Expedition South - Episode 7 - Bolivia the Incredible! HD

Welcome to episode 7. I'm going to be going to the country of Bolivia this time. If you learned something from these videos, I hope it's a bit of geography. I'll be starting in the town of Uyuni. Last episode I trekked, got lost, and created a never before attempted route into Bolivia that got me into the entrance of the world's largest salt flat, which is outlined here in blue. I'll head in 50 miles in to get to the famous salt hotel, further in to look around for an island, reach the absolute center into oblivion, drive around aimlessly having some fun, continue through the unmarked and tough roads into the west, seize some amazing lagoons and desolate areas, I'll do my favorite thing of getting lost, not really, and finally I'll freeze my butt off ironically at a geothermic active area on my way back into Chile and head to the driest part of the world in San Pedro de Atacama. So welcome to my favorite place in the world, the salt flat in Bolivia called Uyuni. Quite freaking awesome isn't it? Everyday labor workers actually bicycle into the entrance of the salt flat to grab their shovels and start making these awesome salt mounds, which you later haul onto a truck, take to get refined, and sell for pennies. During this time of the year the salt flat is actually drying up from the wet season, but during the wet season getting into the salt flat with a motorbike would actually be disastrous to the electrical and mechanical components because of the salt content, so I enjoyed its dryness. I continued on to the salt flat about 15 miles to find the salt hotel, there's obviously no signs or indicators so it's quite the adventure trying to find it in its sea of white. There was no U.S. or Mexico flag so for those watching if you go please take one. So we're at the salt flat and we're at the salt hotel and it's two o'clock which means all the tour guides get here which means it's a popular place to be. I'd say it's a cool place to be too. The only real good thing about having so many tourists around is I finally had someone to take a picture of me. Anybody speak English or Spanish? Could somebody take a picture of me? Would you mind? I'm all alone and I have nobody to take a picture of me. So the middle of the salt flat running into other bikers from New York. Taking some pictures with the bikes. It was quite amazing to find other fellow adventure riders in the middle of the salt flat which is quite surreal. So we got together to take the famous perspective pictures like these. You can pretty much take these pictures anywhere but because of the drastic color contrast it's spectacular to take them here. Meeting all these other tourists reminded me of the trust and bond all we travelers share to help one another out any way we can. So after some much needed social interaction with people I continued in 80 miles to the middle where the view got dramatically intense and magnificent. Everybody says that you're moving again. I don't want to be right baby every single night. I could tell you a thing about taking your time. It's making me nervous yeah. One step at a time don't be living on the line. I don't need a friend. I got more than all of mine. Sunshine in my brain making everyone complain. There ain't no time. Don't be being so strange. Think I'm losing it. Baby where have you been? Everybody says that you're moving again. So welcome to probably one of the most beautiful places uh in this world I think because it has so many different things. So we're at the salt flat in Bolivia. It's called Cuyuni and during the dry season which is kind of like now is basically you see nothing but salt flat all around you. But during the wet season you see an amazing reflection off the water and if you check out my uh my blog my web page there's going to be a little I'm going to put a little thing that's pop up right here. If you click that you're going to see a bunch of cool pictures when it's wet but right now you're going to see basically when it's dry and it's quite beautiful in itself as well. I'm going to introduce you to my little second invention. That's how I uh how you're going to see a bunch of the videos that you're going to see how they're made. So with my camera firmly in place and no one around I started my creative attempt to entertain everyone back home by first attempting some handstands which looked pretty awesome. I then proceeded to drive across the camera one way, then the other, then further away, then really really really far away. Then I got pretty motivated and created doing some donuts and I'll let the video explain the rest. So being in this fantastic environment for so long was just so amazing. I had salt flat in my brain and running through my veins which sparked my next installment of Alex Being Silly. So following my epic time at the salt flat I found a place that actually washed off all the salt that had accumulated on the bike doing my crazy stuff which my electrical components thanked me for later on. I then continued to an abandoned train yard with some relics of the past. Welcome to the train yard cemetery in Bolivia next to the salt flat. It's kind of cool, kind of creepy, kind of neat. I forgot to mention that it was also extremely dangerous as driving through the place I noticed rusted nails and rusted pieces of scrap metal already that caused me trouble. So unfortunately in Bolivia if they see you try and buy gas and you're a tourist they about double the price for you saying it's a tourist fee which is a bunch of crap if you ask me but apparently it's pretty illegal. So what you do to get around that is you actually find a very nice old lady who works in there and you talk to her very sweetly and she'll give you a good price. So uh there's a there's such a cone tip for you. I know it's one of the most beautiful places in the world to me. I returned to the entrance of the salt flat where the water was for the sunset which I cannot describe in words how magnificent it truly was. You can only imagine how fantastic it is when it's actually the wet season and you're surrounded 360 degrees all around with this mirror effect. I also accidentally took this picture upside down which turned out quite interesting but gives you an idea of how incredible this mirror effect really is. So what happens when you have to work on the bike? Disaster. That's what happens. Check this out. Everything's just pretty much in pieces in the room because that's what it takes to take the bike apart. So I continued onward through the rough, awesome, bumpy, desolate, and majestic roads of Bolivia which take you through some of the most remote parts in the whole country but also some of the most beautiful. At certain times of the day you'll run into lots of caravans like these with tour groups returning from their off-road tour which sucked for me as a kick up a massive amounts of dust that I had to involuntarily breathe in. So what do you do when you don't want to get lost in Bolivia is you find yourself the biggest caravan ever and you uh you follow them through all the routes that they've driven every single day. So my chaconne survival techniques brought me to find a tour group and follow them for the next two days. As GPS is useless there's nobody to ask directions to and maps were around here suck so if you're going to try and navigate alone you're going to get lost going in circles just like I did for three days last year trying to navigate by myself because I thought I was Superman. So as much as I love Bolivia it's quite barren and quite scarce with anything and what happens is that you get to these roads to where you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 you have a lot of different ways to go and you don't quite know which one it is so what you do is you you wait for a little tour car to pass by and you just follow them because navigating these roads any other way even with GPS would be quite difficult to say the least. So this is what I go through every day trying to figure out which of these 15 roads to take. All part of the adventure huh? But it's all worth it as you can see. So welcome to lagoon number one. I then made it a point to count all the amazing lagoons I was driving by and I lost count around five which was pretty awesome. So if you're looking for an epic off-road adventure I highly suggest that you come visit the country of Bolivia. The landscapes will change very drastically. There'll be some rough stuff. There'll be some fun stuff. There'll be some exciting stuff and dangerous stuff. These roads are really starting to suck. Overall you'll be enchanted by the amazing journey it is to get to this very remote part of the world which is nice. So upon inspection of my bike I come to find this. It seems I'm missing the license plate again Wait a minute. Oh never mind it's way down there. I was worried. I thought I lost the license plate for the second time this trip. That's good news. These roads suck by the way. I then made it to Arbol de Piedra which literally translates in English as the rock tree. I'm not sure about that one but I'm sure you can use your imagination to see it. Further in the roads continued to suck. I finally reached the Laguna which is red because of the unique red algae it has. It's 5 a.m. I'm freezing my ass off. I'm 15,000 feet above sea level and I'm here at this geothermic activity area in Bolivia. It's pretty neat. Freaking cold though. So I would like to introduce to you my favorite Bolivian sign. It says do not pee and poo around here. The fine is 50 Bolivians which is not even nine bucks so it's not that bad. I suppose if you really had to poo or pee around here it wouldn't be that bad. It's a funny ass sign. Gives you a nice smile at 6 a.m. I then hit the most popular thermal bath in all Bolivia which I found out is the place to check out the silly tourists in their bikinis. So welcome to probably the most remote immigration station I've ever seen in my life. It's in Bolivia. Just across over there and there's absolutely nothing except tourists, their cars, mountains, and absolutely nothing but this building. This is the first time in eight days after crossing from Bolivia to Chile that I see asphalt. It's so beautiful. I'm gonna kiss it. I'm gonna kiss the asphalt. Ready? Who knew the wondrous luxury of having asphalt. Amazing. Amazing stuff. Asphalt. Soon after I made it to San Pedro on fumes. So thanks for watching. Stay tuned for the next episode where I'll drive through another salt flat while waving to some other bikers. I'll visit some beautiful canyons and valleys. I'll scope out the awesome Argentinian wine selection on behalf of my dad. I'll visit the happiest place on earth, Walmart. I'll say hi to the Argentinian gauchos and their horses. I'll join the Argentinians in dealing with a lack of gasoline problem they have by waiting in a giant line to gas up. I'll see the oldest Triassic dinosaur fossil known to man and my front tire blows out almost killing me. So thanks again and see you next time.