Big news!!!!

Argentina is no more. I am now somewhere in the center of Bolivia, a country a few weeks deep in hail season. I'm quickly regretting what I said earlier in Salta about needing a change from the sun and heat. I'll take a healthy dose of UV radiation any day over being pelted by pellets of ice every time four o' clock rolls around. I'm just glad all the scenery is keeping my spirits up.

Backtracking a bit, the last leg of my Argentinian route was harrowing and cursed once again by another pair of Germans promising great tail wind all the way to La Paz, a guarantee that was immediately followed by crippling head wind and a pledge to myself never to talk to another German cyclist for this reason.

La Quiaca was the last Argentine town on my route, and what a send off that turned out to be. For two days, I chilled at the local firestation, which-due to the lack of fires this time of year-reverted to a 24/7 asado hut for volunteers and guests such as myself. The half dozen of us spent the next 48 hours cooking up pretty much every meat imaginable and bringing the llama population in Jujuy province down  to near extinction levels. These guys were true dudes, taking me out on driving tours to the ancient town of Yavi that all the other tourists had to pay good money to get too. When it was time to leave, they packed me a bag full of vegetarian tamales and helped me get across the border into Villazon, Bolivia.

The next day, I was rolling up Bolivia's ruta 1 for the first time, and quickly discovered the roads to be more friendly to cyclists than Argentina. The shoulders are wide here, and drivers are crazy about using their horns, so the cars don't sneak up on you here like they do in Argentina. Half way into my first day on the road, I ran into fellow solo cyclist Nicola from France who's been conquering the roads of North and South America for the past year. Being on the road for so long, it was no wonder the guy was speaking gibberish about how we were actually living in post-Judgment Day but that the leaders of the Bilderberg Group managed to stop god's wrath by summoning satan once every year, and that he was biking to bring awareness to the conspiracy and TimeCube.org. 

I'm kidding, Nicola was alright and sane.

It was also on this first day that I was introduced to the schizoid Bolivian weather pattern that I will have to face for the next few weeks. While not a cloud blemishes the morning sky, a wall of dark grey clouds usually comes rolling in from the north around noon, along with a terrible headwind that brings my progress to a crawl. Around two o'clock, it begins to rain, which I have no problem with. Two hours later, the temperature drops ten degrees and the rain turns into hail, which sucks in so many ways. 

Arriving in Tupiza a little bit bruised by the storm, I decided to get a bus ticket to Potosi to see if I could get ahead of the storm (yet another mistake). I got a reservation for the next day and decided to get some rest in the bus terminal. Less than ten minutes into my nap, I am roused to alertness by this lemon-faced gremlin of a man jabbing his broomstick into the back side of my thigh. He's telling me I can't sleep here, not in the terminal. I look around and a good ten other people are passed out on benches all around me, something I calmly point out to him. He says I can't sleep here because I'm not a bus passenger. I produce my ticket and hand it to him, but he shakes his head and says to me the ticket is no good, that my bus left yesterday, and tears half way through the ticket before I shout "WHAT THE FUCK" as loud as I can while grabbing the half torn ticket out of his stubby little fingers. He grabs his broom like he's about to take a swing at me before a police comes over to assess the situation. The bus gremlin is eager to explain his side of the story first, telling the police that I'm not a passenger and I have a ticket that's no good and there's no use talking to me because I can't speak spanish (I understand every word he's saying at this point). I hand the ticket over to the police and explain en español that I am a passenger and that my bus leaves tomorrow. The gremlin points to the date on the ticket, telling the police "See, his bus left yesterday". The police brings his watch in front of the gremlin's face, show's him what day it is, and with a high pitched grunt, the gremlin waddles into the night, angrily tapping his broom handle against the ground as he dissapears into the dark. The police tells me to ignore the guy, and that I should try to find another place to sleep because the gremlin is pissed.

After camping out in the central plaza, I return to the bus station the next day, ready for a quick ride to Potosi when who is there to greet me but the gremlin, who tells me bikes aren't allowed in the station. He has back up this time...a young kid in an identical green custodial jumpsuit who's got a hold of his broom and duster like some sort of imperial guard. I make for the terminal anyway, blowing past the kid with the duster. The stubby little gremlin starts slapping the ground with his broom as if he's trying to shoo me away like a stray dog. He ends up hitting some woman's luggage and stumbles sideways as the woman screams all kinds of bad into his ear. At this point, a quarter of the terminal turns against this guy. He cowers in fear, looking around for his sidekick with the duster who's nowhere to be seen. He finds shelter in the men's bathroom, and for the next two hours pretends to clean sinks and does not emerge until I'm on the bus.

With that episode out of the way, I take my very first bus ride of the journey to a city two hundred km's up the road. Potosi is the name, and while I was expecting to arrive in a modest sized town similar to Tupiza, I am surprised to find a vast citiscape scaling up a steep mountainside. At the base of the mountain, it's your usual generic brick packed corrugated roof neighborhood, but as I make my way to the top of the mountainside, the city changes into some kind of colonial quasi medival city with the most magnificent architecture I've seen so far on my trip. This city center is beautiful. Cathedrals and churches built in the 17th and 18th centuries are found at every other block. The houses and cabildos look like they've been plucked straight from Spain, and I'm saying that as a person who's never been and will never go to Spain. My lack of expectation definitely contributed to my surprise, along with the fact that you have to really physically exert yourself to get to the prettiest part of the city, unless you cheat and take a taxi.

Another thing I'm digging about Bolivia: the produce. Not only is it cheap (when it's not being sold at the entrance of el mercado negro by a grumpy old lady looking to mercilessly gouge extranjeros for peaches and bananas) but it's really fresh and makes for some good cooking. I've traded out my packs of freeze dried rissotto and pasta for kilos of apples, corn, bananas and figs, and once again my energy is up because of it. So what is the general Bolivian diet you ask? From what I've experience so far, it's increasingly different from the Argentinian palette the further north I go. Bread and empanadas become less common. Corn, rice, and mentas (mintas? I'm not sure with the spelling...it's a vegetarian tamale with cheese) are the norm, and every dish is accompanied by a saucer full of hella spicy minced peppers. Sorry Argentine amigos/amigas, but I'm digging the transition. My stomach thinks bread and wheat is satan's food so I do better with the corn stuff myself.

Due to my strict schedule, I could only spend a half day lounging around the city before heading for ruta 1 once again. The days of coasting easily through the plains were over for the moment, as I soon found myself in Andes country. That's right, I was entering the Andes mountain range, something I would have never thought possible two years ago. The word Andes invokes images of mummified Incans, stranded travelers, and cannibalistic soccer teams. It strikes fear into the hearts of men, and by men I mean myself. I was once terrified of this place, but as soon as I began traversing the steep slopes of the Bolivian Andes, I instantly lost all my reservations and yes...fell in love.

This is love

But it is a bittersweet love, for no sooner did I enter this magnificent mountain range that I first encountered some pretty abismal poverty. The mountain sides are full of men, women and children either shepharding llamas, tending to corn fields, or mining ore. To a passerby in an automobile, this might appear to be a picture perfect postcard image, what with all the fantastic scenery and the beautiful, colorful garments that these folks of the mountains wear, but to someone crawling along at 8 kph, you kind of have more time to assess the situation and talk...or atleast try to talk with the folks. These people are not making a comfortable living by any means. Families of four to eight are packed into these leaky mud brick houses that almost seem to melt in front of your eyes when the afternoon hail rolls through. They all sleep on the same small bed, which is probably for the best seeing that they have no source of heat save for the scarce amount of wood they collect each day, which they have to conserve for cooking. The shephards and farmers typically live ten to forty kilometers away from their flocks and fields, and with no personal source of transportation save for the occasional rickety bike, these folks have to rely on kind hearted drivers or the infrequent taxi to get them to their work...or back to their homes. Because of this lack of transport, I've seen far too many people stranded in the middle of nowhere in a thick hail storm or close to sun down, desperately looking for a ride back home. To see these old women and young kids wrapped up tight in whatever knits they have on them during a storm is a terrible sight. A lot of the kids will raise cupped hands to any vehicles that pass, including myself, and it does not take long to realize these kids are asking for food and water...not money.

Even if I'm moving at a snails pace, I still feel like I'm passing by this situation as apathetically as any passerby in a car. I'm constantly kicking myself in the face for not having the proper means of communicating with these folks, for while my Spanish is always improving, my Quechua is non-existant. Even so, one does not need to acquire a whole new language to know how bad these people of the mountains have it.