Day 13 Uyuni to Desert Hotel

We are up and ready to go except for the fact Brians "pig" has broken in half. Brian and Sam C head off tho the welders while Sam T and I head into the markets to find tubes. Now if you remember we could not source a USB drive anywhere in SA so far - Well here I am in the middle of the desert and a small Libreria (book shop) has a 160GB samsung USB2 drive at a very resonable price - we purchase it immediatley as we have run out of storage for our helmet cam.

The pig is welded up

At about 10:30am we have tubes and a alloy weld done on the BMW. Before we leave Uyuni we do a quick photo shoot at the famous steam train grave yard. Now to try and work out where we can get Gasolina before we hit the desert proper. At this stage of the journey we have word that there are two possible petrol filling places then after the 70k mark there will be no civilisation for 350k and no gasolina. So we hit the fist stop at San Cristobal only to find the petrol station closed until the end of siesta at 2pm, we could not afford to wait so pushed on in hope of finding gas by the last stop at Villa Allota. This was a ghost town with a sand street and md brick dwellings. It took us a while before one of the locals opened his gates to offer us the desparatley needed gasoline - this would give us the range needed for the crossing of the Cordillera. It mid afternoon and we need to make good time through the desert to make the area of the hotel and see if we can find it. Luckily we have a GPS navigator that gives us an approximate route, the rest we do by map memorisation and signage that pops up along the way.

Formations in a canyon at Villa Alota - Sam holds it up.

Unfortunatley as soon as we go offroad the "pig" breaks again. The weld has not lasted and we are stuck with a bike that has a useless footrest and comprimised strength. We decide the best course of action is to wire the bike up as we beleive this part of the frame is more to hold the undercarraige and footrests on than anything else. Brian will have to sit down for the rest of the journey which may be a bit tough in some sections.

Number 8 will do it - she'll be right!

Whilst we wire up the pig, one of the tornadoes that we have seen many times in the high plains starts to roar up from the canyon beside us. I get some good footage as 5 or so mini tornadoes form one big one as it sweeps directly towards us. We can't move as Sam C is still wireing the pig and we have gear all around that we quickly collect as the wind starts to pick up. I film the whole thing with the tornado picking up the sand and dust only a few meters away from us. The noise and force is amazing and we all woop as the twister goes around us by meters and heads off to the east. The sand goes up the spout a few hundred feet and disperses into the atmosphere.

We get going again and start making some good ground across volcanic gravel and sand tracks unil we hit the first lake. I breath a sigh of relief as I recognise the terain and environment from the maps I have studied, we are on track and the methods are working. We travel past lunar and martian landscapes, volcanic cones, flamingoes, antelope that look like Alpaca, drag race flat pans, deep desert sands... Its all too much to comprehend in one afternoon. About an hour before dark we find the Desert Hotel like a mirage it appears around a bend off the main track.

Mirage turns out to be the Hotel - Cerveza Cerveza....

I unpack the bike and ascend the nearest ridge which looks small but turns out to be about a kilometer of climbing sand and rock strewn slopes I make it 3/4 of the way up and park the DR650 for a quick sunset photo shoot before heading back to the hotel.

The Desert Hotel is middle right

DR at about 4500 meters

For us the hotel was 5 star considering the day we have had and the one we will have tomorrow. Our one meal a day method means we enjoy the 3 course meal put in front of us and the Cerveza even at over 4000 meters.

Early start in the morning as we have another 200Km run to San Pedro in Chile - mostly Cordillera desert.