May 1, 2010

When I rolled into town yesterday, I met Rick,  a UK fellow doing Round the World (RTW) on his BMW F650 Dakar. (You can see his blog at https://www.dickysworldadventure.blogspot.com/ ) Rick had been on the lookout for a fellow he was supposed to meet up with in Uyuni riding a DR650, so when mine rolled by he whistled me down.  I think he was a little surprised when I took off the helmet and revealed my, um, girl-ness.

We chatted for a bit, then agreed to meet at his hostal at 7 to grab a bit of dinner together. I went off to find a hotel, goofed up on the time, arrived an hour late, an he was gone. Poor me, he was cute! The good  news was that the Argentinians from the hotel last night randomly showed up at the same hotel as me again, so I had a nice visit with them.

<>

I felt badly blowing off Rick, so this morning I strolled over to his hostal again and found him. We hatched a plan to bypass the tourist tour, and go ourrselves to the train graveyard and to the Salar. Good idea, because we had a BLAST!

It was one of those super special days, where everything clicked–personalities, riding styles, get-up-and-go on the dirt. I’ll show you the pictures here and if you want to read more about hhowmuch fin we had you can click on over to RumBum.com where our fun together inspired a post in my weekly column.

https://rumbum.com/959-playing-like-kids-in-the-salar

The Train Cemetery

25 miles of Ripio North to the Salar

But Rick finds a dirt track mostly parallel to the road, and we take that. wow. We’re chasing each  other like likes through the desert. I think  it’s about as much fun as I have ever had on a motorcycle.

Rick has this idea–we need to get a can of Pringles to make out-of-proportion pictures.

No pringles, we settle for sardines.

Out to the Salar

The challenge of the day now is what to do with the sardines…we opt for riding back through town and giving them to a hungry dog.

We decide to take the same dirt track back to Uyuni. The llamas are moving across the plain.

I am impressed with the garbage landscape. Plastic bags hanging on the scrub brush everywhere…

impressive in thee 45 mph wind!

Back into town for some dinner