PowerCycle

09/20 Aside from being a victim of my own stupidity today couldn’t have turned out any better. I made it to the border town of Avaroa at 3pm right before the afternoon headwinds kicked in. The immigration office (white building just before the gate on the right) was easy enough to find but I wasn’t planning on leaving until the morning.

I knew there was a place to stay and the guy to talk to was Walter who works in the blue building on the left. He walked me over to the room and for Bs.30 it was mine. No water or even a bathroom but there’s electricity. Then my luck really kicked in. He said I could exchange my Bolivian cash for Chile cash at the train station offices. The exchange rate I got wasn’t the best (it cost me $8 US to exchange $72 US) but at least I have some money now. I thought it would cost me Bs.21 to leave Bolivia but he said there’s no charge.

There’s also a place that serves lunch/dinner behind the school on the other side of the tracks and there’s a tienda that sells bread/eggs/snacks and beer right behind the offices.

The stupid thing I did was on a particularly bad section of road a few miles before getting here. In a minor fit of rage I yelled out, “Is that all you got!?” Not 5 seconds later I slid on some sand, hit a lava rock at the side of the road and tore a hole in my front pannier. I’m hoping Chile roads are in better shape because it’s obvious from looking at my right calf that I’m not good at pushing my bike. I can almost read the Shimano logo in my skin from how many times I rammed into the pedal.

The scenery in this area is freaking amazing. There are snow-capped volcanoes everywhere. This is one of the neatest places I’ve ever seen. I thought I saw some smoke coming off the top of one of the volcanoes but it might have been blowing snow.

There’s supposed to be wifi in the town on the Chile side of the border so tomorrow might be a really short day (2 miles). I’ve ridden 10 days in a row now and although I’m not tired an internet break would be nice. This is probably the longest I’ve been without internet access since, well… since the invention of the modern internet.

GPX track