Monday – La Paz, Bolivia
Well, today was tyre day, so the first thing after breakfast I could do nothing because the shops do not open until 9am! Meanwhile Chris was going to the airport to find out about their tyres and hopefully if they get theirs, I would then have no need of a new one as I could use Grahams old front one. Although I had tread enough to maybe get to Santiago, Chile, I will not do it with the damaged tyre the way it is. I grabbed a cab that the hotel has on the books and he took me to the Imcruz place, now that it was open I could see it was Suzuki cars mainly, but I waited until the parts dude was free and found that yes indeed, they have parts for Vstroms and service manuals 🙂
But, they had no tyres here, they did have some in Santa Cruz and it would take 2-3 days to get an OEM Trailwing tyre here. I decided not to do this, because of Grahams, but it is good to know there is a Suzuki shop that can do Vstrom work and parts in La Paz, the co-ordinates are here
S 16 30.740 W 68 07.048
That done, I got the taxi dude to take me to a shop for some sunnies, the last pair had a broken frame. Actually this is the replacement pair I had been sent for another broken pair under warrenty. I won’t buy any more MAXX sunglasses, they are too weak for extended use on a bike and after 5 hours they were so tight they hurt my head anyway, so good riddance 🙂 But, the shop he took me to was very expensive, I decided not to pay $200 for something that would surely get broken so he took me back to the hotel where I tried to find out about Chris and tyres but there was no word yet.
I now had some time so I decided to go for a wander up the market area, maybe I could find some cheap sunnies(where are all the sunglass sellers when you need them?) and maybe a sticker for my bike with a death road survivor logo on it 🙂 The market was about 8 blocks away and all uphill, this is a knackering process at this altitude but I took it easy and checked out some other stuff as well. I actually found a security wallet that wraps around your leg, I had been thinking about one ever since Vincent had mentioned them in Mexico, (he is in Chile btw chasing tyres ). I found the main street where all the tour guides and stuff are and started looking for stickers and/or Tshirts.
I had a lot of luck with T-shirts but no luck with stickers, a market going begging maybe? But, the only issue with the T-shirts was although they had nice designs, they all had the tour company logo on them and they all referred to mountain bikes, not motos! One of the companies mentioned a chap who screen prints shirts to order so I went and checked him out, he was just down the street right at the back of the arcade under the Hostel Maya.
I chatted with him for a while and discussed my needs and he came up with the goods. Jorge did quite a lot of shirts for the tour companies, so he had most of the designs to hand already made up. All we did was to use a few different ideas and he would print me a T-shirt to suit for $35 BoB, which is about $5. That would be ready that afternoon around 3pm so I wandered around a bit more and slowly made my way back to the hotel. I met Chris and it is bad news about the tyres, apparently they were never sent and were still on the tarmac in Florida! What a balls up and lots of people lied to him by saying they are already in La Paz 😦 There was a lot of phoning going on for a while to organise for the shipment to be sent. Chris was interested in looking at the shirt design so we headed up to the market again and had some lunch as it was a bit early. The ladies here wear these felt hats, a very different look and quite interesting 🙂
We checked out the design which was still being made and I told him to leave it until tomorrow and I would pick it up then. I also gave Jorge an order of 5 more and we also added the year 2009 to the design and left him to it. On the way back I noticed another unusual thing, one of many weird things of which I have no understanding, it was a pile of rocks, in the street blocking one lane and causing traffic blockage, but I could see no use for them there? 😕
There was no building or works going on in the area, just another unknown 🙂 As we went downhill we noticed the snow on the mountain range, this is high summer by the way, high being the operative word 🙂
Back at the hotel I left Chris and Gert sorting out tyres, I meanwhile did some more beer hunting. I found a titty bar, but it was closed and after much wandering around I eventually found a shop that sold cold beer 🙂 I bought 4 big bottles, gave one to Graham and worked on the blog all night while having a relaxing beer or 3 🙂
Tomorrow I would need to chase up a different tyre, even if it was the wrong size. I have already sorted a set of tyres in Santiago, but I won’t get there if I cannot replace this bad front one.
Day – 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 47,595 miles and 76,597 km
Salud
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 