Well, like a true pro, I parked my motorcycle in La Paz and locked the steering wheel. With the parking lights on (I just discovered this is possible).
2 days later, nothing. It´s like the bike didn´t even have a battery.
Ok, so first I tried to find some jumper cables. Not so easy. It was a Sunday morning.
I grabbed a taxi and asked the guy if he could drive me to a place with jumper cables. We drove and drove, and asked and asked, but no one sells jumper cables. There is a shortage of jumper cables in La Paz, or else no one really ever buys jumper cables, which is also plausible.
So after chatting with my taxi-drive / amateur mechanic about my options, we decided maybe we could just go to an electrician and get a few feet of insulated wire. While it´s hard to get a jumper cable, tons of people sell all sorts of wire, so I gave it a shot. A conductor is a conductor, right?
Next, I enlisted my taxi driver to give me jump. And....No dice.
OK... so next step was to up the juice on the battery. I took it out and charged it direct from the car for a half hour. Almost. I got the engine to start once. But a minute later it died, and there wasn´t enough left for #2. Close. At this point I gave my taxi driver a heroic fare and thanked him for his help.
My next option - foolproof, hopefully, was to charge it for a good hour and a half. But, it was a Sunday. No mechanics (or electricistas) were open. So I had some time to kill. Off to the internet cafe.
The guy at the front desk of my hotel looked surprised when I walked through the door asking for my room back. Hopefully this gets solved.
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