Since yesterday’s confusion had led us to discover the correct way out of Potosi toward Uyuni, we arose early, ready to head straight out of town. Duane pulled my bike out of the parking garage onto the street then went back for his. While I waited for him, an hombre came up to me, pointed to his cell phone, and asked me something in Spanish. I replied “no hablo Espanol”, but he kept babbling. Repeat “no hablo Espanol”. Finally he gave up and walked away. I thought he seemed like a bit of a jerk.
Turning back to my bike, my jaw dropped! My backpack was gone! It had been secured to the back seat with a cargo net, but the jerk’s partner in crime had sliced the net and grabbed the pack. I don’t believe it! We had read about these scam artists working in La Paz, but we were in the little town of Potosi. Grrrr…….. Gone were the electronic translator Tara and Dan gave us for Christmas, my control for my heated jacket liner, bug repellant, our cherished toilet paper, etc, etc. What a way to start the day. Did I say I want to go to Chile?!!!
The gravel road was decent, and the scenery reminded us of parts of Utah. There was also a deep canyon not unlike the Snake River canyon in Idaho.
After driving for a couple of hours, we happened upon a river crossing. What an excellent opportunity it was to wash the bikes. They were disgustingly dirty, and we felt we could take time to wash them now since we only had about 200 kms to ride today, apparently on a hard-packed road.
While we were washing away, along came 2 bikes which we had seen in the hotel parkade in La Paz. They stopped and introduced themselves as Argentineans who were on a month-long adventure. We chatted about various roads we could choose on our journey to Ushuaia.
While we were discussing routes, a local farmer came wandering down the road and we had a great chat with him. Finally we had to end our social gathering as big storm clouds were building. Off we went, heading for Uyuni before the rain.
Although the road was rough, the rest of the day was uneventful and we arrived at the chosen hotel in Uyuni early enough to have a good supper and check our email before hitting the sack.
Tomorrow we will check out the Cementario de Trens (train graveyard) that Duane had discovered on the internet before we left home. Then we would get ourselves out of Bolivia to Chile and better roads. Riiiight!!
