Crossing Bolivia to Argentina - Uyuni to Villazon/La Quiaca

aworldofadvantures
Oct 13, 2016
4 min read

Uyuni was a funny, dusty little town, and it wasn't until we ascended out of it that we realised just how isolated it was. Literally a sprawling mass of ramshackle buildings in the middle of the most vast expanse of flat desert that I've ever seen.

But I've got ahead of myself - the first step was to get the salt off the bike! There was a thick layer of white crust covering the whole underneath, and a fine sticky layer everywhere else.

We asked the owner of a motorbike shop if he had any handy hints on getting salt-flat salt off of bikes. He said to buy a few large bottles of Coca Cola, shake them up, spray the entire bike and then it should just wipe off... and that it did! Pretty terrifying that the stuff can dissolve salt better than hot water but there you go, and it was certainly good fun spraying our precious bike with fizzy drink!

Meanwhile it took us a whole day to figure out where we were going to go from Uyuni. The shortest way to the border was south via Tupiza, but after a bit of online research plus asking the locals what the road was like, it sounded like it was a pretty brave road to try. Deep sand, rough gravel and washboard, plus the occasional river crossing. We contemplated taking the train but all up this was going to cost us $75, leaving us ten dollars left of our daily budget, plus felt like a bit of a cop out. We were supposed to be adventure riders after all!

But with all that we'd put poor old 46-year-old Betty through over the last five months we just didn't think it was worth risking sand plus altitude plus potential rivers plus a lot of jiggling, for the sake of getting to Argentina a day sooner.

So after reaching out to a couple of fellow riders online who'd ridden this area before, we had a plan - to go back north to Potosi, and then down to Villazon via Tupiza - the route was supposed to be beautifully paved and with some pretty epic scenery.

And the first day certainly was - we rose up out of the ludicrously flat Uyuni and into the hills towards the north, winding through various landscapes that resembled what I can only imagine the surface of other planets to look like. At one point we rode past a vast canyon, and upon spotting a dirt track up to a big pylon at the top of a hill we rode up to have a closer look, which was well worth the effort!

We continued on out extra-terrestrial journey as the geology continued to morph and change colour, and just before reaching one of the highest cities in the world we spotted a wild Ostrich, which we didn't even know you could find in Bolivia. (Excuse the shoddy iPhone photography)

We had every intention of exploring Potosi - which is supposed to be a lovely city, and from what we saw, we agree - however on arriving into the city we got completely trapped in lunchtime traffic in the non-signposted one-way system. Add to this visiting six hotels before finding one that had a room (or would even open the door?!) we were pretty fed up, and thus spent the afternoon kicking back, making it only as far as the supermarket and cafe in the square.

The next day was not quite so beautiful, more due to of a lack of variety and of curves in the road than anything else. I certainly cannot deny that the scenery was still pretty impressive!

We got a great view of the city as we rode out of the basin, and saw the famous 'Cerro Rico' mountain, which was the key to Potosi's riches when it was first discovered to be full of silver. Apparently you can now do rather spooky tours of the mines inside!

We made good time, sailing through Tupiza and arriving at the border to Argentina at about 2pm. The process wasn't difficult, but did take a while on account of the extremely long queue for immigration. Our import permit would have taken minutes if we hadn't arrived at the tail end of a motorbike tour of 25 people, who still had four permits to get done before the group was finished. But we enjoyed chatting to fellow riders, who were in fact on a Charley Boorman bike tour, however sadly without Charley who'd injured himself earlier in the year.

We were through by about 4pm, and found a fab little hostel that was a lot nicer (and rather more expensive) than we were used to. Little did we know that the 'rather more expensive' part would soon become a recurring factor for Argentina!

But in the meantime we were happy about our decision to stick to the paved roads, and were excited to be in country number thirteen!