The Hell Road
When we started motorcycling through Bolivia, we didn’t expect things to go right. But we could never have foreseen them going this wrong.
When an escalator breaks down, it becomes a staircase. When a motorcycle breaks down, it becomes an anchor. A useless, 150kg anchor, legally obliged to be returned to its country of registration. With two weeks left in the trip, a thousand kilometres to the Peruvian border, thousands more to our planned finishing point, clicking noises emanating from the engines of our three bikes, and a string of mechanical failures behind us, we decided to play it safe and have the engines rebuilt in Santa Cruz.
Within the coming days, we would come to regret deeply this decision.
We spent three days in the heat of Santa Cruz, throwing back pisco sours and waiting for the rebuilds to finish. Finally, cylinders honed, piston rings and clutch plates replaced, exhaust bolted back together, the trio rolled triumphantly out of the city and into the mountains. There are two routes from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba. The northern road is modern, used as the main transport route between the two cities, and fully paved. The southern road is old, used only for local transport between the villages in the region, and includes a long, notorious unpaved section through the cloud forest. We headed onto the southern road.
Jubilant at once again being in the mountains, we hit the twisties at the highest speed we were allowed during the break-in period of our newly honed cylinders. Spirits were high and banter flowed freely through the intercom until, 90km up the road, I noticed something disturbing.
“Guys, the noise is back.”
“What noise?”
“The clicking from my engine.”
“Hey Didier, why’s there smoke coming out of your engine breather?”
The team pulled over and inspected the engine, but we were unable to reach any conclusions other than “something is very wrong here but we don’t have a lot of options, so let’s ride very slowly until we reach a mechanic”. The plan didn’t work — another 15km up the road, the sound suddenly and dramatically worsened, the volume of smoke being dumped out of my engine breather greatly increased, and within ten seconds my engine had seized.
The first time I’d towed a bike, I was in the mountains of Laos with my friend Josip. We were near the end of a long South-East Asian trip, and Josip’s overloaded 150cc two-stroke sport bike had just broken its last legs. The fact that we had found ourselves in a situation with no option but to lash his bike to my own overloaded 150cc two-stroke, symbolized to me the utter desperation of the times. It has always stood out to me as one of the highlights of the trip.
Those were different times. On the South America trip, our first tow was on the first day. Since then, we’d had to tow the Chinese dirt bikes so many times that we’d lost count. The act of towing had been transformed from an exciting challenge, emblematic of our highest form of adventuring whereupon we pushed ourselves and our machines to the limits, into the world’s most high-adrenaline chore. “Sigh. I guess we need to tow the bike again.” It gets easier, but it never gets easy. We ran a strap from Tibet’s passenger peg to my handlebars, and continued into the mountains.
Eventually, only dropping the bike once, we reached the town of Samaipata. A motorcycle mechanic, spaced out on coca leaves, spent an entire ten seconds looking at the bike, played with the kickstart a bit, and then confidently declared to us that the crankshaft was broken and that the bike had to be sent back down to Santa Cruz. We thanked him for his advice and continued down the road until we found a mechanic whose cheek wasn’t full of coca. One of his assistants unmounted and disassembled the engine, let out a “whoa!” of surprise, and called everyone to gather around and to analyze what was likely the most thoroughly ravaged motor they’d ever seen.
We found a hostel and settled in for the long haul.
Samaipata, it turns out, is not the worst place to spend a few days. The presence of some nearby UNESCO world heritage ruins, dubbed the “Machu Picchu of Bolivia”, has prompted the development of some expat-owned bars and restaurants. The ruins are underwhelming, but given the dire state of the typical Bolivian culinary experience, the food was welcomed. We wiled away our time on burgers, cocktails, trips to the local attractions, and conversations with the hostel owner.
“You are going to Cochabamba?”
“Yes.”
“On this road?”
“Yes.”
“That is the hell road.”
“Oh?”
“There is a long muddy section, 120km. Very, very bad. They are doing road works and it is almost impossible to get through. It took me twelve hours yesterday.”
“Oh.”
A few days later, my bike had been fixed. The mechanic, noting how uneasy we all looked having lost nearly a week on our cylinders, attempted to reassure us. “No tendrá más problemas, te lo garantizo!”
We rode out. Within a few kilometers, my front brake started dragging. We rolled to another mechanic, who bled some fluid out and sent us on our way. Utterly unconvinced about the long-term effectiveness of this solution, we continued warily. Before long, my engine was making clicking noises again.
“Hey Didier, why are you making all that smoke come out of your engine?”
Drat.
Within minutes, my engine had lost all compression and we found ourselves once again on the side of the road, swearing profusely. History was fresh in our minds, but it appeared that the universe had doomed us to repeat it regardless. We attached the tow strap and continued slowly into the next town.
The first mechanic we stopped at was, as before, completely spaced out on coca leaves. We had not yet learned to avoid these mechanics, and maintaining hope that he could fix the issue, complied with his increasingly ridiculous demands. Wheel the bike into the shop. Okay, now dismount the engine. Good, now take the valve cover off. Timing chain too. What, your bike doesn’t have pushrods?
Before long, it became clear that this absolutely gormless buffoon of a ‘mechanic’ had no idea what he was doing, and was hoping that we would fix the engine ourselves and pay him for the privilege. We had the entire top end of the engine disassembled before he finally came clean regarding his cluelessness, and advised us to pack up and go to a better mechanic. At least, during the disassembly, we had been able to diagnose the issue — the previous mechanic had not torqued a cylinder head nut enough, it’d come undone, and an important gasket had blown as a result.
By the time we had the bike reassembled and towed to another mechanic, night had fallen. We explained the issue and, failing to find a properly sized gasket, he set about modifying a non-fitting one using a file and a tube of liquid gasket. By midnight, he had finished and, with the help of some partying locals who had the phone number of an unfortunate sleeping hostel owner, we’d secured accommodation.
We were now desperately behind schedule.
We were on the road by 6:30 the next morning. It would be tight, but we calculated that if we had no more major setbacks, we could still make it back to Huanuco in time for Tibet and Alex’s flight home. All we needed was for the Adventure Motorcycling Gods to end this streak of bad luck and mechanical failure.
At 8:30, as we rolled into the last town before the road works, my engine started making the clicking sounds again, and rain started pouring from the skies.
“Guys, can you hear this?”
“Yes.”
“What should we do?”
“Carry on, I guess.”
“Good plan! Then after 20km, my bike’s gonna break down again, and we’ll be stuck in the mud with a broken bike, smacking our heads and shouting ‘fuck! If only, somehow, we could have foreseen this!’”
“Oh come on Didier, stop being dramatic.”
I was wrong. We went not 20, but 36km before the engine siezed. I smacked my head. “Fuck! If only, somehow, we could have foreseen this!”
Why my bike experienced by far the most mechanical failures of the three remains a mystery to me. We attributed it to “luck of the draw”, “cascading failures” and “probably not Didier’s fault”, but it was little comfort. A failure on my bike had already cost us a week in Chile, and further failures on my bike were now, at least in my mind, jeopardizing the ability of the team to stay together in the home stretch. The guilt was overwhelming. Fortunately, I’m blessed with good friends. Alex and Tibet steadfastly refused to abandon me in the interest of catching their flight on time, and assured me that we’d “sort something out”.
Towing is a challenging operation in the best of conditions, and riding in slick clay mud is tricky enough when one has a working engine. Combined, this situation almost guaranteed injury. We tried and failed to find a truck that could take us out of the mud. With no other option, the tow-strap came out, and we attached my bike to Alex’s. It was to be Alex’s first time towing a bike, and we’d do it in the rain, on the slick clay cliff-hugging Hell Road.
Towing is difficult. If the strap slackens, the best possible result is that it will violently jerk the two bikes when it inevitably tightens again, and the worst is that it gets tangled in one of the wheels. As such, my chief responsibility was to keep the tow-strap taut. I dragged the rear brake for a substantial portion of the next 10km, until it faded away and I had to start using the front — a dangerous manueuvre on the mud, but once again my only option. Predictably, it did not take long before a combination of mud, front braking, and a slight jerk from the strap caused my bike to slide out and I hit the ground. Trapped under the bike, I was dragged through the mud until Alex noticed my protests and stopped, tipping over himself.
“Well, given the conditions, I think that was inevitable” helpfully offered Tibet, the one character in this situation who wasn’t involved in the towing.
“I can’t say I’m too happy with this whole ‘inevitably crashing’ plan”, I shot back.
“Yeah, well, what are we going to do?”
We picked up the bikes, bitterly rejoiced at our lack of broken bones, failed to find a truck driver willing to give us a lift, and continued towing. I silently fumed at the “we’re all in this together” and “we all basically own three thirds of a bike” rhetoric from the other two for whom being dragged through the mud had not been deemed an inevitability, but appreciated that they hadn’t simply taken off. Progress was slow but steady, until I noticed something off.
“Guys?”
“Yeah?”
“My front brake is locking again.”
“Don’t even joke about that, Didier.”
“I’m serious, it’s not — ARGH!”
I hit the ground again, the bike landed on my leg again, and was once again dragged through the mud until Alex was able to come to a stop (braking assisted by dropping his own bike again).
I had crashed because my front brake had locked up. I was using the front brake because the rear had failed. I was dragging the rear because my engine had died, for the third time in 200km.
I was, in that moment, truly consumed by fury. While I vented my extreme outrage into my helmet and the airwaves, Tibet kept his wits about him and noticed that we’d crashed within sight of a large truck, parked in front of a house. While Alex and I picked up the bikes, Tibet found the truck’s owner, explained our predicament, and negotiated a price for the drive to Cochabamba. Twelfth time’s the charm.
Loading the bikes into the truck and tying them down took almost two hours, and the bumpy, uncomfortable ride in the back to Cochabamba took a further five. We pulled in after dark, unloaded the bikes, and got out the tow-strap — the truck couldn’t take us into the downtown. What should have been a long day’s travel had turned into a week’s, our schedule had been completely ruined and spirit almost definitively crushed, but we’d made it to the next city along. We still had a broken down bike, and only time would tell if we’d make it to Peru in time for the flight. But for now, it was time for a drink.
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