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Published: August 26th 2012
La Paz Most people take a flight from Rurrenabaque to La Paz for the simple reason that it takes 1 hour instead of 20 hours by bus. The view over the amazon rainforest is obviously another highlight of the flight, not forgetting that the road between the two cities is supposed to be one of the most dangerous roads in Bolivia. But flying was far too pricey for us, so we opted for the bus.
It actually took us 29 hours to arrive to La Paz! It was nothing compared to our previous 36 hour nightmare journey from Trinidad to Rurré (anything is easy after such an experience…at least for a while!) but it was still pretty bad: our bus arrived in a town called Caranavi 15 minutes too late as the road from Caranavi to La Paz was closing for the rest of the day for roadworks! That meant that we were stuck in Caranavi for 9 hours! After a quick walk through the town and its river, we quickly realised that we were stuck in a shithole. Honestly, there was nothing of slight interest in that town! So we killed some time in an internet café. Lee
and Fern also went to play some old 90’s video games in an arcade with a bunch of Bolivian kids (they play a lot here!).
Back in the bus 9 hours later, we were in for a ride! The dirt road we drove on for the next hour or two was so windy and narrow, we were shitting ourselves! It was a 2-way road, even though it was barely wide enough for our bus! To make it more interesting, there was a sheer drop on one side, with a cliff stretching above us on the other side! And it was so dusty we couldn’t even see where we were going. At one point, we found ourselves nose to nose with another bus which appeared around a blind corner. Both drivers braked hard and stopped about a metre away, if that, from each other. Scary stuff! A guy later told us that the edge of the road is also collapsing due to cars and buses pulling up on the side to let other vehicles pass…
But eventually, we saw the lights of La Paz shining through our windows. The sight of the city was spectacular as we approached it
from above: La Paz is built in a canyon above an underground river, so all we could see was a steep valley below us full of lights. It was a shock to get off the bus at 3,500m altitude, having spent the last 2 weeks in the jungle at around sea level! It was freezing cold and at that altitude, it proved hard to breathe again.
After 2 or 3 of days of acclimatisation, I (Ori) decided to have a go at climbing Huayna Potosi, one of the most accessible 6,000m+ mountains in the world. Lee wasn’t up for it, especially after his experience in Nepal, struggling with the altitude. Actually, he was even struggling going up stairs in La Paz so he definitely wasn’t ready for walking at 6,000+ metres! So we decided to separate for 3 days (the first time in this trip!) – I would walk up the Huayna Potosi with Damo and Bea, and Lee would go and cycle the Death Road, known as the most dangerous road in Bolivia.
Huayna Potosi (by Ori) I had read and heard many people saying how hard the walk up to Huayna Potosi was. Well, you
know me - it made me want to do it even more. I was well up for the challenge. I motivated our mate Damo and his friend Bea to join me for the 3 days. Although it can be done in 2 days, we followed most agencies’ advice to add an extra day to acclimatise and practise walking with crampons on a glacier. On our first day, we walked an hour from our refuge (at 4,700m) to an old glacier for the practice with our guide. The walk itself wasn’t hard but the altitude made it difficult. It was only a one hour walk, but it was a confirmation for me that the next two days were going to be really difficult, without a doubt the most difficult days of trekking I’ve ever experienced.
On our next day, we walked up to the next refuge at 5,300m, made all the more difficult by the fact we were each carrying backpacks of about 10 kilos! (Luckily we’d be able to leave them at the refuge the next day for our attempt on the summit!) This was the hardest day for me. Putting one foot in front of the other required
disproportionate efforts! I was breathless very quickly and I felt knackered pretty soon after starting the walk. Damo and Bea seemed to cope much better. I kept asking for breaks - it was so hard for me. I couldn’t walk any faster, you should have seen me, I looked like a grandma, folded in two, going at snail’s pace.
I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I consider myself to be relatively fit and am not usually lagging behind during treks. Plus I am pretty competitive and so this wasn’t going down well. I kept dragging myself down mentally and started doubting I could actually make the summit. Anyway, after 5 hours of hard work we finally arrived in the second refuge around 6pm. We were all absolutely shattered. The relief of arriving and the tiredness after such an effort made me cry. It was a similar reaction to when I got up to the summit of our Annapurna trek…except that we were not even halfway to the summit of Huayna Potosi! The next day was going to be even harder. It was going to be steeper, and with a lot more snow and ice.
To add to
that, our guides basically told us that since we were relatively slow and had just done a 2 hour walk in 5 hours (!), we will have to wake up earlier (midnight!) than most groups the next day if we wanted to get to the summit for sunrise. That was the cherry on the cake. You feel knackered, you think you’ll never gonna be able to get to the top and you hear your guides basically putting you down. Not exactly what I needed.
Needless to say that we went to bed pretty early that night. There was no fire in the refuge (not much wood at 5,000m!), it was absolutely freezing. I was wearing 4 jumpers, leggings and a pair of jeans, as well as a shawl, my hat, gloves and a couple of pairs of socks! I had 2 sleeping bags and still I was freezing! And the altitude, once again, made things even harder. None of us slept more than a couple of hours that night.
We woke up in the middle of the night, ate a bit (again, you tend to lose your appetite at this altitude!), and got ready for the ascent. Even
though I still had a lot of doubts about reaching the summit, I was determined to give it my best shot.
We walked with crampons and head torches, tied together in a procession of 3 people (including a guide). I was second in the line. The stars were above our heads, and as we got higher we could see the early morning lights of La Paz. It was a stunning view. But as we got higher still, it got more and more difficult for me and I couldn’t follow the rhythm of our group anymore. It annoyed me not to be able to go at my own rhythm without being a burden on the group. We got to 5,600m, and there was a steep part ahead. I started considering going back down and asked the guide if we could slow down the pace. He said that we were already slow enough, and pointed and the other groups who were about to overtake us.” All right” I thought, “I’m never gonna be able to do this, might as well turn back now”. I know it’s easy to say this but I wish the guide pushed me on a bit more.
And so I went back with him to the last refuge and decided to sleep a bit there until sunrise. But I slept through the guide’s alarm and missed sunrise anyway! A couple of hours later, Damo and Bea were back. They were knackered. They got to 6,000m – only 88m from the summit! I was well proud of them. They tried really hard - apparently Damo even vomited a couple of times up there because of the altitude!
Death Road and Coroico (by Lee) For those of you who know my calamitous bike-riding history, you might think I’d have to be mad to cycle down the ‘Death Road’! But it wasn’t actually that dangerous – yes there were sheer drops of hundreds of metres all the way along the road, but its true danger is not to us cyclists. It gets its name from the fact that dozens of buses and other vehicles used to plummet off the side every year, but luckily there’s a new alternative (and much safer) road open now, and the Death Road is used pretty much solely by thrill-seeking cyclists.
After an early start, we were driven to the drop
off point and kitted up with full on protective gear and set off on a super-steep tarmac road for the first hour or so – it was so rapid, with great views down the lush green valley too! We then all hopped back into the bus and were driven another 20 km or so further down the valley to the start of the Death Road proper. It did feel a bit like cheating, being driven along that stretch, but apparently some people don’t like pedalling and prefer to just do the downhill stretches!
Once we got onto the next stretch of the Death Road, the real fun started - bounding along the dirt track, a sheer drop down into the forested valley on the left, with a cliff stretching up to the sky on the right! And what a rush – feeling the tyres skid out behind you as you brake frantically, turning one way and then the other as the road winds down the valley! I have to admit I did almost lose it a couple of times, managing to get the bike under control just in time to get round the corner safely and avoid a drop
to my grizzly death! But, hey, it’d be no fun if you went down at pedestrian speed would it!?
At the end of the Death Road we reached the town of Yolosa where the tour concluded with a buffet lunch and a couple of hours relaxing by a swimming pool – not a bad day all in all!
Afterwards, rather than returning to La Paz with the rest of the group, I took a local ‘colectivo’ (minibus) to the nearby town of Coroico to meet up with Ori and Damo.
So what did we do in Coroico…? Hmmm? Well, we sat by the swimming pool getting sunburnt and munched by sandflies…we drank a few beers…and then a few more beers…and that was about it! It’s a pretty small, sleepy, non-touristy place, well worth visiting to relax for a few days.
One thing we’ll remember this town for is its people – they were so friendly and welcoming. One night after the bars had closed and kicked us out, we walked back via the Plaza and found it packed with people having a few drinks. Some old guys chatted to us for an hour or so, forcing
us to have another beer (oh, go on then!), playing guitar and just having fun with their Saturday night.
The next day we got ourselves together to leave town, heading back to La Paz, and found the Plaza packed with life once again, this time full of kids and families just playing and chatting – a really sociable place.
La Paz again! After Coroico, we made our way back to La Paz before heading towards the Lake Titicaca. We thoroughly enjoyed the city of La Paz; in fact, we even preferred it to Sucre, which is quite the opposite for most travellers. We thought La Paz was a bit more edgy than Sucre, with more character. Don’t get us wrong, Sucre was beautiful with its colonial white buildings but it’s almost too nice and clean – at least the parts of the city that we visited. Also the location of La Paz, amongst the peaks of the Cordillera Real, is absolutely stunning. Yes it’s hard to walk up the hilly cobbled streets sometimes but I guess you get used to it after some time (although we were still out of breath after a couple of weeks there!).
We particularly enjoyed walking uphill from Illampu street, into the labyrinth of market stalls, built like little sheds with people inside, hidden amongst ridiculous amounts of merchandise! There were cholitas hidden in there, eating with their children, or chatting with some friends, or knitting yet another jumper for sale. There was so much going on behind the stalls, it looked like a puppet show! There were also streets specialising in cholita fashion, with bright colourful skirts hanging on the walls of the “tiendas” and stalls selling thousands of aprons.
Speaking of cholitas, we also went to watch a cholita wrestling show whilst in La Paz. It was so much fun! We were kind of anticipating it to be a touristy show but there were lots of locals there, laughing their tits off as the cholitas being thrown around by their plaits, with all the usual pantomime nonsense that we’re used to from US wrestling!
Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol We finally headed out of La Paz to Copacabana, on the banks of Lake Titicaca, but we didn’t like the town too much. It’s a shame, because it sits in a beautiful location. But apart from the
imposing white cathedral in the plaza, it’s a really touristy place full of touristy shops – not very interesting…
Isla del Sol on the other hand was absolutely stunning. We got there after a 3 hour bumpy ride in a tiny little boat – the kind of journey that would take 30 minutes back in Europe but takes 3 hours here because they use a couple of asphyxiating lawn-mower motors to carry 30 people across the fairly agitated waters of the lake! When we finally arrived in Challapampa, on the north side of the island, we discovered a simple little pueblo, with a couple of restaurants and some hostels (more like homestays) lined up on the sandy beach, overlooking the blue lake and the snowy peaks of the Cordillera Real in the horizon. It was so peaceful and beautiful with the lake stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions – it almost felt like we were on an island in the middle of the ocean!
The water was pretty cold but a couple of guys who were sitting next to us on the beach went for a quick swim. That’s how we met Remy
and Lucas (two Frenchies) and a German guy called Ben. We all walked up to the nearby hill for sunset, and met a couple of other guys with whom we shared a few drinks and dinner (second trout of the day!).
The next day, we walked along the shore of the lake to the south part of the island. We went past several little pueblos; the houses were made of mud, with thatched roofs. Some women were walking their cattle along the beach and up the golden hills of the island. It was really beautiful. The final town we reached was fairly disappointing though - it was a collection of touristy restaurants and hostels, the perfect example of how you can ruin a village by building everything around tourism. Hopefully the other side of the island where we were staying will keep its rusticity and simplicity for years to come. After lunch we headed back towards Challpampa, this time taking a serpentine path over the top of the island. The views over the lake, the light and the colours were so beautiful. It reminded us of some landscapes we saw in New Zealand, particularly around Bank’s Peninsula.
According
to Incan myth, Isla del Sol is the place where the Sun God was born, and that evening we visited the site where it is believed that he was created. There was a massive rock which was (according to our guide who was actually just a local guy looking to make a quick buck!) shaped like a puma. This is apparently the rock where the sun came out for the first time. Or something like that. Basically, if you ask any ‘guide’ they’ll probably tell you a different story! And just next to the ‘puma’ rock was a labyrinth of ruins built by the Incas way back in the 15
th century, with a fresh water source spurting out in one of the many rooms.
What with this being the Isla del Sol (“Island of the Sun”), it was pretty fitting that we were there for the winter solstice on June 21
st (summer solstice of course for all you folks back in Europe, but not for us in the Southern Hemisphere!). The occasion has great significance for the local people too, and we were awoken an hour or two before dawn with the sound of fireworks from up on the
nearest hilltop to our town. We set out nice and early, in the dark, with plenty of locals leading the way uphill, and at the top found a shaman leading a ceremony offering gifts to the Gods, with a huge fire burning in the middle. There were also local musicians, playing basic tunes on their pan-pipes and drums. And, of course, there were also plenty of tourists! (Ourselves included so we can’t complain too much!) We waited eagerly along with everyone else as the sky started to brighten and then eventually the sun peeked up over the crest of one of the distant mountains, treating us to a magical sunrise.
Lake Titicaca itself sits on the border between Bolivia and Peru, so this would be our last stop in Bolivia, where we’d spent almost three months – the longest we’d spent in any one country by a long shot! And with good reason: Bolivia has got such a great mix of beautiful places, a rich history, and friendly (if sometimes shy) people of so many different indigenous cultures. But it was time to move on to Peru, where we had plenty to look forward to as well…
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