all. The price of fuel in Bolivia is heavily subsidised by the Government and so a black market of smuggling fuel across the border has sprung up. There are very strict and onerous rules around selling fuel to foreigners so most fuel stations find it easier to simply refuse us service at all. We find the trick is to proffer cash and utter the phrase “sin recibo” (no receipt). In shops we are often ignored and service in cafes is invariably slow. The economy here is largely propped up by the cocaine trade which is shall we say “managed’ by the Government. Without it the country would be totally broke. There is little else in the way of resources to exploit.
One of the few legitimate exports from Bolivia is a small range of minerals mined in and around the city of Potosi which sits at an altitude of just over 4000m. We stay 2 nights here and despite making reasonably gradual increases in altitude 12 of our group of 15 show signs of altitude sickness and we can assure you it sucks. Fortunately the symptoms pass in a day or two with the aid of coca leaf extract (no, not the white powder that props up the Bolivian economy) plus some aspirin and caffeine.
We take a guided tour of a mine in the Cerro Rico,
the mountain on the edge of town but not before we stop at the miner’s market to buy gifts of coca leaves and energy drink for the miners. We are also offered dynamite complete with fuse and detonator for a couple of dollars. I am tempted!
Hmmm, the possibilities!
The mine conditions are positively medieval. 18,000 men and about 1,000 women work in the mountain everyday using basic tools. The ore is first blasted loose with the dynamite then shovelled by hand into rail trolleys which are then pushed by hand hundreds of metres to the surface. All miners belong to cooperatives so they take a share of the profit depending on years of work. For an 8 hr shift they make around 32 Ozzie dollars. Some of these guys have been at it for 20 or more years.
Twenty years of back breaking toil.
Did I mention that the landscape is spectacular. It looks just like the Badlands so often featured in old Westerns. There are rugged hills of red rocks, cactus and low sparse scrub. Weirdly the only trees that grow more than a few feet high are introduced Australian gum trees and then only in the gullies. There are tiny villages of mud brick dwellings that cling precariously to life on the edge of nowhere. Goats, cattle and llamas wander aimlessly about and every town is populated by as many street dogs as people. The dogs are always healthy and happy though and rarely chase the bikes. Sally often saves a portion of her lunch for them and they are grateful.
Well fed, happy street dogs are everywhere.
The roads for the last few days have been awesome and JC promises that tomorrow will be even better as we make our way to Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. We’ll let you know how that pans out. See what I did there, pans out, salt pan?
