May 14 - Potosi to Argentina

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So today was big day... drove a good 10 hours all the way to Argentina.  Even though there´s still over 1,000 miles to Santiago, it feels like I´ve done the equivalent of summited and the rest of the trip is a descent to base camp.  Bolivia really was the most challenging bit, and once I´m in Chile I´ll practically feel like I´m back home.  No risk of getting stuck somewhere for weeks waiting for parts - at that point its just a truck ride back to Santiago!

I actually didn´t expect to make it to Argentina today, but about half of the unpaved roads turned out to be paved roads and the going was good.  The road from Potosi starts out high and bitter cold.  There was frost in the air and it might have been below freezing.  You descend a bit on a good paved road and then it turns to dirt about 90km out.

The road is under construction, and sometimes it is great new concrete or asphalt, sometimes solid groomed dirt, and sometimes nasty riverbed type of stuff with creek crossing and big rocks sticking out of the dirt.  But anything that´s passable for a public bus is easy game for a 650... you just have to take it slow sometimes.  I actually drove along a river bed so long that I thought I had gotten lost and asked a passing truck to make sure.  Yup - it was just a long long detour while they were paving the real road.  I wish I could shake that feeling of anxiety, of not really being sure you´re on the right track - but when you´re on dirt in Bolivia it´s hard to know.  Mental note - a GPS with good tracks is crucial for this part of the world.  I mistakenly assumed road signs would be adequate.

The only town of any real size between Potosi and Argentina on this route is Tupiza, which is a wild-west kind of town with limited services, one gas station and dirt roads in a river valley.  It´s beautiful countryside but there´s not a ton to do... I decided to push on to Argentina, about 100km further down the road.

I made it around 4 - not bad!  And the Bolivian exit was a piece of cake.

Getting into Argentina was another story - I don´t think any of the dozen customs people on duty had ever dealt with a rented Chilean motor bike driven by an American and they made a big fuss about it.  Copies of this and that, talk to my boss, etc. etc., and then finally a phone call to some supervisor cleared it up.  I have to say, on the 2x2 of competence and arrogance Argentina gets the bad corner.  Bolivia and Peru weren´t too quick either, but they were very very nice.  Chile is nice and efficient (and very thorough... which means there are usually lines).  But this wasn´t the first time that a bunch of Argentinian border guards puffed out their chest and were rude and ridiculous when they had no idea what they were doing.  Sigh.  World famous Argentinian bureaucracy and machismo meet at the border.

At this point in the trip I was so used to the Bolivian countryside that Argentina seemed rich by comparison!  Town squares with a cafe or two... a nice restaurant in a hotel on the edge of the map.  It is crazy how quickly your brain gets used to one thing.  Coming back to the US is going to be interesting.

And from here the plan is to make it to Chile tomorrow - it´ll be one of the longest days of the trip (almost 700km), but it´s all beautiful road at altitude, so it should be a breeze.

Almost looks like something out of southern Colorado, but bigger.

Another one for the cute stray dog collection.

Country living in Bolivia.

A slightly worrying tunnel.

Fields just after the harvest.

And then... the road flattens out one you get close to Argentina.  Straight with lots of blue sky.

Striking country living.  Talk about isolation.

Yikes!  Get ready to get dirty.

Ok, here we are at the border.  It doesn´t look too organized, but it was a breeze to get out.

It all looks so funny with the hand-painted signs and police dog (on the right).

And here´s the inside... do you think they use that safe?  

Hello Argentina!  It´s a long long way to Ushuaia.... 5,121 kilometers.

May 13 - The Potosi Mines (or... one of the world´s worst jobs)

So, Potosi.

It´s hard to describe just what a horrific history this Auschwitz-colonial-silver mine has had.  Historians estimate that 6 million people have died in the mines over the 400 hundred-odd years the mine has been in operation.  When the Spanish came to the new world they never found their city of gold, but they did find an enormous mountain of silver at Potosi, and spent the next few hundred years forcing locals into bringing the silver to market.  The silver funded the Spanish empire and made Potosi the era´s Dubai - maybe one of the wealthiest cities in the world.  Over 100,000 people lived there (at a time when Paris had less than half that number), at 13,000 feet, and the economy of most of the region was reconfigured to supply the miners and export the gold.  Cities as far away as Salta became agricultural centers just to export crops up to Potosi.

Today the city has a melancholy, charming feel.  It has lots of well-preserved colonial architecture and clean streets downtown (although the drive in was the worst so far - the last few kilometers of road are lined with trash trash trash).  The weather is cold and the sun is fierce.  There are a few tourists and a few modern mines, in addition the what´s left of the Potosi mine.  After being the Dubai of its day now it´s just another Bolivian backwater.

And the mines... people still work them today in conditions that haven´t changed nearly at all since the colonial days. Life expectancy in the mines is 10-15 years, before miners succumb to poison gas or silicosis of the lungs.  In in what could only be possible in a place like Bolivia, you can tour the mines.  So I did.  It was one of the most intense experience of the trip - a nightmare of sorts where at the end you get to back to the sunlight but the miners stay, working.

The shocker about the mines is that the miners are self-employed.  There´s no story here of forced labor, indentured servitude or foreign companies exploiting local workers.  Most miners are young and from outside of Potosi, and they come to the mines because of earnings that are several times that possible to them in other places.  So it´s a classic case of risk-premium... like young American men going to work on oil rigs instead of supermarkets.  Except in Bolivia, the risk premium is enormous and the extra earnings seem tiny, given the terrible state of the economy.

And then there are the ¨customs¨of the miners - the alcohol use, coca chewing and cigarette smoking which probably multiplies the effects of the job.  If they spent that money on face masks... well it isn´t fair to judge as a westerner.  But it´s hard not to think those thoughts when you see the mines.

Peru has it´s own version at La Rinconada, the highest town in the world.  That article by the LA Times rung true.

Slate and the BBC provide interesting color.

I also took a visit to the old Spanish mint, which offers some more sad irony.  Bolivia used to mint money for the entire world.  Now the country imports its currency from Spain (the technology for minting is too expensive these days).  Even the zinc and tin roofs of the shacks in Potosi are imported from Europe (despite the fact that Bolivia has big reserves of both), because the country lacks the industry to process the metals.

So I spent a melancholy afternoon reading a bit and trying to process the sights of the day... the nights are cold and central heating is a rarity so it means a lot of time spent sleeping (under the covers... the only warm place in the city!).  Tomorrow its off to Tupiza, and then a final push into Argentina for the last leg of the trip.

Let´s start out with dynamite and.... grain alcohol?  These two should be kept far away from each other, but, in the mines, people drink 196 proof booze while blasting holes in the walls. 

And then there´s the ammonium nitrate, fuses and some bica for your coca.  The miners drink, chew coca and smoke at the same time.  They say the alcohol helps them with the heat, the coca kills their apetite and ¨filters¨ the air, and the cigs ¨clear the air.¨ Peculiarly, they don´t eat in the mines because they think their food will get dirty.  Just unbelievable.

Other tourists suited up and ready for the mines.

Mining shacks on the edge of the mine entrance, with a good-luck prayer flag.

Pushing an ore cart out of the mine.

Tourists are expected to bring ¨gifts¨ into the mine for the miners, which usually means a few dollars a person worth of soda and coca leaves.  This guy guy a 1.5l bottle of lemonade.  The tours have actually paid for a lot of infrastructure improvements in the mines (like ventilation), and the miners get some freebies.

1 ton of ore stacked high in the ore cart and moved by pure human labor.

In the mines... a lot of the miners teeth are stained with coca and tobacco.

No lights.  It is 100% completely dark in the mine... these are just some headlamps in the distance.

Hauling ore by hand at 14,000 feet.  Unbelievable, back breaking work.

It was hard to get good shots with all the dust and total darkness, but you can get a feel for the conditions here.

Ditto here, shoveling ore by hand into buckets which are dragged by hand onto the surface.

A runner with a big bag of ammonium nitrate (!) to re-supply some miners.

Moving some ore in position to be dumped into the pick-up chutes.

Tired.

There it goes.

I can´t get over how inefficient everything in the mines is... here people manually sort some of the ore before it gets shoveled into trucks for transportation to the smelter.

May 12 - Sucre to Potosi, 150km

Well after a couple of long days where I felt like I was racing the sunset, this short little paved ride was a lot of fun.  All day to do just under 100 miles, and not a single intersection on the way so you don´t have to worry about getting lost (it´s the only paved road in this part of Bolivia!)

Even though Sucre sits on top of a ridge it´s low by Bolivian standards - just over 7,000 feet.  Potosi, on the other hand, is on the side of a mountain up in the altiplano and is at 13,400 feet - almost twice as high!  It´s not quite the highest city in the world (although it is about 2,000 feet higher than Lhasa, in Tibet), it is close.  The record is taken by a town with 30,000 people in Peru 16,700 feet.  Almost the entire drive is uphill where it gets colder and the air gets thinner.

The road is in fantastic shape the whole way and the sweeping curves were a lot of fun to ride.  I took a break for a little bit once I was over the ridge to the altiplano to take a few pictures and enjoy the scenery.  This time of year is late fall and a lot of the grass is a golden color which is brilliant in the sun.  There are shepherds and little villages here and there too.  There´s a real feeling of freedom of being in that landscape - the brisk air and bright sunshine probably have something to do with that.

Gear

So a few people have asked what I packed, and what I wish I packed (or left at home) for this kind of trip.  I´m no expert on all the gear out there, but this worked out pretty well!

Most importantly - the motorcycle:

2010 BMW F650GS

The criteria was something light, powerful, and capable of surviving dirt roads.  The KLR650 or Transalp were my other options.   A KTM would also have been great.  On the lighter side, the Honda NX4 (a 400cc bike) could have also worked - it also has the advantage of being much simpler (no fuel injection, no cooling system, and more widely available spare parts).

I thought about the big adventure series bikes - like the BMW 1200GS.  But to be honest, those bikes are just too heavy.  I ride an 1100GS in the States and the idea of having to pick one up after losing it in sand or gravel.... [shudder]  That extra power didn´t outweigh the weight issue to me (no pun intended!).

Spares - not a ton.
 - Two tubes
 - Drive chain
 - Pump
 - Chain lube
 - Jumper cables (electrical wire in my case)

If I was going longer I would have taken the regular maintenance parts with me (extra rear tire, air filter, oil filter, fuel filter).  Spare parts are almost impossible to get in Latin America outside of the biggest cities... and even then it can be hit or miss (forget about finding spares in Bolivia.)

Clothes - one pair of everything for all weather conditions.  Using different layer combos I was pretty much always comfortable - from below freezing at 15,000 feet to 90 degrees and 100% humidity in the Amazon.

Top
- 3 cotton t-shirts
 - 1 synthetic t-shirt
 - 1 pair long synthetic top
 - Patagonia R1 Hoodie (expensive but worth every penny - it is extremely warm and versatile)
 - Mountain Hard Wear Primaloft puffy jacket (likewise - featherweight and compressible but very warm)
 - Held Insulated Riding Jacket (not crazy about it - I´ve broken a few zippers and torn some pockets.  I have the BMW enduro jacket in the States which is lighter and more durable)
 - Patagonia Rain Jacket (better than a rain suit because you can wear it anywhere - and its a wind layer)

Hands
 - Off-road riding gloves (for 90% of the time)
 - Black Diamond Primaloft Mercury Mitt - these are lifesavers when the temperature drops below zero.   The are rated -29/-12 Celsius.  It is awkward to drive in them, but your hands will literally never, ever be cold.
- Smartwool glove liners (light and easy to slip on when you don´t want to wear the others)

Head
- Neck Warmer
- Held Enduro Full Helmet
- Boston Red Sox hat (critical)

Pants
- 3 pairs synthetic underwear
- North Face TKA 100 Fleece Pants (HUGE fan - extremely warm and breathable)
- North Face Apex Summit Series Hiking Pants (HUGE fan - very durable, wind resistant and dry quickly.)
- Patagonia Rain Pants
- Swim trunks

Feet
- 2 pairs Smartwool socks (medium and heavy)
- Asolo Moran GTX Boots (really versatile with great ankle support, and they are indestructible)
- Flip Flops

Mini-Pharmacy
 - Immodium
 - Neosporin
 - Aspirin (OTC pain killers are widely available just about everywhere, however)
 - 2-3 servings of antibiotics (in case I got really unlucky with food more than once)
 - Malarone for malaria
 - Ambien for long flights / overnight bus rides
 - Band aids
 - Compression bandage
 - Hand sanitizer (also usually widely available)
 - 4 servings of oral re-hydration salt (didn´t have to use)

Everyday stuff against the elements
 - SPF 45 sun screen
 - Desitin (surprising I know... but it is great for preventing and treating windburn!)
 - Chapstick
 - Bug cream with DEET
 - Water purification tablets (never used them, but they are small and JIC)
 - Camping towel (very handy)
 - Mosquito net (didn´t use, but small and JIC)

Other gear
 - Swiss Army Knife (mostly useful for opening beer and wine... and cutting cheese / salami)
 - Plastic Spoon (you never know when you´ll need it)
 - Head lamp and small flashlight (with spare lithium batteries - these are HARD to find)
 - 500ml thermos (huge when you want a hot drink in the middle of nowhere)
 - 1L Klean Kanteen (to be honest, would have gone with a Nalgene)
 - Mountain Hard Wear sleeping bag, rated -22C (might be overkill, but it is not a lot of extra weight)
 - 2 person tent (I actually haven´t used it yet... lodging is so cheap!  But again, JIC)
 - Scissors
 - Sewing kit
 - 8 pocket plastic folder to keep documents organized
 - In-ear headphones (for the long rides...)
 - Spanish/English pocket dictionary
 - Personal hygiene kit (toothpaste, shampoo, etc.)

Personal spares
 - 2 pairs eyeglasses (you never know...)
 - Contacts
 - Copies of passport, insurance, etc.

Electronics
 - iPhone (music, dictionary, Kindle, email, Skype... amazing)
 - Netbook (for the internet, photos, blog :)
 - Local cell phone (just in case)
 - Chargers, adapters, etc.

Photos
 - Canon Rebel XS SLR Camera
 - 55-250mm lens
 - Small Canon Pocket Digital Camera (for when you don´t want to lug around the heavy artillery)
 - Case Logic holster (loved it)

Country Intel
 - At least 2 maps of every country (again, you never know when that extra village listed in one but not the other is going to come in handy)
- Lonely Planet for each country.  Useful because they cover all the places in between tourist spots, where you might get stuck.

And that´s it!  In the bigger cities in Chile and Argentina you can find most of the basics, but once you are in the boonies just about the only stuff that´s available is food and toiletries!

Spotted in Bolivia

Tourism, not just for gringos.