Heavy black clouds fill the evening sky to the south. They stand in contrast to the pale, sloping, open land all around us. The impending storm is the last thing we need as we try to finish our day. Every few minutes I see huge bolts of lightning striking down to the desert. I listen for thunder to see how far away it might be. I can even make out the lines of raindrops falling from the clouds in some spots. The wind is blowing into our faces lightly, telling us about what lies ahead. Different types of cacti pop out all over, silhouettes in the distance. Some, closer to the road, show off beautiful red and white flowers blooming off their tops. Doesn't look like land that sees much rain. I catch myself scanning it all for too long, then hitting a rock too hard or ending up on the wrong part of the road. A dustcloud in the distance tells me there is a vehicle coming soon. It is quiet and lonely on this road in southern Bolivia. I have time to think about everything.
The storm is right in our path as we slowly creep closer, stirring up dust under our wheels. For over an hour I watch the dark mass float across the sky. The dirt road stretches on and on, and with each big sweeping turn I try to figure out how long it will be until we are under the storm. I picture us scrambling to set up tents, already wet, dreading a night of sitting in them waiting out the storm, thinking of Argentina and the border we can't seem to find.
The road is so slow I can't believe it. My hands and back are sore from the washboard. All day long we are searching for a good line in the road, moving from one side to the other, trying to avoid the sharkfins of rock and the bone-rattling bumps. We have been going gradually uphill all day, but I have no idea what elevation we are at anymore---somewhere between 3500 and 4000 meters. The map tells us Tupiza is just under 3000 meters. It's our last town before the border. I know that somewhere there will be a descent. Maybe its just around the lonely, rocky, barren peak in front of us. Maybe not. We don't have elevation graphs now like we did through much of the Andes. But I know there's still at least 30 kilometers to the town, and we're running out of daylight quick. Tupiza is our destination for the day, around 100 kilometers from the little town of Cotagaita where we had woken up to a new year.
But earlier when we stopped for lunch around four o'clock with only 30 miles under our belts after five hours of pedaling, I'd written Tupiza off with a sigh. There was no way we could make it. I couldn't stop looking at my watch. Too many kilometers...not enough daylight...no love from the road. We were going to be stuck in the desert for the night, short of our destination, foiled by the road and the terrain again. And no good dinner on board. Things were not looking good. My attitude had gone sour at that stop. Not making Tupiza meant not making Argentina the next day, as we had planned...domino affect against us. And we'd already had to change our three day plan from Potosi to the border after hitting the dirt roads and facing a bunch of mechanicals. Things slowing down. Plans blowing up. I didn't like it. Too many miles remained today. It would be impossible given the roads.
Our day had been broken up and slow from the beginning. Only ten kilometers out of Cotagaita, the flat, dirt road ran into an area that had been doused by a flash flood from the rain during the night. The road was gone.under a knee-deep, 100 foot wide flow of muddy water, people and vehicles on both sides trying to figure out how to get across. There was only one option for us. Take off our shoes, unhook the trailers, hoist them over our heads, and hike them across the water, returning for the bikes. We each trudged across the river four times to transport our rigs. It was a scene---a crazy experience to have on New Year's Day. It was a slow process. We even hung around to cheer on a bus driver as he barrelled the giant machine through the river. But, between all that and the slow, difficult roads, the day had become dragged out and tiresome. Now I knew we'd be stuck in Bolivia for another day, dreaming of the border we'd been pursuing for almost seven months, with a demoralizing and torturous road sitting between us and it. It just wasn't fair.
Pondering all of this, I had sat with my back against a tree, looking out across a desolate stretch, a few mud huts in the foreground and one drunk guy singing to himself. I was gnawing on a piece of bread with butter and jelly on it, and then an apple, all the time smelling the dried-up, questionable can of something-that-was-supposed-to-be tuna fish that I'd dumped out on the ground to make sure I wouldn't have to eat it. Spoon did the same and Duncan never even thought about it. The tuna situation had become ridiculous by now. Food in general had become difficult in Bolivia. It was rough not being able to find anything that filled us up in the little tiendas through the mountains. It was getting to me. I wasn't speaking to the boys, who scrounged for snacks to call lunch on the other side of the tree. We were all disappointed about the way our day was going, me the most at this moment. But this had become a typical scene in Bolivia by now. We were used to it. There was always something trying to slow us down, and this unexpected, desolate 200 mile stretch of beat-up dirt roads was doing a good job of it.
I brought my negative feelings out onto the road. Morale was low and it hit me hard. We rode with some space between us for a while. I pedalled in silence, wondering how it could have become so hard to get miles---to get to our border. After some time in the saddle, looking out across my surroundings, I came around. Of course the Argentina border wouldn't come easy. Why should it? Almost seven months thinking about it as we moved down the road. It won't just appear. It won't be given to us. We chose the line. Now we have to do it. We decided to spend weeks up in the mountains, at high elevations, fighting rain, hail, cold, rough roads, steeps, ascents and descents. The 200 miles of dirt road wasn't specified on our map. No one told us. It was a surprise. Now we had to deal with it. "Suck it up, Jake!" I thought. "It's our line. Be patient and it will end. Negativity helps nothing. Turn your mind around." So I did.
Duncan was now riding close to me on the other side of the road looking for a good path. He was probably thinking about the same things. I decided to break the silence.
"What did we eat for lunch in Alaska? I asked him.
"Peanut butter and jelly bagels," he said. "And Clif Bar and trail mix."
"Oh yeah. Man, that was good," I said, longingly. "We got nothin' now!"
"I know. It's ridiculous," he said, and we kept pedaling over ruts and bumps at 5 mph, looking ahead at the storm up the road. "Spoon's back a bit. He told me his knee is starting to hurt from biking out of the saddle because his ass hurts so bad."
"Yeah. He's not doin' too good with that today. Maybe we should hold up a minute."
He caught up, and when we asked him how he was doing, he groaned without a word and kept going. No one was happy. But we all had to keep going.
Around a corner, a huge climb appeared. Duncan was ahead. I know we all thought the same thing. "This is ridiculous. That thing into a storm at the end of a day like this. Great!" No choice but to climb it. Just pedal. So we did. Luckily, I felt good. I'd finally accepted the day for what it was and felt ready for whatever we were about to face.
At the top, Duncan and I waited. Spoon summitted not far behind us. He was not happy. I could see it in his face. He dropped his trailer to park the bike and it started to fall over, as they do sometimes. He finished the job by kicking the whole rig to the ground. Duncan and I looked at each other silently. We were like, "Whoa."
"How you doin', Cuchara?" Duncan asked. Not a word. He picked up his bike and sped off down the hill. He was headed right into the storm with a vengeance. We followed. "Maybe this hill will bring us right to Tupiza," I said. That was a best-case scenario, almost like a far-fetched wish. But it was the only thing that could get us there in time. I prepared for a dirt descent on old, worked tires, with tired bodies and minds, right into a storm. Perfect!
We rattled down the roads, winding through the mountains on ridges along a deep canyon. The bright red rock against the dark clouds looked incredible. Trucks blew past us as we concentrated on the road and tried to hold it together. I was on my brakes so much that my rims heated up, and I needed to stop for a minute. My hands were killing me from getting beat up so bad on the handlebars. But the views were incredible, and it still hadn't rained on us. The descent continued on for so long. Over 20 kilometers and more than a half an hour later, we saw a welcome to Tupiza sign and couldn't believe it. Spoon was waiting there, smiling. He was better. The descent had cured him. He loves to go fast.
It was getting dark and the storm was now to the west. We'd never gotten under it and had miraculously made our town, set deep down in the canyon, surrounded on all sides by dry, red rock mountains. It was a cozy little haven for us. We cruised through the town, casing the joint as we always do, looking for places to eat and maybe to sleep. We were tired. We had been on the road since 9 in the morning and it was almost 8 o'clock. I was so happy to have made it to another island after being convinced we would be stuck out in it for the night. Now we would make the border with one more day of riding. Argentina was starting to seem real.
One more long day finally brought us there. The arch over the road said "Bienvenidos a Argentina." I am happy to say that I am writing this in a city well into the north of Argentina, a city called Salta where we have found the South American summer. We are now in the foothills of the giant mountains and we are revelling in the fact that we can say we rode our bikes from Alaska to Argentina, just like it says on our stickers. We did it. It feels good. Already there are more stories I'd love to post here. Stories about our final ascent to 4000 meters just into Argentina where we faced icy rain, covered in all our gear trying to stay warm and had to hide under a bridge for 12 hours. The descent through the Quebrada de la Huamacha. The quick change in climate from dry desert highlands to lush green foothills filled with butterflies and fireflies, chirping birds and soft grass, lakes and inviting, tree-covered hills. It is warm and humid and alive all around us. We are happy to be here peadlling through the summer.
But the story for now is about getting to that border, about what it took to piece together that section of the line we chose---a line that ran across these powerful, all-consuming mountains called the Andes. From Cusco to Puno and Lake Titicaca, La Paz and Bolivia, we explored the roads. For much of the time they were flat. We cruised along the altiplano under the sun and watched the clouds, hardly believing we were over 12,000 feet. Other times, roads were steep and challenging and it was harder to breathe near the summits. There were all sorts of roads and situations and experiences we three understand. We made some memories. We have learned about the culture of the people by being in it. One night we camped near a little place where about twenty people live. A woman made us dinner on her clay stove in the front of her dwelling, smashing tomatoes and peppers with a rock to make a picante sauce. I played flutes with the kids and we took pictures and showed them. Duncan gave one of the older fathers a headlamp and one of the kids ran around with it excitedly. We answered their questions and recalled stories while they gave us beer and a Bolivian liquor called sangani. It was a beautiful experience. I enjoyed looking up at the stars that night before drifting off to sleep.
Other nights we spent far from anyone, way out in it all, talking to each other and listening to the quiet. On the roads we saw women carrying babies on their backs in colorful sacks they tie around their shoulders, all wearing the traditonal clothes. People working their land with homemade plows and oxen. Herds of llama and vicuna roaming the land...donkeys, horses, chickens, roosters, dogs, animals all over. We saw little towns and cities, met all sorts of people. It's always exciting. It was one phase of this long voyage. We talk now about Alaska survivors...things we find in our stuff that was in Alaska with us. The trip has had so many phases. And we're still in it. Our bikes have taken on personalities. We have learned about each other, about situations, about hardships and challenges. We have changed as we have lived it. We loved the mountains. It was a special part of our voyage.
We are one step closer to Ushuaia all the time. Now we will experience Argentina, as we pursue the southernmost city in the world and wonder what it might be like to one day finish this journey. I know it will be interesting as it unfolds. We are accustomed to life on our bikes...life far from home. But we miss home as well, and dream of the day we return. And I am thankful for having made it this far. We have been blessed with good luck and I thank whatever force is responsible for that and pray for it to continue.
I'll let one dream lead to another.
