MOUNTAINS, VALLEYS AND SALT FLATS
Atrip across South America had been on my bucket list for a long time, but somehow we always went somewhere else. Dee and I have now turned 70, and thought that if we were going to do it, we had better get on with it.
We considered a self-guided tour on a hired bike, but one-way bike rental trips are expensive if you end up 2700 miles and several countries distant! We eventually settled for a four-week guided tour run by Australian company Compass Expeditions and instead of hiring a bike each as we normally do, went for a R1200GS and rode two-up. The trip would start in Cusco, Peru, and then route through Bolivia at altitudes up to 15,500ft in the Andes, past Lake Titicaca, through La Paz and Potosi (the world's highest city), then border the edges of the greatest salt flats on earth at Uyuni, before crossing into Chile to ride across the Atacama Desert, where it hasn't rained in 400 years.
We would cross into northern Argentina at the remote Paso Jama at over 13,200ft and ride on through Salta and
