From Peru to Bolivia, then Chile to Argentina!

Once we were moving again we were really moving!

Still in Ariquipa.  We hit a lot of national holidays while on the road and here was no different.  This is actually the days leading up to the holiday but we got to see some traditional singing and dancing.

Museo del Pisco, featuring 100 different piscos!  The drinks were fancy and delicious.

"To pay the Earth." A bit odd, maybe, but it seemed like the perfect gift.  I smuggled this guy across 4 borders!

Bikes are finally ready to hit the road again.  It was such a frustratingly long time for them to get the part in and they did not communicate well at all.  It was like being on the Stahlratte again.  We would swing by in the morning, talk to somebody who would tell us to come back in the afternoon, then we would come by in the afternoon and they would tell us to come back the next day. 

Coca tea is common in Peru and Bolivia.  I had to try it since it's illegal at home!  We stayed in Puno for two nights... because we got turned around at the Bolivian border for not having our visa prearranged.  When we got turned around they said we had to go all the way back to the consulate in Puno.  We, of course, arrived on Friday afternoon on the eve of a long holiday weekend.  The secretary gave us a list of things we had to acquire before they closed.  We did our best and got there a few minutes late, but she stayed late to process us.  Phew!

Lake Titicaca!  The world's highest altitude navigable lake and our first stop on the Bolivian side.  

La Paz... Is just nutty.  We found ourselves on an absolutely terrifyingly steep road.  It was so steep that our brakes couldn't keep is from rolling backwards, and it was twisty too!  This photo was taken while we were coming down from our adrenaline high.

Death road is out there!  We went from the desert of Peru up to the lush mountains of Bolivia.  Our hotel was just shy of the city of Croico.  By the time we got in it was cold, raining and dark.  I told Ryan we had to stop at the first hotel that had a hot tub and a restaurant.  Of course, that was the first place we checked and we stayed in the most expensive hotel of the trip that night.

Not gonna lie, even though death road is a tourist attraction now, it's still a hell of a road.  It's not so deadly now because most of the traffic is on two wheels.  I could not imagine what it would be like driving trucks on this road.  Or with two way traffic.  It would be absolutely horrific.

Even though it was winter in South America we rarely ended up in super cold weather.  The worst parts were the mountain passes.  But they were so beautiful and interesting that they were worth it every time.  We had to go through this pass both to and from Croico.  The first time we had dense fog, snow and rain all at the same time.  The way back was sunny but super cold.

Uyuni has a railroad graveyard.  It felt very "Latin America" to have a big pile of railroad cars but it was odd to find them all in one place.

Uyuni is home to the Bolivian salt flats and is also home to several hotels made of salt.  They have "no lick" policies but it was important to me to know for sure.

The one we actually stayed in was flooded in the streets all around.  In the morning all of this was ice... And it was the second day in a row we had to push my bike into the sun before it would start.  I eventually got my oil changed in Chile.

The Uyuni salt flats hold a bit of water in the rainy
Season and it creates an amazing mirror effect.

That's Ryan back there... picking up his bike.  You never want to go down, but look at this place.  It's the middle of nowhere!  Thank god Ryan was uninjured.

My first impression of Chile was not a good one.  We had to buy gas from a store that sells them from plastic bottles that didn't open until "sometime around 5:30," and when they did finally open it took about half an hour of bartering to figure out how much gas we were going to get and how we were going to pay for it.  It was the most "Latin American" place we had seen yet.  Things looked up quite a bit when we moved on.

Chile was full of interesting surprises.  The cities were very far apart and there wasn't much in between them.  We found this abandoned ruin city just off of the highway.

Another surprise!  It wasn't on our radar as we were driving south but all of the sudden we cane upon the Tropic of Capricorn!

First actual equipment failure of the trip.  My electric glove malfunctioned and burned me!  Fortunately I only needed the glove one or two more times before the end of the trip.

We were so worried about coming up this road we looked into changing our border crossing.  This is the pass between Santiago and Mendoza and is often closed due to weather throughout the year.  Sometimes they require snow chains, sometimes it's closed for several days.  Looking into it, the other borders were even worse so we had to give it a shot.  The roads were clean and dry and wide and swooping.  Turned out to be an easy run!

Our 15th border!

Mendoza!  Malbec!  This was a fun night.  By the time we made it to the hotel we had to just have dinner there too but we very much lucked out.  They have a private chef that comes every night to cook for the guests and it was delicious.  And we drank a lot of wine...

The end of the trip was pretty rushed.  We made it to Buenos Aires and the next morning we had to pack the bikes for air freight.  It was a really neat process but it felt like we were giving up a part of us.

Finally made it to Ushuaia.  It was, of course, disappointing to not make it on the bikes but it meant a lot to be there.  We celebrated with a king crab caught locally.

End of the world!

Ushuaia

These cigars made the entire journey with us.  It was often a challenge to keep them safe but it was a lot of fun to smoke them at the bottom.