Hammockeering Around: Crossing Bolivia

Bolivia was adventurous. From Lake Titicaca I carried on across a vast plain towards snow capped mountains rising slowly over the horizon. One of those mountains I biked up. Mount Chacaltaya. The road took me up to 17,233 feet. A mile over the big city of La Paz sprawling across the land below. It was a six hour climb to that point which I finished in the darkness. As the light faded the city lit up below mirroring the sparkling clear starry sky above. Arriving high in the cold and the dark I expected to be huddled in my tent trying to stay warm for the night. What I found was a glass pyramid positioned on a precipice to give a view of the city, the stars and the surrounding snow covered mountains rising above me. It is one of the greatest places I have ever slept.

Traversing towards southern Bolivia took me across wide open valleys before depositing me on the Uyuni salt flat, the largest salt flat in the world. It took me more than a day to bike across. South of the salt flat the roads deteriorated and I began climbing up rocky, sandy tracks into the mountains. Volcano cones rose up around me. The landscape seemed to expand away from me. It was a beautiful place. The remoteness of it was spectacular as well. I had to make my food stretch 11 days between locations I could resupply. I brought four ingredients for that section; rice, oatmeal, pasta and brown sugar. This area was cold too. The highest pass was over 16000 feet. Night time temperatures at that elevation dropped into the single digits Fahrenheit. During the day it warmed up enough to melt my water for cooking before it froze again as the sun set. During a particularly windy night in my tent while high in the mountains I awoke to find snow piling up against my tent fly. By the time the sun rose the high desert had turned into a tundra. The world had been transformed. It was spectacular. The rest of my journey to the Chilean border was punctuated by brilliant white mountains against deep azure skies.