15th January San Pedro-Bolivia 108 miles

OMG, what a nightmare day, started badly and got progressively worse.
We had breakfast and said should we pack up camp and shower or the other way round. This campsite has the water heated by a solar panel on the roof, modern hey, and when we first arrived Martin had hot shower in the afternoon, woke up next morning and had a cold shower at about 8.30, I had a hot shower at 10.55. The reason for all that waffle was that Martin said no lets pack up first and have a hot shower after. We did that and as I went to get a shower Martin told me there was no rush the showers are turned off at 11, it was now 11.05.
We leave and first stop, fuel. Tanked up we look for an immigration and customs office that is near the town, no luck so we carry on towards the Bolivian border, having travelled 25 miles and climbed 2200 meters, we are now at 4600 masl, we turn around and head back. Almost as soon as we get back we find the Control Office, 15 minutes and we clocked out of Chile, where is the Bolivian border, ½ mile further on from where we turned around. Having travelled 50 odd miles and gone nowhere we go back to the garage and top up both bikes.
Back to the top of the hill and yes just passed where we turned around a sign showing the turning to the Bolivian border. Three miles down the road and there is a border gate, open, and a small rendered block building on the right. We venture inside with all our documents and a charming little Bolivian guy greets us and stamps our passports, he is very chatty but doesn’t speak a word of English. Martin gets the camera and we have a session with Martin taking photos of him and me and then he insisted on taking photos of Martin and me in front of the various signs and then his colleague who was a police officer joined the fray. Martin said afterwards, ‘could you imagine that happening at Heathrow. Our friendliest border control so far, customs by the way is a further 80k into Bolivia.
5 miles down the road another building, we are charged a lump of money which we thought was part of entering Bolivia, it turned out that we were entering a National Park and therefore had to pay.
We are now in the Country and have not passed customs and we are literally in the middle of nowhere. The roads are literally sand tracks and although we have some Bolivian maps, there are more tracks than those on the map. We would suddenly come to a fork and it really was hobsons choice as to which one you took. My theory, which is probably wrong, is that someone who lives 50 miles off to the right thought one day it would be quicker if i went straight across there and behold, a new road.
The only vehicles you see here are 4 wheel drives and lorries, nothing else would make it. Funnily Martin was told it would take 2 days to Uyuni, but it is only 200 miles how could it take so long we thought, now we thing that was a gross exaggeration, it will take much longer.
Going is really hard and slow, I have riden on sand on a light KTM and it is not easy but I can do it. The diference between that and nearly 400 kilos of bike and luggage with me purched on top is chalk and cheese. I know it is easier if you go faster but when the inevitable happens it happens so much quicker and all that weight starts to take over. Both of us practice laying the bike down and picking it up is something else. Bear in mind we are at 4500 masl and everything you do is a real effort, having picked up the bike we are both puffing, yes even 2 of us struggle to lift one bike.
I am now starting to have a sense of humour failure as the first time the bike went down I trapped my shin between the cylinder head and a rock, the second time I did exactly the same thing to the same led in exactly the same place, ouch! I now have a massive haematoma on my right leg and it is throbbing.
The bikes are now getting hot and as they bog down we can smell the clutches burning away, this is a nightmare. I am now losing confidence in my riding desperate not to drop the bike again especially not on my leg, I think I could probably walk around Bolivia quicker that I can manage on this bike today. Having discussed this with Martin he agrees it is heavy going although he is coping much better, and we agree to go back. We cannot do that tonight though as we have only travelled 30 miles and it has taken us 3 hours, the sun will go down in40 minutes to an hour so we must camp, WHERE!! A 4x4 stopped and asked if we were and told us there is a lagoon 4_5k further and they have a refuge hut. Great, we go on to the lagoon and the buildings are deserted but a couple of people a bathing in a hot spring and we are told we can camp.
We try to find some lee from the wind and set up camp. My leg is throbbing away and I am ready just to climb straight into my sleeping bag, I should also mention that Martin and I feel pants as we are probably suffering altitude sickness, Nausea, headache, light headed and everything is an effort. Martin is happy to cook so we cook up some tuna, onions and tomatoes; we skip the rice as it takes 18 minutes.
It was nice but the sun has now gone down and it is getting quite cold so we take to our beds. We have had a couple of noisy campsites which has compromised our sleep but here there is absolute silence. Well we were in bed by 9.30 and I could not go to sleep, all night, just closed my eyes and opened them later expecting that I had been asleap for hours and 30 minutes or 1 hour and I know I had been awake for the whole of that time. It was a very long night and on comparing notes with Martin he had exactly the same experience, I don’t know whether it was the altitude or what.
During the night I was as warm as toast, in fact too warm but as soon as I opened my sleeping bag it was cold, I eventually found a compromise. Next door Martin was cold and had his jacket over his feet and various layers of clothes. So it must have been cold, we recon about minus 5 as it was still minus 2 at 7.30. Quite a drop from about 28 degrees when the sun was up.