THE INCA EXPEDITION: 1999

Bill, Marick, Canada John and Helge at the Museo de Pedra Roundtable: “We want beer!”

How nice it was to have an easy day and to get into town by mid-afternoon, with plenty of time to unpack, clean-up and have a couple of cold ones before a leisurely dinner. The beers were particularly enjoyed since Helge had passed the word that alcohol consumption should end after Salta, as we moved on to the “high” Altiplano (10-15,000 feet). On the previous running of this expedition a number of riders had experienced serious altitude sickness and the theory was that evening partying had contributed to the problem.

Our lay-over day provided an opportunity for some much needed bike maintenance. Chains were lubed, nuts and bolts tightened, carbs re-jetted. A number of us were using Scottoilers, a device that automatically puts a drop of light oil on the chain every minute or so. These do a wonderful job of keeping chains clean and lubed. Helge’s had become overly enthusiastic, however, and was attempted to do the same for his tire. Apparently some little bit of grit had found its way into the control valve. Fortunately, disassembly and cleaning proved relatively straight forward.

I really enjoyed the day in Salta, making a quest of finding nylon straps to replace the ones I had loaned to one of our less well prepared comrades. I was never able to discover a good Spanish translation for “nylon strap,” but once I decided to expand my options to include bungee cords, I discovered the word “elastico.” I followed helpful suggestions as to where I might find elastico, hither, thither and yon, through many interesting stores, but to no avail. In the end, I settled for some rope. No matter. In this case, the journey was definitely more important than the destination. Along the way I was reminded again of three great contributions of the Italians to Argentina: bidets, great coffee and beautiful women. In addition to the rope, I picked up some wonderful kalamata olives, goat cheese and crackers, which helped sustain a number of us through the hours of paper processing at the Bolivian boarder several days later.

Back on the road again, our destination was Tilcara. Maximum elevation for the day was 12,000 feet. The route notes advised:
“Dirt Hwy 51 (not sign posted) roughly follows tracks from Tren a las Nubes (Railway to the Clouds), crossing back and forth several times. Road climbs steadily to town of San Antonio about 100 miles away, with spectacular scenery along the way. There are several water crossings, some of them fairly deep. Although the train runs only once a day, look out at track crossings, which have no warnings of any type. Road peaks out at 13,120 feet a few miles from San Antonio. . . . There are long sections of fairly deep sand which will require some concentration.”

The route to Tilcara was very scenic, with wonderful rock formations, herds of llamas and the widely scattered adobe huts of the local Indians. However, I found it very hard to take my eyes of the road to enjoy the scenery. At San Antonio we got our first taste of the famous Coca tea, supposedly the best cure for altitude sickness.

Late in this day’s riding I began to notice a certain mushy feeling in the front end of my moto. Suspecting a going-flat tire, I stopped to check the pressure. Twenty-five pounds, just what I wanted in these conditions. Reassured, I rode on but continued to be troubled by the funny feeling in the front end. On the third tire-pressure-check stop, I finally noticed the drip, drip, drip of oil from the left fork seal on the trick upside-down forks of the KLX. Oops, in all my careful preparation for this trip, I had forgotten to bring a spare fork seal. There was nothing to do but ride on. The handling wasn’t really a problem but I knew that, sooner or later, the fork would run dry, with very bad consequences. About this same point in the trip Chicago John’s KLR began go through oil almost as fast as gasoline. He’d forgotten to bring a spare top end, as it happened, so he shared my plight of having to ride on knowing that his steed might not make it to the end.

From Tilcara, we headed for the Bolivian border and Tupiza. The border crossing itself was the biggest adventure of this day. The border town was a bustling little place. We shuttled back and forth between the various border control offices, getting paperwork checked and stamped, then on to a “copy center” to get duplicates of everything. At that point most of us thought we were home free in Bolivia. Not so. Several miles out of town we had to pull off into a customs office for several hours of further paper processing. The official’s office was a monument to political non-correctness, having a large, somewhat raunchy pinup poster in front of the desk and a crucifix behind. This official would tediously go through the papers for five of us at a time, then take them into his superior’s office for a final signature. Between these interruptions, the superior was closeted in his office with his attractive assistant, tending to some other business. It was here that I hosted an impromptu little picnic with my deli items from Salta.

As we were checking into our hotel in Tupiza we were cautioned about a uniquely Bolivian piece of plumbing, the flash heaters on the shower heads. Not only was it risky to be adjusting an electrical control as you stood in a running shower, the wires to this device were often just bare runs of copper wire. The gods of hot water were with me on this trip and I always had hot water in which to shower, but this was certainly not everyone’s experience.

Tupiza was a picturesque little town, with a large market place. I would have loved to have taken pictures of the colorful vendor stalls, particularly those of the meat vendors with their hanging slabs of diverse meat and animal heads on the counter. Refrigeration was nowhere to be seen. However, we had been cautioned that the people were very shy and did not like being treated as spectacles by camera wielding tourists, so I kept my camera holstered. We met a couple of Norte Americanos traveling our route by bicycle, which was truly hard to imagine, given the struggles we were having on our motorized two-wheelers. At Tupiza, they had decided to abandon this masochistic pursuit for a while and catch a bus. Tupiza is a staging point for white-water adventurers, so there were a number of other gringos in town. One of the culinary highlights of our trip, for me, was the discovery of pollo salkta, a spicy chicken soup with potatoes, onions and a hard boiled egg, at our evening dinner. This was a most welcome change from “melanesa” (thin, chicken-fried steak) and pollo asado, a spicy baked chicken. Both of these were good the first several times, but had become very boring, as had the fritas (French fries) which invariably accompanied them. For more on Tupiza, with some great pictures, see Jerónimo´s Tupiza site.

As always, layover days provided an opportunity for needed moto maintenance. Chicago John added more oil to his crankcase and I tried pouring some 15-50 through the vent screw on my leaking fork leg. I fancied some went in but it was hard to tell. I took some comfort in the fact that oil was still leaking out the bottom.

Road from Tupiza to Potosi