Deane's Motorcycle Trip In SOUTH AMERICA
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Deane's Motorcycle Trip In SOUTH AMERICA |
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April 12 - Tupiza, Bolivia 198 Miles, Tilcara to Tupiza |
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Today started out fine, with threading the motorcycles through heavy early morning traffic in Tilcara, a fairly large city. Riding up the paved road to the Argentina border was pleasant, in a long valley with green fields against dry mountains. My impressions of the Argentina mountains are that they are very large, to at least rival Colorado mountains in the U.S., or larger. Certainly they are very much sharper than any mountains I've seen. We stopped to take pictures of a monument of the Tropic of Capricorn. This was sort of proof that we were in the southern hemisphere.
Then we stopped at a "Indigenous" (native people) town, which was quite large and had very interesting buildings. this mammoth sculpture honored the fight for independence for Argentina in the 1810-1823 period.
Then it was off to the Bolivian border. First we had to check out ourselves (passports) and our motorcycles (papers) from Argentina, then check in ourselves (passports) and motorcycles (different papers to Bolivia. Sort of a bureaucratic process with much paper, but it didn't take too long. While there, we were amazed at the line of people carrying 100 lb. sacks of something across the border. Just like a line of ants. Then after we got over the Bolivian border, they seemed to be piling it up and going back for more. We speculated why, but don't know. OK - Then there was the "gravel road from Hell" into Bolivia. Our guides have been building us up to the Bolivian roads, but this one was terrible. It wasn't so much the road itself, which wasn't too bad, but it is a main road for that part of the country, and had many, many big trucks and big busses racing along the fairly narrow road. The worst part was that they put up so much dust that one couldn't see anything at all for the dust when they pass. Here we were, running the gravel road at about 45 mph, and the truck's dust completely blanks our vision of the road, the side area, and everything!! One of our more experienced riders crashed because of this, but he may have been going too fast for the conditions. (Good thing he had on his protective clothing.) We finally had to just stop when one of those came along. - Looks tomorrow will be the same, only longer. With Bolivia, we're told that these relatively poor roads are all they have and they are crowded for gravel roads, so its ride those roads or one can't get around the country. We'll see. |
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