Bienvenidos a Bolivia

In terms of border formalities South America is great for Europeans. Having crossed the bridge to Bolivia I was met by a large poster of the president Evo Morales and granted a ninety day visa. The reality is that I could have crossed back into Argentina and gotten another ninety days for Argentina the following day. All of this at no cost. American citizens however, have a harder time of things. The US is  a difficult country for people from non-developed world countries to enter. These people have to pay substantial visa fees and do a fair amount of paperwork to have a chance of getting into the States. The result is that all these poorer countries reciprocate immigration formalities for US citizens looking to enter their countries as an act of revenge. Thus, US citizens travelling through South America have to fork out visa charges of anything up to $200 per country. They will also have the headache of having to document their travel arrangements. Of course, I don't think they face too many issues at the border but Europeans don't have to jump through any hoops at all. Being allowed to travel anywhere on this continent no questions asked is truly a wonderful thing.

Bolivia is home to: the highest city in the world (La Paz), the world's largest salt desert, the world's most dangerous road (supposedly) and cocaine. Bolivia is also where iconic figures such as Che Guevara and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end (although there is apparently evidence that the latter two escaped the stand-off and died in Patagonia). It is also home to Evo Morales, a good buddy of Hugo Chavez. Indeed the president recently nationalised four energy companies and stood up at an international summit claiming that the white man is bald because he eats too many genetically modified chickens. I will make no comment as I can neither prove nor disprove such claims. Bolivia is also supposed to be the poorest country in South America (although the Guyanas might rank up there too). For sure, Bolivia is dirt cheap for the traveller but one must realise that poverty and being poor are two different things. While Bolivia may not rank highly in terms of economic statistics the people do not seem poor. Certainly they do not have much but they are not short of essentials such as water, food and shelter.

Having arrived at the border much earlier than I expected thanks to a gentle tail-wind, I decided to press on and bypass the mess that was Villazon. The next town was 36k away, so  it was with great intrigue that I went to find the town of Mojo. It had to be worth a stop-over with a name like that. The ride was such a contrast to earlier in the day when I was in Argentina. While they were building a new road it was not ready and so I had to mostly travel along the old route. It is pretty frustrating having to slog one's way over rough ripio when there is perfectly sealed tarmac very close by. I did manage to ride sections of asphalt but the main problem was that there were big gaps in the road where they were installing drains or underpasses and so I would have had to ride like the Dukes of Hazzard to clear the jumps. The deviations in height and distance between old and new meant that it wasn't worth the effort trying to hop on and off at every obstacle. I arrived in Mojo late in the day and it was nothing but a scattering of around twenty houses on one side of the road. A quick chat with the locals confirmed that I could camp across the way in the school grounds and they kindly showed me the best spot out of the wind. Thankfully it was Friday so I did not have to worry about about a whole bunch of school kids waking me up in the morning going to classes. So I settled in for the night with nothing but a shy dog and a donkey for company. I was surprised at how big the school was for such a small town, indeed they were building two extensions. I quickly realised that their must be lots of families in the middle of nowhere whose kids must tramp across fields to go to this school. Indeed, Bolivia is odd in that not everybody lives by the roadside. It is funny to see that the way the traffic goes is not the way the locals walk. They walk along river-beds and through fields as opposed to taking the road to get somewhere. This was my first introduction to what Bolivians consider the 'way'.

The town of Tupiza was only 60k away from Mojo and I arrived there early in the day having been surprised at the amount of rolling hills I had to navigate. I was under the impression that this part of the world was on a plain but it is anything but flat. The terrain was mostly ridges and canyons. Rolling hills really knock the stuffing out of the cyclist and so I pulled up in Tupiza due to the fact that it was the only bit of real civilisation I would see for a few days. It made sense to stock up on supplies before hitting the road to Uyuni, where the world's biggest salt flat is located. Tupiza was a pleasant surprise; Spanish conversation was so much easier here than in Argentina and the food was such a treat. There is a strong hint of tourism here but the town is not dominated by it. It was such a shock to see the menu, which had great variety in that it catered to tourists tastes. It was great to see vegetables and real salads on the menu as Argentina was really lacking on the fruit and veg front unless you were in cities.

My first impressions of Bolivia are really positive; the people seem really easy-going and the food is much more to my liking. It is also great that the altitude is not affecting me at all and while the roads are shocking it seems like it is going to be a very interesting country to cycle through.

Hasta Luego

Marco

local bus wash ... havn't seen this since Nepal so Bolivia must be poorback to schoolthe new road ... work in progressharvest timeI wasn't expecting to see canyonstunnelling my way through to TupizaTupiza