La Paz – Wild Camp 1 – Wild Camp 2 – Wild Camp 3 – Sajama – Tambo Quemado – Guallatire – Termas de Polloquere – Pagador – Coipasa – Ventilla – Llica – Salar de Uyuni – Uyuni – La Quiaca (Ar)
13 days | 846 kilometers | 5.180 meters elevation gain
In the Casa Ciclista in La Paz I meet Thomas and Sander, both from the Flemish part of Belgium. Actually they are from the same village and that’s why they decided to meet up here in La Paz. Sander has been biking south from Cajamarca, Peru and Thomas will start his biking adventure here in Bolivia. Thomas, nickname “Wasi“, is a happy guy, very sweet, always smiling, can’t seem to get mad at anything. Sander seems to be more serious from the outside, but inside of that hard crust is a sweet, loving, funny guy. I jokingly call him “old grumpy guy”, but I hope that he knows that I love him with all my heart. We make a great team. We have the same humor, the same relaxedness, the same mindset. The last week in La Paz felt great with these guys, preparing to go south together, buying Wasi’s bike and getting it ready, going out together, exploring the city together. It felt like I was hanging out with my brothers, or like real good friends. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.
After some delay in La Paz (mechanical bike issues & a rain storm) we finally get ready for our departure on a Friday morning.
The plan is to cycle towards the Sajama National Park with the three of us. There we will say goodbye to Sander, which has a flight to catch to Guatemala. Me and Wasi will then continue together southward. I don’t know for how long, because his initial plan was to go north to Peru, but we’ll see what happens.
We have an absolute great first day together. We take one of the many teleféricos that span over La Paz’ skyline. It brings us up and out of the valley that La Paz is wedged in. After that it’s a super easy 20 kilometer out of the city: slightly downhill and with a tailwind we don’t have to spend any energy to make progress. We have a stop at the plaza of a village, Sander smokes a cigarette, we talk to some locals and have lunch.
After that we continue our way and we find ourselves suddenly out of the hustle and bustle of the metropole called La Paz. A calm comes over us after being overstimulated for two weeks in the capital. We find the perfect grassy camp spot near some rail tracks and out of sight and wind.








Another perfect day follows. We have super nice weather, blue skies with great temperatures. First a tranquilo morning with coffee, oatmeal and a morning stroll looking for water to do the dishes. We hop on the bikes for a beautiful day on unpaved roads, nice small villages and beautiful hilly landscapes around us. When we pass a hamlet we suddenly hear drums and flutes and try to see where these sounds come from. Before we know it we are all three on stage dancing with old native women. The drunk men come and offer us beer and we have to take dozens of photos. Everyone looks at us and approaches us to shake our hands. Very overwhelming to suddenly find yourself in the center of everyone’s attention over and over again. We manage to escape the crowds and the attention after half an hour and hop on the bike for our last stretch and in search for a tranquil camping spot. We set up camp in the middle of an open field. There are dark clouds all around us and we see flashes and thunderstorms coming from four different places on the horizon. We keep our fingers crossed that we will be spared. Fortunately, we have just finished cooking our dinner when it starts to rain: we retreat to eat in our tents. We keep counting the seconds between flash and boom (3 sec = 1 km) to see if the lightning is getting too close.
We’re camping in an open field with no trees around us, not the best spot at this moment. Luckily the storms keep their distances and we don’t have to evacuate.
The next morning we let the tents dry and make breakfast. On todays menu: beautiful unpaved roads through riverbeds and the pampas. After a horror ride on a washboarded road where we try to find the right tactic (very slow or as fast as we can to fly over the annoying bumps) we arrive back on asphalt. We end up in a fantastic spot a little bit away from the road, along a beautiful canyon and in between red rocks beautifully formed by wind erosion.
Sander surprises us with a cold beer that he secretly bought at our last snack stop and the moment couldn’t be more perfect. We have meaningful conversations and are making some very nice memories in a very short time. It’s crazy how I became such good friends with these guys in such a short time. It feels good.
We set up the tents which takes a while because the pegs don’t go into the rock-hard ground. So we have to make constructions with rocks and our tent lines. Again, there is storm and lightning all around us, but luckily this time it never reaches us.












I wake up by the sounds of zipping tents and whispering voices. When I zip open my tent I see red rock formations all around me. What a day to be alive. After a good oatmeal breakfast (Sander teaches us some new techniques with fried pieces of apple with cinnamon on top) we saddle up our aluminium horses. We are lucky with a trucker’s stop along the road with a good lunch because there is nothing else here. We cycle past dozens of herds of llamas. When we reach the Sajama National Park we try to avoid paying the extremely expensive entrance fee by taking a short cut. But this old road is completely overgrown with bushes and coarse wild grass. We have to push, struggle and lift our bikes through riverbeds and over the bushes. After two kilometers we are completely destroyed. We still have 14 kilometers to go. We do some quick calculations but it’s very obvious that with this tempo we will reach the village of Sajama late in the evening and probably completely knackered. But we also don’t feel like turning around, like we’ve passed the point of no return already. Luckily the road turns a bit more into an actual path now and then which makes it able to actually cycle some bits. I have a big disadvantage compared to the other guys because I’m heavier and my tires are thinner, so I keep sinking into the sand. Slipping, sliding, getting off, pushing, jumping up again: it is agony, suffering and pain. I know I have to push as hard as I can to increase my speed to sink less into the sand, but this finally completely exhausts me. When we reach the town of Sajama just before sunset we high five and hug each other.
We survived another day. Never give up, always keep going. We reward ourselves with beer, a meal, a hot shower and a bed. We deserved this.
The original plan was to go to some hot springs, but we are still too tired from yesterday so we just make it a very chill morning at the hotel. We take another terrible dirt road back to asphalt. When I get there I immediately see a bus with a sign saying “La Paz”. Sander has to get back to the capital and we’re not sure if we can get him into a bus from alongside the bus. So I raise my hand, waving the bus to stop. To our surprise the bus stops immediately. We quickly throw Sander’s bike on the bus and say our goodbyes. The emotions are running high. This all went way too quick.
And then suddenly there are two of us, which suddenly feels very strange. Wasi and I cycle to the next village for lunch and discuss the phenomenon of group dynamics and how it is so much different with 2 than 3. After lunch we want to cycle on, but it starts to hail and rain. We find shelter, but after an hour of sheltering it is time to put on our rain gear and just get going. Again, there is lightning all around us, and this time pretty close as well. It frightens us but the flashes never come closer than 12 seconds close to us. The plan was to go up and over the Chilean border today, but after pedaling into the pouring rain for two hours we call it a day in the last Bolivian town before the border. We check into a hospedaje that is swarming with truck drivers whose trucks are parked outside.





The next morning we finish the last part of the climb to the border with Chile. We pass hundreds of trucks that seem to be standing there for a while already judged by the hammocks, clotheslines and the chairs and tables set up. The border is the most strict and complicated I’ve encountered this trip, with checks for fruit, x-ray scans of all our bags etcetera. When we finally reach the end of the bureaucracy we suddenly remember that we forgot to get some Chilean pesos in the village this morning. Damn! And we won’t get a chance to change Argentinian for Chilean pesos in the coming days. We ask around and one of the ladies from immigration tells us that normally around 12:00 a local lady arrives to sell handicrafts but also to change money. We wait for her. She takes a big profit out of our little deal, but we’re not really in a good position to bargain.
With some Chilean pesos in our pockets we zip down into Chile and are immediately treated with pink flamingos and a lot of vicuñas. Those last are not a big surprise because the national park that we just entered is called Reserva Las Vicuñas. We turn into a gravel road and within an hour we are completely alone, in a beautiful desolated area with snow-capped mountains, far-stretched landscapes and vicuñas all around us. Once again it feels like its just us in this world and its an indescribable feeling. After a while we cycle past some hot springs. No entrance fee, no fences, no nothing. Just one little building with a roof and inside a pool with incredibly hot water, what a find! Later we discover some less hot, but more enjoyable temperates in the bank of the river. We have lunch and shelter from some rain bathing our tired bodies in 50 degrees water.
Soon after we cycle our last stretch to a town called Guallatire. We are surprised by how abandoned all the towns are on this side of the border. Guallatire on the map looked like a decent sized village but aside from some police men stationed here, there are little to no inhabitants. We may pitch our tents at a station of the park rangers for the night.
The next morning we are discouraged by thick, grey clouds and some measly rain. We take it easy. Soon after we are done packing up the sun breaks through the clouds and we hop on our bikes. A beautiful ride follows along a green valley packed with alpacas that are drinking from the cobbling stream that meanders through it. The only other road users are big trucks that are transporting lithium from the salt flats to their refineries. The truck drivers turn out to be incredibly happy guys, because we have a score of 10 out of 10 for them waving back at us with big smiles and honking horns. We are actually pretty lucky with these guys on the road because in the middle of nowhere a lady is cooking lunch for these workmen, we are starving and munch into our alpaca meat and potatoes.
After that we take a turn into a road that’s even sandier than the ones before. We have to push hard to keep our wheels spinning. Before it gets really bad we see a desolated police station, a domesticated Llama runs towards us like he’s a dog waiting for his owner to come home. He starts coming really close to us and licking our bags. We are a bit scared of this big llama but the police men only laugh when they see us struggle with the warm welcome. They tell us we can come in and give us hot coffee to warm up. So friendly! They tell that their main business in this desolate part of Chile is to catch smugglers.
After the hot coffee and refilling our bottles with water and saying goodbye to the over-enthusiastic house-llama we spin back onto the sand. The last thirty kilometers are hell. We barely can move forward because of the loose sand and whenever we are able to make some speed the washboards in the road annoy the hell out of us. Due to these despicable washboards both our bikes break down: first my back rack breaks down and later on the small wheels on Wasi´s derailleur comes off. When we start repairing his derailleur it also starts raining. Could this afternoon become even more unfortunate. Lucky enough, before we emotionally break down completely, we manage to get his derailleur fixed and make it to our camp spot. Some hot springs in the middle of nowhere. We set up camp, bathe our bodies in the hot water and try to emotionally recover from a hard day.











I wake up between steaming hot springs, a blue sky and snow-capped mountains around me. The hellish ride from yesterday already seems so long ago. Wasi is already awake and tells me he has seen vicuñas close to our tents when he woke up an hour ago. We have a decision to make: either take a shortcut road that I’ve heard some bad stories about on the internet or to take a big detour. Of course we take the short cut. This road crosses Bolivia for three kilometers before heading back into Chile and I’ve read stories about illegal activities and about metal parts that will pierce your tires. Luckily we don’t see any people and our tires are not pierced. We do see an awful lot of burned down vehicles which makes the whole scene a bit dark.
Wide plains lead us over sandy, loose, rocky and washboarded roads. These washboards are so fucking annoying!! We struggle to keep a pace. We pass abandoned villages, villages with churches, houses, everything still intact, but just no inhabitants. Post-apocalyptic. We need water but all the water taps are dry. With our last energy we reach the first habituated village after 51 kilometers where we manage to refill our water bottles.
On the public WiFi I hear good news about my dad that had been investigated for his prostate, but all turns out to be OK. After the village we cycle on over some more sand and washboards before we finally reach asphalt again. It is amazing that our bikes didn’t decide to just collapse, that they survived this. Well, not completely, because my rack broke. But still. Incredible. We reach the little village of Colchane at the border. Civilization! A shop! People! We munch down the most delicious alfajores we have ever had en wash them down with a cold beer. After four days of abandoned villages and washboarded roads, this feels like heaven. It is seven o’clock in the evening and even manage to still cross the border. We cycle some 10 kilometers more and make it to a little village back in Argentina. There is absolutely nobody around so we decide to pitch our tents right on the elevated kiosk on the main square. The wind that night will keep me awake for several hours.
The next morning we have access to water tap in the street and thus we can make coffee. A luxury we couldn’t afford ourselves the last days. On our way to Coipasa we are greeted by more sandy roads. It drives me absolutely crazy. Another day of pushing, dragging the bike, getting off and on again, covering absolutely no distance. And once again we arrive in a big village where once again it seems that everybody closes all doors and windows as soon as they see us arrive. Hola? Buenas tardes?!? Come on people, we really need some food now! Nothing. We have lunch with our last crackers that we dress with oil, salt and pepper.
After this poor lunch we decide to tackle our first salt flats towards the eponymous village of Coipasa. And it’s A-MA-ZING! We cycle over a mirror-smooth white surface, a small layer of water mirrors the puffy white clouds and blue sky. We scream it out, make pictures and enjoy riding on the salt. There is no road so we keep aiming for one of the mountain tops in the distance that should lead us to the town of Coipasa. When we arrive the first thing we do is to spray clean our bikes with water because the horror stories about salt ruining bikes are endless. The people that lend us a helping hand with the water hoses turn out to be a group of smugglers. Fifty or more cars are stationed in a courtyard and their drivers are getting themselves drunk before they embark on their dangerous journey of riding the cars in the dark over the border and to a bigger city where they will try to sell the cars on a black market. If they get caught by the not corruptible Chilean police it’s end-of-story for them. Hence the drinking to calm the nerves a bit. We wish them good luck when they leave.
We re-stock our food supplies and jump into a hot shower when we see a sign that offers “Duchas calientes“. I ask the house that sells the hot shower if we can also rent a room for the night. They tell us that the room is their room, but that they will move to another room for us to sleep in their bed. It’s a bit weird, but we really long for a bed and so we sleep in a bed that belongs to this older couple.











Beautiful hills scattered with cacti wave us goodbye when we leave the village. Another day southward on the Coipasa salt-flat. Another day in this otherworldly galaxy. White under, blue above and nothing around us that gives us a hint of perspective. We pick another mountain top on the horizon to keep course. When the salt ends, we push our bikes through the damned sand to reach a hamlet with a water tap in the main square. We rinse down the bikes and have lunch. It is only 14:00 and thus we decide to do some more cycling. Otherwise we would just be bored in this place where there is less than nothing to do. A wrong decision turns out: a flat tire, pushing our bikes kilometers long through loose sand and a fiery, unforgiving headwind is what follows. Tired we put our bikes against a wall in the next hamlet and immediately we are almost raped by a family of llamas. They are too stupid to recognize our signs that we don’t want any of this. They keep coming too close and in the end we have to flee for them. We put the tents in an abandoned house for the night and to be protected from the wind.
After a morning of small bike maintenance and meeting some people from the hamlet that bring us food (so nice!) we move on towards Llica. Another day of loose sand, mud and washboards. I try to keep calm but from the inside I’m burning: can’t the roads be normal, for one day, please?!?! Wasi has another flat just before we reach Llica and we notice that his tires are in real bad condition, with rips on the side giving the inner tube room to stick out. We fix with lots of tape but we know it will not be a long-term solution
When we reach Llica it’s like cycling into paradise. The shops are stacked with food, there is street vendors selling all kinds of delicious goodies, fruits, vegetables, restaurants! We meet Laurens and Vera in the street! We know them from back in La Paz and we knew that we were not far behind them. With the four of us we munch down on hamburguesas, papas fritas, chicken and beer. That night me and Wasi are incredibly corny and happy. I think we’re just both glad that we’ve survived this incredibly difficult stretch through no-mans-land with all the sand, pushing, washboards, etcetera. And then to think that this was Wasi’s first stretch in South America on the bike, not the easiest start but he passed with flying colors. Tomorrow we will start cycling the Salt Flats of Uyuni.
We have breakfast together with Laurens and Vera and they manage to keep their nerves together when me and Wasi get ready for the day a bit too slow. After a few kilometers the gravel gradually starts to make place for salt. And after ten kilometers it’s really only the salt that’s crushing underneath our tires. It’s a perfect day. The salt is dry, it hasn’t rained the last days, of course it’s perfectly flat and thus the cycling is just super nice. After 40 kilometer even the mountains behind us start disappearing and with that all the horizons start to be empty. Luckily there are some car tracks on the salt for easy navigation. We stop for lunch in a completely white world. We sit down on the salt and take some salt from the ground to put on our hard boiled eggs. When I look around and spin 360 degrees I notice that immediately I’ve lost track if what’s north. It is so easy to get lost here. The reflecting sun on the white surface also makes it an incredibly dangerous environment: without sunglasses you can get blind and we try to cover every part of our body with a garment.
After lunch the wind turns a bit and crawls behind our backs. We’re really flying now. With averages of more than 30 kilometers per hour we reach the island of Incahuasi. It is a touristic place where all the 4×4’s stop to drop of some tourists. To our big surprise the place even has a small shop that sells cold beers for the same price as you would buy a beer in La Paz! Not soon after we are chopping down pints like never before. Life is too good at this moment. More cicloviajeros arrive to the island and we wave them down to come and drink beer with us. Friendships are born. Sarah, Jullien and Theo from France join the club. A little bit tipsy we watch the sun set over the salt flats, leaving behind a spectacle of colors over this otherworldly place. Just before it gets really dark one of us suggests to start looking for a place to camp. Oh that’s right! Soon later a group of seven slightly drunk bike travelers are fluttering over the salt flat looking for a place to camp around the island. Seven head lamps shoot into different directions over the white surface. We find a cave where the wind doesn’t come into play. We manage to all find a spot for our tents and soon later crawl into the windless cave to cook our dinners and drink some more Schneider cervecas.
A beautiful night in a beautiful place.














Vera wakes me up around 5 o’clock because they don’t want us to miss the sunrise. With a cloudy head from the beers yesterday I manage to open my eyes. Still in our sleeping bags, everybody zips their tents open to watch the sun rise over the Uyuni Salt Flats.
Julien and Sarah are moving into a different direction. With yesterday’s squad and Theo we start pedaling for our second and last day over the Uyuni Salt Flats. Another day in this white world. We make pictures of us cycling the salt flats naked:
Now we take part of a lifelong tradition for bike travelers on the Uyuni flats. We cross the Salt Hotel and the flags and after 80 kilometers we reach asphalt again.
We rinse of our bikes at a car-wash and cycle the last 20 kilometers to Uyuni where we eat delicious pizza. Later we check into the Casa de Ciclista where we meet other cyclists from all around the world and roll out our mats and sleeping bags on the floor.
The next five days we rest. Some people swap the Casa Ciclista back for the road and it becomes a really tranquilo and warm place to stay. I let my bike-rack weld and stitch one of my bike bags that has a rip. For Christmas me, Wasi and Laurens and Vera book an apartment with a kitchen. We split up in teams of two and we cook a nice dish for Christmas Day. And to top it all off Sander decides to visit us from La Paz.
But, wait, didn’t Sander had to leave you guys some weeks ago to catch a flight to El Salvador? Correct, but the thing that you don’t know yet is that he got incredibly sick (I start to believe that every gringo get’s sick in La Paz) and thus missed his flight. The five of us have an amazing Christmas Day with nice food, nice wine and good conversations. I’m so glad this Christmas is so much better than last year’s! On Boxing Day we call home and watch a movie in the evening. I wipe away a small tear when calling home and the thoughts of my family all gathering. It’s these times that I miss family the most.
The 26th me and Wasi continue our journey. The initial plan was to celebrate New Year’s in Atacama in Chile, but we’ve heard terrible stories about road conditions going from Uyuni to Atacama. Therefore we change our plans now aiming for Salta in Northern Argentina. The distance is a bit too much for 4 days of cycling so we decide to take a bus from Uyuni to the border. A bit sad to leave Bolivia, because I’ve become really fond of Bolivia in the past weeks.
That same evening we already cross into Argentina, that immediately looks so much more sophisticated with neat looking cafes and restaurants.
Argentina. The last of the 18 countries that I will end up visiting during this bike-trip-of-a-lifetime.
Next story: Oh, how we start to love Argentina!







We zitten nu in ons laatste hotel in Argentinië voordat we weer naar huis gaan en lezen jouw verhaal over Bolivia , wat een avontuur weer
We hebben net samen een hele fijne waardevolle en gezellige week gehad met elkaar en ook Thomas was er 3 dagen bij .
Geweldig dat wij weer 7 dgn ( vorig jaar 14 dgn) deel hebben genomen aan jouw droomreis en het avontuur van Thomas
Nu ben je weer ( even?) alleen op pad maar dat vind jij ook wel fijn .
Blijf vooral schrijven dan blijven wij genieten van JOUW avonturen én KIJK GOED UIT