Advertisement
Published: September 24th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Well I started the week in Bolivia with nice couple of days climbing a mountain called Huayna Potosi. A couple of our friends did it and said it was very rewarding so I thought I would give it a go...... Yes I found it very rewarding but it was bloody hard! At 6088 metres it is the highest I have ever been on land. I thought of my friend Julian Hazard who climbed Everest (a mere 2500 metres higher - well done mate) and at this height I was I was breathing like I was running. The climb was over 2 days and we camped at just over 5000 metres to get a little aclimatised. I could hardly sleep for nerves.... and others snoring and so got up first at 1:30 am and had some food. As I was the only one in my group we set off just as others were just getting up. I got to the top first which was cool, and I have to say it was quite scary. The torch only lights up so much and there were crevises to cross etc. But what a view at the top! It was excellent to do but I
Huyuni Potosi
Its the big one in the middle! All 6088 metres of it. can safely say never again!
The night of my return we got woken up at about 2am to a lot of swearing in Polish (luckily I have had the good fortune to work with a lot of Polish guys and so am quite fluent in their swear words!). I have a lot of good Polish friends and have to say that what followed is out of caracter but we all have our fair share of scoundrels in our countries! Well these 3 chaps had been robbed. Lost their cameras. I can sympathise with them.... but beating up the owners son I draw a line at. Out of full hostel I was the only one to help for a start...... banishing Cath to watch! I looked into the office and saw this boy about 5 foot 1 inch tall beaten badly to the face with about 3 shorter women around him. I started to try and calm the situation with the Polish guys. Lucky for me one other person decided to get up and help - Rum who had 10 years service in the Isreal army as a Comander. He was a great calming influence in reasoning with them. It
Death Road. View from the top.
It was cold and over 4000 metres. Hailed on us at one point was quite hard as they were going crazy kicking doors and trying to get everyone up. One was threatning to kill the boy! He said he was a doctor and he had killed before (not some thing that my GP usually brags about!). To cut a long story short the police finally arrived. Two of the Polish guys got arrested and had to pay a fine to the boy. Finally we all got some sleep! One thing that annoyed me is out of possibly 40 tourists only 2 of us did anything to help the staff (most of which are women!), especially as some took the time to have a look from the floor above. I am just glad the police took these guys away as they were just scum!
After a day relaxing in La Paz (which by the way is the highest capital in the world so makes walking up the stairs alone quite hard!), it was on to the "most dangerous road in the world" - a little bike ride 3500 vertical metres, 100 foot sheer drops, 65 km long. All in a days work. About 16 people have died cycling this route.... but with about
10-100 cycling every day the figures don´t look so harsh. Not to mention the buses etc which have taken the plunge when this used to be the main road.
An exciting week all in all! But it ended with a relaxing stay at a cabaña in the hills at the town at the bottom of the bike ride. Cath didn´t come on the bike ride after her last experience but took a bus to the town and got adopted by a huge Bolivian family along the way! The place we stayed was great as we had fantastic views and were far from any other cabañas. We were quite happy with our outdoors kitchen and shower, hammocks, night time fire, pool next door, no neighbours! After the hecticness of La Paz it was sad to leave!
Back in La Paz..... a terrible day of Rugby.... had to watch England lose badly to South Africa. Luckily we were tucked up safe and sound in an English Pub and Cath was happy with her Tetley tea and Beans on Toast. They say its the little things....
However...... GO THE ALL BLACKS!!!! (my first team of course)
Richard
Advertisement
Tot: 0.146s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 54; dbt: 0.0893s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb