Day 391 – 3rd January 2010
Posted by TravellingStrom on January 3, 2010
Sunday – Sucre, Bolivia
Still here!
Sunday, a lazy day as nothing would be open, so I might as well spend the day on my blog, getting so far behind is annoying, but when there is nothing much happening, I get sidetracked by other things. The internet here in the hotel is a bit hit and miss and that made things once again difficult to achieve anything without getting frustrated. The rooms have direct cable, which is constantly dropping out, there is a WiFi zone, but not in the rooms and there is no power where the WiFi is, so once again TIB. Lunch was back up at the balcony bar where the band from yesterday was gone so the meal was a lot quieter, in fact it was so quiet, even the dogs were having a lay day 🙂
The afternoon was the same, between writing and posting, using cable in the room with a power point and the outside area on battery with WiFi.
I scored some beers from a local shop and all day I had been keeping an eye on the sports channels on TV, trying to find some info on the Dakar Rally. I had asked my parents back home to record our telecast, but I expect to see something different over here. Finally I saw an advert and worked out the difference in time zones and myself, Chris and Graham sat down in the antique decorated foyer and watched the hour long broadcast on the big LCD TV 🙂
Now, I must say, the actual broadcast over here is crap, we saw bugger all actual racing, it was more chit chat between two old fart desk jockeys with a bit of vision thrown in, it was a hopeless waste of effort. 😦 But, when you are in need of some bike action, any will do 🙂
After that we went and had some drinks etc at a pub that Gert used to own, here we found out that Gino, Alana and Mike were getting a taxi from Potosi to here, that is 165km and apparently it will only cost $10 each, cheap as chips 🙂
Now, this is a subject that smells and I have kept on forgetting to mention it, but down here, from Guatamala on south, the toilet systems cannot handle the toilet paper, so you are supposed to put it in a bin, this is the result if you don’t and I can say I have seen a number of blocked toilets down here so although it is a practice hard to adjust to, it is more hygienic to put the paper in the bin provided!
On that note, the evening was a few more beers and some more effort trying to upload photos, having quiet days should help as few photos means nothing happened 🙂 I got back and phoned my dad, it is his birthday today his time, which is really tomorrow the 4th, so Happy Birthday dad, he was out so I left a message, maybe I will call again in the morning, but it is late here. Tomorrow, I have two bike shops to visit to hopefully find a tyre that will fit my rim, but they do not open until 10am or so, meanwhile Chris will visit the airport and find out if the tyres have arrived. The tyre I hope to find will just be a backup in case the box has not arrived or there are other problems, that is assuming there is a box, no one has seen it yet!!!
Day – 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 48,079 miles and 77,376 km
Salud
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 
Hugh said
Man, it would be awkward if you suffering from diarea? he he….. Don’t even want to think about that.
Yeah, you would think that there would be lots of coverage on the Dakar being so close to it…shame. I heard a spectator got killed early in the race.
Anyways drive safe
Cheers
Hugh
TravellingStrom said
Well, only in the fact the bin would fill up quick 🙂
The coverage down here is from Argentina and is biased, we have discussed the issue amongst us and my theory that the Bolivians cannot do two things at once, like look at pictures and listen to voice overs, gained a lot of ground and was accepted 🙂
The spectator that was killed(and a number seriously injured) were fly ins and not local and were standing in a ‘non official’ spectator area, so it is a shame the driver had to pull out because of remorse and guilt when it had nothing to do with him, just too much dust and no visibility.
Anyway, I will be riding safe tomorrow to Uyuni regardless, as I have a new wrong sized tyre, but it will do better than the religious tyre I had on before.
Cheers TravellingStrom
ybg said
The Dakar has been a disaster for may riders. Don Hatton, the fellow from Vancouver Island, I’ve been following on his blog, had to pull out along with 20 other riders due to bad fuel, dunes and illness.
http://www.destinationdakar.com/.
TravellingStrom said
I have only seen a few bad reports, but as it was in Spanish and very regional I had no idea. But, the fuel and elevation I can believe is a problem
Cheers TS
TravellingStrom said
Greetings,
I’ve found a very easy tutorial on the stuff we were talking about, look here http://telabib.houstonysa.com
Later, TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom said
Hey!
Have you heard anything about that place? They say it’s lovely there, check it out https://clck.ru/BDvDy
Typos courtesy of my iPhone, TravellingStrom
markharf said
Hey Richard, check http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?newPost=true&messageID=16627486� before heading for Bolivia.
Gotta go. Best to all.
Mark
TravellingStrom said
Thanks mark
I had heard from the tourist guide here, that Ollague was closed and only open at certain times. This means I have no choice but to go through San Pedro de Atacama. We have the tyres, can you believe it? Today we head south and hopefully be in San Pedro tomorrow.
Cheers Richard