Our travel log

With black market fuel and good advice from the boys at Moto tours Bolivia, we headed out for some of the nicest riding of the trip so far: the 500km sand track from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Day 1: after being held up over another petrol delay around 100km down the road. We just missed the petrol station as they went for lunch. We managed to find the black market dealer, a tyre place, but that guy wasn't in. So we had to wait till 2pm before heading off.

The navigation was fairly easy, we just followed the jeeps. The main turn off was onto a tiny jeep track, not what we were expecting. We watched a jeep head out that way and decided to follow. Lucky for us, this was the right track. The american danny decided against this plan (riding seperately) and headed out towards Chile border before regressing and running out of gas on the side of the road. We managed to camp next to Laguna Helondia to see pink flamingos and mountains. Time on bikes: ca. 5hrs

Day 2: Time on bike: 4ish hours. We found the nasty sand corrugations the guys warned us about, and as a consequence chris spent as much time off the bike winging about crumpet muching as she did on the bike - but its not hard to spend time off the bike here - it was some of the most stunning scenery we've ever seen - like we were on another planet. Deep sand saw al drop his bike, but no problems as we arranged to have panniers carried to avoid broken legs. We spent a couple of hours watching flamingos on the stunning laguna colorado before heading to the southern end of the lake to do a gear (and food) sort in preparation for chilean customs.

Day 3: Our bikes made the climb to 5050m no problems - thanks to chris's jet fix, she was getting seal level mileage from her little bike, and it was running sweet. We then had pleasant dip in the hot springs where danny caught us up. After a feed (lama, yummy) we headed off to languna verde to collect al's panniers, and then dropped 2000m to san pedro atacama. Time on bikes: 5 hours.

Overall, this was the most stunning ride of the trip. Chris was stoked as she finally learnt how to ride sand (easy, carry 12 litres of fuel  as well as a normal load to weigh the back down and let the front float) and managed a *hard* (suposedly) track without dropping the bike. This place is like another world.... it was unreal, heavanly, and so worth it. A do not miss for anyone in south america.