Biking in Bolivia, December 2006
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River Crossing on the Way to Sehuencas
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Trip Overview
There were several things that worried me before Philippe and I started our bike trip across Bolivia, such as where we would safely be able to camp, how we would eat without getting sick, local political unrest, how we would bike while being sick, etc.  It the end these things were the least worrisome and often the most enjoyable - people were very friendly, camping was relatively easy, and I managed to avoid getting sick even the slightest!  I cannot say the same for Philippe, although he was a much bolder eater than me.  Given that, we did of course have a few unexpected and very large hurdles.  I guess this is how every well-planned trip goes in the end.  A good example of an unanticipated hurdle was this - we were vary familiar with our anticipated route using local maps, a few web reports, and Google earth satellite images, but we did not know the exact altitude profile of the road between certain towns.  If town A was at an altitude of 1800 meters and town B was 50km away at an altitude of 2400 meters, we anticipated a 600 meter climb with the usual ups and downs along the way.  What we did not anticipate was that the road would first climb to 2700 meters, then drop back down to 2000 meters, then climb again to 3200 meters, before finally dropping down to our destination.  This is a tough surprise.  Another unexpected hurdle was that dirt roads quickly turn into a rock and boulder covered thoroughfares when the gradient is steep enough, as the dirt is usually long washed away by the combined effects of rain and gravity.  When wet these boulders have the effect of greased bowling balls, and are not very conducive to riding.  These are the types of problems that make good trips great, and we can now happily look back and smile over the forgotten inconvenience and anguish.  The following is the story of our bike trip from Santa Cruz, located in the eastern tropical lowlands of Bolivia, to Cecilia's hometown of Cochabamba, located ~450km due west in a valley in the Andes.  It was uphill all the way, which perplexed many locals who asked about our destination, but was well worth our efforts.
Day 1 - Preparations in Santa Cruz
Philippe and I started our first full day in Bolivia by returning to the Santa Cruz airport to see if Philippe's delayed luggage had arrived with the morning Miami flight, as promised by the American Airlines baggage staff after our late arrival the previous night.  We were skeptical, but his bag did indeed arrive with no problem.  We spent the remainder of the morning buying food and fuel for Philippe's camping stove.  Finding fuel can sometimes be a challenge, as there are a variety of fuel types used around the world and each specific stove fits only one type of fuel and canister.  Fortunately there were several large camping and related hardware stores in Santa Cruz that carried several different types of propane/butane fuels, and we had no problem finding the one that matched our stove.  We then went to the bus terminal to pick up Cecilia’s bike, which she had overnight shipped from Cochabamba using a local bus service.  I will save the details of this story for another time, but to summarize Philippe tried to buy a bike in Houston (while living in Japan) and have it shipped to Santa Cruz, where it would be waiting at our arrival.  But the Bolivian shipping company failed to hold up their end of the bargain, and in the last minute we decided that the best (and really only) option was for him to use Cecilia's mountain bike that she would carry down from Houston.  The bike fit him perfectly.   So back to the bus station....in Bolivia the various bus companies also serve as the best and most reliable way of shipping things quickly around the country – I was skeptical when I first heard of Cecilia's plan to overnight it from Cochabamba, but in the end it worked perfectly.  The undamaged bike was waiting for us at the terminal, and we even sent back a bag of unneeded equipment to Cochabamba via the same bus service.  We returned to our super-nice hotel Los Tajibos, which Cecilia's mother had sponsored as an early holiday gift, and spent the majority of the afternoon assembling our bikes in the hotel’s garden.  It seems that our luck was turning, and we would actually make it out on time the following morning.

Day 2 - Santa Cruz to Bermejo, 85km - see altitude profile
Despite our ambitious plan to get an early start we woke up relatively late (8am).  But in retrospect I think that it was well worth the extra needed rest, as we had a lot of climbing ahead of us.  We packed up, checked out, and were on the road by 10am.  Leaving the city was very easy, as we headed along an outer loop road to the southwest corner of the city where the road to Cochabamba starts.  As we rode out of the city we passed the Schlumberger office, which was a pleasant surprise, so we stopped to take some pictures before moving on.  By mid-day we were well out of the city, heading west on the “old road” to Cochabamba.  The weather was hot and humid, but cloudy skies really saved us from what would have been a superhot day.  We passed through a toll plaza at La Guardia, about 23km from the start, and I recorded all of the mileage markers to various listed cities including Cochabamba.  We would pass under another toll plaza later in the day on the same road, and the mileage markers were not consistent! 

After slowly climbing through various small villages (San Jose at 29km, Santa Rita, El Torno at 37km, Limoncito, etc.) we arrived in Angostura at 61km in the mid-afternoon.  There had been plenty of places to buy water and food along the way, so we were not too worried.  The road immediately narrowed leaving the town and essentially entered a canyon, and we really started to climb.  We spent the last hour or so of the day in our highest gear, and it was a small taste of what was yet to come in much greater quantity.  We arrived in the small village of Bermejo around 5pm, and decided that we wanted to stop and camp.  After surmising the small center village plaza, a church, and surrounding farmland, we decided to camp in the backyard of a small restaurant located just before town.  Camping was my biggest paranoia before the trip, as I really did not know what hospitality to expect from people in small villages, and I knew that camping somewhere without anyone’s approval, as remote as it might look, was not really a good idea.  In the end camping was one of the most pleasant surprises of the trip, as everyone was overly friendly and accommodating.  We felt secure for our first night on the road, and we were even be able to enjoy a beer from the front porch of the restaurant while keeping an eye on our tent and bikes!  Unfortunately we had not climbed high enough out of the tropical heat, and Philippe’s well-insulated 3-season tent served as a virtual sauna that night, and it was one of my worst nights of sleep during the entire trip.   Images from Day 2:

Philippe in front of the Schlumberger office

 The road uphill to Bermejo
The largest of the 1000's of parrots we saw

Camping behind the restaurant

Day 3 - Bermejo to Samaipata, 45km - see altitude profile
This was one of our toughest days of the entire trip, thanks to the clear skies and hot tropical heat.  From Bermejo we proceeded to climb for the entire day, spending the majority of it in our highest possible gear.  We passed through the town of Las Cuevas at 15km in the mid-morning.  This was more pure climbing than I had done on any previous trip, and despite a well paved road we averaged ~7 kmph for much of the day.  But the views got better with every new turn up the mountain, and we were ready and expecting the climb, so it was ultimately a very positive day.  The vegetation changed dramatically throughout the day, which started in the tropics but ended in a dry forest and scrub climate.  We arrived in Samaipata at 1639 meters altitude in the mid-afternoon, and rolled through the town looking for one of the better-rated “cabana” hotels.  We found the Land Haus hotel on top of a hill on the edge of town, which served to be a wonderful little cabana hotel – it was by far the best lodging of our trip, and first class by any standards.  After allowing Philippe to beat me in multiple games of ping pong in the hotel garden we went into town, where we managed to find dinner and beers at a nice restaurant overlooking the main plaza.  It was an excellent ending to a hard day, and we looked forward to our first (and only) “rest day” on the following morning.  Images from Day 3:

The uphill road to Samaipata
Philippe using a stolen napkin from Los Tajibos as sun protection
 Beers on the plaza in Samaipata
Day 4 – Rest Day in Samaipata, Fuertes Pre-Inca Ruins, 21km - see altitude profiles up and down
My highest sustained heart rate of the entire trip occurred on our rest day, which I found quite ironic.  After enjoying a wonderful breakfast at the Land Haus hotel Philippe and I decided to day-ride to the nearby pre-Inca Fuerte ruins, which I had read good things about before the trip.  The ruins were located on top of a mountain about 10km from town, and were accessible by a rough dirt road.  We had decided that it would serve as a perfect leisure but not too relaxing day trip, although we significantly underestimated the difficulty of the road.  Luckily we were without the trailer or bags, which likely saved us from walking several kilometers due to the steep gradients, and we arrived at the ruins in time for lunch.  After getting a brief overview from the local Unesco guide, we paid the visitor fee, locked our bikes, and hiked up to the ruins area.  It was definitely impressive and worth our efforts getting there, and we had lunch under a tree just next to the ruins.  There were only a handful of other people visiting the site, mainly young German tourists who had made a day of walking to and from the ruins – what a hike!  I am sure that they would have preferred to ride, and we even asked one guy why he had not rented a bike in town.  He responded there were no quality bikes available – a future business opportunity?  The return ride back was certainly better than the outbound, although there were still a few uphill stretches to conquer, and we made it back in time for another dinner at our favorite restaurant on the main plaza.  We knew that our time in Samaipata was limited, as we planned to leave the next morning, and we half-joked that we should delay the trip and just hang out there for a while longer.   Images from Day 4:

Overlooking Fuertes pre-Inca ruins
The ride up to the ruins
 More ruins
Philippe in the Samaipata main plaza
Day 5 – Samaipata to the pass just after Mataral, 83km - see altitude profile
We sadly rode out of Samaipata, and to make matters worse were immediately greeted with a long climb to a col at the end of the valley.  We were now well calibrated to climbing from the previous two days, and easily churned up and out of the valley.  As we descended from the col we passed into a much drier area, and cactus became the primary decoration of the panorama.  We enjoyed our longest descent of the trip, 10.25km without pedaling whatsoever going into the town Mairana at 17km from Samaipata.  We passed through Los Negros at 52km, then passed by the fork to Pampagrande at 55km in the mid-afternoon.  Pampagrande was located off the road by several kilometers down into a wide valley, and we were tempted to end the day there, but we decided to move on without stopping.  We arrived in Mataral about an hour later, at 1379 meters altitude and 68km from the start.  Mataral did not look impressive, so we again decided to continue onwards towards a rumored pass, and to find a camp along the way.  We expected to get over the pass and then find camping with much time to spare before dark, but little did we know that it was almost 20km of climbing to reach the pass!  6pm arrived and we were still rounding turn after turn on the climb, each time expecting to see a pass that never appeared.  To make matters worse there was now little potential camping along the road, since we had risen high enough that the mountain dropped off steeply on either side of the road.  But at 6pm we found on nice-looking family dwelling on a large flat dirt spot, so we decided to stop and ask if we could camp somewhere nearby.  The woman who we first approached was not excited about our arrival, but her husband arrived soon after and warmly greeted us and invited us to camp on their lot.  He told us that a gringo on a bicycle had passed through two years previous, and that we would camp exactly where he had spent the night – next to the chickens right in front of their mud-brick house.  This worked great for us, and what was previously becoming a stressful situation worked out perfectly.  We ate dinner outside the tent while watching the chickens, and were asleep by 8:30pm.  Images from Day 5:

Aaron recording the inconsistent road mileage makers

 Camp at the farm before the pass
Day 6 – Pass above Mataral to Comarapa, 41km - see altitude profile
We started the morning by finishing the climb to the pass that had so frustrated us the night previous.  We stopped on the way up for Philippe to go to the bathroom, at a spot where a bus had evidently crashed the year previous, as the mountainside was dotted with at least a dozen memorial tombs - it was quite a depressing but common sight on these types of Bolivian roads.  It ended up that we had camped about an hour from the top of the pass, and we stopped at the col for snacks and drinks in a woman’s small store.  We then enjoyed a huge downhill into the next valley (about 9.5km of no pedaling) before started another long climb up to Comarapa.  We now had a strong headwind for the first time on the trip, which made the climbing quite difficult, and forced us to stay in our highest gear even though the pitch of the road was not close to what we had climbed in previous days.  We arrived in Comarapa at 1815 meters altitude in the early afternoon, exasperated from the headwind climb.  We ate lunch in the small and very nice town plaza, and decided to call it a day.  We managed to find a hotel on the main road through town called the “Paradise Hotel”.  Everyone we had asked had said that it was the best in town, but this did not allay my fears of what we would find inside before entering.  But the hotel served as just one more of many surprises during the trip, as it was super clean and nice.  We ate in the hotel that night and enjoyed another night of good sleep – little did we know that we would really need it for the following day.  Images from day 6:

Dry terrain after Samaipata
Rainbow over Comarapa
Day 7 – Comarapa to Siberia, 44km - see altitude profile
We knew fully well that Comarapa was at ~1875 meters altitude, and that the next major town of Pojo was ~69km away and at 2100 meters altitude.  We also knew that there might be a pass between the two villages at an altitude slightly higher than Pojo.  Finally, we also knew that the road turned to dirt just after leaving Comarapa, and would be dirt until we reached the town of Epizana later in the trip.  What we did not know was that there were actually two passes, both much higher altitude than we expected, with a steep descent and subsequent ascent between them, and that the second pass was located in a perpetually wet cloud forest that caused the road to turn into a mess of mud and slippery rocks. 

We spent the morning climbing out of Comarapa, and struggled on the high-pitch dirt track with a stiff headwind in our face.  We spent the entire morning in our highest gear.  We ate lunch huddled behind a mud wall outside a small village, then at 19km we reached what we thought was the high point of the road at 2650 meters.  The wind was so strong at the pass that we had to walk the bikes for several hundred meters.  The highlight of the morning was watching a farmer try to carry a huge bundle of tree branches across the road - he looked at us like we were crazy for riding in those conditions, and we looked at him like he was crazy as the bundle acted like a sail and carried him across the road.  The road then began to drop through a cloud forest, and we descended happily until late-afternoon.  At 4pm we stopped for a snack just as the road began to climb again, which we assumed would be a short exception in the generally downward trend.  A mist had begun to fall, but the weather still looked OK. 

We continued to climb for the next hour, and the mist turned to rain, and the road turned to a mess.  At 5pm we realized that we had no idea how far it might be to what was obviously a next and higher pass, which one hour previous we did not even know existed!   The road had turned to mud on the sides and greased wet boulders in the middle, we were super tired, and we had no choice but to walk the bikes to make any progress.  The road dropped off in all directions, so there were no ideal spots to camp.  At 6pm in a cold rain we decided that we might have to turnaround and go back down to find a flat spot to camp, even though this would be a disaster from a morale perspective.  I assured Philippe that if we retreated all the way back down then I would certainly be riding a bus next time we came back up.  Unfortunately it seemed like we had no choice at that point, and we made the decision to retreat.  There was one visible turn ahead of us, and it did indeed look like a promising candidate to be the top, but so had the previous dozen turns.  Even so we decided that I would walk ahead just to make sure before turning back, and would wave to Philippe if for some miraculous reason it looked like the top.  You will not believe it, but when I got to the top of the turn I stared as the road seemed to descend from there on - I could barely even see Philippe at that point, but I stayed and waved and finally he came staggering up to the same spot.  We road on another 15 minutes on flat and slightly downhill mud in search of an adequate camping spot.  Finally we found a decent flat spot off the road in what appeared to be in the middle of nowhere (no farmland in sight, although visibility was only a few hundred meters).  We quickly setup camp and spent the remaining daylight trying to heat up in our sleeping bags.  We ate dinner in the tent, and enjoyed a misty night on a 3100 meter pass that we did not even know existed.   We would discover the next morning that they called this area "Siberia".  Images from Day 7:

Climbing out of Comarapa

Aaron & the BOB
Muddy shoulder in Siberia

 Too wet to ride
Day 8 – Siberia to Totora, 29km - see altitude profile for bike to Pojo and bus to Epizana
We woke up to blue skies, but there was still a mysterious mist blowing around our tent.  It had rained much of the night, so nothing had dried from the previous day.  We got back into our wet clothes, and rode into a small town which turned out to be only a few kilometers down the road from our emergency campsite.  It was here that someone explained to us that the perpetually area of wetness where we had camped was called Siberia, and was quite famous for its cold and wet weather.  We then started the real descent, which lasted for the rest of the morning - we passed through El Churo at 3038 meters and descended all the way to Pojo at 2160 meters, where we arrived in the early afternoon.  Note that Pojo is 2km off the main road via a road paved with round boulders, but also 200 meters below the main road junction - this forces riders to decide if they really want to descend all the way into town, as it is no easy climb to get back out!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in the sun in the main plaza and trying to decide what to do.  We were committed to meeting Cecilia and her mother in 36 hours in Sehuencas, which was the name of a small village located about 14km off the main road in the middle of the tropical area often referred to as "Yungas" - it was located 600 meters lower than the main road, and contained two remote cabanas that could be rented from Cochabamba.   Cecilia had stayed at the cabanas many times before, and assured us that it was a super cool place and well worth our detour off the road.  But back to the matter at hand...we had heard that the next 70km from Pojo to Epizana covered several passes even higher than Siberia, and knew that if this were true we would not be able to make our meeting time without some help.  We made a last minute decision to hop a bus from Pojo to Epizana late that afternoon, which we hoped would put us in Epizana around 7pm in time to find a hotel before everything closed for Christmas eve.   I was quite worried as they strapped our bikes to the top of the bus, as I knew how much bumping and rocking was in store on the road ahead, but in the end they suffered no damage whatsoever.  The bus covered two high passes along the toad that we never would have been able to do in time to make Cecilia, which verified our decision. 

We arrived in Epizana just after dark, at an altitude of 2865 meters, and found that the village was no more than a stopover at the junction to Sucre – camping was too risky in town and the two hotels were far from the quality we desired (they were really bad, even by my newly calibrated standards).  We then made a last-minute decision to hop a ride to the town of Totora, which was only 13km south off the main road towards Sucre.  This served to be a good decision, as we found a nice hotel and a good dinner in Totora.  We walked through the main plaza and watched as everyone filed into church for Christmas eve mass.  Images from Day 8:
 
View from our tent, Siberia pass camp
Downhill from Siberia to Pojo
Aaron on the downhill
Muddy descent
 Finally out of the clouds
Day 9 – Totora to Sehuencas, 39km - see altitude profile
We spent the first part of the morning drying our clothes and cleaning the mud-caked bikes, which were barely shifting thanks to the heavy dirt and debris from the previous day.  We rode the 13km back to Epizana on the main road, and the town looked a little better in the daylight than it had the night previous.  We continued another 10km to Monte Punku, at an altitude of 2839 meters, where the dirt road to Sehuencas started.  We ate lunch on the side of the road at Monte Punku, as a large group of children stared at us from less than one meter away - that was as close as they dared to get and it was pretty close - Philippe could not even eat under such staring pressure. 

We then started the two-hour and 600 meter descent into a deep valley north of the road.  The dirt road crossed at least five streams of which two got us wet, and one even required complete disassembly of my trailer and several carry-crossings of bike parts.  We arrived in Sehuencas in the late-afternoon, although Cecilia and her mother were not due to arrive until early the following morning.  The area was indeed very gorgeous, as the lush tropical terrain climbed up and over the steep valley walls whose tops were invisible in the clouds.  It also looked very wet, and we were not enthusiastic about the possibility of showers throughout the night.  We chatted with the caretaker of the cabanas, who decided to let us stay on the promise that my wife would arrive the next morning with approval papers.  We switched cabanas after discovering bats flying around the first one (one even hit me square in the chest).  We made a fire with the caretaker, and managed to buy a bottle of Singani from one of the caretaker's neighbors.  This made for an excellent night in the valley:  Images from Day 9:

Hotel courtyard in Totora
Ploughing the fields near Monte Punku
Many river crossings on the way to Sehuencas

 The cabanas at Sehuencas
Day 10 – Rest day in Sehuencas
Cecilia and her mother arrived as promised in the late morning, and we spent the day together cooking and eating as much food as possible - I would discover later that I had lost at least 5 lbs during the ride, which explained our desire to consume massive amounts of BBQ.  We fished in the stream but did not catch anything, and hiked around a bit through three valley.  The highlight of the day may have been playing a game that I learned at the overnight camp I had gone to as an adolescent - it involved hitting a ball up onto a slanted rood, and then when it came bouncing back down your partner (or next in line if there were more than two people) was required to merely hit the ball back up onto the roof.  It seems simple enough, but as you get good at it you are able to accurately place the ball where your partner struggles to reach it as it comes bouncing off the roof.  Philippe was a quick learner, but I had years of experience which proved to be too much for his talent and younger age.  That night we made a huge fire, and told all of the good stories from our trip.  Images from Day 10:

Roofball, our favorite game of the trip
BBQing in Sehuencas
Bonfire in Seheuncas
Day 11 - Sehuencas to Cochabamba, then return to Houston
We packed up the jeep and left Sehuencas in the mid-morning, and climbed back up and out onto the main road.  We intended to go visit the Incallajta ruins, which the Lonely Planet referred to as the "Machu Picchu of Bolivia".  We found this label very suspicious, as the ruins were seldomly visited and were not locally known to be very famous.  Cecilia had never gone to visit despite their close proximity to Cochabamba.  Even so we figured we would give it a try and judge for ourselves.  Unfortunately we never got this opportunity - after a little under an hour of driving on the dirt access road to the ruins, we reached a point where the road had completely collapsed and fallen down into the valley below.  This was common in Bolivia, and Cecilia had told many similar stories of being stuck on the wrong side of a collapsed road.  It could not have happened more than a day before our arrival, as chunks were still crumbling when we arrived and the scene in general looked very dynamic.  We were able to scramble along the cliff to reach the other side of the chasm, but this did not really help much as the ruins were at least five more miles further down the road, and we were not even positive about that approximation.  So we turned around, and instead found a nice lunch spot overlooking the valley which was very nice.  We then spent the remainder of the afternoon driving back to Cochabamba - we had decided not to ride, so as to avoid several hours of industrial areas just outside Cochabamba.  Note that there is a 3600 meter pass along the way, just outside Cochabamba.  Just outside of town we stopped for some delicious saltenas (I think that is what they are called), which basically are dough empanadas filled with a thick meat soup.  They were excellent!

We spent the next three days enjoying Cochabamba, including a run up to the top of the Christ statue overlooking town, shopping in the market, eating, and generally enjoying the town.  Cecilia had booked us for a New Year's party at the fancy Cochabamba country club, so we had to find and buy formal outfits in the market - this proved to be an easy task, and I still use the tie for work today!  Adam Berkelhamer, one of my old buddies from Chicago, and his wife Angela had recently quit their jobs and were spending a year traveling the world.  By coincidence they were in South America at the same time as us, and had decided to meet us for New Year's in Cochabamba.  It was quite odd having a friend from so far away (and another life really) show up on our doorstep in Bolivia, and we had a great two days catching up together.  We had a fun New Year's at the club, then Philippe left at 6am the following morning for his three-day trip home.  Cecilia and I also said our goodbyes to everyone later that afternoon, and flew to La Paz for an overnight layover at 3700 meters altitude before our return flight to Miami.   The previous two weeks had been one of the best trips of my life, and I will certainly never forget some of the adventures that we had while crossing Bolivia.   A few images from our days in Cochabamba:

Philippe and Cecilia, view down from the Christ statue overlooking Cochabamba
Aaron, Adam, and Angela at the Christ statue

 New outfits for New Year's


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