Today we finally left La Paz. Departure morning began at 6:30 AM, and the very first order of business was an indulgent hot shower. Who knows when the next one will be, so it was appreciated accordingly. By 7:30 AM we were eating breakfast: American pancakes with jam, fried egg, strawberry juice (which sounds better than it tasted), and a bowl of fruit. Another solid start, regardless of the fact that we sorely missed our freshly squeezed orange juice.

We rolled out of the hostel slightly later than 8:30 AM and headed straight for the Teleférico to take us up to El Alto. (Cycling out of La Paz and up to El Alto simply isn’t manageable with our heavy bikes. The incline is very steep and around 8 km long. No thank you.) And this is where the first challenge began. Bicycles are allowed in the Teleférico, but not allowed in the elevator, meaning we had to carry our fully loaded bikes up three flights of stairs. These are not light bikes. At all. Let’s just say I now have a very distinct, very colourful bicycle-frame-shaped bruise on my thigh to prove it. Challenge number two: the gondolas don’t stop. They slow down a little, but not much. Getting yourself and your bike through narrow sliding doors while the whole thing keeps moving is… challenging. Somehow, we managed without losing limbs or equipment. As a reward, each of us was in our own gondola with our fully loaded bikes soaring over the city. The view was unreal. We joked that the moment would have been prime Radscheune Erfurt Instagram advertisement material if only we could’ve taken decent pictures of ourselves mid-air with bikes.

In El Alto, the next challenge awaited: cycling through El Alto to get out of it. And that proved to be quite a pain because it was very dirty, chaotic and dangerous and seemed to go on forever. After 20 km we had finally left the worst of it behind us and cycled through suburban villages on the Altiplano. The Altiplano is… something. It’s impressive in its scale, no doubt, but what it isn’t is colourful. It’s dry, dusty and monochrome. It’s the kind of landscape that humbles you, but doesn’t necessarily please the eye. Despite the surroundings, we found a good rhythm and kept a solid pace, cycling until just before Patacamaya. There, Göran found us an excellent, wind-protected camping spot in nature. A small victory that genuinely matters when the sun drops and temperatures follow dramatically.

We cooked dinner, packed up a bit, and then got a message that Markus, the German bikepacker we’d met in La Paz, was also in Patacamaya. We made a spontaneous plan to meet him in the morning and cycle a few kilometres together to chat and enjoy some company on the road. By 8:15 PM we went into our warm sleeping bags after a long day of cycling.

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