Jaime joined us for part of the way on his XR650L which is a very nice machine, leaving mid morning we ventured out into yes ... more protests and blockades, todays strikes are the public transport and taxis blocking as much as they possibly could.
The policemens wives were also protesting about something as well so pretty much Bolivia came to a standstill yet again.
The blockades meant some pretty unusual riding tactics to negotiate the vans and buses strewn all over the intersections, at one point we had a policeman on a KLR650 in front of us, he took a wrong side of a bus and ended up behind us, we mounted the kerb, up onto the footpath, around some fruit stalls, past a bus shelter and along some shop fronts only to have Mr.Plod think that our route was much better than his and he followed us.
Buses parked diagonally across the road to stop everyone
Minivans parked all over intersections ... some too tight for us to fit through meaning alternative routes like center islands and footpaths.
I wondered if he was gonna get grumpy with us so I was armed and dangerous and was ready to tell him to take a flying leap but he didn’t and just turned off his way.
Finally through the blockades, some 20 - 30 of them we came to our turnoff, we wanted to gas up but the YPFB (Petrol station) would not serve us, they said they didn’t have any petrol ..... sure.
Anyway, having the super tanker we still had enough to get to our lunch stop which also we could fuel up at Morochata but first we were sent to 4400 meters above stress level to stunning mountain top scenery, with the public transport and taxis on strike we had the road pretty much to ourselves which was so nice, thanks guys ... go on more strikes please.
Bit of a rough section here
The range we rode over, sorry for the lesser pics as they are all taken with the little camera which gets lost in the big long scenes.
Zig zag
In Morochata we found two more girls that smiled, actually the whole town was friendly which was so unBolivia, although shy the two girls that were serving in the restaurant were genuinely interested in our moto, gringo faces and where we were from so we had a nice chat with them and yes I had my picture taken so that was three smiling people we found in Bolivia thus far, with the exponential growth in smiles this place has possibilities.
See in the background in the photo above the other faces looking around the corner at the aliens ... it was funny.
Two happy kiwis after a nice lunch and friendly people
From Morochata the road opened it doors to an array of exciting scenery with spectacular backdrops, to be fair if there is one road worth doing in Bolivia it would be this one, I hope the death road is much more dangerous cos this one was a serious contender, in places it dropped 400 - 500 meters straight down with no stops except at the bottom which would not have hurt because you would be dead.
This made me keep my mind on the job, all the heartache and crap in Cochabamba pushed to one side and fresh mind-food put in via the scenic eye candy.
Destination Independencia, time to put our feet up for the night and lay the heads down.
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