We have written about La Paz more than once. The city and its people have drawn us into their trap and made it difficult to leave. The truth is that after 26 months of continuous travel, we needed somewhere to call ‘home’, at least temporarily. The same bed and bathroom, the same group of people with a similar view of the world, a local ‘hangout’… some consistency. We were able to find all that and more in La Paz! Of course it wouldn’t have been as much fun without the large group of Poles that just happened to be in La Paz at the same time. The Polish jokes, dancing with locals in the streets till dawn, pub crawls, the Huayna Potosi climb, a ‘San Pedro’ cactus experiment (”trip”) in a castle near La Paz, Iza’s 30th birthday in club Ruta36… the list goes on. Thanks to this like minded group of people, we have also found new motivation and ideas for our further travels. Recently, we had been feeling worn out a bit and starting to think about turning for ‘home’. After all, travel can be hard work sometimes and we’re not on a beach resort holiday…

So, the time has finally come for us to move on!
Actually, we tried to leave once already. Kuba headed south for Potosi, Marta and Bartek rode out for a loop around the mountains and we pointed our bike north for Brazil. A day out of La Paz though, Kamil noticed oil leaking from the shock absorber. It didn’t bode well. A shock absorber is not something you can easily fix on the road and we had over two thousand kilometers of gravel ahead of us before we hit the next major city. We had no choice but to return to La Paz and find a mechanic that could service an Ohlins shock. The closest one we found was in Lima, Peru. So to save on transport costs, we put the shock on a bus (for US$5) to be picked up by the mechanic in Lima and waited… In the meantime, Marta and Bartek returned from their ride, Marta sporting a broken foot, meaning more days in La Paz for recuperation. Had La Paz put some kind of curse on us? To be honest we didn’t care too much because it just meant we could spend a few more nights on the town with ‘old’ friends
And new ones too. We were joined by Agnes and Michal, who are also traveling around the world.

Iza, not one to sit around idle, decided to take a solo trip for a couple of days to the volcanoes neighbouring Chile. We had come through that region already, but Iza never passes up a good photo opportnity…
The trip in her own words:

“It was a very different experience. First of all a person traveling solo is completely dependent on themselves - for food, accommodation, breakdowns… etc. Interaction with newly met friends seems more intense, while lonely periods more depressing. I think of our friend Yuki, traveling solo around the world for a second time, and feel an even greater admiration! As I was leaving La Paz, I came across huge traffic jams in El Alto. Once on the highway it was a headwind slowing me down. Coupled with the thin air at 4,000m the little Honda Bros couldn’t go more than 50km/h. The nights were incredibly cold, the temperature falling to -15deg. 8 blankets didn’t really help much! Compensation fall this were amazing views of snow capped volcanoes, valleys, streams and meadows… Windy dirt roads lead through tiny villages and firleds of grazing alpaca, llama and vicu?a… heaven!. On the last day the Bros must have had enough because it refused to start. It seemed like there was no spark because I couldn’t even push start it. Luckily, I wasn’t too far from civilization and got a few local men to help me load it onto a truck and haul it to the closest village. An our later, after some TLC on the spark plug, the Bros was brought back to life. A couple of hours later I found myself teleported from that magical world back into civilized Bolivia that is La Paz. I’m really looking forward to more of these little solo advengtures!”

Below are a few pics of the trip…

Thanks to great work by Walter the mechanic at the Ohlins workshop in Lima, the shock absorber came back within a week. Apparently only a few o-rings and seals had to be replaced. not bad after 110,000km, considering that this kind of service should be done every 30,000-40,000km…

Tomorrow we leave for Rurre.