Balancing Bolivia

When it was fashionable for men in the City of London to wear Bowlers, did they ever struggle to keep them on? Perhaps they never rushed, or the wind never inconveniently blew, but I don't remember photos of those purposeful gentlemen with one hand on their hats to stop them from escaping or images of them reaching to the ground to pick one up. I'm sure those Bowlers were fitted, that they were made to measure.

If you are a Chola lady in Bolivia the key to wearing your Bowler is not to have it firmly attached. They favour balancing them precariously on their heads so that any movement too violent sends them flying or someone else who is keen on owning one can simply grab it and run. It makes an already unusual outfit seem even trickier to live in. I saw women stuggling with their bowlers as they mounted buses, finding it impossible to keep them on as they harvested potatoes, battling with them in the brutal altiplano winds. It is a real art sporting that headgear.

And yet this precarious balancing act is the perfect analogy when weighing up Bolivia as a whole. From the calm perspective of a sojourn in Chile it seems a place juggling different worlds, where life exists in extremes, where so many things seem to be teetering on the edge.

Conquering the Andes

We were in Bolivia for a little over a month in the end. It felt like a lifetime. The last few weeks have been, in every sense, a ride. Think of all the other old travel writing cliches about rollercoasters and 'countries of contrasts', and then add a few yourself.  From the scarcity of blogs that we've managed to write, you have probably interpreted that high technology - and, indeed, most other 'normal' creature comforts - have been in low supply.  We will not be forgetting Bolivia in a hurry.

We are now down at the Pacific coast, revelling in Chilean civilisation.  On a trip like this, you try very hard to take all situations alike, and like a sports interview 'take the positives' out of all predicaments, however tough.  But hell it's nice to be back for a brief stint in a land of shops and real coffee and ATM machines and night temperatures in double figures on the comfortable side of the zero mark.

Salacious Stories

We knew we were in trouble when the punning began.

We biked towards the Uyuni salt flats and the white emptiness started to stretch out before us. It played with our minds. Almost immediately we were joking about our impending assault? Would it be plain saline? Were we salivating at the prospect? How would we cope with this simply collosal challenge? And on and tragically on.

The Other Cyclists Took the Train

We had been warned.  The various websites and local accounts we had paid attention to had told us in no uncertain terms that the "road" from Tupiza to Uyuni was a brute.  Indeed, one blog, written by a man who had been cycling for 4 years, said it was the worst road he had experienced.  So we shouldn´t really have been surprised.  But the last five days have been Tough.  If we are tested any more sternly than the last 300km, we might just hang up our cycling shoes.  Or just take the train, like most other cyclists we´ve met going this way.

Follow the yellow dust road (or pink or grey)

We´re not in Kansas anymore. A tornado has blown this Dorothy and Toto (you decide!) away from their `home´of the last four months somewhere over the rainbow.

We´d only been in Bolivia for three minutes when Phil was attacked by the Wicked Witch of the West. Admittedly she was a rather small, ancient version and not actually green but it was still quite a shock to look up from my bike by the public toilets, yards from the border post, to see Phil batting a old lady off as gently as he could as she tore and grabbed at his jacket. It was rather like watching a bemused Great Dane being attacked by a Chihuahua. Apparently the public toilets were not public, but her personal preserve, and she wanted him to pay for his privilege. So far, so faaaaar!