Getting Out Of Bolivia

After the battery fiasco on the Salar de Uyuni and the temporary, make-shift solution of the new undersized battery and homemade jumper cables, we were eager to make our escape from Uyuni and our way to Chile. We soon found out how utterly deceptive our maps were with respect to road quality. My Hammond Map of South America made Route 5 (701 on other maps) to Ollague, Chile, appear as a super highway. However, a local tour guide in Uyuni set us straight: “Just stick to the biggest dirt road going southeast.” As with the ride from Potosti to Uyuni, we were in for some adventurous riding in one of the most remote areas in one of the most remote countries in South America. We were riding in a high plain desert (over 12,000 feet) on some very rough, loose-gravel roads. Nevertheless, the landscape had an amazing beauty of its own.

After several hours of riding in the high desert of Bolivia, we were happy to come to the remote and barren frontier crossing near Ollague, Chile. Unlike our unpleasant border crossings in Central America, getting out of Bolivia and into Chile was a breeze, relatively speaking. Our only disappointment was the later realization that one of the Chilean border officials had had some fun with us in advising us on the ease and rapidity that we would experience on the road from Ollague to Calama.

Salt piles, big pink birds and storm clouds made the isolation erie at timesThen the sun would come out but the dirt got deep and soft in places.

The Vibration Gods claimed its first mud guard.

After pounding along on a deteriorating gravel road for miles on end, it became clearly apparent that we had had our legs pulled and were in for another tough stretch. The bright side of the experience was another opportunity to gaze upon some fascinating terrain of high deserts, more salt flats, and mountains framed by an incredibly blue sky. Eventually, we came to the paved portion of the road to Calama and were able to make illegally good time to our destination. We found that Calama was a good-sized town with numerous hotels and restaurants and a lovely town square. The source of the prosperity we learned was the abundance of copper and the extensive mining operations in the area.