It felt like I was approaching the edge of the map. A little further and I was sure I could look over the edge of the earth.

Getting out of La Paz was a whole lot easier than getting in. Of course it was early on a Sunday which made all the difference. It's not like it was traffic free, it was just traffic tolerable.

As I was clearing the city I pulled in to fill with petrol. I was dreading this because I had read so many horror stories. The issue is that Bolivia is a socialist country and their fuel is heavily subsidized by the government. In fact Bolivians pay the least for fuel of anyone in Latin America. $.54USD/Liter or about $2.04/Gallon. Rightfully so, foreigners like me do not qualify for this subsidized price. The problem lies in the way that the government controls this. It is so complicated that many service stations just will not serve foreigners. I found out just how complicated it is. The attendant greeted me politely and told me that the price would be 8.88 Bolivianos/Liter ($1.26/Liter or $4.87/Gallon... which was the correct foreigner price). I agreed and asked him to fill my tank which he did. When he finished, he asked me to pull forward as to not block the pumps. He asked me for my passport and drivers license and handed me a form to fill out. While I filled the form with my basic name, address, phone number etc. The attendant took photos of my bike and license plate. While he was frantically trying to serve other customers he had to enter all of this information into a computer that was on the pump island. While I waited, two big rig drivers came over to chat with me. They were astonished that someone would ride from the United States to Bolivia alone. They both gave me hearty hand shakes and thumps on the back. 30 minutes later I was still waiting for permission to leave. I had a long day ahead of me and I was anxious to get rolling. The attendant kept apologizing to me saying that the computer system was not accepting my information. Finally, employing my mad Spanish skills, I convinced him to take photos of all of my documents and gave him my whatsApp contact information. He did so and told me I could leave. 45 minutes for 3 gallons of gasoline but at least I was on the road with a full tank. Enough for the day.

About 30 minutes later I came up over a rise to see the hi-viz uniforms of the traffic police. An officer waved a red flag at me and pointed for me to pull over. As I slowed down I could see two officers, one on each side of the road with radar guns. I laughed to myself because the posted speed limit was 80kph. I knew that everyone in the very long line-up of vehicles including myself had all been going in excess of 110kph. I stopped and pulled off my helmet. An officer approached and asked me for my documents which I produced. He examined the bike and asked me the usual questions. What kind of moto was it. What was the displacement. All the way from Estados Unitos! Really!? The officer reached into his pocket for his phone. He pulled up google translate and spoke into the phone and then handed it to me. The funny part was that he didn't know how to make google translate work properly so the phone just read back his message in Spanish. He tried again... same result. One more time... again in Spanish. I said, "Eso no es necesario, yo entiendo" (that's not necessary, I understand). I read back to him "El límite de velocidad es 80 y yo hice más de 100" (The speed limit is 80 and I was doing more than 100). He laughed and asked my name. "Andrew" I relied. "Soy Jorge. Mucho gusto" (I'm Jorge, nice to meet you) we shook hands. I'll paraphrase the scolding I then received (remember... all in Spanish). Andrew, you can't drive that fast in Bolivia. Maybe you can drive like that in Colombia or Chile but Andrew, you can't drive that fast in Bolivia. Andrew, the speed limit is 80 kilometers and you were doing more than 100. Andrew, you can't drive that fast in Bolivia. This went on for another 8-10 minutes. In the end he shook my hand and sent me on my way. I tried really hard to obey the speed limit for a while but every vehicle on the road including tuk tuks were passing me. I figured, just get behind a bus and go the same speed as the bus. That speed was well in excess of 110kph. Fortunately, I didn't see anymore police the rest of the day.

From that point on my ride was uninterrupted joy. The high plateau of Bolivia was just how I imagined it. Vast, open and wild. The high altitude sun bounced off the roadway making it difficult for me to distinguish the horizon. I appeared that I was going to ride right off into the sky. Later in the afternoon the clouds turned more ominous. At one point, I could see lightning on both sides of the road. I prepared to get soaked. Then "pop!". I got hit in the head with something. Pop, pop pop! Dang! That's hail! There was no place to hide, I would just have to ride though. My chest and arms were taking stinging blows and the rattle in my helmet was deafening. Fortunately it only lasted for about 15 minutes. but it was a long 15 minutes.

I broke through the other side into blue skies again. I could see wild llamas grazing along the side of the road as I whizzed by. Near the end of my ride I got a brief glimpse of the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat on the planet. This is what I came here to see and I will be visiting that in more depth tomorrow.

I rolled into Uyuni about 4 PM and found a simple hostel. Uyuni is an old railroad and mining town and it looks like something from the old west. Dusty and broken. Going to find some dinner I thought I might run into Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as I could imagine them being here (because they were).

It was a brilliant day and I would ride it again given the chance.