Motorcycle Diaries + More Mountains - Peru

Learning to Ride - Ariquipa

Every trip has its firsts.  (Mum, it would probably be better if you stopped reading here, just skip half way down this page to where I talk about doing a nice treck in the mountains.)  In Ariquipa I had a first, first time riding a motorbike.    Really though, you couldn.t pick a more suitable place to learn.  Right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of downtown Ariquipa, on roads with no markings, or discernable road rules, and without so much as a single lesson before hand.  But I better back up slightly and give you some context. 

We had been talking about renting some bikes for a while, so when we saw them being offered in Ariquipa we jumped on the chance.  I didn.t exactly lie when they asked if I had any experience on a motorcycle.  I said yes, but omitted to tell them that that experience consisted solely of being a passenger on the back of a motorcycle taxi two weeks earlier in Bolivia.  Good enough though I thought, so we paid our money, and 10am the next morning were standing in Eddie.s (our guide.s) patio, as he asked us whether we wanted to ride the 250cc 2 stroke trail bikes or the larger 650cc beasts.  I didn.t want to do anything stupid, so opted for the former.  He took the bikes out onto the street, jumped on his, started it up, and shouted ´´follow me!´´

Sweet Ride

Now when I say I have had no meaningful prior motorbike experience I really mean it.  And sitting on top of a hundred odd kilos of metal, I was packing myself, big time.  But I had been doing a lot of visualising the night before, after asking Brett all the motorcycle questions I could think of ´´do the bikes have gears? how do you change them? where are the brakes, clutch, where is the accelerator?´´   Unfortunately the visualising didn.t include starting the bike, so after looking like a complete idiot trying to turn the key on a kick start bike, Brett pointed the kickstarter out to me.  After mashing my shins on the foot rests while attempting to kickstart the bike, we were finally running.  The visualisation was paying dividends as I held in the clutch, kicked the gears into first, and slowly pushed the revs up on the accelerator.  We will not mention stalling the bike 5 times before finally getting moving, but in no time I was riding.  So stoked with myself I was that I went straight through the first intersection oblivious to the fact that there was even an intersection there.  Shit.  Resolved to do better on the second intersection comming up, but that plan went by the wayside when I realised I hadn.t quite mastered stopping.  The only way through saw me on the wrong side of the road passing an oncoming truck.  The next intersection I made sure I mastered stopping.

Ariquipa, a choice place to ride.

We had about 5min of inner city driving before Eddie informed us we were about to go offroad.  Sweet, street riding was getting too easy anyway.  The next 4 hours I was introduced to soft sand hill starts, steep downhill descents, open road highway riding, and navigating through villages, cars, trucks, goats, locals all while trying to give the impression that I knew what I was doing.  All of that and only one minor skid, coming off the bike while turning a corner on the tarmac (in a patch of loose gravel).  The wingmirror smashed when the bike fell, which cost me $12 to replace.  I didn.t tell eddie that I had noticed a little oil leak after the spill, or that the bike seemed to be skipping a bit post bail either.  Doing so would have probably cost me more than $12.

Ica - Sandboarding

We signed up to do some sandboarding (snowboarding on sand dunes) just outside Ica in Peru.  It shouldn.t really be billed as sandboarding though, as the ride out over the dunes in our modified toyota land cruiser was definately the highlight.  Our driver was a flat out madman behind the wheel, regularly getting all 4 wheels off the ground, travelling at stupid speeds, and hitting blind lips at full bore.  Bloody awesome.

Our modified Land Cruiser.  SUPER quick.

I gave up on the sandboarding after our first downhill (as it was far too slow), and opted instead for running down the dunes as fast as I could, which I regretted about half way down when I realised there was no way my legs could keep up with my body.  Also randomly, on the streets of Ica, I bumped into my brother Scott, neither of us having any clue that the other was in the city.  Hilarious, but good, as we then spent the next three weeks travelling together.

Dunes:  Steep

As quick as it takes to run down the dunes, it takes approximately 85times longer to walk up the dunes.  Lucky we didn.t have to walk up them as our land cruiser met us at the bottom, but we did do a night mission to the top of the dunes, which paid off by catching some awesome photos messing around on the way back down.

Our mate Steve, part way through travelling overland from Rio, Brasil to NY, USA

Santa Cruz Treck (mum you can start reading here)

Wow.  What a place to go for a walk.  With 22 mountains in the region with peaks exceeding 6,000m (mount cook is only 3,700m), Hauraz is undoubtably visually stunning.  We had a 3 day treck planned which took us at its highest point up to 4,700m.  Probably the best way to describe our treck though is to talk to a couple of the photos taken.

Any time you looked up, your gaze was either greeted by snow capped peaks, or giant glaciers gouging their way and shaping the landscape around us.  If you look really closely, you can see a waterfall on the very right hand side of this photo, 2/3 of the way up.  The water runs straight off the snow and into any of the many lakes that we passed, like the one pictured.

Glacial run off does make for cold water though.  That is why Scott is avoiding getting wet here and simply opting to make like Jesus and walk, or run, on top of the water.

Here we are, at our 4,700m pass.  The first couple days we had cloud cover, and a bit of drizzle every now and then which the others didn.t like so much, but it definately made for some justice photos like this one, and the one at the very start of this blog.

This was our crew.  Our guide Dario, on the left is probably the fittest person I have ever met in my life.  While we were struggling with our day packs, walking at what can best be described as pedestrian pace, Dario was carrying three packs, and telling us how just last week he did a 70km run over a 5,000m pass in 11 hours.  It normally takes most trampers 5 days.  He was good value.

The obligatory donkey shot.  This one is for you Chia.

At such altitudes the force of gravity is noticably weaker.  Candace demonstrates.

It doesn.t take much to stop me from writing my diary.  While sitting down to write it in the evening, I looked up and was blown away by the valley ahead.  If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you should be able to count 7 ridges on the mountain in the background, which were illuminated ever so fleetingly just before the sun dissappeared for the day.  I haven.t written my diary since.

Even the cold crisp early morning kicks your ass with its awesomeness.

Until next time, Mark.

Underground Mines, and Salt Flats - Bolivia

Potosi - Silver Mines

This is definately an only in Bolivia story.  Potosi, in the 1600s was one of the richest cities in the world, ahead of London, Paris, Auckland et al.  Its riches were founded on the huge silver deposits mined from Cerro de Potosí, the mountain made of silver that dominates the city landscape.  The mountain has been mined for over 450 years, naturally meaning the vast wealth of minerals contained in the seams have largely dried up.  Howerver, this doesn´t stop over 5000 people a day working the mines to ´make a living´. 

Making a living in the mines

The phrase, make a living, is rather ironic when talking about the mines, because I doubt you would find worse working conditions anywhere in the world.  The average life expectancy for a miner is about 15 years after entering the mines.  The biggest cause of death is silicosis of the lungs, from breathing in silica, asbestos, and arsenic dust from the unventilated mines.  Although technically illegal, you also see miners as young as 12 years old working in the mines.  Since the mines were opened in the 1500s, it is estimated that somewhere between 3 and 7 million people have lost their lives working the mines.  Why do people work in these conditions?  In most cases necessity.  By working in the mines, and basically sacrificing their lives, the miners can earn $6 to $8 usd per day, about double the normal wage of a non miner in potosi.  For a father with 8 kids, and no other skills, it would be impossible otherwise to support his family.

A fortunate worker, having a job in the processing plant, crushing the ore

Why would you visit such a place, and go down into the mines?  Its a hard question, many people we bumped into avoided the place, as they didn´t want to have anything to do with the mines, while other people cited it as a highlight of their trip.  But a place like this, you really have to see it to understand, and make your own mind up.  The miners also enjoy a bit of company during their work, as during their 10 hour shifts they do not come up for any breaks, often work alone, can not eat any food (as it is far to dusty), and survive on chewing cocoa leaves, and drinking soft drinks.  We bought large supplies of both, along with several sticks of dynamite to donate to the miners that we visited (yes, in Potosi you can literally buy dynamite from any street vendor).

His job, to hammer in a steel rod 20 inches into solid rock.  This will take 6 hours straight, before he will place a stick of dynamite in the hole, scamper 25m around the corner and wait for the explosion.

It wasn´t all cramped, dusty, hot, noisy and scary though.  Once we were out of the mines our guide, Effe, the master of disaster who loved to blow things up, produced three of dynamite ´bombs´ to show us.  These were dynamite stiks crushed up and surrounded by potassium nitrate to give the explosion an extra kick.  They also had one and a half minute fuses on them.  He then lit all three and one by one threw them to members of our group.  You can see why this is an only in Bolivia story.  We were standing there, 50m from the mine enterance, running around, dumbfounded expressions on our faces, holding lit sticks of dynamite.  After 30 odd seconds, Effe took all three from us, ran a hundred paces down the road, chucked the bombs down into a pit, and ran back to join us just as the three blasts went off.  They were loud.

Overall, it is very hard to pidgeon hole the miners and their lifestyle or to sum it all up in a few words.  The miners are very proud people, who are not looking for pity.  They are tough but personable and fiercely loyal.  Their working conditions are atrocious at best.  Though it will probably be a blessing in disguise when in the near future the mines become uneconomic to mine.

Salt Flats

From the ridiculous to the sublime.  If I had to single out one highlight so far of the trip, the salt flats of Bolivia would have to be pretty much near the top.  Filled with landscapes that make you question your own eyesight (as you can scarcely believe you are seeing), the salt flats are like being in another world entirely.  Covering an area of over 10,000 square kilometers, the salt flats are so flat, that the flatness of the salt varies by less than 1m over the entire surface area.  This makes for an excellent callibration tool for satalites orbiting the earth, but also makes for some sweet photos.

Piles of Salt, Salt Flats 

 Salt Flat Midgets; Invasive

Even the 8 hour bus ride to the salt flats treated us to some pretty spectacular scenery.

 Scenery

We were actually pretty lucky to get onto the salt flats, as for some reason or other, there always seems to be constant protests, strikes, hijakings or the like around the area.  One of the funnier strikes that we just missed was a bus drivers strike, who were striking because they had just been banned from drinking alcohol while driving.  Seriously.  A mate from NZ who was there three days before us was also hijacked.  We managed to get through largely unscathed though, although there was one oh oh moment just as we entered the salt flats, as our jeep was suddenly surrounded by 5 baloclava clad bikers, riding pretty mean black sports motorcycles.  Turns out they were just tourists, but it didn´t stop me from checking my pants after they drove off.  Before we hit the salt flats we took a quick look around the ´train museum´.  Not so much a museum, but simply where a whole pile of trains were abandoned, after the trains servicing the Potosi silver mines were no longer economical to run.

Abandoned Trains

Even when you thought the salt flats couldn´t deliver much more they did.  On our first night on the flats, our guide told us there was a museum that had an old mummy in it if we were interested in checking it out.  It didn´t sound too exciting, so decided to flag it, and instead head for the hills to check out the sunset.  Turns out the museum was an open air one on the hills where I was heading, and there wasn´t so much a mummy there, but 20 odd 2000 year old human skeletons lying where they perished in makeshift caves dotted around the hillside.  Apparently they had been only discovered about 10 years ago, and instead of locking them away in a museum, you could walk around and practically touch them if you wanted, all for an enterance fee of $2.  One of the craziest sunsets I have experienced.

2000 year old skeleton at sunset.

Sunset at sunset.

After reflecting on an awesome day, the next day did its best to top what we had just seen.  At 4,000m altitude we were treated to spectacular turquoise alpine lagoons, surrounded by crystal white salt deposits, orange soil, golden tussock, pink flamingoes, deep blue sky, and all overseen by the 6,000m volcanoes towering above us.  The picture at the beginning of this blog is one of my favourites, but I couldn´t narrow it down to just one, so have chucked in a few of my other favourites below.

Lone flamingo

Another ´I´m just going for a walk to watch the sunset´ moment.  While listening to the Veils on my ipod at the same time, I was pretty happy

What else can you say.

We couldn´t have a perfect run through the salt flats though.  The last day, our transport woes struck again.  Our 4 wheel drive, that happened to only run on two wheels got stuck in the soft sand at 5.00am while we were on the way to visit some guysers for sunrise.  We had to get out and dig.  With the outside temperature at -2degrees, and with about 30knotts of wind to contend with, cold is an understatement.  We got to the guysers just after sunrise, but with being so freezing, we spent a combined total of 2minutes outside the car before jumping back in and heading for the hot pools a further hour down the road.  They were a welcome relief and am pretty sure is the only reason why I still have all of my toes left.

 One of about 3 pictures I managed to take of the guysers before my fingers froze solid.

Back to Chile

The salt flats finished with a bus ride into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.  It was a nice little spot to hang round in for a couple of days.  As I have gone on for long enough already, I will finish with a couple of snaps from San Pedro where we hired a couple of mountain bikes and took to the surrounding countryside with relative degrees of success.

 Danielle, our Australian travel mate for a week or so; rides successfully

Myself; not so successful.  Click on the photo to enlarge

 Finally, to all those who commented that I should look at shaving my beard after the last blog, I can announce (although with sincere regret) that I did get a beard trim following the comments.  But good news is that it was only a trim, and that it is now growing back to its lushfull bushy self.  The Bolivians love it though, and everywhere I go, they seem to paint the walls with my initials.

Stay tuned for the next update, which promises to be one of the best yet, not only story wise, but also have some sweet photos ready to drop.

Mark.