Adventure: into the heart of South America

I have a cloth mask over my face and there’s a rucksack on my back stuffed full of beer, coca leaves, fuses and sticks of dynamite. No, I’m not heading to a terrorists’ Christmas party, I’m about to enter a mine shaft penetrating deep into a Bolivian mountain to watch miners toiling their way through a 12-hour shift.

They say mining techniques in Cerro Rico (literally ‘rich hill’) haven’t changed for the 500 years it’s been operating. Far from representing the essentials of an anarchists’ picnic, the items in my rucksack were in fact gifts for the men who work here – and who invariably shave decades off their lives due to the harsh working conditions.

The fact that the mine’s entrance is 4500m above sea level means the air is thin and every step an effort, especially if you haven’t been born into this sky-high environment.

The coca leaves were for the miners to chew because they stave off hunger pangs. The miners don’t eat for the duration of each shift because the food would become impregnated with deadly iron oxide dust. The beer simply dampens their dusty throats, while the dynamite gives their work an explosive helping hand – hopefully without burying them alive.

I’d bought these bits and pieces at the miner’s market in the sprawling town of Potosi – all entirely legally, mind you – for the equivalent of a couple of Aussie dollars.

This certainly wasn’t an everyday sort of experience for me. But, as I found out from day one on the Globebusters High Andes Motorcycle Expedition, this was to be a trip where the extraordinary became commonplace.

Spanning some five weeks, the tour would see our group of 11 adventurers depart the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, then trace an anti-clockwise route across the expanse of the pampas, up into the Andes, through Bolivia to Peru, then down to Chile and back across the width of the South American continent to Buenos Aires again.

On our 9000km journey, the landscape slowly changed from the flat, fertile farmland of the pampas to the towering 6500m peaks of the Andes to the crushing isolation of the Atacama Desert. We rode along the Atlantic coast as we made our way north from Buenos Aires, and then, weeks later, we traced our way along the Pacific coast, following the mighty Pan-American Highway south.

There’s no better way to experience foreign climes than by motorcycle. And if there’s one thing that stirs the boundless passion of the people of Latin America, it’s the sight of a big group of large motorcycles. Bikes are everywhere in South America, but coming across anything beyond mopeds is rare. Bike bikes are almost unheard of.

Our group – comprising four GS BMWs, a Honda Pan European, a Honda Africa Twin and a Suzuki V-Strom 1000 – caused a minor riot just about everywhere we went. People waved, dogs barked and oncoming traffic erupted in a frenzy of honking horns and flashing lights – this certainly wasn’t Australia!

Adding to the spectacle were tour leaders Chris and Liz Smith on their Africa Twin, with me as sweep in the support vehicle – a Ford Transit which, in a world where trucks from the 1950s are still par for the course, also caused its fair share of raised eyebrows.

To travel through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Chile is to be caught up in a near-constant barrage of colour, sound and sensory overload. From running the gauntlet of frenetic Buenos Aires traffic, to being surrounded by dozens of smiling, inquisitive Bolivian school kids, we found South America plunged us headlong into a welcoming culture that was a world away from the usual Western reserve.

At one point we stopped in a small Bolivian village high up in the altiplano (high plains). It was market day and the entire village was out in the village common, organising herds of llamas for sale. Or at least they were until we arrived…

As the villagers thronged around the bikes, the locals eagerly shook our hands – then the village chief gave an impromptu speech to thank us for visiting Bolivia and his home!

Lake Titicaca was an incredible sight, a glittering jewel, resplendent in the strong sunshine that floods this part of the world throughout the dry season. It’s home to the Uros Islands, where a civilization still lives on man-made islands constructed of reeds, just like they have since the Incas forced them off the mainland in the 1500s.

Peru’s old Inca capital of Cusco was a highlight, with its beautiful plazas and Spanish colonial architecture, as were the breathtaking ruins of Machu Picchu.

Only discovered by a Western explorer less than a century ago, Machu Picchu is a special place indeed. The religious capital of the Incas, it’s so well preserved that it’s easy to imagine priests worshipping in the Temple of the Condor, amid one of the most stunning mountain backdrops imaginable.

Then there was the Top Gun-style joy flight over the mysterious Nazca Lines – unexplained geoglyphs etched into the sands of Peru’s arid coastal plains. They’re thought to be some 1500 years old and yet can only be viewed properly from the air.

And yes, if you want the full gamut of riding experiences, this expedition is impossible to beat. Being charged with the support vehicles as I was, I spent most of the time either behind a steering wheel or behind a camera (or both), but, as a motorcycle journalist of 15 years – and a rider for several more than that – I know a good biking road when I see one. South America has loads, and they go on and on.

Similarly, the road from San Pedro de Atacama, in northern Chile, climbs its way through an incredibly desolate Andean wilderness to the top of Paso de Jama. Up here there is little but rocky outcrops, a howling gale and the odd drift of snow. A temperature sensor on one of the bikes read –37°C, before it broke.

At the highest point you’re an amazing 4700m above sea level, then the serpentine road makes its way into Argentina, where the incredible undulations and corners continue for 350km, until you reach the edge of the mortar-board-flat pampas.

Road conditions vary, but many have first-rate surfaces. However, you’ll have to keep your wits about you because the term ‘lane discipline’ is an oxymoron in South America. Also, you never know when an alpaca, llama or vicuna (one of the llama’s smaller relatives) is about to spring out in front of you – or a pig, horse, donkey or human, for that matter.

Traffic in the major centres is a white-knuckle ride. In cities, we soon discovered that the horn isn’t just a cautionary device – it’s just as important to your survival on the road as your wheels or brakes. Plunging into the traffic at first looks suicidal, but there is a method to the locals’ seeming madness and, once you’re in the groove, the mayhem can actually become quite addictive.

There is an exception to this and that is Chile – maybe it’s a product of years of oppression under General Pinochet in the ’70s and ’80s. As soon as you cross the border from Peru into Chile things settle down into a more Western form of order.

Meanwhile, dirt junkies were kept entertained by the ‘main’ road from Villazon, on the Bolivia-Argentina border, to Potosi, in Bolivia. This potholed, rutted dirt road stretches for nearly 400km. And because this place is so arid in the dry season the dust is incredible. Overtaking trucks – billowing dust behind them – sometimes felt like plunging into the void. It would have been downright scary, had oncoming traffic been any more frequent than a vehicle every 30 or so minutes. The locals here simply can’t afford a car.

But the absolute best thing about this trip was the unadulterated sense of adventure that comes with travelling through vastly different cultures. Nothing is certain here, everything is open to interpretation – from road rules, to even whether a road will be open or not. And if you want to hurry the painfully slow wheels of bureaucracy – like when you want to cross a border, for example – well, the Latino ethos of mañana, mañana (tomorrow, tomorrow) will hit you pretty hard until you allow yourself to slip into a similar headspace.

On one occasion, in Peru, we were confronted with a long line of trucks and hundreds of villagers at the start of a 50km-long roadblock on the only road in the region heading to our day’s destination, Cusco. It was Peruvian election time and, to voice their distrust of both candidates, the locals had decided to stage a three-day roadblock, bringing the country to a standstill. All over Peru, boulders were rolled onto the roads, along with tyre-spiking cacti.

We couldn’t have planned on it but it gave us an insight into Peruvian life we wouldn’t forget. I found it a rewarding time to practise my Spanish with a few of the local kids – Cuanto tiempo puedo parquear aqui? (how long may I park here?). “About six hours,” came the response, amid fits of giggles. Fortunately we had hit the blockade near the end of the third and final day.

Overlanding across South America is a challenge, but it’s an adventure that’s certainly worth the effort. Eleven people started this journey and 11 people finished – and the lives of everyone to a man had been touched in a very special way by South America, its people, and that wonderful, intangible Latin allure.