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Week 17 – Doing repairs & riding San Borja to Santa Rosa

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After I arrived in San Borja with the French couple, we had planned to separate as they headed to Trinidad and I continued north. After spending so many nights in the tents, we decided to take some rest days before leaving town. In my case, this wasn’t just to rest, but also to take care of some repairs that I needed to address. Riding on the rough road surfaces over the last few weeks had taken it’s toll on the bike. I am guessing the vibrations just worked things loose. So it was mostly just a case of tightening some bolts. But there was one problem that I really didn’t know how to take care of.

A Damaged Tyre

One day on the route to San Borja I noticed a huge lump in the wall of my front tyre. I never experienced anything like that before, so I posted some pictures in Facebook groups to ask for advice. After reading through a lot of comments I spoke to my friend Charlie, who I met while travelling through Africa. He has a lot more knowledge about bicycles than I do and actually owns a chain of bike shops. So I went with his suggestion. I wrapped a bank note around the innertube of the tyre where it aligned with the defect. This worked for a few days, but then it came back. When I took the wheel off again I saw that the bank note had split into several pieces. So I went for a slightly stronger solution. First I lined the inside of the tyre with duct tape. Then I cut a small piece of plastic water bottle to around the size of the bank note. Charlie had warned me that the plastic would puncture the tube. So I followed some more advice from Facebook. I covered the piece of bottle with more duct tape. That seems to have done the trick and its still holding up to now. I also contacted the manufacturer and they said they would replace the tyre. But I won’t be holding my breath.

The Back Road to Santa Rosa

I decided to take the route that I am on, after meeting Yuri in Uyuni. He said that one of the highlights was the road from San Borja to Santa Rosa. This is a back road which doesn’t show up on Google Maps. The road surface isn’t so great, but the road takes you through the countryside. Passing cattle ranches, forest and marshland. The route took a couple of days and I spent the night camping in a small village called Santa Elena. It’s such a beautiful village. There were horses, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats just wandering around free. It was also a great camp spot as there was an outside toilet and a tap with running water. I took a ‘shower’ using the tap before getting some food and heading to bed.

Lots of Wildlife

The second way was amazing. I started to see more wildlife along the roadside. Animals that I had never seen in the wild before. The first was an armadillo. But it ran too fast for me to take any pictures. Then there were Capybaras. Lots of them. Some in the road and they would make a loud noise when they were running away. Something like a dog’s bark, but a lazy old dog with dementia or something. Then I saw a large bird that looked like an emu or ostrich. But maybe the coolest thing was when I got closer to my final destination for this week. I was crossing a bridge when I heard a noise. Something moving in the water. I looked down to see that the river was full of Kaimen. It was a great way to end the route as I got into town. The only issue now is the road north. Yuri told me it was a bad road. Not necessarily the road surface, but just a long boring road, 350km. But that is for next week.

South America Blog Posts

Week 16 – Caranavi to San Borja with some new friends

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After I arrived in Caranavi, I took a couple of rest days to sort out a few things I needed to do. Firstly, I needed to fix my gears as they had been playing up since the ‘Death Road’. But I also needed to do my usual weekly blog and vlog posts. Luckily the gears were an easy fix. The front gears were just jammed by a bit of grit in the mechanism. But I actually took the time to watch some YouTube videos and learned how to adjust the gears on the front and back. They aren’t set up perfectly, but they are much better than they were.

Meeting New Friends

I have also been having some problems with my center stand. It keeps coming loose with the vibrations on the rough road surfaces. So I needed to buy a hex key big enough to fit. When I was walking back to my hotel, I noticed two touring bicycles locked up in the lobby of a hotel across the street. I went in and asked if they belonged to some tourists, they did, but they were out in town. So the next time I went out of the hotel, I called in again and asked if they were back. This is how I met the French couple, Lea and Armand. We had breakfast together the next day and it turned out that they were heading the same direction as I was. We agreed that we would share the road for a while.

Some Great Camping

I had hoped that coming down the ‘Death Road’ would take me out of the mountains. While it did bring me down a lot of altitude, there were still a lot of mountains still to cover. We headed out of Caranavi and we realised that we would be passing over a mountain pretty much every day of the next week. We didn’t hit a mountain every day though. We took some rest days along the way. We also had some great camping spots beside rivers and waterfalls. It was really nice to travel with Lea and Armand. It gave me motivation to push over some mountain roads, but also camping with some new people was a lot of fun. There were two camp spots that were particularly good. The first was next to someone’s house in a mountain village. The guy who owned the house was a musician and he played some music for us. Then I played his guitar while he played his local instruments. He taught me a traditional Bolivian rhythm on guitar. It was a lot of fun and completely unexpected. In the morning we also met his 96 year old mother. The second great spot was next to the river in Sapecho. We swam in the river and I took the opportunity to take a bath and wash my clothes in the river.

Clearing the Andes

The road north was sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrible. The road surface was sometimes smooth and good condition, then it would just stop and we would find ourselves going over rocky roads. I think it would have taken me a lot longer to follow this route if I had been alone. Not that I felt rushed, but being with other people can give you that little extra motivation to keep pushing up the hill rather than stop. It took us almost a whole week to finally get out of the Andes and onto the flat plains of the Bolivian Amazon region. It feels so good to be able to cycle so easily on the roads, even if they are in bad condition. As the week came to a close, we arrived in a town called San Borja. This was our last stop together. Lea and Armand would be heading east to Trinidad while I would be heading North towards Cobija and the Brazilian border. But we all decided to stay in town for a few rest days before we separated.

South America Blog Posts

Week 15 – Down the Bolivian ‘Death road’ and to Caranavi

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The Bolivian ‘Death Road’ got it’s name from the number of traffic accidents that happened on the road. Most of them occurred when vehicles tried to pass each other on the narrow roads and rolled down the mountain. The road was built to link La Paz with the Amazonian areas of Brazil. It was started using labour from prisoners of war from Paraguay. Because of the number of deaths on the road, the Bolivian government completed a new road in 2006. Since then the road gets very little use, other than tourists on bike tours who are driven there from La Paz, go down the hill then are driven back to La Paz again. So the road is actually very safe, peaceful and beautiful to ride down.

Heading down the ‘Death Road’

I started my week by waking up in the viewpoint at the top of the ‘Death road’. The view was amazing, especially as I hadn’t been able to see more than a meter in front of my face the night before. Before I set off, I waited for the tour groups to leave so that I could take my time without them passing me. While I was waiting, I met a couple who were travelling in their small campervan with their 9 month old baby. It’s always nice to meet and chat with fellow travellers, especially when they are coming from the direction you are heading in. They recommended a riverside camping spot further on my route. We wished each other luck and then I started cycling down the road. The views were so refreshing after the desert landscapes I have been in for the lase few months. Tropical forest covered mountains with birds singing in the trees. Really wonderful.

I got to the checkpoint which is maybe half way down the road. That’s when I noticed that I had dropped my powerbank somewhere on the road. I left my bike at the checkpoint and started walking back up the mountain to see if I could see it. Luckily the ambulance driver, who waits at the checkpoint, was kind enough to drive me up the hill to look. It’s a good job that he did, because the powerbank was right up near the top of the road. I was so grateful. I didn’t know what I would do without the powerbank. Without it I can’t use my solar charger and can’t recharge any of my equipment. I thanked him, passed through the checkpoint and then found another viewpoint that I decided to camp in for the night.

The road to Caranavi

In the morning I sat listening to the birds singing and made some recordings of the sounds before I packed up and continued down through the mountains. I spent a day resting in a hostel in the valley at the bottom of the road before taking the road to Caranavi. Honestly, there isn’t much difference between the standard of the ‘Death Road’ and the rest of the road to Caranavi. Both of them are terrible and gravel covered, passing through mountains. I thought that passing down the ‘Death Road’ would take me out of the Andes and that I would be on more level ground. But I was mistaken. The Andes gently get smaller and smaller for hundreds of kilometers yet. It was a long days ride to Caranavi and when I arrived, the city didn’t look nice at all. It basically looked like a huge truck stop. But I stayed there a day or so and it looked a lot better with a fresh pair of eyes after a nights sleep. The city is sat in the mountains, with wonderful views as you look out of the city. It was while taking a rest day here that I met a French couple who were also cycling into the Amazon. We decided to travel together for the next week as our routes will separate in a town called San Borja. They will head East to Trinidad and I will head north. But we can talk about that next week.

South America Blog Posts

Week 14 – Solo Bikepacking Bolivia. From La Paz to the Bolivian ‘Death Road’

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I arrived in La Paz and took a few days to rest. I wanted to extend my visa, as it says 30 days. But the immigration office in La Paz told me that it is actually for 90 days because of my nationality. I am still not really convinced that it will go smoothly when I try to leave. Even if the visa is really 90 days, my passport stamp says 30, so a visa agent at the border could easily try to ask for a bribe. Hopefully this won’t happen though.

La Paz

La Paz isn’t the capital of Bolivia, even though most people think it is. But La Paz definitely feels like the capital. It’s a nice enough city in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains. Because of this steep landscape, there are cable cars to take you to different areas of the city. There is a mixture of people wearing modern clothing and traditional clothing. As well as a ‘witch market’ to visit. The ‘witch market’ is a tourist area where they sell souvenirs but also have dried dead llamas hanging from the ceilings. It was nice to spend a few days in a big city, but it felt so strange after being out in the middle of nowhere for so long. I spent a few days relaxing in the city before heading off towards the ‘Death Road’.

My hardest day so far

The route to the top of the death road was the hardest day that I have had so far. On the mapping app it looked ok. Only around 58km. I have done more than that already. So I thought it would be an easy enough day. But I made some mistakes which ended up making this the hardest and most dangerous day so far. Firstly, I left too late. I set off at around 11am and started cycling through the city streets. Unfortunately the app that I use was sending me on some strange and unnecessary streets. Turn left and go up a hill, then turn right to come down hill, then left again back up the same hill. Really stupid. Plus I could have taken one of the cable cars to cut a large section of the route. But I carried on and went out to the edge of town.

It was a long steep hill. Basically up one side of a mountain and down the other side of the mountain. It took me 7 hours to cycle and push my bike to the top. Several times I thought I should stop to rest, but then I thought about the altitude and thought it would be too cold. I convinced myself that it was better to get up and over the top. The longer I went, the more I had to keep going. As I got to the top of the mountain the clouds started to blow in. I put on some warm weather gear and kept going, thinking that the clouds would clear as I started to go down the other side. As I got to the top the sun was setting. So I started down the other side of the mountain through thick fog and dark conditions. I couldn’t see far in front of myself as I went down the winding mountain road. I knew it was dangerous but I kept going as slowly as I could, to stay as safe as possible. To make things even worse, my headlight came lose, so if I hit a bump in the road, the headlight would fall forward and point at the floor instead of where I needed to see. I kept going and followed my mapping app to get to the start of the death road.

First view of the ‘Death Road’

When I got to the death road, it was still foggy. But I went down to a community that I had read was a small town at the top of the road. I hoped there would be a small hostel so I could take a shower and sleep in a real bed. But the ‘small town’ was actually around five houses in the mountains. I asked an old woman if there was a hostel, she said there wasn’t. But she said that I could sleep in the viewpoint if I had a tent. I couldn’t even see the viewpoint because of the fog. I could only see around a meter or so in front of my bike. So I used the mapping app to work my way to where the viewpoint was supposed to be and finally found the steps. I climbed up there, set up my tent and then laid on my mattress feeling exhausted. It took me around 30 minutes before I had the energy to cook some food. But then I ate and fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up and opened my tent to the best view that I have ever woken up to. Sleeping in a viewpoint, I should have expected it. But I didn’t even realise I was on the edge of the mountain looking down the valley. It almost made the previous days journey worth it. But from here I was at the end of week 14 and ready to continue down the Bolivian ‘Death Road’.

South America Blog Posts

Week 13 – Solo Bikepacking Bolivia. Flamingos on the long road north.

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This week I continued my way along the 550km route north towards La Paz. It was really nice to be back on the bike, out on the open road. Even though the road was sometimes difficult or going through the middle of nowhere. The first few days were difficult but I pushed through and managed to do a decent amount of distance each day. I have been using an app called iOverlander to find camping spots as well as cheap accommodation along the way. Some of the camping spots have been in really beautiful spots, while some others left me wondering why anyone would mark it on the map.

Cheap accommodation & desert roads

The accommodation in some of the towns was very basic. The worst was in a town called Sevaruyo. There was just a small bed in an otherwise empty room with a wooden floor. The shared bathroom was a small toilet room with some brown substance on the floor and a bad smell. The door was broken so it had a huge hole in the bottom and didn’t close. But it was only £2.50 per night and I was only staying one night so it wasn’t so bad. From Sevaruyo the road headed through more long stretches of empty desert. Sometimes it’s nice to cycle through these kinds of places. But when it gets hot and you are starting to get tired, its not so fun. It really made me look forward to getting into the Amazon. Although I’m sure it will be difficult to cycle through the heat there, at least there will be some moisture.

An unusual camping spot

Further north, in a town called Poopo. There was only one hotel in town and it was overpriced at £6.30 per night. I asked around to see if there was another place, but when I found it, nobody answered the door. So I used iOverlander to find a camping spot. The spot that people had suggested was on the road to the cemetery. This was ok except that when I got there there I found a load of animal skins drying in the sun. I didn’t really mind that too much, but then a car drove past slowly and the guys inside were looking at me and my bike. So I decided to look around for a more secluded spot. On the other side of the road there was a raised area hidden by piles of dirt. This was perfect, except that it was just outside the walls of the town cemetery. I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, so I decided to sleep there.

An alternate route

The road from Poopo to Oruro went around the edge of a lake. But I could see a small road that cut through the middle of a lake, following some train tracks. I decided to take that road. It wasn’t so interesting for the first half. Just dirt tracks through the desert with a couple of train bridges to push my bike across. But then I got to the lake and everything changed. The clouds were reflected on the surface of the water and there were more flamingos that I have ever seen in one place before. I spent ages there taking in the scenery and flying my drone. For a while I even forgot that I had to cycle another hour or so into town. I really hope that I get more experiences like this as I go through the Amazon. But eventually I had to come back to reality and cycle into town. The roads were terrible, but I was still on a high from the lake. I got to my hostel and had a great nights rest.