Day 29

Tuesday 30^th November 2010

Today is quad biking day! Alright!

We met our guide downstairs and had a bit of a to do about payment, so we sat in a Bolivian stand off for about an hour. Then the ‘boss’ arrived and said “ok guys, lets go!”

All very strange…. We jumped in a cab and soon arrived at the house where the quads were kept. We had booked to go on the 4 hour ride which the flyer said was ok for riders without experience, although the boss seemed a little surprised by this. We jumped on the back and were taken to a practice area to familiarise ourselves with the bikes. They were Suzuki 500cc autos and pretty self explanatory to use.

This is the gear lever

Put it in N to start

Put it in H to move

Press this to go

Press this to stop

These are emergency brakes etc etc

We had a little practice and then we were off. Straight onto the streets of Sucre!

“don’t worry its only for 10 minutes”!

We hit the back streets and then the open countryside.

The tracks that we went down were still being used by wagons and buses which made things interesting. We were glad that the boss had told us that often dogs will come charging out of homes barking and chasing after us. “don’t worry” he said “they are trying to bite the bikes”

Oh good

This happened quite a lot and freaks you out the bigger the dogs get, there is always that thought in your head, what if this time he actually wants to bite my leg?

We gained in confidence and began to pick up some speed, it was awesome! Up and down the craggy paths, trying to get the back end to slide a bit. Suzi tried once but didn’t like it, I began to relish every corner, of which there was plenty.

We stopped in a little town for lunch and everyone from kids to grown men came out to have a look at the bikes. The boss had bought us a sandwich each and we sat in a bandstand eating and watching the locals gawp at the bikes.

As we set off the local kids waved us off, I felt like Ewan Mcgregor in “The Long Way Round”.

In the afternoon the views were spectacular.

We had covered about 45-50 km and could see all of Sucre and beyond. The sun had made an appearance too and although we were almost covered from head to toe our wrists were poking out and so was the tip of my nose. (insert joke here)

We splashed a bit of sun cream on and set off again (we would later discover that Suz had only managed to cream one wrist, the other one is red raw).

The next two hours passed so fast, we spent them avoiding all sorts of animals, more dogs, sheep,  goats, chickens, 3 donkeys and then we were encouraged to overtake a bus up hill. Suz floored it and went flying past, I quickly followed and the speedometers read 45 MPH. I know it doesn’t sound that impressive but it felt really quick, we pulled back in and the boss turned around and made the gnarly sign (hang ten) with the thumb and little finger of his left hand.

We made one final stop and the boss explained that the wall we could see in the distance was where the famous dinosaur footprints are (check Wikipedia). Unfortunately we don’t have the time to go and see them.

We made short work of the final 5km back to base to cap off and amazing experience totalling 90km of riding. Quad biking rules!

We arrived back into town at about 14:00. We collected the laptop and headed off to find food and Wi-Fi, Café Joyride won again. We grabbed a spot of lunch and Skyped my folks, its snowing at home and United are getting beat off West Ham, sounds rubbish.

After dinner we headed back up to the hotel, for some unknown reason my guts had decided to start playing up again. I wasn’t really feeling up to going out for a group tea, so we stayed in and packed, showered and settled down for a film on the laptop (The Hangover for those interested). We battled through to the end and were asleep within a minute of the credits.

Tomorrow we're off to Potosi. No rest for the Honeymooners!