The Longest Night (Part 2)

By now I had a couple of thousand kilometres of these types of Andean tracks under my belt. I knew there would be signs at the roadside, and I knew what they would say:

"ZONA DE DERRUMBES". Landslide Zone. I couldn't see them, but knew they must be there.

There would be other signs too - Maybe a good old "ZONA GEOLOGICA INESTABLE" (which I'll let you translate), and probably a few "NO DEJE PIEDRAS EN LA PISTA" (Don't put rocks on the road) too. But the derrumbes were what should have concerned me.

When you're peering into the inky blackness of the Peruvian night up a mountain after a long, painful, liquor-coated day, your eyes can play tricks on you. You nearly take bends that aren't there, miss bends you're right on top of, and imagine a giant two-metre boulder right in your path which leaves you fractions of a second to react.

Then a giant two-metre boulder is right in your path which leaves you fractions of a second to react.

My laughter echoes in the bracing wind, and as I'm picking my way down the mountain the track turns to asphalt. What luxury! I start fooling myself into believing that now it's suddenly perfectly safe, even though I still can't see a thing.

There's still the odd landslide to dodge, just to keep me on my toes, but then a giant glowing sphere of good fortune appears. The moon has risen, and she lights my way beautifully. I can see the bends before I have to go round them, so I click the engine into gear, bump-start the engine, ruining the silent mountain night, and am soon powering round the hairpin bends. It all seems a little too easy...

Not to worry though, my luck won't hold for long. Now I understand that sight is indeed a blessing, but some things you just don't want to see. Some things are best left a surprise. There was a sign, and now under the stark light of my always-reliable friend I could actually see it:

"ZONA DE NEBLINA". Fog Zone. Now I was descending, I would have to go back down through the cloud. It was inevitable, but I didn't want to know.

And then, all too soon, I was in the thick, soupy fog, which was now glowing by the moonlight and my vision was as bad as ever. I shift back down through the gears to neutral, and kill the motor. I'm back to my silent night-running, and can get over 50 km/h between the hairpin bends without the engine anyway, which is way too fast when I can barely see past my front wheel.

Somewhere down in the valley I'm descending into I see a pair of faint, small, red lights. They're winding down the road, and are hidden most of the time, but pop into view for a few seconds at a time. If I can catch up with this other vehicle, which probably has headlights, I can just follow it without all this ridiculous mental strain I'm under reacting to the road as it falls beneath my wheels.

The engine's back on, and I'm storming down. The road seems to be getting predictable, just evenly spaced hairpins, and I was getting good at the split-second steering inputs needed to stay on two wheels. As long as there's no more landslides, I have a chance. I still have no idea how I did it, but I did, and within a few minutes I was behind a truck, which did indeed have it's very own headlights.

As long as it stayed on the road, so would I. Or so I thought.

I hadn't been following for more than a minute when my back wheel quickly started flailing around, and my moto was bucking wildly as I rolled to a stop at the roadside. Watching my precious lights drive away into the clouds knowing exactly where they were going was heartbreaking. I had fought for them, I had earned them, and they didn't even know I existed.

I knew before I looked that I had a flat tyre. Then remembered a conversation with Enzo (in Valpo) months before. "Please, take the can Eddie, you never know - sometime you might not want to, or have the time to, play with tyre levers and patches".

Enzo had given me a can of tyre repair liquid. I'd said I didn't need it because I had patches and could fix them myself, but in his wisdom he'd made me take it. This was that time he was talking about - it was cold and dark and I was in pain and mentally exhausted.

It would only take seconds to spray some gunk in the tube, I could even catch up with my sacred lights. If it worked.

A healthy squirt of goo and some frantic pump-stamping later and I was back on road. But it hadn't worked, I didn't get 200 metres before I was stopped again. The lights were long gone, and I wouldn't see them, or any others for a while.

As I got off the moto a loud dog appeared, barking angrily. It stressed my mind, but I knew I had to stay cool. If I rushed and fudged something it could waste a lot of time. The patching went okay, and the exercise kept me warm, I'd been getting really cold riding down through the damp cloud.

I didn't know the time and I didn't want to. I'd hidden some chocolate for desperate times in my tool kit, and this was the time. I hoped when I found a town to sleep in that somewhere to buy a hot meal would still be open, but I had no idea how far I had to ride and what I might find. So chocolate would do for now.

Well, I rolled down the mountain safe in the knowledge that everything that could go wrong, had. I had a new sense of calm, and before long I came back down out of the cloud. I started seeing villages, which meant I was probably going to come across a town, and I could finally end my day.

I'm pootling through one of these villages, pretending I'm warm and cosy already, when a dog jumps off a verge on my right, from head height, barking maniacally. It was so sudden, and scared me for a moment in the quiet night. As it landed next to my right foot I instinctively kicked out at it. As my leg stretched out my trousers rode up from my ankle and as some pink flesh exposed for a fraction of a second the beast clamped it's teeth around it.

I couldn't believe it. When will this day end?

Well, it turned out it was soon after. I rolled into Abancay, found a friendly alojamiento, a hot and tasty pollo a la brasa and a well-deserved cerveza.

Phew.

The Longest Day (Part 1)

There weren't any signs. It could have been either way at the fork.

I've been riding without a map for a month now. I've been using my seemingly-infinite faith in humanity to guide me through. My logic follows thus: A map can easily be out of date, but local knowledge is likely to be up-to-date. I've quickly found which people are likely to know more than others. But am still surprised often.
Taxi drivers know less than you might think. Police and Army are always a good bet. Bus drivers aren't likely to give you the time of day. Whatever information you glean, every single time distance and time are subjective. Very subjective. Whoever you ask will at least pretend to know the way, or agree with the first suggestion, so averaging large samples is the only way towards any semblance of accuracy, but some days the available sample is one lone boy...

"Was that a house?" I thought to myself, "Or just another seemingly abandoned hut in the middle of nowhere?" This thought process was after I'd already gone left, using only the force to help decide.

I'm going up a winding, rocky track in the Peruvian Andes - you could say off the beaten track, but I'm not sure that would do it justice. Maybe my decision-making skills are off today, back on the asphalt road the restaurant owner hadn't let me leave without three healthy samples of his sugar cane liquor, and beer was cheaper than a soft drink. Not quite the snack I'd imagined, but it left me confident for the day ahead.
I look back over my shoulder for a second to assess the building I'd passed, as I came to the conclusion that rational thinking might, for once, trump Star Wars mysticism. I was wrong, but who was to know at the time.

While I'm looking back the rear of the moto drifts out a touch too far. I face forward and in a flash am up on the pegs, leaning my body into the drift in a desperate attempt to catch my momentum. I over-correct and as the back wheel slides out the other way it grips suddenly and she pivots, throwing me off and over her, up the slope we're climbing into the dusty rocks.

It's called a highside. It's the cause of a lot of broken collarbones in track racing. I'm not on a track though, and luckily am only going fast enough to get dirty, stretched and bruised. I lay on my back, laughing to the sky. In a moment I realise it's not funny at all if my moto is damaged out here, and I jump up to assess her. She's not meant for crashing. Off-road moto's have folding foot pegs, protected hand levers, and guarded oil sumps. Mine has friendly looks, great fuel economy and a quiet exhaust.

She's laid on her right hand side. A good sign - it's much more possible to ride without brakes (which are all on that side) than gears (which are all on the other). Hope.
The lever and mirror twisted around the handlebars instead of breaking. Just as I'd intended when I loosened and loctited the bolts before crossing the border into Bolivia a month before. Satisfaction.
The footpeg is mangled and no longer attached, but fits back on in a similar fashion in which it started. And in a heart-warming act of self sacrifice it somehow saved the brake pedal from damage too. Admiration.
The exhaust is attached, if a bit less pretty and the bendy indicator stems all bent as far as their dignity allowed them when it really mattered. Gratitude.
She crashed well. Pride.

I head back down to the fork in the track where the hut is and, absolutely nothing more is obvious. Ten minutes before I was willing to go wherever the wind carried me, but now I feel less sure. If I can at least know that whichever track I take goes somewhere I will follow it, but neither have more logic than the other.
Then I see a flash of something swinging around a bend in the distance of the as-yet untried track. I race down and find a teenage boy carrying a ladder, seemingly between nowhere and nowhere else.

Amazingly he doesn't know what village this track goes to, even though he's walking along it, but suggests I ask the taxi. I'm laughing as I begin to ask him what taxi he's talking about, having not seen a vehicle since I left the asphalt some hours before.

But as I do a white 4-wheel-drive Toyota estate taxi bounces slowly round a bend ahead and I hail it, laughing with the boy, who clearly knows how powerful an ally the force is. The driver clearly has no idea where the village I'm asking about is, and is in the process of making something up when one of the (five) ladies in the back seat explains it's up the track right of the hut. Where I'd just been and crashed.
My instincts were right at first, and I found my lack of faith disturbing.

Back on the fateful track and I'm glad I got my crash out of the way when I did. It only got rockier and more difficult. The gradient was getting steeper and I was standing up on the pegs, leaning over the handlebars to keep the front down over some of the bumps. I rode up into the clouds and whiled away my afternoon picking my way up the mountain, promising my moto a more comfortable life someday. For now I hope she's happy with the demanding life of adventure. I'm sure she'd let me know if it were any other way...

We emerge from the clouds - we're coming to the top of the mountain, the track becomes asphalt and the view across the cloud-carpeted valley is amazing with the sun setting under the clouds. We stop for a rest to marvel and while she cools the uncomfortably hot oil coursing through her aluminium veins, I stretch out my pulled arm muscles and can suddenly feel every part of my body that I landed on.

As it gets darker I know I will get a bit cold, and I may have to ride a few hours into the night to find a warm bed to stay in. This is nothing new or scary, I have my usual untroubled demeanour and I'm still feeling independent, free and privileged to be here. After all, it's all downhill from here.

I turn on my headlight to clean it. It's not working. In a marvellous physical act of irony I use the last rays of the evening sunlight failing to find the problem with the light.

The stars are out, but my good friend the moon isn't up yet. In my mind in the northern hemisphere while growing up the moon was always a man, The Man in the Moon. Here she's a lady, La Luna, which while a little confusing for me is quite comforting. She was full only two nights before, so I know when she gets here she'll be great at lighting my way.

For now I can barely see anything, but going downhill I turn the engine off and in the chilly wind it feels like I'm using all my senses to feel my way down the silent mountain.

Los Incas

The cloud vapour froze over on my visor and goggles, I rolled off the throttle as my vision reduced to a kaleidoscope of grey and white and I pulled them both out of the way to experience a brand new pain sensation - windblast frozen eyeballs.

If you have immensely, painfully and dangerously cold hands I can guarantee you that this will take your mind straight off them.

I knew I was going somewhere interesting and adventuresome, but this really confirmed it.

Santa Theresa was the last town on the list of directions the Belgian had given me - from there he said everyone would know the way.

The road there was heart-stopping, and I wished I had changed my tyres for it.

There had been a great tyre debate at the "PARE" sign where I'd waited over three hours for the road to re-open while excavators cleared the landslide.
I'd fallen asleep in the dirt before the Peruvian men crowded around my moto had made a concencus on the tyre issue, and my laziness made the decision for me.

The river crossings were the really sketchy bit, and my road tyres just couldn't get any purchase on the wet boulders I was bowling over. I was lucky to only get wet feet.

The next day I was glad for the nap though, as I was awake before the sun and made it to the hydroelectric plant where the train tracks begin as he came up.

Getting to a rusty old metal bridge I think of Rob Reiner's film "Stand by Me" as I kneel down and touch the tracks for signs of an impending train, and hum the theme of "Paladin" as I walk across.

After an hour following the tracks they split - Juan back in Santa Theresa had definitely said to stay right, but as I was getting nearer I heard the unmistakable sound of a locomotive and realised if I crossed the tracks I could get a dramatic photo as the train came around the bend, looking as if coming straight at me.

As the train rounded the bend I see it's not going very fast, and Corey Feldman's voice echoes in my head: "Train dodge - dig it.".

I need to cross back over the tracks anyway and think I can get a quick photo of the train *actually* coming straight at me.

I've timed it well and step out in front of the train with enough time to make it, but so that it'll make an impressive photo if a bit of motion blur comes out.

My body was steeled to stop, fire the shutter and carry straight on, but when the shutter button wouldn't move I was thrown totally out of sync, and froze.

Unfortunately Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix weren't there to talk me down. The man standing at the front of the train started shouting and in my head I was going over loading the film, taking up the slack on the spool and winding off and firing the first wasted frames.

As the deafening horn sounded I realised I hadn't wound on the first good frame, but it was too late for the photo and I came back to my senses and jumped off the track, while the man cursed my stupidity, his mouth moving as if silently with the horn blaring over his wagging jaw.

I was half way over the bridge across the river to start the ascent when the cafe owner woke the official in the ticket office and I was shouted back to him, only to find out I had to walk to Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to buy a ticket which would be checked here.

After the forty minute diversion I was back at the bridge and could start the steep climb. It was tough, but I knew it would be worth it.

And there, in the clouds I found the sacred, lost and rediscovered ancient city of Machu Picchu - as beautiful and mystical as it's reputed to be.

I didn't visit the gift shop - On the way back I put one Peruvian Sol on the train track as the engine passed and it casually tossed the coin aside, flattening it. I had my souvenir for the day.

Leaving La Paz

I'm still putting the side-stand of my moto down on the worn slippery planks that make the "floor" of the raft when the captain pushes off and starts the outboard. I was being careful as a wheel of the camioneta I'm sharing the raft with had already fallen through a gap and we'd all had to help to get it out.

The captain set the rudder and started the endless task of bailing out the flooded hull visible between the planked floor. I would have helped him if the vessel wasn't twisting, rocking and contorting so much under the feeble power of the tiny waves that my moto was constantly on the verge of tipping off it's stand one way or the other.

I imagined what of my riding gear I would still be able to swim in, and mentally put in order what was most important to remove first. Then I made a mental note when I judged we passed the half-way point and the destination shore was the closer one.

I wasn't nervous or scared, but if you have been on a sinking boat in a remote destination in a developing country you might think practically too.

The old, toothless lady with a cheekful of coca, selling biscuits was the first person I'd met in Bolivia who I entirely couldn't understand. But luckily her biscuits were cheap, and the direction she pointed for town true. The roadsides were free of rubbish and children cycling on the road waved excitedly.

This was a far cry from the city of La Paz I'd left that morning. The owner of the "parqueo" I'd left my moto in had feigned a seizure when I wouldn't pay more than we agreed originally. I would feel callous riding off after catching his "spasming" body, laying him on the ground and putting a cup of water next to him, but as he peeked through one eyelid as I kicked over the motor I just sighed.

The landscape was wild and rugged, reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands, and the road was winding and dramatic.

The man with six gold teeth and a donkey who I'd asked directions from on the other side of Lago Titicaca was right - the view on the road winding down the cliff into Copacabana with islands stretching into the lakes distance was, indeed, bonita.

North Yungas Road

"Que paso hombre?" asked the camionero seeing my tools, tyres and wheels spread over the dirt on the side of the road as he pissed into a bush. I explain I'm just changing tyres for more suitable ones, pointing down the trail which drops off sharply through the clouds on our left.

"Jajajaja! LA RUTA DE LA MUERTE" chuckles the man, now looking over my obviously ill-equipped moto.

It's an easy start and I'm following all the rules: my headlight's on, I'm riding on the left and using my horn at every blind bend. But visibility is practically zero as I descend through the cloud, and I have to hope I'll hear any oncoming traffic and vice-versa.

Then it appears.

The mountainous, jungly valley stretches out to my left with a small rocky trail clearly visible, winding over and under itself impossibly, clinging to the near vertical sides. I've seen only arid scrubland for the last three weeks in Bolivia, and desert for a week before that, so this rich, lush, jungly forest is especially breathtaking.

Waterfalls, tiny and huge cross, cover, drop under and dribble over the track as it stretches out of sight. As soon as I have my breath back I'm bombing down, a cloud of dust behind me, stones pinging off the hundreds-of-metres drop on my left.

As the back wheel drifts out, and what looks like a banked edge slides away, turning out to be displaced stones, I surmise that the right-hand bends are the most dangerous, as your momentum is pushing your weight over the certain-death edge.

Then the back wheel drops as it cuts over a gap that crumbled away from the inside of a left-hand bend and I realise - at this speed it's all the most dangerous.

There are signs every kilometre or so reminding me to stay on the left, but I'm there anyway. Nothing could take me away from the tantelising edge - I'm addicted to the speed and peril and am going faster and faster. Kicking stones off the edge with the back wheel is a game that gets easy and the real challenge becomes using the front wheel.

Looking across the valley through a rainbow made by a waterfall ahead steals my concentration and I nearly crash having drifted into the central bank of stones. I realise it's one thing at a time here, and stop to admire.


"Diez Bolivianos?" Asks the policeman quietly at the barrier checkpoint leading to the paved road back to civilisation. "No thanks!" I reply with a smile and snatch back my driving licence, feeling silly for having given it to this extortionist in the first place.

"Diez Bolivianitos?" He tries again, but I just smile and by now I'm raising the barrier by myself, thinking he's not very well practised at this shakedown routine.

Back at the fuel station on the outskirts of La Paz I resume negotiations with the young attendant I'd managed to buy two litres of gasolina from that morning after borrowing a bottle from an old lady. Usefully foreign vehicles aren't allowed to be supplied fuel in the whole region, so I have to resort to bribing people or finding locals to fill an oil can for me.

I agree to pay double price (it's still only sixty pence a litre) if he can get my whole tank full, and he devises a plan to get me past the cameras so he can't get into trouble. He fetches another attendant and I walk the moto to a pump while they each cover a number plate (my Chilean moto has one on the front and another on the back) from the cameras view with their bodies.

I swap out for one of them while he fills the tank, then we swap back and walk out of the forecourt in our bizzare procession. I roll back into the city tired, but satisfied.

And promptly get lost.

The Wild West of the Bolivian Altiplano

A dozen dogs are fighting in the road and I swerve off between the pigs and the old ladies sat in the dust selling tissues and sweets. It's getting dark and this town feels seedy, but I have to find a bed here with a thick alpaca duvet or I'll freeze sleeping out at this altitude.

I'm haggling with the lady at the alojamiento and notice a grubby toddler playing in the dirt road, with cars dodging around him. I excuse myself and push my bike onto the pavement, lifting him to the pavement at the same time.

When I get back to the moto after looking at the dingy room a reeking, toothless old man is absently fondling it's mudguard with a big dribbly smile.

In the "restaurant", which is little more than the ladies kitchen, the soup is simple and tastes of only fat and potato, but the leg of lamb in it is satisfying if gristly.

The old man with the cowboy hat has filled my glass with beer again, and as I'm explaining that I'm a bit tired for a third glass, his head drops and he starts snoring.

This is the Bolivia in which the tourist coaches don't stop. The Wild West of the Bolivian Altiplano.

Uyuni

It was hard to think, but eventually I realised I had to do something. It was only three a.m., there were around four more hours in which it would be getting colder and colder. I was still thirsty as hell and needed to pee.

There were no options. I would have to make a fire to keep warm.

Trying to get out of the bivi was difficult without the use of my feet. As I finally got out I fell onto a spiky bush and couldn't get up. I started hitting my feet in a vain attempt to reanimate them, and felt stupid and powerless. I rolled over into the remains of the fire from dinner and bum-shuffled back over to the bivi, the sand around was deathly cold.

I stayed in the sleeping bag, and alternated warming my hands in my armpits with warming my feet with my hands. I had to be able to walk to get the wood to make a fire.

Eventually some feeling came back into my heels and I undid the zip at the bottom of my sleeping bag so I could waddle for wood. Annoyingly I'd used all the close firewood, so had to go much further to get more. It was enraging and frustrating trying to walk with my leaden feet, and falling over bending down to pick up wood was testing my patience.

I'm normally quite orderly when setting a fire, but this time I dumped some wood in a pile, sprayed some medicinal alcohol over it and flicked a match. It did the job.

I sat with my legs bent around the fire, my feet centimetres away from the flames, and my arms and chest hugging the tall flames. By now I wasn't bothered if I burnt a hole or two in my sleeping bag.

I nestled my metal Sigg bottle in the fire to melt the first of my water, and put the plastic litre-and-a-half as close as I dared. After an hour or so of rotating water, ice and slush between bottles and my cup I got scared about my toes.

The rest of my feet were in suitable pain, but my toes were still dead. And then I thought - 'How cold actually is it here?', 'How cold do you need to be to get frostbite?' and finally 'Are my toes actually dead?'

I was scared, but had to know. It was an awful feeling peeling all my socks off, and of course it turned out I was being paranoid. They were nowhere near the right colour, but they were still a part of my body and bloodstream.

I had run out of wood, so had to search further again, but promised myself a cup of tea and some hot oats. I could walk more or less like a human, but the cold sand was torturously painful. I vowed to warm my boots next. I carried on like this until sunrise, my toes slowly and painfully coming back to life, and my small fire getting bigger.

The morning was hassle, and lots of it. I've camped out around zero plenty, but this was totally different. It must have been way, way below.

My toothpaste wouldn't squeeze. I cut my mouth on a piece of chocolate that splintered. Cable ties on my moto snapped. Moisture in the zip of my sleeping bag froze it shut. My packet of baby wipes had frozen into a solid block.  Nothing was simple.

Then I had to push my moto out of the deep sand into the morning sunlight to warm her up.

Back on the trail it was easy-going. A good job too as I was shattered. Mentally physically and emotionally. The ripio got sandier and sandier, until I realised it was the deepest yet by far. The gentle steering input and lazy leaning suited my battered state. Every now and then I'd have to catch a drift going to far, but I didn't have the energy to mess it up by panicking and stiffening my arms too much.

The bitterly cold morning wind kept me awake, and I found I was just as good reacting to the feeling through the bars as I was at watching the track, so lazily gazed over the scenery, which had become yet more green and full of alpacas. I drifted my sandy morning away in a daze.

There were a few houses, some dodgy river crossings and lovely views. Then, before midday I reached Ruta 701 - a graded ripio which led all the way to Uyuni, civilisation. I still couldn't believe I hadn't crashed, and stopped for lunch and marvelled at my tough little bike.

The only unknown was whether I had enough gasolina to make it there. Or so I thought.

As the undulations calmed and the ripio flattened out it became obvious that I hadn't quite got through scot-free. The back wheel was rhythmically wobbling out to one side, then the other. I absolutely couldn't ride her straight.

I aired up the tyres for the conditions, checked the wheel alignment, then spent nearly an hour trying to tune the spokes. Without a spoke key. Being careful I found I could manage with a monkey wrench, but one slip and I'd have a rounded spoke nut.

The spokes wouldn't come into tune, and it became obvious I'd buckled the wheel. So while I wanted nothing more than to blast to Uyuni as fast as I could, I knew I should take it easy. With the Salar de Uyuni (the worlds biggest salt flat) on my left, and the mountainous plains I'd just conquered on my right, it wasn't so bad. In fact it was a blessing as the fuel-guzzling sand would be offset by my gentle pace here.

I rolled into town unreasonably filthy, impressively smelly, impossibly tired and in no small amount of pain, but feeling more alive than ever. And invincible.