September 22 & 23, 2017
We took two days to ride into the big Bolivian city of La Paz where we planned to take a break for about a week.
Cycling Stats
September 22, 2017
Start Point: Santiago de Okola, Bolivia
Destination: Batallas, Bolivia
82.7 km, 16.7 km/h average speed, 52.8 km/h maximum speed, 4:57 time on the bike
751 meters gained, 730 meters elevation descend, 4079 meters maximum elevation
September 23, 2017
Start Point: Batallas, Bolivia
Destination: La Paz, Bolivia
54.4 km, 14.1 km/h average speed, 34.8 km/h maximum speed, 3:51 time on the bike
702 meters gained, 906 meters elevation descend, 4133 meters maximum elevation
Route Description:
September 22, 2017 The day starts on a gravel road. The first 5 km you climb 200 meters. Then you reach the paved highway shortly after and you have undulating hills for the rest of they day on a great paved highway with a shoulder. After some time you reach the town of Achacahi that has at least 3 hotels, stores and restaurants. We chose to take advantage of the tailwind and continued to Batallas where we found 2 hotels.
September 23, 2017 This day is on a paved highway with a shoulder for most of the way. Traffic gets heavier as you get closer to La Paz. The road includes a very gradual climb. Once we reached the suburbs we took the Telerifico which is the gondola system. The gondola is super easy and inexpensive.
Accommodations:
If you choose to stop in Achacachi there are 3 hotels. We stayed in Batallas in the hotel on the highway. For 40 Bolivianos we had a private room, shared showers and bathrooms and no wifi. In La Paz we booked a nice apartment on www.booking.com. You can easily find hotels here for 50 Bolivianos and there is a Casa de Ciclistas.
What happened…
Andrew writes: It was a bit of a push to get out of lake area and back onto pavement this morning but then it was a nice easy ride to Batallas. The riding was so-so, not a lot to talk about really. It was a paved road and we had the wind at our back. The following morning we woke up and did it all over again, making quick time in a light-drizzle into the capital city of La Paz.
La Paz is busy, and weird. Weird in that the city sprawls itself over and around a few mountains. There is a really cool gondola system in place that we used to get around with our bikes. This included getting in, AND out a week later. While in La Paz we had our fill of decent food, wine, R&R, and just chilled in our rented apartment. I could see myself spending time here if I wanted a homebase to make money in.
Oh, we decided to fly to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks of cruising in the Caribbean with our friends from San Carlos. Amanda is kinda torn about the whole thing since it throws our South America schedule off by as much as a year, but I’m up for the change in pace. Since riding with Nici and Philip, getting “there” just doesn’t seem as important anymore. I’m happy to just be out exploring the world, taking on new challenges, savouring new experiences and having fun with Amanda, wherever we are.
Amanda writes: Light drizzle?! Are you on drugs Andrew? It poured rain. Cats and dogs, falling from the sky soaking us to the bone. It was actually pretty fun considering our number of rains days over our cycling in the last year we can count on one hand. It’s also always more manageable when you know you’re going to get a hot shower at the end of the day. Before the rain clouds arrived and opened up we got to see the awesome glacier capped mountains that surround La Paz. They’re huge and amazing!
As Andrew mentioned we made the difficult decision to go to the Bahamas and sail. It’s something we had hoped to do earlier in the year before we returned to Peru but the stars didn’t align then. And going forward we had hoped to go in Spring 2018 after finishing South America, kind of as a celebratory trip of finishing this continent. After speaking with our friend Glenn, the future of sailing in the Bahamas was uncertain as peoples lives change. And so with the possibility that it might not happen in the Spring we threw around the idea again. Sailing in the Bahamas really is a once in a lifetime opportunity and as a friend said to me recently “Chile and Argentina will be here waiting for you”. So combined with the fact that two of our friends from San Carlos Mexico were going to be on the boat with our other friend, it kind of sealed the deal. We’ve known these friends for about 3 years and would love the opportunity to get to know them better and spend some time with them. So we priced everything out (gulp) and went with one of our mottos … we’ll figure it out. And so we booked a bunch of flights and then were left with planning our route over the next month to make sure we get to our flights out of Chile in time.
Oh ya and our apartment was skookum! We splurged and got an apartment that included a full kitchen with an oven, a separate bedroom, a flushing toilet and a hot shower!!! Living the dream.
The aerial view of our rides: