In our last post I was somewhat unkind to Oruro, the town centre it turns out was delightful. The guide book is not overly enthusiastic from a backpackers point of view, but we found it a pleasant enough place to spend time.
Oruro Square
The road to the east heading towards Potosi and Sucre was sealed for 40kms or so. The only downer was that we picked up 3 punctures on the road from various bits of road debris. I think we need to have a look into a couple of replacements for the Specialized tyres that are proving to be none to resistant to, well, anything really.
The road splits just before the town of Machacamarca, and we took the left fork towards Huanuni, a mining town, whose centre piece is an open sewer running through the middle of it. We'd planned to spend the night here but, were disinclined to stay once we'd had a look around for a few minutes.
After asking around we found the track out of town. It was a river bed heading to the South East. It looked like we were on a diversion as they were working on improving the road. In fact once we'd found the road itself, it transpires that they were doing more than that, they were tarmacing it. Happy days! We sped along until it started to climb... this might not be so bad after all.
At the end of the first day's ride we even managed to find a lovely camp site across the river bed from the main road.
Camp site
The next morning we continued to climb... and climb. To over 4400m in fact. The road was steep. The gentle gradients of Peruvian road builders are clearly not followed by their Bolivian equivalents. It was hard going all day, and at Uncia the tarmac stopped. We'd finally found the dirt!
We decided to camp, so we pushed on past Cala Cala and another steep climb. A few miles past the town we found a dirt track that appeared to head nowhere, where we decided to have tea and to wait out the remainder of daylight until we could put up the tent. It was just as we finished eating that we realised our mistake. The first of the llama herders, complete with accompanying llamas headed past on their way home for tea. After the 10th group we realised we may have made a mistake, but it was too late to move on. Certainly there was nothing up the steep sided valley. So we stayed put, and fortunately had a sound night's sleep.
The climb the following morning was gruelling, but seemed not as long as the previous day. We reached the top to be met with a hugely deteriorated road. 6 inch corrugated ruts caused by cars travelling too quickly along the unsealed road.
Roads and Ruts and Mines
Passing by a high altitude lake, we came across, bizarrely, a pedallo in the shape of a swan moored up ready to go. The plain gave way to a sharp sided valley, and we followed the this down for over 1000 vertical metres. The road was littered with rocks and soft sand traps, which meant our speed had to remain low. I'd guessed we'd travel 35 miles a day at an average of 5 mph. A bit optimistic in these conditions as it turns out. We were averaging single figures even on the down hills. When the road turned upwards, to eventually climb back over 4000m, our speed was oh, maybe 3mph.... when we were cycling. 2 more punctures on the climb, this time in the heavily worn Schwalbe tyre on the back of my bike. Oh, and Den's chain snapped.
Mining using hand tools. Hard way to earn a living.
By the time we reached the village of Pocoata, we were both thoroughly exhausted and in need of a comfy bed. Unfortunately, of the two hostels in town, one was full (in Bolivia, we've started to suspect that some hostel in remoter parts have a dislike of strangers and say they are full even if they may not be) and the other was locked up. Looks like another night in the tent was calling. Fortunately, one of the team was not in the mood for three days more of bumpy dirty roads. So we resorted to plan B. Taxi. Now it's not far from Pocoata to Sucre, but we clambered into the taxi at 7pm expecting a long and bumpy trip.
The reality was worse than we could expect. 8 hours of being thrown around. And this was us taking the chicken's easy way, cycling's too hard route... well it would have been murder on a bike. Got to Sucre at 3am and went in search of a hotel. Got let into one on the town square after hammering the door bell for a while. Had to have two showers to get rid of all the road dust before we could climb into the white sheets on the bed. Ahhh, bliss.
Sucre by Night
The following day we found that the head of a bolt that holds on Den's rear pannier rack had sheared off at some point, possibly during the taxi ride, but we'll need to get that fixed before we can carry on. Oh well, it's Christmas so we'll deal with that later.
Happy Christmas everyone!!
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