After discussing the intelligence we had gathered at the border, we came up with this plan:
We would cross legally on foot with most of our equipment in our back packs without checking out of our current room in Argentina. Once on the other side we would get a room in Bolivia too and check out the landscape from that side to ensure an easy crossing with the bikes and further refine our plan of escape. Then the next morning early during the changing of guard at 7a.m. cross back illegally on foot. The morning after that, we would take off with the bikes and cross during the morning shift change. We needed stamps in our passports, thus the first legal crossing was key. That way we would not have trouble getting out of Bolivia and into Peru.

What we actually did turned out to be a little different:
We crossed with the packs on May 15th. We got a hostel that had a garage for the bikes, then immediately went to check out the terrain along the river. People were crossing the river with little concern. Inspired by the people's disregard for border law, we decided if we cross now we could save ourselves a whole day of sitting and waiting in the hotel room. We then strolled across the river, returning to town via the dusty, poorly defined road we would follow that very next morning.

That evening Aldé retired early reporting a "sick feeling." He slept a couple hours before I woke him up to eat dinner. He then vomited and returned to sleep.

The next morning I woke Aldé at five a.m. and was glad to discover he felt ready for a little early hour smuggle. We checked out of the hostel. Unfortunately, the bikes did not seem to have awoken with the same adventurous spirit as my travel partner.

My clutch was frozen, not allowing me to enter gear, a feature somewhat central to this border operation. After a few minutes of warming up la bicha the clutch conceded and loosened up a little bit, but not to day-time operation capacity. We started off only to be stopped several blocks later by Aldé's chain falling off. I circled back to see what the problem was. When I reached him, he was in the middle of putting it back on. We were loosing time and gaining light. The dark provided the added cover that we wanted to slip stealthily across the border.

With the chain fixed, we were off again. We hit the dirt road going out of town. We began to cross multiple other roads. The cold of the crisp morning was doing a number on my glasses and fogging them up.

I was leading and every time I stopped to attempt to orient myself in the maze of dirt roads my glasses would fog up all the more. In addition, the speed at which we were traveling, while underway, was not sufficient to defog them while driving. Thus, in this manner, my glasses became a translucent smokescreen. The added altitude and adrenaline increased my breathing rate further compounding my personal misty reality. My half frozen clutch and my white-out field of vision put me in pretty sorry shape to be leading this expedition, but I continued.

Minutes later I began to realize that the dirt road seemed to be petering out. Before I knew it I was driving right into a small chasm. I was launched over the handlebars about a meter as my bike dropped into the half-meter deep chasm. I was to my bikes side in a flash trying to formulate a way to extracted poor la bicha from the crevasse into which she had wedged herself. I called to Aldé softly to help. He informed me that he was on his way. While lifting her I grabbed the handle bars and inadvertently sounded the horn, just what we needed, a trumpeted charge. We got her out and I informed Aldé of my difficulty seeing and gladly let him take the lead. We eventually found our way to the comforting "private property - do not pass" sign that spelled the entrance to the path to the river. When we got to the area where we had kicked it with the brick workers we were met by loudly barking dogs.

Our stealthy operation was quickly becoming a parade, "national lampoon's bike smuggling." While unsuccessfully trying to quiet the dogs with sweet whispers of phrases such as "good doggie" and "hush now," we made our way to the river. I looked both ways and barreled through the ten centimeter deep water to Bolivia. I was again in the lead and spotted the incline we would have to climb to get to real roads. We had decided during our reconnaissance to walk the bikes up this hill, however, in the spur of the moment I whimsically changed that part of the plan and gunned it. I made it halfway up the incline when my bike cut out and I was left holding the weight of my bike with one foot, as there was not enough room on the narrow path for the other foot to plant. Again I softly requested Aldé's assistance. He came up and commented on my changing the plan, a duly deserved criticism.

We pushed the bike up the remaining portion of the path with Aldé verbally instructing me to turn. As the incline was extremely narrow and did not allow us to switch positions, I pushed the front, steering by instruction due to my inability to see, and Aldé the rear. We eventually arrived clumsily at the top. After pushing Aldé's bike up, we took a couple minute rest at the top of the hill to recover. I took off my glasses, preferring to ride without the ability to see far rather than not at all--a much more attractive option.

We continued along with Aldé again leading. My clutch froze up completely after about 400 meters. I had to stop to fix it. When I later looked up from my clutch-work, Aldé was nowhere in sight. Not wanting to sound my horn or shout, I warmed up my clutch with my hands for a minute and a half and then continued, guessing the path he had taken. There were multiple crossing dirt paths on this side of the border as well. I guessed right and soon came up to a stopped Aldé looking behind him. After that we sailed smoothly at low gear until we came to the main street. We stopped there for a couple minutes to allow Aldé's hands to approach a functional temperature. By this time the light of morning had arrived. We continued the 4 blocks to our hostel, unloaded our stuff and then brought the bikes to the garage. After which, we fell into bed for a well deserved early morning nap.