Sucre to Oruro 330km

 

We have managed to knock off 350km+ with ease on this journey however we were unprepared for what  the road fromSucre to Oruro had to offer! Joe sadly left us today, so Chris will be driving solo, we all pledged to fly as his wing man.

The day started inauspiciously with confusion with the hotel management as to whether we had paid or not. Chris had the receipt from AirBnB stating we had, the hotel struggled to understand this and insist that we should pay again. There was nothing malicious in the  misunderstanding, simply the day to day confusion of travelling in a country where one's only means of communication is Google Translate.

 

The day started to go wrong fairly early with Nigel and Hugo taking a different exit route from the town (getting to the same road) whilst Chris and I decided that we would fill up with fuel before we left, with absolutely no certainty as to when we would get fuel again. This took some time as fuel stataions are not as frequent as you might think and when we finally set off up the ineveitable hill out of Sucre we met Nigel coming down to find us. Finally, about 09:30 we were off! Nigel, with his enormous 140ltr fuel tank, was confident he could do the miles.

Route 6 to Oruro is an extraordinary road. Once again 290km of rises and falls, twists and turns followed by a flat 40km into Oruro. It goes through very different terrain to begin with filled with pines and eucalptus trees. Small holdings on the outskirts of Sucre are soon replaced by the arid and empty Andes only interspersed by small, improverished mining communities . The Lagondas purred to the top of the hills and would then wait some 5-10 minutes for the Rolls to arrive in its usual stately fashion. The day slipped into a smooth and successful routine....until it all went wrong!

At a junction in the road (about the only one between Sucre and the main road into Oruro) David and I took the only available wrong turn at a badly marked junction (that's our excuse and we are sticking to it). We continued for about 10 minutes and then stopped by a small village with a heavily polluted stream running right past it, to wait for the others to catch up. No one appeared and after about 15 minutes we turned around to find them. Back through the soon to be notorius junction and up a long, steep and winding road back up the road we had just come. By this time we were becoming concerned about the amout of fuel we had just used up. No sign of anyone, so back down the road to the same juction and the realisation that the mistake was ours and the other two cars were now a long way ahead of us. Not only had we wasted nearly two hour, we had used up our critical petrol with no idea where the next fuelling point might be. The fuel problem was solved by buying 20ltrs on the road side from a little lady and we could once again relax as we would inevitably catch the others in due course. 

 

 

We finally caught up with Nigel and Hugo and they indicated that they had some mechanical problem but would push on. We passed the downtrodden mining town of Chiquihuta and round the corner found Nigel on the roadside empty of petrol! We still had over 100km to go. We shared our 10ltr can and Nigel and Hugo reruned to Chiquihuta to find more fuel. As we waited on the roadside a 4x4 stopped and somehow we explained our dilema. Out the back of the truck came a piece of hose and 10ltr were syphoned into our can. The generosity of strangers! Thunder was threatening on the other side of the mountain and darkness was begining to fall so it was a relief when Nigel and Hugo reappeared having found 90ltrs for themselves and kindly brought us a further 20ltrs. Fuel was no longer the problem, darkness and a threatening storm were now what we had to face. 

 

 

 

 

We cracked on once again through a small and rather unpleasant downpour, past enormous mining operations and finally, oh finally, we were through the mountains and onto flat road into Oruro. The ineveitable battle to our hotel through chaotic traffic was successfully negotiated and then finally the slightly weird Chinese built and decorated  Eden Hotel, Oruro with secure parking was reached around 18:30. It had been one hell of a drive but we had made it.