The fuel can (OK, orange juice container) has finally been used.

Not because we are short of fuel, nor because there are no gas stations.

Quite the opposite, there are loads of gas stations here in Oruro, but no one will sell us any petrol.This is not a racist thing, it is because the Bolivian government subsidise the price of fuel. Country wide a litre of petrol is 3.74 Bs (33p/0.54USD). 2 years ago they passed a law that all foreign vehicles would pay the full rate of 9.25Bs (83p/1.33USD), with the extra money collected going back to the government. However this has involved a lot of paperwork at the gas stations with 2 receipts needed (one for the listed rate and one for the difference), with the vehicle details and my passport number.

In the nationalised gas stations this is not an issue as they have all the paper work. It just irritates all the drivers in the queue behind. In the rest it has been pot luck if they will serve us, and what they will charge.

Some have just added a bit to the bill after asking "Sin facture?" (no receipt) and pocketing the extra themselves.

Others have charged us the full 9.25 and failed to give the receipt. (so pocketing a large amount). If I didn't like the attendant I sat and waited until the paperwork was done, so all the money had to go where it should.

The further north we have come, and closer to La Paz, the bigger the problem has become. Culminating to the farce we have faced here.

None of the stations entering town would serve us, always refusing with a smile and saying they did not have the paper work. Eventually I decided to empty the emergency fuel into the bike and then walk with the empty 'fuel can' to the nearest gas station, once we had found it. We asked the Tourist Information office where we could buy some and the best they could come up with was "ask a taxi driver".

Eventually we found a gas station on the north of town, walked in with the 'fuel can' and asked to have to have it filled because "our bike was empty". The attendant took all our passport details, filled the container (5l) and then charged us the local rate. No problem.

The moral of the story is to park out of sight of the attendants and walk up with the container, about 3 times.

Now we had enough fuel to carry on. Hopefully the bike will start tomorrow, it would appear the left carburetor is leaking into the air-box. I'd rather be stuck in a nicer place than Oruro.

Addendum
The next day we returned to the same gas station on the bike as we left the city, after finally getting it to start..

The attendant was unable to serve us as he could not fill a foreign bike.I asked him if he would fill the "fuel can" again instead. This he was happy to do, once more at the local rate.

40 kms down the road to Cochabamba, at the crossroads with the La Paz road, we stopped at another gas station next to a military checkpoint. The attendant had no problem selling us any fuel for the bike, he just openly told us that it would be 6bs/litre. A small profit for himself.

The law would appear to have created a black market in fuel.