From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

When we arrived in Tupiza we looked into doing trip in a 4x4 around the region. It’s supposed to be beautiful, but very difficult by bike.

Agency: Tupiza Tours

We wanted to book with a company that other travelers had recommended. There are a lot of agencies in Uyuni and Tupiza that offer trips to Lipez, and there are a lot of trips that go wrong too…

The Group

All the agencies book people in groups in order to fill a jeep. Normally there are 5 people in each car, but the agency had 6 people on its list, so we went in a group of 6 – after asking each of us if it was ok. We were in a group with Sanne and Bonnie from Holland, and Els and Jan from Belgium, all backpackers. They spoke Flemish to each other, but we spoke English in the group so that we all could understand.

The Staff

There was our driver-guide-mechanic, cautious and knowledgeable. And the cook, Eli, who would normally have been in the car with us, but wasn’t because there was already 6 of us.

The vehicle: Toyota Landcruiser

Like all vehicles that have rough drives, we ran into a few “pequeños problemas.” We got a flat tire, blown fuses, and a clogged gas filter (the gas in Bolivia is only refined once so it’s not very clean).

Food

All the meals were !!include!!d. For breakfast we had bread or pancakes, jam, butter, Dulce de Leche, tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Lunch was generally a picnic with vegetables, meat, beans, fruit and drinks, and at night we ate soup, meat, beans and vegetables. There were also snacks of tea, coffee and drinks, and candy and cookies. There was as much food as we could eat.

Itinerary

Day 1: Tupiza, Quebrada de Palala, Sillar, the mineral deposits of Nazarenito, Chilcobija, Cerrillos, Polulos, Rio San Pablo, San Antonio de Lipez.

Day 2: San Antonio de Lipez, Torreón, Laguna Morejón, Quetena, swimming in the thermal baths of Chalviri, Lagunga Polques, Laguna Verde, Licancabur Volcano (5960 m above sea level), the Dali desert, the geothermal area Sol de Mañana, Laguna Colorada.

Day 3: Laguna Colorada, the Siloli desert with the Stone Tree, “Jewels Road” and the Ramaditas lagoons, Honda, Chiarkota, Hedionda, Cañapa; Ollague volcano (still active), Tomasamil volcano (5900 m high), the salar de Chiguana, Atullcha (a salt hotel).

Day 4: Atullcha, salar de Uyuni (3650m in altitude) and Incahuasi Island, el viejo hotel de sal, Colchani, the hub of salt extraction, Uyuni. And then back to Tupiza for those people who wanted.

Regrets

It would have been nice add another day to the trip and climb up the Licancabur volcano, but we couldn’t get two other people interested in doing that. We talked with the Tupiza Tour staff and they told us that in July and August lots of people had added the day to climb a volcano – either Licancabur (5914m), Uturuncu (6008m) or Tunupa (5432m).

The Commentary

Fernando finally explained to us the mystery of the cars with steering wheels on the right. They’re second hand cars that have come from the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Japan, Australia, New Zealand) and which arrive in Chile. Bolivians involved in car trafficking [Trans. note: ha!] buy them in Chile and sell them for three times as much in Bolivia. Often they move the steering wheel to left, but the exhaust pipe is still on the wrong side, the gear box and the hand brake are closer to the passenger than the driver, and the signals and windshield wipers are backwards. Fernando showed how to spot these modified cars by the windshield wipers and we noticed that almost all the cars in Bolivia had been “converted.”

We saw some of the trails around Lipez and it would have been pretty hard on a bike. No doubt that if we had started out our trip on that kind of terrain we would have gone right back to France, totally disenchanted with biking. We didn’t see a single cyclist for 4 days, and the ones we had met earlier who had biked through had really sweated it, without many opportunities to stock up with food and water.

The region is about the size of a dozen French departments and has breathtaking wild landscapes, but only about 7000 inhabitants. It is very dry, cold and quite hostile. At its lowest point, it’s 3600m above sea level. We climbed up to 4900m. The few villages that we saw survive on mineral exploitation, including tin, lead, silver, zinc, borax, and antimony.

Along the whole 1000 km that we travelled, we saw lots of vicuna digging around in the sand for food, American ostriches, a condor, partridges, viscachas (like rabbits with a long tail), lots of birds, and lots of red flamingoes in coloured lagoons, like the reddish-pink Laguna Colerada. Our favourite was the Green Lagoon (4400m), at the base of the Licancabur volcano (5960m). The emerald green colour comes from a high concentration of lead, sulfur, arsenic, and calcium carbonate.

After our trip, we went on a 5 hour horseback ride around Tupiza, through the “quebradas,” dry river beds that look like canyons, surrounded by varying rock formations. The landscape was beautiful and our guide told us all about some of the strange formations like “Devil’s Door,” “Machos’ Valley,” (so named for the many rock formations that resemble masculine characteristics), and the “Canyon del Inca.” Sebastien’s horse didn’t like water and jumped over it, much to Sebastien’s surprise. He also decided to go home a little faster than the others, and took off at a gallop, while Sebastien hung on. I guess after 15,000 km on a bike you learn something about riding! It was a great day trip, for only $2.00 an hour. (Especially considering riding in France [Trans. note: or in Canada] costs between $15-20 an hour!).

Sara

This trip is outside the scope of the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire. But we will use the site to keep you updated on all our news and adventures.