Bolivia: Climbing Pico Austria

A few days ago I had the chance to experience a really spectacular climb in Bolivia. With its almost 5400m, Pico Austria overlooks Lake Titicaca and other impressive views like Condoriri peak or Lake Chiar Khota. A place to be in peace with oneself and dream of flying.

I didn´t find the climb too hard but I guess that, having previously done the Salkantay Trek and been living for two months at a constant altitude of over 3000m, helped quite a lot. The temperature, as expected, was fairly low but luckily enough we had a sunny day and were really grateful for the warm rays of sun that made the trek more bearable.

Again, it was great to have the chance to leave La Paz behind for a while and get lost into the wild. The peaceful mountains can provide you with some fresh air far from the pollution of the big city. I also had the chance to see some rural areas and small villages on the way that would better represent the real Bolivia than the capital. I didn´t really take any pictures on the way to and from the mountain and I am starting to think that the best pictures of this trip are those ones I haven´t taken. On the other hand, I just don´t want to become a photographer of misery and poverty in this land. I will keep those images to myself. As far as you are all concerned, please be my guest and enjoy the beauty of nature in this exciting country.

Bolivia: Lake Titicaca. Copacabana and Sun Island

Sometimes plans don´t work out as expected. Sometimes places are way more impressive than we expect them to be. Both things happened yesterday when I had the chance to (briefly) visit Lake Titicaca and, especially, the Sun Island. What was meant to be a two days tour spending a night on the island turned out to be a quick one day visit due to yet another threat of transport strike and road blockades. A shame, really, as what I found there was by far the most beautiful spot I´ve found since I started travelling in Bolivia.

Coming from a busy, chaotic and polluted city like La Paz to a small peaceful island surrounded by the highest lake in the world (at 3800m above sea level), where no cars or roads have yet found their way there, was like love at first sight.

I can´t even begin to describe the inner peace I found when, after ascending an Inca staircase dating back to the 15th century AD, I could contemplate a magnificient view of the lake (sea-like), the small sister Moon Island, and the Andean snowed peaks in the far horizon. Not a single artificial noise. Just the sound of the flocks of sweet and friendly donkeys that populate the island among a few llamas, sheeps and dogs (and some other tourists and the few local indigenous people, of course). From the moment I set foot there I thought I would love to spend at least a whole month here, with the minimum company, some bottles of wine, books and a guitar. The island has pretty much everything: astonishing scenery, water views, mountains, a lovely and warm climate during the day (quite freezing during the night, I´ve heard - nothing that cannot be solved with the "good company", who is probably reading this by now, the bottles of wine and a bonfire) and especially peace at its max. I cannot think of a better place to escape to.

As you can imagine, the hour and a half visit was an extremely short one, considering the five hours that takes to get there from La Paz via bus, boat, bus and boat again each way (it is necessary to cross the strait of Tiquina by boat before arriving to Copacabana) and the magnificent impression the island instantly created in me. Feeling dissapointed and fairly melancholic, we left in the evening to come back to La Paz, under the protection of completely clear night skies and infinite stars that made the trip back a memorable one.


Tonight is the Aymara new year celebration that will mark the beginning og their year 5519,  and there will be celebrations at 80 sacred sites in Bolivia, being the main one the ruins of Tiwanaku. It is said that even Evo Morales will be present. I guess they won´t count with my presence, as I will be taking it easy while remembering the beauty of yesterday´s scenery and preparing for a trek to Condori tomorrow. Besides, I had my dose of stress caused by crowds during the Gran Poder celebration on Saturday (some pics for you below) which, by the way, was definitely an interesting event. Judge by yourselves.

Glosary of South American experiences so far

Vast mountain ranges, potatoes, shortage of traffic lights, colourful clothing, the best breakfast in the world = coca tea (not Cola Cao!), llamas, fluffy alpacas, vicuñas, guanacos, missing girlfriend, lukewarm showers, potatoes, unpronounceable Quechua and Aymara names, greenest rainforests, "Blood knot" by Agustín Sánchez Vidal,  mosquitoes, amazing Peruvian buses with beds and bingo games, potatoes, blisters, colonial buildings, street shoes cleaners with covered faces, no bus stops, Inca ruins, condors, deepest canyon, radical changes in temperature, street artists, charangos, potatoes, chaotic organisational skills, protests and roads blocked, fun parties, stars in the midnight skies, shared bathrooms, witches market, loads of new friends, "The lost city of Z" by David Grann, horrible unpaved roads, several currency exchanges (Euro, I miss you!), potatoes, "heaps" of Aussies, Irish and Israelis, Death Road tragedy, untiring playful kids, slums, Tiwanaku ruins, heavily armed policemen, national elections, potatoes, Sacred Valley, coca museum, Andean folk, new exotic dishes like quinua soup, guinea pig or alpaca, slacking, Pacific beach and wannabe surfers, professional mountain bikes, exotic international restaurants, international hostel aka gringo land, buses with the face of Che Guevara, flea markets, postcards not reaching their destinations, potatoes, crazy packed minivans, llama fetuses, bargaining, exotic flower and plant species, hot springs, karaoke night, soup with...errrmmm...french fries, "The dream of the Celt" by Mario Vargas Llosa, becoming a true pool expert, a killer stomach virus, potatoes, Cusqueña, Arequipeña, Paceña and other wonderful Andean beers, street stands where you can buy books, razorblades and memory cards, terrible music at the hostel including hip hop for breakfast, "ya, ya.....", amazing lunches for two euros, tourists with llama sweaters all over the place, sunflies, salteñas, burning sun, "Bolivia. Between a rock and a hard place" by Pete Good,potatoes.....(to be continued)

Bolivia: La Paz. City of contrasts.

It´s been over two weeks since I arrived to La Paz and, by now, I am feeling like I am settling in this city. The first thing that caught my attention when arriving here at night was the myriads of city lights spread accross the upper and lower part of the city as if the stars had a reflection on this massive human creation. The image was really amazing. It somehow reminded me of Cusco but at way more immense level. I didn´t know what to expect, but I knew I would probably find many similarities with some of the Peruvian cities I had already seen.

The first thing that catches a traveller attention once here, together with the impressive nocturnal landscape, is the bus station built by Gustave Eiffel, world wide famous for something that doesn´t need to be mentioned. If arriving during daytime, it will probably be the omnipresent Illimani snowed peaks, dominating the landscape from the horizon.

La Paz, like many other capitals, is a city of contrasts. From the skyscrapers of the city centre to the big mass of unfinished houses of the suburbs of the city, La Paz can be a confusing place. Reminiscences of a city like Madrid in some of the colonial buildings in the centre, several steep streets built all the way up to the area known as El Alto due to its height (4000 above the sea level), dark slums spreading for kilometers outside the city, residential areas with green areas, ... La Paz (and Bolivia) is not as open to tourism as Perú might be, and this is translated into the locals being more reserved than their Andean neighbours. It is not that they are cold, but they definitely lack the warmth I found in the beginning of my trip. Differences aside, they share many common aspects, like the crazy traffic, the chaotic organisation and their deep political conscience.

Watching on TV vulgar criminals being beaten up as an act of street justice or social unrest encouraging people to block roads and set barricades doesn´t give the most pleasant feeling about the country. This all can be really far from the other reality of the country: white models and presenters on TV, the importance of football and an interest to portrait the economy as a flourishing one. But there is poverty, inequality and corruption here ("everything has a price" is a true statement here). I won´t get into ethical questions like who´s responsible for this or what is the international community doing about it (or what can they do, in general). However, it makes me sad that a country with such natural resources and some of the most incredible landscapes on Earth falls that low and gets stuck in this situation. In one of my nights hanging out with locals I even got to hear an opinion as dramatic as "the indigenous people are the cause of the non-development of the country". Again, the two Bolivias.

Apart from the political and economical situation, the city is a vibrant one. There are plenty of possibilities here: dinning at some really interesting restaurants, going to concerts or the cinema, visiting the witches market (where you can buy a llama fetus to bury in the foundations of your new house and be granted luck), visiting the coca museum and understanding why Western countries unfairly "demonise" a plant that has been used many centuries before we even had any sort of civilization, dropping by the National Art Museum and seeing a national art influenced by colonial religion, indigenous aspects and social protest or simply sitting down at the Plaza Murillo contemplating some of the most impressive buildings of the city, like the presidential palace.

Due to my volunteer work with children, I will be staying in this city until the end of this month, where I expect to reach a better understanding of the city that, somehow, remains a mystery to me in some aspects. Right now I am starting to feel that I might have preferred to use my time as a volunteer in a rural area, working with farming communities and street children, and far from the misleading images I get in the capital. I also wish I could have stayed with some local family to escape a bit from the gringo land place that my hostel is, where any hint of latin culture or Spanish speaking is far from reach (apart from the kitchen, that is). I must admit, on the other hand, that the bar of the hostel makes a good place to socialise and to avoid the solitude of the lonely traveller.

Other than that, I am really glad I can get lost in the capital of Bolivia and that I can contribute, even if done at a really small scale, to change the life of these little orphan kids who otherwise would have a hard life on the streets and an even harder future at the tough prisons of La Paz in most cases. 

Bolivia: La Paz. Death Road or a lesson of life & death

After a long detour via Chile, several hours on a tortuous bus, an attempt of bribe by the Chilean police at the border and some more memorable landscapes (see pic attached), I finally made it to La Paz, the core destination of my travels and where I expect to spend at least a month. This will give me the chance to somehow settle for a while after constant packing, unpacking,repacking and daily bus journeys, and to be part of a volunteer project with children in need in the city.

I will have plenty of time to tell you about my experiences down here and to describe what I found as a really fascinating and massive city, full of contrasts and placed at a height that seems unreal (4000m on the higher part of the city known as El Alto). But today I will focus my attention on a dramatic experience lived two days ago while I went down the most dangerous road on earth, the sadly famous Death Road, and that has tought me a really important lesson I thought I wouldn´t get until my departure from South America, when all lived experiences become part of my memory. This dramatic event sadly rushed the process.

Let me first give you some background information about the Death Road. The Yungas Road, otherwise known as The Death Road, is a 65km downhill road that leads from La Paz to Coroico. The road used to be the only way of transportation between the Northern Amazon part of Bolivia and La Paz. The road is extremely narrow, completely unpaved, surrounded by the scariest dropoffs and weather conditions can make visibility really difficult. This is the reason why this road has claimed the life of hundreds of people since its construction in the 1930s during the Chaco Wars between Bolivia and Paraguay. The main core of traffic is diverted now to the new road, built in 2006, leaving the Death Road for the almost unique use of tourists looking for a thrill and few locals. I wanted to see this macabre road full of crosses on the sides and so I took part in one of the popular mountain bike tours that follow this road on a daily basis. I was told it is not that dangerous, as long as you are cautious and keep full concentration on the constant bumps and curves of this narrow road. But fate was keeping a tragic surprise for me.

What started as a thrilling mountain bike ride in a sunny day, enjoying the most impressive landscapes, turned to tragedy while biking one of the most dangerous parts of the road. As part of the tour, our minivan was following us and we would stop frequently for the driver to take some pictures of us in this stunning valley. It was when we stopped at the most famous turn (yes, the one you can see in all postcards and guides), that a scream caught our attention. The rest happened too quickly, but in a slow motion like feeling. I only remember a bike slipping off in the section of road opposite to where we were standing, and falling off, down the cliff, for approximately 50 meters before it even hit the ground. I am not too sure whether my mind has eradicated the image of the biker, but my biking mates remember clearly having seen her falling into the void. I only remember saying Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, before realising someone was quite likely to have died in front of my eyes at that precise moment. I rushed to the guide of the tour to which the biker belonged to and screamed in Spanish that someone had fallen down the steep cliff.

There is not much we could do to save the life of the Japanese girl, whose friends stood staring at the valley in state of shock as expecting her to come back up again with a few bruises as if nothing serious had happened. We assisted as much as we could with the rescue, but our efforts were helpless and when the guide of our group came up again after having descended more than 100m down the cliff (apparently the girl had rolled down to a depth of 120m), the most shocking moment took place. He swore several times, while trying to catch his breath, before informing the rest of the group that their friend was dead. Despite it still looked unreal, it was then we realised this hadn´t been a joke. Someone had just become the 31st deadly biking victim of this road at the very exact moment we had stopped for some pictures. The biggest irony of it all was that the group had biked the road before and had decided to repeat it again as they had highly enjoyed it. That was a lesson of death.

It was difficult to hold down the tears and our whole group was still in a state of shock for a while. I cannot describe now all the things that passed through my mind: a sudden need to call my girlfriend, all my family and friends and tell them I was alive; an odd and sudden attachment to life, almost as a celebration; several questions why and failed attempts to understand how this had happened; a strange fear to those mountains, like a sign of respect. I was lucky to be alive, the thrill of doing this road had dropped and all I wanted to do was to finish the tour and be back in the hostel to assimilate the situation. It was psycologically draining and my mind was even more exhausted than my sore arms and fingers (this is due to the constant braking, as hardly any pedalling is needed in this downhill route).

Today, this whole things seem like a bad dream to me. I am awake and I am alive. I can only be happy for that and realise that this life is too short to be wasted. It needs to be enjoyed every minute and face the toughest situations in the best possible way. We need to appreciate what we have and disregard all the minor things to which sometimes we give too much importance. Behind this story, there is broken family and several mourning friends, but there is also someone who´s learnt an important lesson that will be used for the rest of my life.

I am back in La Paz, starting a sort of routine: mornings chilling at the hostel and afternoons working at a children´s home. I just started yesterday, but these two days working with 3-6 year old kids (either orphans or from troubled families) have already thought me another lesson. A good lesson of life. Their smiles make every effort put into this worth millions. The main activities are workshops where we play music, sing, dance, work on plastic arts or sports. Exhausting it is. But a pure joy. For these little kids, everything is wonderful and surprising. From the hair of my four day beard to my hiking boots or tattoos. They live inside the center and never go out, having school in the morning and workshops in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I cannot post any picture of the "little devils", due to strict regulations that forbid to take any pictures at the center to avoid any attempts of human traficking. Sad but true. This is reality in South America.

Should any of you decide to support this organisation, Para Los Niños, by making a donation or maybe volunteering if visiting Bolivia, please find below a link to their website. You will find there more about their activities and the kind of projects they are involved in.

http://www.boliviaparalosninos.org/

I will tell you more about Bolivia in following posts. In the meantime, I will leave you with some pics of my first week in the country.

Enjoy and keep posting comments! I promise to take some time to answer the comments posted so far. I would also like to remind you that I recently made the blog open for comments without a need for registration, so it will only take you two minutes to drop a line and cheer me up. I miss you guys.

Peace.