Cycling The Globe

Distance: 70.47 km
Ride time: 5:51:59
Average: 12.13 km/h
Altitude: 3711 m
Total: 27850 km

After the interesting stay in Salinas I was leaving town as the party was ending. Many people were waiting at the central square for buses to take them back to their home villages – I was leaving by bike instead.

The road towards Oruro was in construction, making progress slow. I would often have to cycle on small tracks away from the main road where big machines were working.

At some point I noticed that my rack had finally broken, after more than 2000 km of dirt road cycling in South America. While cycling the Carretera Austral in Chile months I would often meet cyclists with broken racks. At that time I could do nothing but to hope my own would keep up. Now it had finally reached it’s limit as well.

Luckily the welding that had failed was not the most important part of the rack, and I was able to temporary fix things up with a bit of wire.

A bit further down the road I was passing the impressive Jayu Crater. I found it very fascinating to think that a meteor hit in this place millions of years ago, and today I could still stand there and look at the result.

In the late afternoon I arrived at a stretch of road that had already been paved. With a bit of tail wind (it seems forever since I had that last time) I was able to make good progress for an hour. No reason to get up hopes to high though, soon enough I was back on a sandy dirt track.

I do hope to finally reach the real paved road tomorrow. This will potentially make those the last kilometers of dirt road I’m cycling, possibly all the way until Canada!