I got a needed ten hours of sleep last night and awoke refreshed at eight thirty this morning. Potosi is actually quite a nice town. I walked around a bit and had some breakfast and jumped on the internet to wish Jen a happy birthday, though late.

On the internet I learned that I have lined up a place to stay in Buenos Aires. It's with a local family who live in a nice part of town - but it is twenty minutes from central. The person who I've been communicating with is a former student and flat-mate of the house. He had lived there for a year and had nothing but great things to say about the family. Its five hundred thirty bucks a month including breakfast and dinner - not a bad price considering. Mike says he will get back to me about the garage prices for parking my motorcycle.

I was all set to leave Potosi at eleven thirty this morning but the motorcycle would not start again. It wasn't even that cold but I poured two buckets of hot water on the engine and it started right away. What a pain in the ass.

I had finally set out and twenty miles down the road I remembered I was low on gas. I was a bit worried but twenty miles later I found a station. I fueled up and ten miles later I found myself on a dirt road and figured it was just a large portion of washed out road - but after five more miles of dirt road, passing mud bricked houses, men farming their land with mules I knew I had taken a wrong turn.

I stopped by the next person I saw, which was actually a while later, and asked if this was the way to the border. "Si" he pointed in the direction I was going. I looked at my map a little harder and sure enough I was still headed to the border but I just wasn't on the highway. I asked the farmer if there were any fuel stations along the way. He said there was one in Tupiza, a hundred and fifty miles away.

One hundred and fifty miles was the max that I had ever pushed my motorcycle without filling up and that was on a highway. I considered for a moment. I would be taking it very slow and that would surely conserve fuel. It would be close but I figured I could make it.

The fastest I dared go was fifty miles per hour and that was straightaway road. After hitting deep sand, fishtailing and having to set down my foot a few times I had no choice to take it very slow.

Already, on quite a few of the turns I was sure I was a goner. One time I was two inches from going off a hundred foot drop. Some of those turns were sharper than I had expected - and sandier.

I set off again and fifty miles down the road I hit a perfect cement. I don't care who you are, everybody likes to drive on smooth cement. After driving on pavement for thousands of miles its like eating Oreos without the cream filling. This cement was the tasty cream.

After only passing two cars in the last fifty miles on the gravely sandy road I knew I would have this perfect cement all to myself. I might be wrong, but I think that cement grips better - or at least the tires grip better on cement than on pavement. Pavement is oily while cement isn't.

There were turns up to fifteen in a row where I didn't have to straighten out the bike. Roads like this I find quite orgasmic. I had hoped it would go clear to the border, but alas it did not. Only forty miles of this paradise and it was back to gravel.

Minutes later, up ahead, I saw a river. Fuck, I thought. I hadn't done any rivers thus far. I unloaded my entire luggage and crossed to the other side by foot where I found that my boots were waterproof. I set down my stuff on the other side. Back on my motorcycle I crossed over quite easily. It wasn't deep; maybe nine or ten inches and only fifteen feet across. I was so proud of my first successful river cross I decided it was an occasion for a few pictures.

How odd to have the best road in South America in the middle of nowhere - and in Bolivia of all places. I took the gravel another fifty miles before I got scared and flagged down a passing car and asked how far Tupiza was. Twenty kilometers he said. Actually it was more like twenty miles but I finally made it.

I fueled up and asked a local how many hours it was to Villazon, the border. Two hours on a bus he said, but on a motorcycle maybe I could make it in an hour and a half.

The gravel road from Tupiza to Villazon was a bit cleaner without the deep sand pits, but it was still gravel none the less. For ten minutes I was comfortable driving at fifty miles per hour. Then I pushed her up to sixty and even seventy. I give myself credit for keeping it at around seventy for about twenty minutes on a street bike with street ties. I had never done any off-roading. Then I pushed eighty five and started to swerve uncontrollably. That absolutely scared the shit out of me. I knocked it down to sixty the rest of the way after that incident.

At five thirty I pulled into Villazon and found a hotel in the central plaza. Out front some American guys in their forties admired my dirty bike and asked me questions about my trip. They were quite impressed, especially after asking how old I was.

Tomorrow will be quite interesting. I had not stopped to pay for an entry visa at the Peruvian/Bolivian border, nor did I get any documents for my bike. All I have going for me now is the exit stamp from Peru and my uncanny ability to talk myself out of difficult situations. I really hope I don't have to pay for the one hundred dollar Bolivian entry visa. If the border goes well tomorrow then I may be able to hit Ruta 40, which will take me all the way to Mendoza, and Patagonia if I so wished.

I hear that Buenos Aires is freezing which really sucks. I don't like the cold and neither does my bike. But it isn't so bad I guess - mid-winter and it only gets down to forty five degrees Fahrenheit.

I'll head out early tomorrow, seven or eight I guess. I'm not sure what the conditions of Ruta 40 are but I just hope there are gas stations. If it's dirt road then I may have to skip it. It's just too dangerous on my bike. Hell, it's dangerous for a duel sport, let alone a street bike.

The above is copied directly out of my hand-written journal