From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

But it was a lot of work to get there! Reaching the salt flats wasn’t so easy.

The first day out of Oruro was flat paved road, through the extravagant landscapes of the altiplano. It was easy going with a favourable wind, and after about 80 km, we stopped at thermal baths for a shower and pitched the tent just a little further along.

The next day we biked another easy 40km and arrived in the last major town before the Salar. We stocked up with enough food for five days. Challapata was a surprising little urban centre, populated by strange cars that we didn’t understand: there were second hand vehicles everywhere with no license plates but with inscriptions on the wind-shields. And the steering wheels were all on the right! Pretty bizarre considering we’re in the middle of a continent where normally everyone drives on the right side of the road. Just another one of those mysteries of globalization… The next 40 km of road were under construction, but there wasn’t much traffic. We biked part of the way on the paved road, part of it on the path beside the road, consistently climbing over piles of gravel. We camped in the middle of the barren altiplano, beside an old ruin, the only shelter we could find against the strong, icy wind. The full moon shone down on us all night, rising in the east just as the sun set in the west.

These days more than ever we live according to the rhythm of the sun: we pitch the tent just as the sun is setting (6:25 pm) and make dinner by the dying light of day. We eat in the tent as the air cools and turn out the lights by 8:30 or 9:00. In the morning we get up with the sun, around 6:30 am, the coldest time of the day. But the air warms up quickly and by 9:00 am, it’s quite pleasant. That night in the middle of the altiplano was the coldest night we’ve spent so far. Our proof was in our water flasks: frozen solid.

The third day on the road we faced increasingly strong winds. And to complicate things, we made the mistake of taking the “short-cut” to avoid some construction. We ended up on a sandy track and wasted almost an hour and a lot of energy. We figured that at this rate it would take us an extra day to get to Uyuni, and more food and gas for the stove. We asked in the next village whether there were any buses that would help us catch up. They told us that there was nothing that day, but that there would be one tomorrow. We had not been passed by a single vehicle so far, although we had seen several buses and trucks going the other direction. The trucks are the public transportation in Bolivia!

So we continued to brave the wind, figuring that it would let up soon. We had to ford a river barefoot which meant we lost even more time. We ate lunch while watching the whirlwinds around us, hoping that none of the them would sweep us up and carry us back where we came from! A few kilometers after that we saw a truck in our rearview mirror. We’d only covered 37 km, instead of 60 km like we were hoping to. The wind was tiring and discouraging. It didn’t take long for us to decide to take a chance and stop the truck – the only one we’d seen all day, and it was already 3:00 in the afternoon. The driver of the truck also took a chance – he asked for $20 to take us to the next village, about 70 km away. We agreed on 20 bolivianos (about $2.50). And in a few minutes we found ourselves in the back on the truck with our bikes and bags, being bounced along to the rhythm of the road, and trying to breathe through our scarves to avoid the dust. Four hours later, just as the sun was going down, the driver dropped us off at the service station of Salinas de Garci Mendoza. We filled up with gas and then biked off into the night, much to the surprise of the locals. About 2 km outside the village we found a quiet little corner to camp.

We knew that the 4th day the road would be rough: rocks and stones bounced around in front of us, sand and dust, and sheet metal bumps – we saw it all. But it was worth it. We came around the Tunupa Volcano in the middle of a wonderful landscape, passed through lovely hamlets and ended up at the top of the Salar d’Uyuni! It was very moving to discover the flats as we crested a hill.

35 km later, we arrived in Tahua Sunday afternoon, right in the middle of a public assembly in front on the town hall. Our arrival was not unexpected – the fact that we were looking for a place to stay has preceded us, and a young woman welcomed us into her little hotel where she hosts many traveling cyclists, mostly French! We enjoyed a mostly warm shower (electric heater), and we couldn’t ask for more. Perhaps we weren’t the first people to sleep in the sheets that night, but oh well.

The next day our host showed which of all the “islands” that we could see was Incahuasi Island, our objective. Once we arrived on the salt flats, however, after going down a sandy track, it was out of sight. It was 40 km away and the curve of the earth meant that we couldn’t see it. We knew the coordinates though, and our GPS showed us which way to go across the vast white expanse. It was a strange feeling as our tires crunched across the salt. It felt like riding across a frozen lake, but the traction was perfect. The total flatness was unbelievable. We set a course straight south for 40 km, the wind on one side. We closed our eyes for 10, 20 then 30 seconds, and even a minute. It was a strange experience and impossible to keep going in a straight line (check out the videos once they’re online). Our brains played tricks on us, and after a couple of kilometers on the flats we felt dizzy. It was disorienting. And apparently the compass doesn’t point north on the salt flats. We could see tire tracks driving off in all directions. It’s easy to get lost on the salty white desert.

As we arrived at the island, tourists in 4x4 on organized tours saw us coming and took pictures of us, like of animals in a zoo. We weren’t planning to stick around, figuring it would be quieter on the other side of the island for lunch. But just as we were biking away, one of the tourists, more persistent than the others, came over to say hello to us. He was part of French tour, and they offered us lunch in exchange for our stories: it was lovely! Then we climbed on the little island all covered in cacti to take pictures and to test the strength of the west wind. It was lucky for us since we were heading east. We pushed off and then didn’t have to pedal again for 40 km! The wind literally pushed us along at 20 to 25 km/h without us pedaling at all! That had never happened to us, in all those 15,000 km. (By the way, that makes 1000 hours on the bike since Anchorage).

We had planned to camp in the middle of the salt flat – an old dream – but in the end we didn’t try. The wind was so strong that we wouldn’t have been able to pitch the tent, and the ground was so hard that it would have been impossible to stake. At 4:00 pm, although we had planned to stop, we decided to keep going and try to get to somewhere to spend the night. In the GPS we had the location of an old salt hotel on the Salar (quarrying the salt is not allowed anymore). It was about 7 km from the embankment, and we reached it after covering 104 km across the salt flats. We were able to put up the tent using blocks of salt, sheltered from the wind by the dirty building. It wasn’t quite in the middle of the flat, but we still camped on the Salar. It was like camping on an ice floe. We watched the sun rise and the sun set. To our surprise, it wasn’t all that cold, despite the icy wind – our water barely iced over.

The next morning, we froze in the icy wind, and after a long photo session we started out. We biked until about 11:00 am, with the wind still at our backs. At the edge of the Salar, after passing salt pyramids and getting back onto the sheet metal road, we met three French cyclo-tourists at Colchani. We talked with them for 3 hours, sharing our experiences. The wind continued to push us along the dusty road all the way to Uyuni. We loved that city so much that we left it as soon as possible. We skipped the 200 km of sandy road and packed the bikes into a bus yesterday morning at 6:00 am and arrived in Tupiza, perfectly situated for a day of rest 700m beneath the altiplano. Given the state of the road that we saw from the bus, we made the right choice!

Tomorrow we’re leaving for a trip on a 4x4 (naturally, outside the scope of the Association) for 4 or 5 days across the high plains of Lipez.

NB: The Salar d’Uyuni is the biggest salt flat in the world. It is 12,106 km², or the size of two French departments. It was formed when the huge lake that covered the whole south west of Bolivia evapourated 25,000 years ago. The lake didn’t drain into any rivers and so the minerals from the surrounding mountains had been accumulating there for millions of years.

NB2: For those of you who don’t know what a sheet metal road is, all you need to know is that it is a cyclist’s nightmare! What happens is that because of the wind and the traffic, a flat road develops all these little bumps that make it look like corrugated iron sheets.

Sébastien