Dark and Dirty Thursday: 11hrs of dusty roads

An early start: 8am and we're off. Immediately the easy going tarmac is replaced by dusty trails. We climb, again, and are soon threading our way along the side of the steep mountains. They are green with vegetation including eucalyptus (introduced by the Spanish for its strength) and not like the harsh rocky terrains we followed in India. Occasionally there's a gash in the mountainside, presumably from a landslide, a stark reminder that nature is in charge.

Who's the boss?  Nature of course!

At lunch we stop; our faces testament to the harsh road conditions.

Steve 'Krusty' King

'Dirty' Danny Rogers

Richard 'not so' White

The roads are winding and on some bends there are sheer drops awaiting you if you become careless. But we are all careful and skillfully make progress.

The day is really dominated by three events: a broken footpeg on Danny's bike; a puncture on Graham's; and Mark's dead Suzuki DRZ-400. Each in themselves would not be a big deal, but together they extended our day to eleven hours on the road and meant that we rode the last hour or so in the dark - the last 30min in pitch black.

On our trips we usually avoid travelling at night because it's more dangerous, India in particular has many vehicles on the roads at night without lights, or if present, switched off to conserve fuel! Bolivia seems more orderly in this perspective (no one here relies on Karma to keep them safe!) so riding at night is not SO bad. Unless of course it is YOU that has no lights!.....

Three of our mounts, being dedicated offroad bikes, had no lights, front or back. That meant Danny, Gerard and our leader, Cory were effectively riding blind - with steep drops awaiting a wrong turn. At first with the fading light it wasn't too bad, but eventually they had real problems (except 'Cats Eyes' Gerard who seemed to be able to ride with his eyes closed!) We arranged ourselves so that the 'dark' bikes were ridden between illuminated bikes, the tail rider on full beam to light the road in front of the dark bike. It worked, to a point; corners could be challenging as the dark bike entered it before the tail bike could turn its beam in that direction. The trick was for the tail bike to follow very closely behind; not so easy when the dark bike's dust obscured the road's tricky contours. At one point Cory came off on a damp patch, but luckily he was unscathed.

The headlight beams also throw up random shapes as you ride: man with cowboy hat, man waving, car with no lights, child running across road. These of course are all figments of our imagination, making progress rather jumpy at times.

We reached Chulumani's San Bartolome hotel in the dark around 7pm. To us it was more than just our hotel for the night, it was relief and safe harbour protecting us from the dangerous dark lurking outside. Dinner and bed; we're all very tired, and dirtier than usual.

The "Health Spa look" proves popular that evening

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