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Sorata road
Bit of landslide action, so our taxi couldn´t get past After a couple of days in La Paz Tucky and I headed to Sorata, a very pretty town three hours away. We left Susie behind as she is not as keen on walking as us. Evans had stayed behind in Rurrenabaque to do a jungle boat tour back to La Paz. It was a really nice couple of days of walking and relaxation. We almost didn´t get there as the road out to the hostel was blocked due to some sort of landslide and our taxi couldn´t get through, so we ended up having to walk through some very muddy roads. After a very quiet first day, we spent the second checking out some massive caves, which had a lake in the middle, just outside Sorata. I unfortunately picked this time to do a Katherine Howell and needed to urinate in an inappropriate place. I had to squat in the middle of the cave, while nearby there was a man paddling his boat around in the lake. Luckily he didn´t come round the corner at that point.
We almost didn´t make it back either...we had bought our tickets to the bus and were waiting around for the 11.15 departure. At
11 o´clock Tucky decided to go to the toilet and two minutes later our bus driver decided he´d take off as the bus was filling up. I told him that there was one more passenger and he needed to wait a minute, but he kept saying no. So I had to jump out (very stupidly leaving my bags, including my passport) on the bus and search for Tucky. Fortunately the other passengers on the bus convinced our lunatic driver to wait for us. The drive back, as could be anticipated by the crazy driver, was an insane one. It was a drive of Kenyan proportions on Bolivian roads! And just when we thought it couldn´t get any worse, we passed a broken down bus: our driver decided we would pick up all the stranded passengers, so we had 19 people in our mini-van for the rest of the journey. It was very pleasant and not at all uncomfortable (I assume my sarcasm can be detected here).
The day after we got back from Sorata we met up with Evans again and set off to climb Huayna Potosi, a 6088m glacier overlooking La Paz. The trip lasted three days -
the first for practicing walking and climbing on ice with crampons and using ice axes, and the other two days for the actual climbing. Day 1 was a pretty easy day. We got dropped off at the base camp, 4700m, and had a few hours practicing climbing and repelling in the glacier.
On day two we set off for a shortish (it was supposed to take three hours, but we did it in two, despite our slow pace and hundreds of stops) walk up to the high camp, 5130m. It was a pretty tough walk because we had to carry our packs with all our warm gear, water, harnesses, crampons, boots, ice axes, etc. We were also walking uphill over big rocks on a very unformed path. Despite that, we made it to the high camp at about 11.30 and had the remainder of the afternoon to rest up, as we had to be up at midnight to begin the ascent to the summit. We had all got set up and were having a nice rest, when some German woman came in and screamed in Spanish at some poor girl to get out of her space - unfortunately they´d
tried to squeeze about 30 people into a space which could only hold 20 or so. Anyway, she eventually calmed down down after we all squished up and gave her a nice big space.
On the third day we had a very early start, leaving at 1.30 to begin the climb. Of course it began snowing just as we started out. The climb through the snow was very hard yakka, very steep and at times icy and difficult to negotiate. In some bits we had to use our ice axes to pull ourselves up. We could see next to nothing, apart from the city lights of La Paz, and we were battling extreme winds and freezing temperatures. It was incredibly mentally and physically draining (on a par with Kilimanjaro, not sure which was harder yet, might take a few days to sink in) and we took so many rest breaks that I lost count. Evans and I walked with one of our guides, called Nelson (very inspirational name), and were absolutely buggered when he said we had another 200m still to ascend. We thought we were finally getting somewhere, but after another half an hour or so he said
we still had 170m to climb.
Finally, after crossing some precarious ice ledges, we made it to the summit, 'completely and utterly fooked´ in the words of an Irishman we met at the top. It was well worth it to see the stunning view of the other mountains, La Paz and Lake Titicaca. Poor Tucks didn´t make it, as she copped a bout of altitude sickness and was vomiting, so she had to turn back. The climb down was pretty interesting - I have never seen anyone so exhausted as Evans. She was wobbling around like a drunkard and falling over, wanting to slide down the slopes instead of walk (despite the fact that there were massive holes and caves she would have fallen into). Nels ended up having to help her stay upright. It was amazing to see in daylight what we had actually climbed and just how steep it was. After a couple of hours we made it back to high camp and had a bit of a rest. In that time I managed to poke myself in the eye with my ice axe - I think delerium was setting in. Then we had to load up
again with our bags for a torturous walk back down to the first camp, which took us twice as long as it should have, given how tired we all were.
Anyway, I think it was worth it! I have promised myself that I don´t have to do any physical activity for a long time though! The only thing that I could complain about (apart from how bloody hard it was) was our head guide Miguel who I was ready to punch most of the time. He either thought I was a very special case or maybe that I was about 12 years old, because he´d get right up in my face and felt the need to speak....very....slowly....to....me or repeat what he´d just said to everyone else, just to make sure I understood.
OK, that was a bit of a marathon for me...hopefully I´ll stay a bit more up-to-date in future. Next up we´ve got Potosi, then heading on to see the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni. Should be good fun.
Hope all is well,
Love,
Brigid
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Yvette
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Well done on making it too the top, it sounds soooo exhausting. The photos again are amazing and beautiful.