September 15th 2024 – Sucre, Bolivia

Arica had been a great appetiser for Chile. The main course would have to wait a bit. With Katrine’s meds secured it was time to get back into the mountains.
We left town following the Lluta river inland. It’s the route that connects Arica with La Paz.
Train tracks run alongside the road. They are more than a century old and connect the two cities as well but are currently not in use – mostly because of political tension between Chile and Bolivia.
The river valley is farmed the first 70 km from the coast. After about 50 km we climbed the southern slopes of the valley and left the river and greenery behind. We now got a taste of the Atacama desert.

The heavy traffic on the road between Arica and La Paz that we had been warned about was conspicuous by its absence. We eventually learned why. The road had been blocked all day in both directions due to construction work. We hit the road block an hour before the road would be open for 3 hours.
When the road finally opened we could enjoy 30 kilometers of empty road to Putre, our destination for the day.
The place we stayed at was a proper one-stop-shop. Aside from lodging they also ran a grocery store on the premises where we could buy everything we needed to cook a meal in the communal kitchen. They even sold fuel from proper 20 liter fuel containers. A 50% surcharge seemed fair considering that we were +2 hours from the nearest gas station. Finding gasoline on the 500 km/ 310 miles stretch between Arica and La Paz can be a challenge, so we grabbed the opportunity and topped up the bikes.

What should have been a 1 ½ hour morning ride through Lauca National Park to the border ended up taking significantly longer. We just had to stop several times to take in the views. The scenery was nothing short of spectacular. Just before the border we passed Lake Chungará, one of the highest lakes in the world. It was cold enough for the streams and lakes to be fringed by ice.

The border crossing itself was located at 4.700 meters. It was very modern with all offices (both Chilean and Bolivian) in the same building. It went smoothly. After about 2 hours we were free to enter Bolivia.
The ride continued along Sajama National Park for a while. The scenery was still nice but marred by an increasing amount of trash along the roads. It was like being back in Peru.

The last 100 km to La Paz on Ruta 1 was an anticlimax. The day had turned gray with rain on the horizon. The road was just a straight 4 lane affair. It culminated when we reached the outskirts of the city just as a sand storm rolled in. Visibility was bad and the traffic intens when we had to follow a detour on dirt and coppeled roads through a construction zone.
Things got slightly better the last bit of the way as we wound our way through the lunarscape that is the setting for La Paz. We even found a gas station en route with no lines and available gasoline.
It was late afternoon when we arrived at “The Grand La Paz Experience Hotel Boutique” that would be our home for the next few days. Behind the fancy name was a 3 story villa in an affluent residential area with a view over one of the most posh neighborhoods in La Paz. The villa used to be the hosts’ private home. When they retired they had turned the 2 first floors into a hotel. They still lived on the 3rd floor and put in an effort to make the place feel like a home for the guests.

A funny touch was the steady stream of guests from the neighborhood dropping by to have a chat with our hosts. It was typically older, classy people. One of the guests was delighted to hear that we were Danish. A few years back she had stayed several months in Copenhagen visiting her son who worked at the Bolivian embassy at the time.

First order of business in La Paz was to get SIM cards. We have been using Claro since leaving Mexico, but as they don’t operate in Bolivia we had to find another solution. We decided to give Tigo a go. The sales woman in the local Tigo store got us covered when the system wouldn’t accept our foreign credit cards and cash wasn’t an option. She just used her card and we paid her back in cash. Good unconventional but solution-oriented service.

With the phones sorted we set out to explore the city. The cable car system was a great way to get around and get a bit of perspective. La Paz is something to behold. From above it looks like the set for a sci-fi movie.

Cable cars took us to The Old Town – the historical and touristic center of the city. We spent the afternoon meandering the maze of small streets, markets and plazas. The whole area seemed a bit run down but there were many funny and interesting things to see.

Not only our curiosity but also a dinner invitation had lured us to this part of town. Fin had arrived a few days earlier and extended us an invitation for a home cooked meal at his penthouse apartment. Jen had been flown in from Colombia to prepare the dinner. Fin was generous and let her join us at the table. It was a pleasure to meet the woman he had been babbling on about for a couple of months.
A package with bits and pieces from back home had been waiting for Fin when he arrived in La Paz. The package contained a few things for me as well. Aside from spare parts from Race Tech for our rear dampers there was also a belated birthday present to me from Katrine. You can never have too many knives!

The following day I turned the terrass on our fancy hotel into a shop and set to work on the bikes. First I replaced the steel retainer ring we had made in Peru for Katrine’s bike with the proper replacement part from Race Tech. Not until I removed the home made part did I truly appreciate the craftsmanship that had gone into creating it from scrap metal.
The lack of the correct tools made working on the damper a bit of a challenge, but with a bit of ingenuity and help from Katrine I managed to get the job done well.
The plan was to also replace the retainer ring on my damper, with the new and improved one, as a preventive measure. Unfortunately it was impossible to turn the preload adjuster ring with the tools available and I had to leave it be for the time being. At least now I have the spare parts in case I experience a failure like the one on Katrine’s bike.

Between everything else Kat and I spent a lot of time in our own neighborhood that soon felt like home.
It was a very nice area with much to offer.

As is the case everywhere we stay for more than a few days we became familiar with the local gym. I’m not very talkative during a workout, but Kat and I still exchange a few words from time to time. A woman came over during our last visit to the gym and asked if we were Danish. I was surprised that she could identify the language. That rarely happens. It turned out that she, Maria Luz, had lived in Sweden for a couple of years in the early 90s when her mom worked at the Bolivian embassy in Stockholm. Katrine and her clicked instantly and kept the conversation going while I tried to destroy my legs. Kat and I left the gym with an invitation for a guided tour of the area and dinner in the evening when Maria Luz got off from work.
Maria Luz turned out to be good company and we had an enjoyable evening together on our last night in town.

A late night resulted in a late start the following day but that didn’t matter as we had an easy and relatively short ride ahead of us.
Leaving La Paz under a clear blue sky left us with a completely different picture compared to when we rolled in a few days earlier. Now it gave the impression of a developing city rather than a war zone.
We spent all day on the main road to Oruro surrounded by the Altiplano. It was an uneventful ride that allowed me to concentrate on listening to a podcast for the first time in months.

We pulled in at a gas station near Oruro to fill up the bikes. There was a long line of trucks waiting to get diesel. We bypassed them all and made it to the gasoline pump with only a few cars in front of us. The attendant told us that we could only get fuel if we paid in cash and didn’t need a receipt. Fine by me. The price at the pump showed 3.80 BOB per liter. When I had filled up both bikes the attendant asked for 6 BOB per liter. I politely asked him to stuff it and insisted on paying only 3.80. I got my way but later learned that I was the asshole in this scenario…

Our destination was a hotel on the outskirts of town next to the bus station. We had no interest in Oruro and only needed a convenient place to stay for the night. The area looked like a war zone, but the hotel was nice and offered both secure parking and breakfast. A short walk to the bus station provided us with charquekan for dinner. It’s a typical Oruro dish with dried llama meat, purple potatoes, corn, egg and cheese. It was filling and tasty. We stayed in our room all evening and went to bed early for a change.

After an early breakfast we gave the sun a chance to burn the morning chill out of the air. We had a long day ahead of us so we didn’t procrastinate much.
A couple of kilometers from the hotel, and still within the city limits, we hit the first roadblock set up by protesters. At first we were not allowed to pass, but they quickly changed their minds and let us through.
The number of protesters on the road increased massively and there were roadblocks every few hundred meters after the first one. We managed to pass/circumvent several of them without being stopped until we reached one controlled by a pack of mad bitches. They were very clear in letting us know that we were not allowed through and that they would pummel us with the fist sized rocks all of them were juggling if we tried to pass.
I got off the bike and asked them to explain to me why they wouldn’t let us pass. I didn’t understand their rabid barking and kept asking for an explanation. When they asked us to turn around and leave I told them that we didn’t have a home and nowhere to go if we turned around. In the end one of the bitches relented and said that we could pass if that would make us disappear. Some of the other bitches at the roadblock didn’t agree with that decision. Before they could figure out who was in charge I got back on the bike and Katrine followed me over the rocks they had used to block the road. Some of the bitches pretended to throw their rocks but didn’t let them fly.
The roadblocks got bigger from that point on, built with rocks, tires and whatever the protesters could drag onto the road, but we made it through everytime without further incidents. At the last one someone had set the vegetation alongside the road on fire. It added to the ambience.
When we cleared the smoke we were met with empty tarmac as far as the eye could see. The reward for the morning hassle was mostly empty roads for the remainder of the day. No one else seemed to have made it through the protesters.

Route 6 towards Sucre turned out to be something very special. Both the riding and the scenery was next level spectacular. It is one of the best roads I’ve ever ridden!

The bikes needed juice when we arrived in Sucre. The first gas station we stopped at wouldn’t/couldn’t sell fuel to non Bolivian vehicles. The next one was out of gas but expected to get some about an hour later. Third time’s a charm. They had fuel and would sell it to us. It was a very orderly gas station where everything went by the book. He typed in both our license plates, names and nationality. When he had done that the price at the pump changed from 3.80 BOB per liter to 8.68. That was the official price for foreigners – and I had told a guy off the previous day when he asked for 6 BOB per liter. Sorry mate.

It was late afternoon when we pulled up in front of our Airbnb with full tanks. The place was located on Cerro Churuquella with a beautiful view over the city. I discovered that my phone didn’t work, when I tried to let our host know that we had arrived. Katrine’s didn’t work either. Just as I was scratching my head, wondering what to do, an old lady pulled up. She turned out to be our host’s mother and got hold of him for us.
The place exceeded our expectations by a mile and our host was a great guy. He gave us an introduction to the building and the downtown area which we had a good view of from the terrace.

With that out of the way, Katrine and I headed down to the nearest Tigo store to figure out why our phones had stopped working. It turned out that we had failed to register our phone numbers online with our passport numbers as we should have. We didn’t know about that. A sweet lady at the store fixed it for us in 5 minutes.
We grabbed a mex dinner and did some shopping before returning to our apartment.

For a while both Katrine and I have felt a growing desire to take an extended break.
We have done it twice before on this journey – both times involuntarily due to mechanical issues with the bikes. On both occasions it recharged us. The bikes have given us no excuses for downtime since entering South America, and it always seemed like the time and place wasn’t right for a prolonged stay.

Now the stars seemed to align. The Airbnb was really nice and felt like a home. It was well priced and located in a charming town that had everything we needed. On top of that we had plenty of days left on our Bolivian visa. A wonderful night’s sleep in a good bed with no disturbances convinced us that the time had come to stay put for a little while with nothing on the agenda. I wrote to our host letting him know that we would be staying for 10 nights.

On the first full day in Sucre we didn’t leave the property at all. It allowed us time to get to know our neighbors. There was a couple from Schweizerland in their 60s that had stayed for 10 days. They had been backpacking all over Latin America for 8 months and were far from finished. Then there was the French guy in the apartment above us and his dog. He had arrived a few days earlier and would stay for a month while his girlfriend was visiting the island Réunion off the coast of Africa to see her family. They were on a bicycle trip from Patagonia to Colombia. He was looking forward to a few weeks with no pedaling.

I also had a good talk with our host. He is a journalist and covers the political stuff for the local newspaper. He explained about the general and current situation in Bolivia. It’s a mess. His best guess was that the protests will escalate for another couple of weeks and culminate next month. Apparently the pot has been boiling since 2019 and might be about to explode. The situation could end up affecting our continued journey through the country, but for now we are going to enjoy our 10 days in Sucre, taking one day at a time.