12.4.2008 (Challapata):

Greetings from Bolivia! We have had a great time so far, although the last few days have been very strenuous. From the border we spent two days bumping over a bad road to the next town. As Jochen´s stomach didn´t agree to the bolivian food, we decided to take a train for 200km to the salt lake. Although the train left punctual, it arrived 5 hours late, on a normally 6 hour journey.

After that we crossed the biggest salt lake in the world, the Salar de Uyuni. It was amazing! It feels like cycling across frozen snow, except that it is not slippy. It looks like snow, it crunches like snow under the wheels and it was pretty cold there, as well.

Tarmo thought it was snow and took a huge bite. That was a surprise! He then tried rolling in it, but gave up after a while deciding it wasn´t as much fun as snow.
The first night we spent in a “hotel” out of salt. Beds, chairs, walls, tables, everything out of salt. The beds had comfortable lama fur on them.
The next day we cycled to the middle of the salt lake, to an island, where we spent the night with a couple of other cyclists. Then we headed to the north side, to a small settlement at the foot of a volcano. We spent a few very nice days there, visited a cave with mummies (or rather: skeletons) and hiked up over 5.000 meters to the crater of the volcano. The area was very undeveloped, there was no electricity, hardly any water, the small houses were built with stones, in the same manner as all the stone walls scattered around. There were loads of lamas running about and at night the stars were amazing. It was a very nice place to relax (well, if you do not hike up a volcano).

From there we had a hard time getting back to civilisation. We spent four days trying to cross sand, stone, gravel roads, sometimes pushing, most times slowly bumping along. Tarmo started hobbeling on three legs, so he had to be pulled most times. We found a vet yesterday and he thinks the problem is little grass seeds that get stuck in the fur and annoy him. Hopefully that was it.

But since yesterday we have hit the tarmac again, so we will be able to do some serious cycling again