The morning of our departure from La Paz was very busy, quite sad, and filled with delays and small problems. It was as if the city was conspiring against us, not wanting us to leave. Or our own subconscious was at work doing the same.

We packed up and said a very heartfelt goodbye to Miriam, Blanca, and Rita the housekeeper, then drove for one last time across town along the route we had come to know so well. We arrived at the repair shop in order to reattach our cases and pick up all of the gear and tools we had left lying all over the shop. We treated the mechanics to a breakfast of saltenas (and Coke as they requested) as a thank you for all of their work on the bikes.

After 17 days in La Paz, we'd finally learned how to eat these delicious meat-filled pastries without dripping juice all over ourselves and Marcello's floor. (Earlier in the week Gary got stuck with the bill after eating saltenas with Marcelo, Alex and Eduardo because he made the biggest mess.) The trick is to bite the saltena at one end and open up a hole, then suck a bit of juice out. As you continue eating, bite either the top crust or the bottom crust, not both at the same time, which will create too much pressure on the bottom and force the juice out. Also, the juice must be sucked out frequently as you progress down the saltena. Remember to eat away at the crust evenly top and bottom, and if you end up making a big mess, blame it on the saltena.

Back at Top Shop, people stopped by in droves to say their final goodbyes to us as we rummaged around Marcelo's office amassing all of our odds and ends that we'd kept there for 2 weeks. We purchased a few necessary items - chain oil, bungee nets, a spare set of gloves. We all put Top Shop stickers prominently on our bikes and Alex, who never had many stickers to begin with, went sticker crazy and covered his bike from headlight to broken license plate bracket. Gary and David put little doggy stickers on their front fairings with little bones in an X over the dog, indicating the number of kills. (David also had a small bird to his credit, but declined a sticker for that one. Ditto Alex for the chicken... but that wasn't a kill).

Gary ran into a bit of a problem when the shoe repairman who normally sets up a booth outside of Top Shop didn't show up in the morning with Gary's tank bag. Gary had given it to him to repair some damage from the accident with the dog in the Yungas. The bag was supposed to have been ready the day before, but wasn't. Instead, the shoe man promised to bring it in the morning. Marcelo made some calls to track him down and learned that some family problem would keep the man away all day. With no other tank bags for sale anywhere in the city, Gary managed to shove, cram and crush the usual contents of his tank bag into his Pelicans. Although the bag was old, beat up, ripped, and just a little too small for everything that went in it, it was sad to lose the trusted companion that so dutifully had held, among other things, Gary's maps, camera, vitamins, and guide books for the many thousands of miles.

A trip to the DHL office with a box of goodies to send back home helped make a little more room for everybody - some clothes, photos, books, broken or unused gear, even Gary's llama wool seat cover he'd bought in the Andes (for $2!), now dirty and stinky, but some things you just can't throw away. (Thanks, Saione, for safeguarding it all till we get back. Glad the sweater came in handy :-)

We had planned to leave by 11:00 am, and one of the motorcyclists we'd met, also named Marcelo, was to ride with us for two days to Santa Cruz where he lived. He was buying a used KX 250 and the mechanic prepping the bike was taking longer than expected. The bike, supposedly ready days ago, wouldn't be finished until 1:00 pm. The ride to Cochabamba, our stop for the night, was about 5 hours away, so 1:00 pm wouldn't be so bad. At 12:30, word arrived that the bike wouldn't be ready at all that day.

By then, however, we'd commited to having lunch one last time at Marcelo's (of Top Shop). David picked up Carmen for their last meal together and, mercifully, lunch was short and sweet. But when we returned to Top Shop, which closes everyday at 1:00 pm for two hours, as do most businesses in La Paz, Marcelo had forgetten to take the keys. We would have to wait until 3 o'clock when Juan Carlos, the manager, returned to work. Then at 3, along with the opening of the doors, the sky opened up and a tremendous downpour, unlike any we'd yet seen in La Paz, crashed down on the city. This was not weather to drive in; the streets flooded in no time and we were forced inside to wait it out.

The Gangs All Here

In typical Riding to the Moon fashion, as soon as Eduado left us, we took a wrong turn and wound up on some horribly bumpy muddy dirt road. Everyone had assured us the whole way was paved, so what the hell was this? Turns out we were 1 block off the main road, but we didn't know it for at least a mile before the two roads intersected. From then on out, it was good road, flat and straight, along the altiplano, the sky threatening at any minute to dump again.

For two hours, we narrowly missed each patch of rain moving swiftly across the altiplano, then our luck ran out. Just before the turn off to Cochabamba and the mountain pass, we hit some rain that in no time had us shivering and miserable. We stopped at a small roadside restaurant for hot tea and soup and waited for the rain to pass. While we waited for the food to arrive, David disappeared to the kitchen to find the soup stove and stand over it. For ten minutes he stood there in the corner, hovering over the aluminum 5 gallon pot, before he finally noticed the huge, recently skinned pig dripping blood onto the cement floor. He left the kitchen. A cute little girl adopted us during our 20 minute rest, giving us all names of her choosing. This warmed our hearts, just as the food warmed out bellies, and we went back out into the darkening day reinvigorated for the second half of the drive.

Why is it it takes so long to warm up after a long ride and it takes only a few minutes to be freezing again?

The mountain pass, at 4480 meters (approx. 14,000 feet), wasn't as cold as we expected, but by then night had fallen and our speed was considerably reduced on the curvy mountain road. We stopped off again just after the cumbres for a light meal and more hot liquids. Good timing too, because a short deluge started and ended during the meal. The road had begun to descend and soon the temperature warmed up as we reached the jungle highlands.

We took a rest at a small river running alongside the road and blessed the gods that we were back in a warm climate. Despite a few warm days in La Paz, we had been in relatively cold weather at very high altitudes for almost a month since leaving the coast of Peru. No one was happier than Alex, who can't stand cold weather unless he has a snowboard strapped to his feet.

The Hotel Uni in Cochabamba was a bit pricier than we would have liked, but rain, cold, night, and a lot of bus and truck traffic had turned a five hour ride into an eight hour ride, and none of us wanted to scour the town at midnight for a hotel bueno y barrato. David and Alex managed the energy to eat a late dinner, while Gary passed out in the hotel room.

Miles - 245

A typical Bolivian breakfast of bread, jam and butter kicked off the day. Our bodies were somewhat affected from the previous day's ride. It had been quite a while since we'd ridden anything close to 245 miles. But the soreness in our butts and lower backs was a welcome feeling marking a return to the open road.

The day was warm and sunny, for once, and we leapt aboard our trusty steeds with enthusiasm. The road out of town was clearly marked, so we made no mistakes, for once. Within a few miles, the city dropped away replaced by rolling farmland, roadside streams and light forests. The countryside and warm weather reminded us of long ago, travelling the rural roads of Central America.

After 40 miles, the road descended further into lush tropical jungle. The air grew hotter and more humid. Dense vegetation draped across the hills like a thick green rug, and trees with giant leaves hung over the road like sentinels. The spectacular flora and smooth curvy road had us all smiling in our helmets.

Then we hit the tunnel. Riding about a half mile apart from each other, we all went through the same following experience. Coming around a curve, the road plunged into the mountainside through a rough rock-hewn tunnel. Without artificial light, and curved so as to cut off sunlight coming in from either end, not ten yards into the tunnel we were submerged in the darkest darkness. The headlight of the motorcycle was completely powerless again the void. Each one of us, in turn, screeched to a halt seconds after entering the tunnel before we smashed headlong into a wall, wherever that may be. Sitting still in the darkness, hoping no other vehicles were going to come roaring through and slam us, we let our eyes adjust to the darkness and our heads adjust to the disorientation. Slowly, we could make out a faint glow from the wet rock walls, spring water coursing through the mountain dripping through a myriad cracks. Slowly and carefully we drove on, desperately peering into the darkness ahead for a clue to the road's path. One final curve brought us in view of the exit, a shining semi-circle of salvation. David waited after his harrowing passage to watch Gary emerge shaken but pumped. Both watched Alex appear moments later, laughing with relief and shaking his head in disbelief at the whole ordeal.

Twenty miles of dirt road, in good condition and obviously soon to be paved, unexpectedly came up, but fresh from our off-road weekends in La Paz, we made it through quickly and easily. An old jungle lodge with a restaurant where the pavement reappeared was the perfect place for lunch. Although we were the only diners in the restaurant, the place was friendly and the kind waitress was eager for some light conversation. The music playing in the boom box and the food on the menu foretold our proximity to Brasil. Outside, we could hear squeals of pleasure from some (local?) children who were escaping the heat and humidity in a neighboring water hole. We were tempted to join in, but Santa Cruz was calling. On the final long and flat stretch into Santa Cruz, the route crossed over many small meandering rivers. At the base of each bridge, local residents swam and bathed in the warm waters. If we weren't so covered up in our riding gear, we might have stopped for a quick dip ourselves, but the idea of undressing and dressing again kept us moving.

We arrived in Santa Cruz in the late afternoon and had some food while we waited for the two Marcelos, who were flying in from La Paz that day with their motorcycles, Marcelo of Top Shop for business and Marcelo of Santa Cruz to return home. In the meantime, just outside the restaurant in the main square of town, a parade of some kind was being set up. We joked about getting into it with the bikes but ultimately never moved from our chairs to go anywhere until the Marcelos showed up with a few other bikers to take us away.

During our prolonged stay in La Paz, we had come to know about the Kawasaki business in Bolivia. Marcelo owned the dealership in La Paz, but the actual importer, Juan Carlos de Salvatierra, lived in Santa Cruz and owned a dealership there. It was to his house that we were taken and told that we would be staying there. Well, okay, if you insist.

The house was beautiful, large, modern, a swimming pool, large outdoor barbeque, plenty of parking for the bikes in between their Land Cruiser, custom Toyota 4x4, and the half-dozen Kawi motorcross bikes. Clearly, the motorcycle business, in addition to his other businesses, had done Juan Carlos well. He and his wife, Cynthia, and their son, Juan Carlos Jr. or Chavo (his nickname) welcomed us warmly. They had already heard so much about us from Marcelo and from Hector at Kawasaki in the United States. They installed us in a gorgeous guest room with a beautiful bathroom (great shower, jacuzzi tub). We all chatted for a while sipping lemonade around the pool in the warm evening air until the time came for our first experience with the Santa Cruz nightlife.

Marcelo of Santa Cruz showed up in his fully-loaded Mitsubishi Montero, a true cruise mobile, and he, his brother Daniel, the three of us and Marcelo of Top Shop headed off. The most common nighttime activity among the young adults of Santa Cruz is cruising a particular half-mile strip of road. Being Saturday night, everyone was out, the road clogged with cars, trucks, and sport-utility vehicles (very popular in Bolivia). The curb was an improptu parking lot and discotheque. Hundreds of Cruzeños stood chatting, drinking and dancing to music pumping from immense car stereo systems. We ran across several friends of our friends as we drove back and forth, back and forth, looking as cool and studly as humanly possible.

Around midnight, a large group of us went to the Palladium, a very popular nightclub. We wormed our way onto the incredibly packed dance floor and let it all hang out for a few hours. The heat generated by the crowd was staggering. By the time we left, our clothes were drenched with sweat and our eyes bleary with exhaustion. Once back in our cool air-conditioned room, we hardly even noticed how comfortable our accomodations were as we dropped off to sleep.

Miles - 245