We had good intentions for Sucre, we really did. We were going to lay low and rest after a few months on the road while Lachie healed and we got some much needed Spanish lessons. The reality was somewhat different. Scott and I DJ’ed at the local party hostel and subsequently snagged ourselves volunteering jobs running their parties. We also found ourselves in the role of translators for hikes run by the hostel and got a gig photographing a proposal.

If the route we took into Bolivia is a road, then I’m Brad Pitt, and both of those claims will leave you disappointed when you see the real thing. However three days of sandy tracks left us trembling with excitement to give the bikes a thrashing on smooth, flat and endless salt. However, before hitting nature’s skidpan, we stopped off for a night at the famous Uyuni Train Graveyard where we made the questionable decision of rolling our mats out on the bare metal of the trains for what was to be another night of -15°C.

We had many glorious plans for the biggest salt flat in the world. Hitting 100mph was a no-brainer. There was also the standard time trials and obstacle courses. Learning wheelies were on the wish list, but the high altitude (and our lack of skill) would make that difficult. Then came more creative goals of surfing on the seat of the motorbikes, riding the bikes naked and then a combination of the two.

Things were going really well. Until they weren’t. Lachie was giving Sea Biscuit one final sunset nude-surfing run when his foot slipped and he came down. Hard. I can remember in slow motion seeing him fall from the bike at 60-70kmh and roll a few times while the bike wheeled away in the opposite direction.

As you might expect, he wasn’t looking his finest. It was too late to head back into Uyuni, so we set up camp in the middle of the salt flat, did our best to dress Lachie’s freshly exfoliated skin and rugged him up for the night. The next morning we commenced what I can only imagine was one of the most painful motorcycle rides in history back into the town. We attempted our own triage on Lachie for a few days, but after a week it wasn’t getting better and we realised that his body might need a bit more than a splash of Betadine and a band-aid. We threw Lachie on a bus to Sucre and left his motorbike there to be picked up later.

If there’s a silver lining to be found in doing something incredible stupid in a remote area of Bolivia, it’s that it caused us truly reflect on the risks we sometime took. We promised ourselves we would deviate from the title of this blog and actually start doing less dumb things. I know I speak for both Scott and I when I say that seeing Lachie fall of a motorbike, naked at 60-70km/h, was one of the scariest moments of my life. To see one of your best mates fall and rushing to him wondering if he was going to be conscious is a feeling I never want to experience again.

Reflecting on this in the following days, we realised how rarely we actually consider what could go wrong. It’s not that we don't care about the consequences. We don’t want to be a paraplegic, or worse, anymore than the next person. We derive so much happiness from experiences that involve pushing our bodies. We would be devastated if we could no longer do that. It’s just that sometimes, we don’t think about consequences until it’s too late. Normally, our thought process is along the lines of ‘It would be bad it we screwed this up, I guess we’d better not screw it up.’

We also reflected on the fine line between pushing our boundaries and being reckless. It’s all about your own limits. For us, going out in a rough ocean may be pushing our limits but surfing a motorbike or attempting other stunts on it is reckless. For a professional motorbike rider who has never swam in the ocean, the opposite would be true. What we need to get better at is realising where we are pushing the boundaries and where we are just being reckless, as well as truly considering the consequences and our motivation for doing it.

Arriving in Sucre a week after the accident, we took Lachie to the hospital where the doctors were not impressed. At first they told us to go to a medical clinic as the hospitals were for emergencies only. However, after one look at his wounds they were more than happy to admit him. Apparently our attempts at keeping his injuries clean were sub-par and he had a healthy dose of infections resulting in a week in hospital on an antibiotic drip.

We had good intentions for Sucre, we really did. We were going to lay low and rest after a few months on the road while Lachie healed and we got some much needed Spanish lessons. The reality was somewhat different. Scott and I DJ’ed at the local party hostel and subsequently snagged ourselves volunteering jobs running their parties. We also found ourselves in the role of translators for hikes run by the hostel and got a gig photographing a proposal.

While Lachie was getting plenty of attention from cute Bolivian nurses, the DJ at Kulter Berlin party hostal was attempting to make our ears bleed with endless Regaton. One night was more than we could take, so we impulsively told the owner of the hostal that we are Melbourne DJs and would love to play a set on night. Somehow, our DJ debut coupled with our underdog comeback to win the weekly beerpong championship landed us some free beds and food in exchange for running the hostel’s future parties. And so DJ GumNut and DJ Blinky Bill were born.

Just when we thought we’d gotten the hang of this volunteering gig, they decided to shake things up for us a little. One night a bloke from the hostel came up to us and told us we need to do some translation for them the next morning. Keep in mind we speak barely any Spanish. When we came down in the morning, we were told we'd be translators for a two-day village trek. We repeatedly told the bloke that we don't speak Spanish but he insisted it would be ok, we just needed to talk to the group and make sure everyone had a good time. Then, not ten minutes later, he introduced us to the group as "these two will be your translators for the hike, they can answer any questions you have". It didn't take them long to work out that our Spanish was sub-standard and our English not much better. Luckily for us, an Israeli chica who far surpassed us in any language ability came to our rescue. For better or worse, it did mean we had to tone down our creative translations and storytelling.

Oh yeah, we also learn heaps of Spanish in Sucre. So much. We were the most dedicated students you’ve ever seen and are pretty much fluent…

In summary, I’d say Sucre was a success. Scott and I kicked off our DJing careers, Lachie had time to lick his wounds, and I did my first solid shit in a month after learning that we weren’t meant to drink the tap water.