Sucre - the (nominal) capital of Bolivia. Very nice town, so much so I spent 6 days there, fresh from marvelling at the delights of soy fields, big hills, mental trees and fantastic sunsets in Brazil.
I’m not there anymore, however - I’m now back in Argentina, in a town called Salta. And there-in lies the explanation for the title above.
‘What’s been a-occurring then?’ I might hear you say. Well, it’s funny that you ask, so let me explain through the medium of numbers:
4 cross-dressed blokes. Yep, I missed the Rio Carnival but instead stumbled into the huge carnival at Corumba, on the Brazilian border. Carnival is a major public holiday with 4 days of packed street parties in every village, town and city in this part of world. Enter ‘Jeffrey’ and his four Brazilian chums, all cross-dressed as per Brazilian carnival tradition, who invited me to join them. Interesting - what I can confirm is that a) no, nothing ‘untoward’ happened b) being part of a Brazilian carnival when it’s in full swing and you’re pretty much the only ‘gringo’ in town? That’s pretty cool and c) I’m pretty sure ‘Jeffrey’ wasn’t his real name.
1 large bottle of shower gel…needed after stumbling into a second carnival, this time in Santa Cruz in Bolivia. No cross-dressing, but lots of ink being chucked around. And I mean ‘we close off the whole of the town centre and tape it up with plastic to protect it’ lots of ink. Everyone forms in to gangs to go round throwing balloons filled with the stuff and ambush people with water pistols and bottles of it. Crazy.
150 miles of dirt, gravel and sand tracks in Bolivia, in the middle of nowhere. Not through choice, but because that was the ‘road’. I’m pretty much a novice at off-roading, so this was a toughie. What made it all the more entertaining, however, was that the whole carnival thing of chucking things at people (see above), and motorcyclists in particular, extends to the countryside.
6 days without a face-to-face conversation in English. One of the perils of travelling solo by motorbike I guess, but I underestimated this one - wowzers. Hard - really hard, actually. Which, in part led to….
3 Spanish lessons. Couldn’t help but get a sense of deja vu with this one; I’m expecting a school report to arrive in the post, closely followed by a parental bollocking at some point. But these have already proven very useful, particularly when you inevitably leave the ‘gringo trail’ and it comes to….
5 hours, 5 queues, 2 passport stamps & 1 vehicle import form. Welcome to the Bolivian-Argentine border crossing at Villazon. Think the officials might speak one word of English? Forget it. Nope, never gonna whinge about passport control at Heathrow again.
2 near misses. There’s been two occasions when I’ve been genuinely astounded that me and the bike and I are still upright - the first when riding on dirt tracks for 150 miles (see above) and the second when hitting an unmarked Bolivian speed bump at 50 mph. I’ve always liked the Bonnie as a bike not for it’s speed or handling but more for it’s power and stability, but now more so than ever. The second led to me spending…
BV$20 for 2 hours labour - that’s about £1.75. I needed to weld the frame the metal panniers attach to, after they sheared off during ‘Bolivianspeedbumpgate’. The same job in the UK would be about £100 at least. Getting a puncture repaired? BV$26. Unfortunately that wasn’t the only damage - the rear wheel was buckled too.
£9. Roughly the daily wage of a Bolivian tin miner in Potosi, the world’s highest city. There are 34 tin mines in the city, run as co-operatives and for 20 years or so ex-miners have arranged trips for outsiders to go down the mines as a way of providing additional income. The average life expectancy of a miner? 55. The ‘black lung’? Not viewed as a big deal, it’s par for the course - these guys make jokes, but they’re not kidding. There are boys as young as 14 working down there. The stone is shifted by hand, shovel and pushed by cart, like something out of a history textbook on the Industrial Revolution - something which makes it almost impossible to compete with other, big privately owned mines selling tin to the international market, furthering the plight of the miners.
3,400 miles. Total distance covered so far, through NE Argentina, SW Brazil, SE Bolivia and NW Argentina. This is going to have to move up a notch, however, if I'm going to make it to the northern part of the continent for the end of March.
0. The number of times I've crossed the Andes, but that’s all about to change. The ride across huge plains bookended with huge mountains from Sucre to Salta really whet the appetite. Next stop is Passo to Agua Negra, the highest mountain pass between Argentina and Chile, at 14,000 ft. Crossing the Atacama Desert lies beyond. Cocoa leaves anyone?
