La Paz

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La Paz makes you quite grateful that in your country you have traffic lights. It's a frenetic strange place situated in a canyon, making walking anywhere a lot more tiring than it should be. We arrived after an overnight bus from Iquique via Oruro, a place memorable only for a rubbish restaurant and a TV in the bus terminal where we caught the Barça-Chelsea first leg. We decided to investigate the Witch's Market, whcih we expected to be a place where crazy old Bolivian women would be stirring bubbling green liquids in a cauldron. It was actually just a small collection of stalls selling llama foetuses and fossilised starfish for reasons unbeknownst to us. We then walked uphill to the Black Market, another one very similar to all the others we had seen and booked our upcoming tours in the environs of La Paz. We were intending to go to the Bolivian bit of the Amazon, but it looked very similar to the Pantanal so decided to give it a miss.

The first was the appropriately named Death Road for the following day. We were driven up to 4700 metres and then plunged 3500 metres, first along a paved and relatively wide road, then down an unpaved and hazardously narrow road, dipping in and out of waterfalls and all the while surrounded luscious vegetation and precipitous cliffs. Charlie fell off, fortunately on the side that wasn't subject to a 500 metre drop into nothingness. We finally arrived at Coroico, the terminus of the trip where it was really quite hot, and enjoyed a swim and shower at a hotel run by an American who made the pronunciation of the word, 'duchas', as amusing as is humanly possible. We returned to La Paz and checked into Loki Hostel, where we would spend the next few days watching films, eating burgers and going out. The nights were fun even if we could only remember certain memorable bits of them.

On Wednesday it was time for our second trip, this time up a mountain. The mountain is called Huayna Potosi and is quite large, sizing up at 6088 metres. The first day consisted of the trip to the mountain and going ice climbing with crampons and ice axe on the glacier, even though we were assured they woulodn't be needed on the actual ascent. We're not sure whether it really is very tiring or just we had rubbish technique, but we both reached the top of the wall at the expense of getting cramp in the hands. We stayed the night in the base camp refuge at 4600 metres. The following day we ascended to the rock camp, another refuge at 5130 metres and from there could see most of what we were going to climb the following morning. We say morning, but ended up leaving at around 1:30 am, in the pitch black and freezing cold. Despite being in a trance for most of it we ascended the first 300 metres relatively easily and wondered what all the fuss was about. The walk then got steeper to about 5700 metres, at which point breathing becomes quite taxing and the wind picks up. We both had colds, so couldn't really wear the balaclavas we'd been provided with, especially when there was so little oxygen. Eventually, after what seemed like years but was only four hours, we arrived at the summit, albeit in the clouds, so the spectacular view that we had been told about was non-existant. It was quite chilly so we didn't wait for the clouds to dissipate, and descended 1000 metres rapidly. Exhausted, a couple of hours after that we reached the base camp and returned to La Paz for a couple more nights at Loki, this time joined by Capes, Dixon, Plastow and the others from BA and went out again.

Today we bus off to Lake Titicaca and then into Peru, but less than a month left - can't believe it!

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Photos

Ice Wall Climb
Serious hand cramp!