A female solo cycling trip in South America, from LaPaz, Bolivia to Ushuaia, Argentina between October 2013 and March 2014

LaPaz-Oruro - country under construction

by Stephanie Chevalier October 15 2013, 08:34 On the road

After my last post, I was supposed to leave LaPaz with a Canadian couple and a Swiss couple, but when we left the Casa I quickly realized that the weight of my belongings was not properly organized among my saddlebags, which created strong vibrations in the entire bike frame, so I decided to give myself one more day of preparation to be ready to leave in good conditions. When I finalized my packing, Wojtek, a Polish cyclist who I'd leave with and myself went for a little ride in town to get a feel of the loaded bike. Wojtek has been travelling for 6 months already and started his trip in Brazil where he got all his equipment stolen on the very first hour of biking, and the community where he was helped him gather everything he needed to go on with his journey. Riding worked much better than in the morning, despite my pounding heart and strong breathing in the uphill, as I still wasn't fully acclimatised to the high altitude.

We finally left The City on Friday, with a lovely French couple from Britanny, Élise and Emmanuel. They are both teachers and started their adventure 3 months ago in Cusco, in Peru. Élise is funny, she claims not to be a sporty girl but already cycled 2000 km. We started our trip by a steady uphill for 15 km, I was glad that Élise enjoyed biking at a peaceful pace, it allowed me to follow without too much difficulties; I know if I hadn't stayed behind her I would have pushed myself too much and would have struggled more than I have. The altitude will probably teach me to go at a steady, chilled pace!

It was exciting for me to discover the landscapes as I hadn't been out of the City since the Yungas trip, I was also really happy to be in company of cyclists who had been travelling for months and knew how to handle the crazy trafic, with fun honks and sticks with flags pointing out on the left side of their bikes to prevent the cars and trucks from driving too close from them.

The 4 days of biking to Oruro were rather smooth, we cycled partly on the main road with the cars, partly on the brand new road sections that are being built. As I mentioned in a previous post, Bolivia is investing in its infrastructures, including the pavement of 1679 km of road. Cycling this area will be much easier once the construction work is done, but for now the 230 km we travelled are a huge construction site. The country is changing quickly!

We camped every night in fields close from the road, we had to be careful of the time as the sun goes down around 7PM, and the temperature drops very quickly so we needed to have our tents ready and bellies full in order to go to bed when the chill would arrive. Even though we cycled only 50 to 60 km per day, I feel that my body needs the 10-11 hours of sleep every night. A few highlights of the trip: Elise and Emmanuel's friends gave them challenges to do during their trip, and one of them was to eat a cheese fondue in the traditional French style, so Wogtek and I volunteered to help them eat this amazing meal one night. They also had brought a Ukulele so we enjoyed a nice little concert while digesting all that food. And the night before arriving in Oruro, we ended up in a little village where we hid under the gazebo, as it was raining pretty hard. As it was really cold and getting dark, the people from the village offered us to sleep in the City Hall, which was amazing considering the weather conditions. So we all slept under Evo Morales' portrait, surrounded by left-overs of coca leaves that people must chew during the city meetings.

Yesterday Elise and Manu took another road to reach Cochabamba, while Wojtek and I headed towards Oruro where we stayed in a really kitch hotel one night, the time to get more food and wash some clothes. Oruro is a fairly big city (about 250.000 people) living mostly of mining industry, which means it has highs and lows. We can see that it used to be pretty wealthy considering the amount of art in public spaces, and the fancy parks, but it is currently struggling. Oruro also hosts the second biggest carnival after Rio de Janeiro's. We were welcomed by a protest of the lower classes complaining about corruption in the city hall.

Today we'll be heading to Sucre, the capital city of Bolivia, where Wojtek and I will take some Spanish classes for a couple of weeks. We should be out of reach for about a week; it seems like the first 200 km of road we'll ride are paved, but the 150 remaining km seem to be unpaved and sketchy, so we'll take the time we need to get there.

From the beginning of the trip I was a bit torn between the idea of riding south straight away to cover as much ground as possible, or taking my time to explore more this country, and go with the flow; it seems like the second option won, which I'm pretty happy about, especially because my level of Spanish barely works for asking my way. Cristian, Luisa and Alejandro have been amazing in LaPaz, teaching me as much as they could (for example they had put pieces of paper with names of everything on the kitchen table), but I need more solid skills if I want to communicate a bit more.

Hopefully the rain season waits a bit longer before hitting Bolivia...