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SanDRina gives me the bad news. She can’t go faster than 20 mph. I had just freed myself and my trusty Suzuki DR650 from a sandy embankment. We’re at 12,000 ft. in remote southwestern Bolivia, riding the Altiplano… clutchless. I smile, because this is where the adventure begins….
Four months earlier, I left Chicago with a goal of riding on the Salar de Uyuni. It looked to be the most strange and out-of-the-normal experience for a motorcyclist anywhere on the planet, a salt flat, the largest of its kind in the world and up high in the Andes. I wanted to experience that feeling of standing on my pegs and cruising at a high speed with my eyes closed.
I left the capital city, La Paz, after a few days stay at Alfonso’s house. He’s a Kawasaki KLR650 rider and provides support to bike travelers passing through his country. I made it to Oruro on the first night and enjoyed a meal on the streets with local residents. We huddled together to keep warm. It was winter after all on the Altiplano, a flat high-plain sandwiched by the Andes, where the temperatures fluctuate from a high of 50°F to a low of 0°F. Oruro is the last big town in this remote corner of Bolivia and I was looking forward to the vast expanse that lay south of here.
My early start revealed that the tarmac ended at the small town of Huari. I topped up my Safari Aqualine tank to a full brim of 10 gallons of petrol. From there, I headed west to the town of Jirere, with the intention of making a loop through the Salar and exiting at Uyuni. The route to Jirere was being paved to develop it as a commercial link between Bolivia and Chile’s northern coast. It wasn’t finished yet and the diversion for the construction was a dusty, sandy surface.
At this point in the trip, my off-road riding skills were not up to par. I wasn’t at the level where I could enjoy it when the front wheel wobbled, or the rear tire slid. Most of my motorcycle miles had come from street riding, yet I knew that the ultimate experience on an enduro was riding at high speed over an uneven surface and letting the bike dance under you. SanDRina wasn’t dancing and I was getting tired. The sand was slowing me down and my minimal camping gear wasn’t up to snuff for a night out in the Andean winter. As I mulled over these thoughts, I saw a local rider on a small Chinese motorcycle zip by up on the barricaded tarmac section and I thought, “Hey, if he can ride there, I can ride there, too!”
The tarmac section was elevated from the diversion by a few feet, and it had a sandy embankment on either side. I was riding in the deep, sandy ruts of the diversion and soon spotted a path out of the ruts, deciding to go for it and climb this embankment. I got some good revs, I had momentum, planted the front wheel where I aimed it, and got over a small sand berm at the bottom of the embankment. Just as my front wheel made it, my lower tool tube got stuck on the berm. This is where I cursed myself for the “brilliant idea” of placing a large tool tube below my skid plate. It was a great location for carrying heavy tools such as tire irons and my bead breaker, but any seasoned dirt-rider would know not to do anything to the bike that would reduce its ground clearance. We live and we learn…
My bike is heavily-loaded as I carry everything I think I need to be sane on the road for years to come. Now I was stuck on this berm, with my bike at an incline… and I couldn’t get the side stand down. I only had the throttle to free myself. But the rear tire was now slightly lifted off the surface and it wasn’t gripping, so with every turn of the wheel, it was digging itself a deeper hole. It was on a fairly fresh Metzeler Tourance tire, which rides better on pavement than dirt—not an ideal tread for riding sandy inclines. I kept spinning the rear wheel and rocking the bike back and forth in the hope that it would catch enough grip to climb over the berm. And it slowly did. I kept my elation in check and told myself to keep climbing this embankment. More throttle, more rear wheel slip, keep the balance and yes, I finally made it to the tarmac! Now I let my emotions flood forward and, as any biker would do, I gave it more throttle to get some speed. But, alas, she would not go faster than 20 mph. Uh oh….
It was then that I had that sinking feeling that I had just done something terribly wrong to sanDRina. Her engine case cover was extremely hot to touch, and I knew there was an issue with the clutch. So, I took stock of where I was: there was a hill ahead, on the flat Altiplano, with a village on top of it and 10 miles of sand behind me and a further 100 miles to Oruro. It was close to noon and I decided there was enough time to take a look in the engine and see how severe the damage was, and to determine whether I could fix it.
I taught myself not to panic in situations like this and instead just to have all the necessary tools to allow me to make it through. These tools include a full set of wrenches, music to keep my mood light and a network of contacts to call for advice. I set about going into the engine in the middle of the starkest landscape that I’ve ridden through, with my garage playlist on. I soon realized that I’d completely fried one of the eight clutch fiber plates. I was not carrying any spare fibre plates. I knew I had to somehow get compression on the remaining fiber plates for the clutch to engage. So, I tried to fix it by putting washers under the spring-loaded bolts of the clutch basket. However, that did nothing and I still couldn’t go faster than 20 mph.
