Reported by Marick Payton

The Highest City in the World

From Tupiza we headed for the “highest city in the world,” Potosi, at 13,200 feet. On the road we experienced our worst accident of the trip. Tom had a bad crash on his beautifully set up R80 GS. The extent of his injury was not immediately apparent, but neither he nor the bike were in shape to continue on their own, so both arrived in Potosi on La Cucaracha. We had a lay-over day in Potosi, to which all of us had been much looking forward. This provided the opportunity for Tom, aided by fireman and paramedic, Lance, to get an x-ray, which revealed a broken arm. So, plans were made to fly him home when we got to La Paz the next day. It would be a sad farewell as everyone had found Tom an especially likable guy and shared his loss at having to abandon the trip so early on.

Potosi is a charming, hilly little city of beautiful old colonial buildings. For a while in the mid 1500’s, after silver was discovered, it was the largest city in the world, with 160,000 people. I was certainly glad I had taken pains to get somewhat aerobically in shape as I traipsed up and down its hills and the stairs to my third-floor room. We scored our first alpaca sweaters at the artisans’ marketplace, restocked on various basics (like Ibuprofen and shaving gear) in the mercado and found interesting little places to eat. Potosi has a university and the other amenities of a relatively cosmopolitan small city. We were not able to enjoy two of its major tourist attractions, the Casa de Moneda (Mint) and the mines at Rich Hill, as neither was open the day we were in town. I was sad to have to leave this picturesque and fascinating little town the next day and hit the road for La Paz.

As it happened, we almost didn’t leave Potosi. Helge learned during our day off that the electrical workers union planned to shut down the road into and out of town that night at midnight to protest the privatization of the electric company, which it was presumed would lead to extensive layoffs. Helge sought an assurance of free passage for Pancho Villa Moto Tours from the union President, to no avail, but was told to come back, if we ran into trouble getting through the road block the next day, and he might be able to help. The hotel staff assured him, however, that the union members were not likely to actually man the barricades before early morning. So, the word went out that we were to be up at 4:30 for an early departure. By 6 am we were on the road. It was cold and dark, but we seemed to be on the way as there was no sign of a road block as we rode out. However, five miles or so out of town we came to a bridge that was barricaded. Clearly the hotel staff had under estimated the strikers resolve. Helge and Willy immediately began negotiating with the strikers, assuring them of our sympathies to their cause while stressing the necessity of our keeping on schedule. The rest of us milled around, some joining the strikers at their bonfires to chat and keep warm.

When, after an hour or so, it became clear that negotiations were going nowhere, Helge rode back in to town to find the union president. He succeeded in bringing the Pres back on his bike and the pres succeeded in persuading the strikers to raise the cable blocking the entrance to the bridge for us. We saddled up and optimistically rode onto the bridge, only to be confronted by a cable across the other side. This one was “manned” by the workers wives, who were quite unmoved by the Pres’ arguments for granting PVMT an exception to the blockade. So, we sat on the bridge while the sun rose and the day warmed.

Soon there began to be a steady parade of people hiking in from the far side, clearly bus passengers who had found their journey to Potosi cut a few miles short. I was deeply impressed by the loads both old and young were managing to carry on their backs. One old man was portaging what must have been 80 pounds of newspapers. A better man than me, I thought. About this time vendors of drinks and snacks began to set up shop on the bridge. This led to some interesting debates among the PVMT members, some seeing this as an attempt to add insult to our injury but making money off our plight. These folks, as you might have guessed, were of the opinion that privatization would surely bring the greatest good to the greatest number, in the fullness of time. Those of us less optimistic of such a sanguine outcome for this IMF-mandated economic strategy were more sympathetic to the immediate economic hardship that will enevitably ensue.

As we waited and Willy and Helge continued their fruitless negotiations with the union auxiliary, we noticed an Army truck drive down beside the bridge on a ltrail that crossed the river on a tiny little bridge downstream. They had to stop at one point, where the trail had a foot-high jump, to pile up some rocks to make an incline. This obstacle surmounted, they motored on and disappeared from sight around a bend. While the rest of us were mentally making plans for another day in Potosi and wondering how we would then get back on schedule, Helge opened a new line of negotiations with the strikers, to the effect that, if we took the path of the army truck, they wouldn’t throw dynamite or rocks down on us. In this he was successful. It seemed that going around the barricade was fair. So, we negotiated our way back through the first cable and off the bridge, then set out down the trail. It took some doing to get all the bikers over the jump in the road bed and, in particular, to get La Cucaracha up and over, but soon we were on our way to La Paz again.

Our rides through Bolivia took us through numerous small, dirt poor little towns. Coming into town, sometimes even in the middle of nowhere, we would frequently encounter herds of livestock–llamas, sheep, pigs, goats, and the occasional cow–being herded along the road. The herders themselves might well be children of barely school age. In addition to livestock, the roads might suddenly reveal a local bicyclist or crawling, decrepit vehicle around any turn. These circumstances added to the conditions of the roads themselves in requiring constant vigilance. Remarkably, our lunch stops in such places often yielded tasty meals. These usually had to be eaten without benefit of a washing up as restroom facilities were frequently bereft of running water. Sometimes, in the rural areas, they were nothing more than dirty pits in the ground.

We must have truly seemed from outer space with our fancy armored riding suits and shiny motorcycles in this land where electricity, if available, was only used for the occasional light bulb. We quickly learned that a “cold drink” was one that had been sheltered from the noon day sun. Kids would quickly surround us at every stop, to our delight. Someone always had stickers, balloons or candy to hand out. By the time this distribution was completed we would be surrounded not only by the children but also by their mothers, chubby Indian ladies in their bowler hats, and maybe an old man to two. These gift-giving occasions provided our best opportunity for taking pictures of the local people, since there was a quid pro quo. People generally looked remarkably clean in their brightly colored clothes. How they kept that way, living in dirt houses on a dirt road, was a great mystery to us. Of course, the little urchens were usually somewhat grubby looking, as are little urchens everywhere, given the chance. It was so dusty that the little Kia minibuses that seem to provide most of the transportation in Bolivia have long air-intake snorkles running up their sides to the roof to get cleaner air for the motor. Their smoky diesel exhausts added to the local air pollution. At the end of a day we were always covered by a thick patina of dust. Sometimes we just climbed into the shower at our hotel riding suits and all.

It was obvious that most of these people had experienced little, if any, dental care as everyone more than about 30 years old was missing many teeth. Age, itself, was hard to estimate as the effects of long days in the sun at such altitudes clearly took a heavy toll on even their rust-colored skins. One of the most striking characteristics of these people, to me, was their stoic, but very self-possessed manner. Even the little children had this demeanor. We never saw a whiny or belligerent kid of the sort so frequently encountered in the States. I wondered how much of this tranquility was due to the fact that small children literally lived next to their mothers’ breasts as they were carried everywhere and how much to the fact that almost as soon as they were too big to be carried they began to carry real responsibilities in the family’s life, e.g., cleaning and herding the animals.

Austrialian John took a good tumble on the way to La Paz, producing soft tissue damage to one arm, which would trouble him for the rest of the trip. Also, somewhere along about here Alberto took a fall, cracking several ribs.

The rest of the ride to La Paz was relatively easy, until we reached the edge of this huge city. “Relatively easy,” however, includes a river crossing with water about 30 inches deep. About 10 miles from the city center, our destination, we were once again shuttled onto a “devisio,” one of the nastiest we had yet encountered, all dust, sand and rock. It was dark and there were no signs. But, there was a steady stream of truck and bus traffic, in whose enormous dust clouds we faithfully enveloped ourselves as we flowed with the herd into town and down the long incline to the bottom of the basin, whose sides are now completely developed, to the town center.

There are a million people in the city of La Paz and another million living in the surrounding “slum” town of El Alto on the rim. Those among us who like big cities were mightily excited to be in one, at last. The others of us found the density, intensity and wildly anarchic traffic rather overwhelming. We enjoyed a great city tour on our layover day, which included the Valle de la Luna (a bizarrely rugged landscape on one portion of the basin rim),

the Museo del Oro (featuring beautiful gold jewelry of the pre-Inca Tiahuanaco people) and the Witches market, a two-block long alleyway where Indian women sell a heady mix of ancient alms (dried ducks and snakes and pickled this and that former life form) and tourist souvenirs, particularly icons of Pacha Mama or Mother Earth. Our guide was a delightfully opinionated gentleman, who described for us how the Chileans, with the support of the conniving British, was stolen the Bolivian lands that reached the sea through the Atacama desert, lands rich with minerals which the British coveted. To a country otherwise very poor in natural resources, this was a tremendous loss.

In addition to it’s lack of natural resources, Bolivia has suffered through years of brutal dictatorships. Democracy of a sort has now come to the country. However, in the first election for President the previous dictator, Hugo Banzar, was elected. The reformist, English-language weekly paper in La Paz had a series of investigative reports indicating this bizarre result was due to crooked administration of the election. Still, the fact that this paper had been publishing relatively unfettered for six years, was encouraging. Another relatively recent cultural change that I found remarkable was that children, formerly taught “culture” by studying European civilization, were now being schooled equally in the culture and achievements of their Tiahuanaco ancestors.

I had hoped to be able to buy a new fork seal in La Paz. However, the Honda/Kawasaki shop (both brands use this seal) carried no spares beyond spark plugs, it seemed. They did offer to try and fix my seal, an unlikely prospect I thought, but worth a try. So, I hastened back to our hotel to pull the fork leg, then back to the shop with it. To my considerable surprise, this $15 fix held up perfectly through the rest of the ride. Truly, third world mechanics are masters of improvisation. Chicago John arranged to have the top end of his KLR rebuilt in La Paz. This forced him to stay an exra day. Alberto stayed with him. The two of them eventually caught up with us in Cuzco.

From La Paz to Puno, Peru, was a relatively short, easy and enjoyable ride: 200 miles, mostly blacktop, with lots of curves. After the climb out of the basin (thankfully, we didn’t have to go back through the horrible construction zone leaving town), it was a short ride to the banks of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the known universe. We enjoyed a wonderfully scenic ride along its shores for quite some miles before coming to the Straits of Tiquina, a relatively narrow expanse which we could cross by ferry. Well, “ferry” doesn’t really convey and accurate image. These were rafts, about two feet deep, covered, sort of, by large planks with big gaps between. We had to be very careful in how we got the bikes on and off. The one I rode was piloted by a 10-year old boy, whose father hung out at the other end. It was startling to see a similar craft coming the other way carrying a full-size, fully loaded bus. I was reminded, yet again, that the people in these countries live with a degree of hazardousness in their daily lives that is unimaginable in the US. For example, the sidewalks will have large potholes and random, large steps up and down. It’s a world without liability lawyers, obviously, and few brain-dead pedestrians since such would have a short life expectancy. I rather liked it, actually.

Copacabana: Gateway to Peru

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