#52 Sleeping in a Riverbed During Rainy Season - La Quiaca to Sucre

Bolivia: the poorest country in South America; the cheapest country in South America; a country with bland, unflavoured food, where you are guaranteed to contract food poising at least once; a country with unpassable roads, roads likely to age your bike by years in months. All this we had heard before arriving in Bolivia. So why did we want to go? Well aside from the favourable fiscal aspect, we were willing to rough it for a while for what promised to be an adventure unprecedented to what we had previously experienced. How wrong, and right, we were.

Before even entering Bolivia we noticed the difference in our surroundings. While we were waiting at customs in the slowest moving line in history to have our passports stamped, we watched as men and women jogged freely across the border, a bridge separating the two countries. Why was it acceptable for them to push crates of goods for import into Bolivia, anything from coca-cola to napppies, while we and many others were made to wait for hours to go through the immigration procedures?

Many women in Bolivia, young and old, wear traditional dress. One prominent look includes a pleated, flowing knee length skirt in one's chosen colour, matched with a lace-made button-less top in a different colour, knitted cardigan and knitted stockings. The most striking aspect is how women wear their hair: in two long, tightly plaited braids tied in black with what look to me like curtain ties. On top is a hat, sometimes a bowler hat, some-times a wide-brimmed straw hat. Women often slip an apron over top and carry babies or things in brightly striped blankets tied across their back.

Not two hours in we stopped for lunch and I broken the cardinal rule and ordered a salad with our lunch. After thinking we might have to camp, dinner was sourced from three different tiendas (kiosks) - I didn't even bother looking for a supermarket having heard such a thing doesn't exist in Bolivia. I finally found salsa, one half of our standard camping meal of pasta, in one store seemingly run by a elderly women who was perched on a stool low to the ground eating her lunch. When I questioned the price of the salsa she responded by calling out to someone up the store's stairs. Only two dogs descended, so again I said I just want to know how much it is in order to pay. Only response was some uncomprehendable mutterings as she attempted to rise from the stool. As she was clearly struggling I helped her up again asking the price and again, no response. Someone appeared from upstairs and by the way she was shouting to her in one ear I gathered she must be deaf. No wonder no response to the question. Fortunately her family appeared not long after.

With dinner bought for the evening we were prepared to camp if need be, and it was needed after passing through only small villages containing houses constructed of adobe mudbrick. There seemed little option but to  bush camp or push on to Potosi, but at over 4,000 metres high, even bush camping seemed a better option than sleeping in the highest city in the world without acclimatising first. There seemed so many perfect spots too, until we decided it was time to stop for the evening. Half an hour we searched without seeing one spot where we wouldn't be visible from the road. Finally we settled on a dry riverbed - what better place to camp - in amongst cacti, on stones and with the possibility of a leaking tent should it rain!

Next day (no rain) breakfast from a local 'restaurant' consisted of some stale bread, margarine, and instant coffee with lumpy powdered milk. It was a better option than what else was on offer - soup! Our surroundings - walls coated with every poster the owners could get their hands on - a contrast of harry potter to naked ladies advertising high-end cars. Across the road we tried to purchase some petrol only to be denied seemingly because we were white. We had heard before entering Bolivia that a new law passed by the left-leaning, some would say foreigner-hating, government of  Eva Morales meant foreign plated vehicles must pay three times the price for petrol in Bolivia. At an exchange of $1.20 it is not all bad but a little frustrating given the low grade of the gas (around 85 octane I think). The bigger problem is the refusal to sell given the additional paperwork required. We were denied this time but were able to get some a few kilometres further North.

We headed for the white-washed city of Sucre to be greeted by kids with water guns and balloons. Seems that carnaval had reached Sucre with globos being the weapon of choice and gringos, of which there were plenty, the central target. Even on our bike we were not safe from being pelted by water. At least we had the protection of helmets and waterproof gear. Not so when we headed out for dinner later that night. We had to get a couple of disposable plastic panchos but that did not protect against people popping baloons right on your neck causing water to run down your back. We sat through dinner a little damp and cold. It didn't matter - we had a luxurious room to return to later in celebration of my upcoming birthday which would be spent while working on a farm outside Sucre for three weeks. In our four-post bed, after a hot bath, and enjoying pisco sours on the roof terrace we felt worlds away from the Bolivia so many tourists had told us about. The real adventure clearly yet to begin.

View of Sucre