Tolar

My last morning in La Paz started with packing my bike, receiving a farewel gift from my hosts Bernardo and Theresa - a little flute with a cat that looks just like their cat Roby 🐈😍 - and some advice on good bike mechanics in Uyuni from their Nephew, just in case it will be needed 🤗.
I will miss this place!

Then it was once again off into the crazy traffic of La Paz to meet Matt at the Teleferico station going south and up to the main road to Oruro starting in the centre of El Alto.

While on the map this Teleferico looked like it was a single line from the centre of La Paz to our end station in El Alto, it wasn't. I realised just in time that I needed to get off to change to the second line going further up, but poor Matt didn't. And so he went all the way back down to the centre of La Paz and had to buy a new ticket to be allowed back on the gondolas...
While I waited for him at the middle station I left my bike with a security guard to get some more water from a shop a floor down. When I came back up (a different flight of stairs then when going down) and decided it was time to head towards El Alto I must have been somehow disoriented...because instead of the gondola towards El Alto I took the line back down 🤦‍♀️
I realised my mistake as soon as the doors shut...and a minute later I got to wave at Matt who had almost made it back up to the middle station.
Long story short, the Teleferico guards on the bottom of the line must have thought we were both idiots (which we probably are) and we pretty much won the price for stupidest tourists in town that day.

Once back up at the middle station the odyssey continued with a 15min discussion (of course all in spanish...thank you intensive spanish course) with another security guard who was trying to make us buy yet another ticket (we had already bought 4 each...) to take the second line up, claiming our bikes wouldn't fit on the gondolas with all the luggage...Which of course we new from experience wasn't true. In the end I won the argument - probably by pure exhaustion of my opponent (thanks MA for showing me how it'sdone 😉) - and we were allowed to continue to El Alto.

Once we made it up, we embarked on our ride along the ugly, dirty, busy main road out of El Alto, travelling south.
Progress was slow and we were forced to take shelter twice because of a thunderstorm. I hate cycling when there is lightning 😵

Matt had not been feeling his best that day and so we decided during our lunch break, in what seemed to be a motorcyclists restaurant in the tiny town of Tolar, to call it a day early and get a good night’s sleep in the adjacent Hotel and continue with more energy the next day.

🚴‍♀️Distance cycled: 57 km
🐕 Nr. of dog attacks: 1
🛣 Scenery of the ride: 2/10
🏆 Prices won: Stupidest Teleferico users 2023✌️Read more