Bolivia and Chile

February 10 - Copacabana, Bolivia

I can't believe that I haven't posted anything in 3 weeks - I've been in front of a computer a lot, scanning photos, reorganizing the web site and compulsively watching the international news situation with growing dismay. But now I've got something more immediate to worry about - we just crossed the border from Peru into Bolivia at Copacabana, and were stopped from getting on the ferry when we heard that there was a riot happening in La Paz. There have been protests and road blockades happening here for a few weeks, and we were thinking we'd head into La Paz and find out how bad this was - which roads were still closed, if any, and when the blockades would stop. At the border we met three Swiss motorcyclists who talked their way through the only one they encountered, just as we did in Mexico and the north of Peru. This seemed like no big deal.

This all apparently was started over the "impuestazo" - a new austerity tax that the president imposed recently. Today, apparently the police joined in the rioting against the government, and were in a street battle with the army. The police seized the Foreign Ministry in the central square opposite the Presidential Palace, and 10 people were killed. The president appeared on TV flanked by some generals and appealed for calm. Then the TV went off the air for a while, and now its back on. There seems to be a state of emergency in the capital, and the president decided to reverse himself on the new tax, but now people seem to be pushing for his ouster. We're 150 km (and a ferry crossing) from La Paz, so this area seems fine, and we can still turn around for the Peruvian border, 6 km away.

The story from AP.

February 15 - Iquique, Chile

We headed out of Copacabana on the 11th, since the news from the capital was that the situation was actually getting worse. There were road blockades set up between us and La Paz anyway, and our main fear wasn't the violence so much as the fact that we could get trapped there at any time. There have been occaisional road blocks in Bolivia for the last month and we thought we'd see what it was like for ourselves, since the rumors in Peru were mixed. Now it seems like it is impossible to actually travel through there, and there is no indication of when this might end.

The funny thing is, we crossed the border fairly early, and were planning on being in La Paz that afternoon and would definitely have made it past the ferry except that we had been planning for weeks to get lake trout in Copacabana. So this little fish saved us a lot of trouble...

The scene in Copacabana was a touch surreal that night - waterfront hotels and bars went on catering to the tourists with a lively party scene even as the capital was burning. The next morning, a road block was up on the road to La Paz, and the local people were starting to look frightened. Then we heard that the President had fled from his palace hidden inside an ambulance. If flight is good enough for the president, it's good enough for us.

We heard of another road through the Andes in Peru that has just been completed, and decided to take it. The road was perfect - except for the fact that it went over a pass at 4755 meters, and we saw a good amount of snow around us, and even on the road for about 100 meters. We were lucky, and it wasn't sticking - Ulf and Anke both are badly in need of new tires, and if we had to ride through snow it could have gotten ugly, but even where the snow was 2 inches deep trucks had melted wide tracks through it.

The road came back to the Panamerica in Moquegua, near the coast, a mere 1700 meters above sea level. We spent a night there, and then crossed over the Chilean border south of Tacna, a process that was orderly but involved us removing all of our bags and boxes from our bikes and having them X-rayed - the Chileans want to be sure that no narcotics are making their way into Chile from Peru. Narcotics! Of course we're not bringing any narcotics across the border - we'd never be so stupid as to get caught at the border with drugs. Hey, waitaminute... both Anke and I had 1 kilo bags of raw coca leaves, the kind that you make mate de coca out of. I asked the Peruvian border guard if they were considered drugs in Chile. He didn't know, but he did know that they were plants, and we also had to give up any plant or animal products at the border, so I dutifully dropped my bag in the garbage... and then discovered a few days later that the pocket of my rain jacket was stuffed with them from the Machu Picchu hike.

We checked out Arica, our first town in Chile, and it was a different world from Peru. After months in Central America and the Andes it was almost like being home again. While walking through a market area, one guy who was selling jewelry stuck up a conversation with me. "La guerra es por el aceite, no?" I agreed that the war was for the oil, and out of nowhere he pulled out some wine, and gave me a cup. The town was very nice - we played some pool in a piano bar, and then Anke went back to the hostel and Ulf and I continued drinking in a karoake place.

That night, we said goodbye again - Ulf and Anke intended to head into the Salar de Uyuni from the Chilean coast, and they also wanted to spend some time on the beach in Chile. I'm still trying to make good time down to Ushaia. They headed out from our hostel early in the morning, Ulf nursing a hangover similar to mine. I went into town to get rid of the last of my Peruvian Soles, and to find a map. Around 2pm, as I finally got under way (Chile is 2 hours ahead of Peru and the East Coast of the U.S., so it felt like noon and the sun goes down after 8) I saw Anke waving on the side of the road, and stopped. Ulf had had an accident earlier in the day - he was going about 100 km an hour down the highway and hit some oil. He was fine aside from a scratch on his chin, but his bike was in bad shape - the fork seems to be bent, and he had holes in the cylinder covers on the outside of the Boxer engine.

They got the bike on a truck to Santiago, and Anke and I went on our bikes. We went on ahead because we needed to be able to stop for rests and gasoline. Somehow we ended up missing the truck as it passed us, and spent 3 hours waiting for it outside of Iquique, thinking they were behind us, when they'd already reached town. Luckily Anke spotted one of the two trailer cars from the truck at a gas station in Iquique, and a guy from there led us to the hostel where Ulf had left his stuff (he'd gone to an internet cafe to send us an email.) Today, Ulf is assessing the damage, and seeing if it can be fixed here. The trucker is leaving for Santiago tomorrow afternoon, but it might be possible to get the bike running again in Iquique, and he'd rather ride down. Today is Sunday, so there isn't much we can do here right now, but he has until the afternoon tomorrow to make repairs and see if they work.

February 23 - Santiago, Chile

I'm finally here. Actually I've been finally here for two days... doing just about nothing. It's great.

Wednesday, I rode on with Ulf and Anke from Iquique to Antofagasta. Ulf's bike seemed to be running well after two days of repairs (plus one day where I was immobilized by tourista), and we stayed together for a day down to Antofagasta just to be sure that the bike wasn't going to start bleeding all of its oil once we were on a long ride. The center of the "perfect desert" is not where you want to be stranded by the side of the road, with nothing on either side of you for 150 miles. Antofagasta is the second largest city in Chile, and true to what we'd been told in Iquique, it was a cheerless place full of rude, businesslike people. The owner of one hostel charged us 6000 pesos each (about $8.50) - and then we met some other gringos from Germany, Australia and England who he asked only 4500 of, and they'd talked him down to 4000. We assumed he didn't like us because of the bikes - we look like pretty rough sorts after a day on the road.

I overslept the next day, but managed to get out of town by 10:30. It was nice to be riding on my own again for a little - making all of my own decisions about when and where to stop. (The novelty of this wears off in a few days.) I also wanted to ride a lot faster to get out of the desert, and Anke's bike isn't really comfortable for that, especially in high winds. I stopped in the middle of the Atacama at the great big hand. I have no idea what the actual name of it is, or why it is out in the middle of the desert - I'd seen pictures of it from the websites of other motorcyclists, but had no idea where it was. Then I saw it by the side of the highway - it was impossible to miss, being the tallest thing within a kilometer, about 30 feet tall. It could have been 2 feet tall, and it still would have been the tallest thing around, because there was absolutely nothing but sand in all directions up to the mountains several kilometers away. It seemed to be made out of concrete, with 4 fingers and a thumb rising straight out of the sand into the air, and a light coating of graffitti covering it as far up as people could reach.

I pulled off the highway onto a sandy track that ran half a kilometer up to it, hopped off my bike and snapped a picture of it in front of the hand. I had a cigarette and enjoyed the silence of the desert for a few minutes. I went around the back of it, wondering if there was some kind of plaque or information about it, and found out that the area behind it invisible from the road had become an emergency toilet... as I mentioned before it is the only thing taller than a foot near the road for maybe 50 km, and since I was just getting over a case of tourista I could kind of sympathize, but I think some people have no idea how long things can persist in a place where there is absolutely no rainfall. A car filled with a family pulled up, and I hopped back on my bike so they could take their pictures, and before I'd have to start answering the usual questions about my trip.

I stopped in a town called Vallenar (pronounced Bah-yeah-narr). This town got its name from one of the liberators of Chile, a guy by the name of O'Higgins, who has streets named for him in most Chilean towns (including the main avenue in Santiago), and who decided to name this town after him home in Ireland, a town called Ballanagh. It was a nice little place with no resemblance to anything in Ireland, which was fine. I got some food and went to sleep for the second day of riding.

I got into Santiago Friday at 7:30, after a 1350 km ride (a little over 800 mi) in two days from Antofagasta. The autopista had a speed limit of 120 km/hr, which let me get my urge for speed out of my system and got me into town just before dark. I found a hostel that Ulf and Anke had a recommendation for, and then got some beer and wine to celebrate my arrival... and consequently got going to late yesterday to get anything done for my bike, which was the ostensible reason for my hell ride down here. It probably needs more than one day of work, so even though I didn't get it started on Saturday, I was going to be here for a few days anyway.

We've been looking forward for a few weeks to Santiago as a bastion of Western (Northern?) civilization with malls, a selection of motorcycle tires, English language books, movies... And Santiago is indeed very easy to get along with - the people are mellow and friendly, and well enough off that I don't feel like a freak when I'm walking around, but it feels like the adventure of the trip is over. On the other hand, I also know that the trip to Ushaia is going to take me through the most isolated terrain yet, and I need a little break before I tackle that, so I'm making the most of my time here (I spent the last 24 hours reading a TC Boyle book and watching movies).

February 28 - Santiago, Chile

I got my bike back from BMW yesterday, and put a new set of tires on it today. The BMW people seemed sort of competent... I'd asked them to fix the bearings in the steering, but they don't have the parts, so I'll just have to get by without it until BA. They did the valves, the oil, and the other fluids, and I have a new chain on there. I also finally got my left mirror fixed. When I picked it up yesterday, it was standing next to another 2002 Dakar with the same paint, and I thought Santiago looked a little battle-scarred compared to it, not as pretty, but tougher and tested on some of the worst roads that South America has to offer.

The bike is now ready to roll, and after a week hanging out here playing chess and cards, watching lots of movies, drinking and wasting time, so am I. I don't have the same enthusiasm I had a few weeks ago - now that I'm past Machu Picchu, there isn't really anything I feel like I must see going south - I'm just doing it to finish up. Maybe once I'm finally gotten down there it'll start being fun again - no more sense of obligation.

Then again, it could also be the wine from yesterday... memo to self, never buy two bottles instead of one of anything with a screw cap that you haven't tried before... "Mmmm... a faint taste of acetone, with a touch of aluminum... GOOD GOD that's sweet!" (I never touched the second bottle.) I've learned to play scaat (a German card game) and have taught a few people to play 25, an Irish card game typically played out in the country. I'm trying to work the people in the hostel up to poker... which we could play for pesos (at 750 pesos to $1...)

I think I've decided to end in Rio, and fly the bike to Miami - and this means that after Ushaia I get to see a chain of South American cities - Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Ascuncion, Curitaba, Sao Paolo, Rio and maybe Belo Horizonte - and Santiago is probably the easiest of them to deal with. Then again, maybe its the blandness of Santiago that takes a lot of the fun away. On the positive side, I've heard that it might be possible to reach Antarctica for as little as $600 - but it is getting very late in the season, so I'll have to see what happens when I get to the docks in Ushaia.

I'll put in one day of actual sightseeing tomorrow, just so I won't feel bad if I don't come back here on the way up from Ushaia. I've decided I don't want to see another museum of pre-Colombian art, another church, or another presidential palace. Maybe the art museum will be cool. Anke and Ulf are leaving tomorrow morning, and they've decided to go as far down through Chile as they can - I'm cutting over to the good road on the Argentine coast about a third of the way down - so unless I catch them in Temuco, 700 km south of here, I won't see them again unless we have a chance meeting in Ushaia. Could happen if I go to Antarctica.

March 7 - Villarica, Chile

I had a hard time tearing myself loose from Santiago. I finally got out of the hostel at 2pm March 2, and headed down towards Temuco. I'd once had an ambitious plan to reach Termuco - 677 km (400 mi) away in a single day, using the autopista where I could do 120 kmph (75 mph) but by this time I was happy just to get out and be riding south at all - I had some errands to finish in Santiago and finally left the city at 4pm. Luckily since we are in summer in the southern hempishere and Chile has a weird time zone, it gets dark around 8:30, so I still had enough time to go 300 km.

I stayed one night in a nice hostel near San Clemente, got back on the autopista and made it to just north of Conguillo National Park. I was also about 60 km east of the Argentine border. My original plan was to get over the border, hit the paved road on the coast of Argentina, and blow down it all the way to Ushuaia. I talked to Scott who runs SCS Habitat in Santiago, and he told me right now the weather was unusually good, and if I wanted to do the Lake District route I should take this opportunity.

Scott had mentioned that he had never ridden a motorcycle, which should have set off little alarm bells for me. He gave me some photocopied maps on which he outlined a recommended route, which I started following. The gravel towards Conguillo was fun - I've actually started enjoying gravel riding in the last two months, and I took the first 30 km at about 80 kmph. Then I entered the park and the road went to pieces - about 2 meters wide, windy, hilly, and crossing volcanic flows where the people in charge of the park decided to use the volcanic material on the road, which means it is surfaced in dust.

When you're riding a motorcycle on an unstable surface you really want to have your center of gravity low and forward, but when you're touring this isn't really possible to achieve - I have about 80 kilos (200 lbs) of equipment with me, clothes, camping equipment, parts and tools. A dual sport motorcycle is a compromise between a bike that can be comfortable for long hauls on the highways and one built to withstand offroad, or at least unsealed roads, and the suspension needs to be high to have enough travel to withstand all of the shocks without bottoming out. In my first experiences on gravel the bike seemed too high to be stable, but over time I got used to the experience, and learned that although it feels like the bike is about to slide out from under you, it really isn't - as long as you don't brake with your front brake, or hit a really deep patch of gravel, or sand, or snow... or dust.

Dust is actually I think the worst surface I've had to drive on - it's much finer and smoother than sand, and unlike snow it never packs to the point where it becomes stable. I'm fairly tall - 1.8 meters (6 ft) and can barely stand astride my bike because it has a high suspension. So the overall effect of riding my Dakar in the volcanic sand was like ice skating on stilts. The park was 40 km of lots of sand and hills, with sharp dropoffs and trees at the sides and in between quick glances to admire the view I spent the rest of my time there recovering from near falls (often a quick tap of the ground with my foot to right the bike) and as I cruised down the last narrow crumbling defile to the park exit I was amazed that I'd never gone down - with all of that weight, once it starts to go over there is no stopping it if you can't get good footing, and the only place you can usually do that is pavement.

I did admire the araucaria (Monkey Puzzle) trees, the volcano itself and the massive lava fields that in the last few decades have dammed rivers to create new lakes. The araucarias were the best part of the ride - a species of tree native to only a few hundred square miles in the foothills of the Andes, with huge umbrellas of platelike spiky leaves at the top of a columnar trunk. At the same time, I cursed Scott and his advice, and wondered whether I should try to continue on his route. I'd bought a map from a local gas station chain called Copec, and it showed the road through the park as "unpaved secondary" and one of the roads that I was to go on the next day was not supposed to be as good as that. But I hadn't fallen, so I thought I'd put in Reigoli, and there was no way they were going on this road. It wasn't really wide enough for a bus and went up the hill at an angle only possible for my bike or a four wheel drive vehicle (a real one, not one of those suburban SUV's that are a minivan with an overload of testosterone). With all of the lose sand on the incline going up I was hoping that I was going the right way because I sure as hell didn't want to have to go back down. At the top of the hill the road narrowed further to the width of a car, and was covered in a deep layer of sand, and I slowed to a fast walking pace, thinking that where I was if I got into trouble it was unlikely that I'd see anyone for days. Then a few turns later, I ran into some farmers on horses herding cattle, who confirmed that this was the right road - but seemed a little shocked to see someone riding a motorcycle on it.

As I came down the hill I spotted a narrow stream that I'd have to cross, filled with large rocks. Water crossings are usually not too much of a problem as long as you don't slow down - but after I was almost all of the way across I spotted a small bridge right after the embankment on the other side, made out of a few uncut logs, and a 45 degree angle to the direction of the road. I was trying to figure out how to surge up unto it without falling off the other side when I slowed down and the bike executed a slow U-turn on the big rocks as I tried to keep it upright, finally toppling over on top of me in the stream. I ended up lying in 6 inches of water, and was more annoyed than anything else, until I realized my foot was trapped under one of the aluminum boxes on the side of my bike. I tried to pull it out and got nowhere.

I knew that there were some people around, but probably too far to help in the next hour or two, so after some struggling I looked carefully at the bike and figured out that if I turned the handlebars I could brace some of the weight, and finally I got my foot free. There was no way I'd find good enough footing in the middle of the stream to right the bike with all of the gear so I disassembled everything and put it on the other side of the log bridge, and then went back and got the bike up on its side stand in the water. It took me another 20 minutes to rock it back and forth over the large stones and onto the bank, and then I repacked. My foot was a little sore, but so far there was no harm done.

I carefully went through the hills until I reached a small town, and I saw a sign for Reigoli, only 4 km away. I smiled and breathed a deep smile of relief, suddenly happy that I hadn't turned back, and came around a corner and crashed again. I was going down a hill, with the normal ravine on one side and an embankment on the other, when I realized that the hill side had a second ravine - some kind of crevice that had opened up, narrow at the top but several meters wide and several deep towards the bottom of the hill - and I spotted it about 3 meters before my front wheel rolled into it. Since I was coming around a curve on a sandy hill I'd had my feet down on the ground and couldn't hit the rear break, so I hit the front and as the bike slowed to a stop it toppled over again - with all of the weight of the bike down the hill, lower that the wheels.

This time I was really pissed off, and just heeved the bike back onto its stand gear and all using my back (ouch), just before two men ran over to help me. I was back in the saddle within a minute and starting up, thinking again, no harm done, and then one of them handed me my mirror, and as I looked at the place where it used to sit I noticed my windshield was cracked in two. The other mirror was spinning free after the crash because overenthusiastic "repairs" in Quito at Hostel Dejavu had destroyed the threads for mounting it, and it had been held in place with local JB Weld that has the tensile strength of chewing gum. That's it, I thought, no more offroad until I get down to Ushuaia. Soon I was back on the gravel, and loving it, even the parts where the rocks were loose and deep.

On the way out past Reigoli I met a bunch of Chilean mountain bikers who were crossing over the mountain into Argentina - we compared notes on the roads - we agreed they sucked - and I tried to help them with some flats using my compressor but it wouldn't fit the the valves of their tires. I headed down the last 5 kilometers of gravel and a wasp flew into my shirt and bit me twice because he was trapped - somehow I had the presence of mind to slow down, find a level spot on the hill to park the bike and then crush the little bastard. I stripped off my riding gear and found his mangled corpse, then had a cigarette - welcome to fucking Marlboro country - and noticed that I wasn't having any problems breathing. Oh good, guess I'm not allergic. (I'd never been stung before.) It hadn't exactly been a banner day.

I made Pucon, saw a zillion tourists, and slowed down only to be sure that the hostel that was recommended to me was overpriced. I stopped in Villarica 24 km away and after a few beers from some sympathetic bicyclists felt a little better. There was a Swiss couple there, both motorcycle touring on the same model of motorcycle as me, and we compared notes on the problems we'd had with the bike - they'd started in Europe and were doing South America before heading home. For the most part none of us had had any major problems, and it was nice to see two other Dakars making such a long trip.

I spent the next day making repairs on the bike - I put a few braces across the windshield made by cutting L-braces for furniture in half, and a taller (repairguy) in town drilled holes for me in the plastic and ground the sharp edges of the braces, and after he heard where I'd come from didn't charge me (in fact refused to accept money from me). I found deep in my spare parts bag a special bolt for the mirror (it's designed to break away at one place in a crash) and had at least one working.

I skipped the rest of the Lake District after some locals told me that the ferry on Scott's map - past another 60 km of gravel - didn't actually take vehicles. So I headed down the autopista to Entre Los Lagos, and then camped out in a national park that straddles the border and headed into Argentina the next day.

I think one of the big problems that you confront on a trip like this is tourist fatigue - after 9 months going through North and South America you can have the tendancy to not appreciate the places that you are traveling through, because they are similar to other places you have been before. Volcanos? Seen that. Yawn. I noticed this also happening when I was at the ruins in Peru - and it is something I'm trying to combat now while I'm riding, otherwise there isn't much point in continuing. On the other hand, I am so close now... maybe after I reach Tierra del Fuego I'll feel released from a major obligation to myself, to complete the ride there, and will be able to enjoy being a traveller again. Otherwise, I might cut things short in Buenos Aires and come back another time.