It´s been a while since I last posted, but what can I say, I´ve been off having some serious fun (see the new photos)! I spent two weeks after my last post hanging around Santa Cruz, doing the usual and deworming orphans with Rotary´s hygiene education campaign (we would always have to show them how to take the little ivermectin pill, so I ended up getting a dose too). Then, in early June, I went to La Paz to meet my dad. For the past couple of months we had been making plans to do some mountaineering while I was still in Bolivia, and our opportunity had finally arrived. After 10 months, I finally got to see my first glimpse of family! The little reunion in the La Paz airport involved a lot of hugging and a few tears. It was easily one of my happiest moments this year. After more hugging, we had to ask around at the various check-in desks about flights to Santa Cruz at the end of the month (dad didn´t have the time nor the desire to endure 20 hrs. of scrunched legs on an overnight bus to Santa Cruz when we were done with the Andean portion of our trip). Then we walked outside, I negotiated a good cab fare down into La Paz, and we were off driving through the streets of El Alto. 

Dad was a little confused at how flat everything seemed, having been told that La Paz was very hilly, but relieved not to be experiencing any symptoms of altitude sickness just yet. I was explaining about the sub-city of El Alto, and how La Paz really lies in the canyon beneath it, when the expressway opened into a beautiful view over the city and we began to descend. On our way by, I pointed out the little rock outcropping where the Inca emperor Huayna Capac was allegedly drawn and quartered and where modern day yatiris or witch-doctors (each knowing the properties of thousands of medicinal herbs and significance of hundreds of minor omens, said to be descended from the vanished Tiwanaku) hang out and tell fortunes. I asked how his flight had gone, thinking that as a pilot he might remark on the incredibly long runway, having to land at double the normal sea-level velocity, or at the very least that the oxygen masks may have dropped upon ground cabin depressurization as they had on a number of my friends’ flights. But, everything had gone normally, and he was just anxious to find a place to settle down and unpack. I began talking to the taxi driver about heading to the Hotel Sagarnaga, where I had stayed on the Rotary trip (I figured it best to choose nicer accommodations with hot water and relatively insulated rooms for the first night; we could go someplace cheaper or upgrade to central heating after dad settled in a bit and decided what he wanted), but, according to the taxista, a visiting delegation from Potosi had booked all of the rooms at the Sagarnaga. He suggested the Hotel Condeza, which was only a half-block away from the Sagarnaga, similar in room quality, and only charged $20 per double room – while the Sagarnaga charged $22. I had never heard of the Condeza, but I figured that I knew my way around the Rosario district well enough that I would know if the driver tried to drive to another part of the city for any funny business. So, we decided to see what the Condeza had to offer. At first they showed me a room for which they wanted to charge me $70, but after haggling a bit, they discovered that we weren´t the typical gringo nincompoops who could be convinced to pay near-American prices. For the stated $20, we ended up getting a nice room with an excellent view facing north - for some nice passive solar heating - a door that locked securely, a private bathroom with plenty of hot water and electrical tape over the shower knob so that typical gringos, like my dad, didn´t have to worry about the nasty little surprise of being zapped while showing. Once we had done a bit of inventory on the cold weather gear that my dad had lugged with him, we began turning our attention to plans for the rest of the day. The Condeza´s location, an equidistant stone´s throw away from each the Witches’ Market, the Black Market, and the smaller produce market on Calle Illampu, proved ideal as we spent most of the morning walking around browsing for things to eat (dad rapidly became a fan of salteñas). We spent the rest morning wandering past the artisan shops on Calle Linares and observing the people of La Paz. After being kicked off the steps of the main cathedral by a petal-tossing religious procession, we evaluated how we felt and, still free of typical altitude sickness symptoms, decided to get down to the business of active acclimatization with some good hiking. We walked down to El Prado and caught one of the little smoke-spewing, gravity-defying van-buses (dad thought the syndicate system – where the ruling transportation syndicate absolves drivers from any liability if they hit any people or property on the way to their checkpoints, so long as they make good time – was a little crazy) to the winding hills on the southern outskirts of La Paz. Our goal was to climb to the Muela del Diablo (Devil´s Molar) for some great views over the city, the little hamlet nearby, and the huge sandstone spires that flanked it. We had heard some warnings about the possibility of muggings on the way up, but when the van-bus dropped us off at the local cemetery we asked about the situation and received multiple assurances from different drivers, shopkeepers, and townspeople that there hadn´t been any incidence in a long time. As a 6’ 4” male gringo and a 5’ 10” female exchanger each fairly fit and carrying easily accessible pocket knives, we decided to take our chances (this stereotype doesn´t always hold, but it seems to me that guns are much more prevalent in muggings in Santa Cruz, whereas in the west people tend to rely on knives a lot more). The hike was vertical enough to be interesting, and it took us an hour or two to get to the top, where we were rewarded with great views. The actual Muela del Diablo was a rock outcropping shaped exactly like a human molar, with sheer rock sides steep enough to make bouldering too risky. By this time, the afternoon was wearing on, so we climbed back down and grabbed a bus back to La Paz. When we got back into town, we thought that it might be a good idea to meet Marco, our mountaineering contact, face to face. We met briefly, handled the first payment, and discussed the equipment situation. We spent the rest of the night walking around looking for a decent peña. Dad wasn´t into the strange semi-traditional dancing and music, so we started to look for a decent place to eat. At this point, the altitude was starting to affect him, and as he became extremely nauseous, all desire for food and beer vanished. I was also starting to experience a finicky stomach. Our sudden pickiness was such that we must have seen the menus of five different restaurants, none of which had anything mild enough. The fact that it was nearly midnight, and many places were closing, meaning that we had to walk farther, wasn´t helpful. By this point, Dad was starting to feel pretty awful, and he was getting crankier because of it. He did a very good job of continuing on totally oblivious whenever we received nasty anti-American commentary (translated: a few guys screaming “go home you f***ing greedy yankee pigs” from down the street, a few sly “damn gringo bastards” muttered in passing, and the usual “assholes” whispered from a dark stoop or two), because he actually was oblivious. I translated for him once or twice and we kept our heads down, walking with purpose away from the potential trouble-makers. Later on in the trip, we finally decided to say that we were from Iceland to any Bolivian who asked. Although dad was dying to try out his long-lost high school German, Iceland proved ideal as most Bolivians have no clue where it is, the people there look like northern Europeans, share cultural similarities, yet they can´t be so easily associated with meddling North Americans or Western Europeans, and the odds of running into real Icelanders, or anyone who could actually speak Icelandic in Bolivia were slim to none (I have a new appreciation for countries like Iceland, which are so wonderful precisely because they are obscure enough to offend no one). Finally, when we were about a half-block away from the Condeza, we stumbled upon a tiny gringo-run bar/café called The Blue Note. We walked inside and ordered strawberry juice with milk, a bowl of pumpkin soup, and some bread to split between the two of us. As we ate, we watched what appeared to be the usual crew of expats goofing around at the bar. Dad, who was feeling much better after the strawberry milkshake, started musing about what it´d be like to be an expat, accepted some drinks on the house, started looking over the literature list, and was definitely digging the atmosphere. I, in turn, was starting to feel awful. We spent another hour or so in The Blue Note and then went back to the Condeza for some sleep. I went to bed feeling every bit as icky as altitude acclimatization is supposed to feel.

The next day we woke up to begin our first acclimatization excursion: Lake Titicaca – an extra thousand feet of elevation, putting us at 12,533 ft. or 3820 m. We both consolidated the things that we would each need for the next three days into my 60 L pack and stowed the rest of our equipment at the front desk of the Condeza, temporarily checking out and setting a reservation for Tuesday of the coming week. We then walked up to the general cemetery where most of the transportation syndicates operate. Fifteen minutes later, for 15 Bs ($2us) each, we were on a four-hour bus ride to Copacabana. When we had to temporarily get off so that the bus could cross one of the lake´s wide channels on a makeshift barge, I went to seek out a bathroom. However, with it being low season for tourism and vacationing, our bus was the only one queued to cross. While I was answering nature´s call, the other passengers all boarded the little single-prop human ferry, so that when dad and I returned to the docks we had to pay 20 Bs for a private – but very slow – ride across, instead of the normal 1.50 Bs, and we worried somewhat about the bus possibly leaving us at the navy station on the other side. Luckily, the bus driver and barge operators took a while in orienting the barge and backing the bus onto the pier. Dad was amused when I translated for him the slogan painted boldly across the front of a nearby navy base: “the sea is ours by right, and it is our duty to get it back” (130 years ago, Chile invaded the Atacama region of what was then Bolivia during Carnaval, using an unfair tactic to start a war that would permanently land-lock the country. Bolivia has had very sour relations with Chile and a longing for the sea ever since – hence the investment in a navy). There wasn´t anyone to check our passports at the navy base as there had been on the Rotary trip, and we made it back onto the bus in good time. By the time we got into Copacabana, all ferries to the Island of the Sun had stopped for the day. We found a nice little spot on the main street to eat lunch and started considering different hostels in which to spend the night. We finally settled on the Kotha Kahuaña, run by a nice local Aymara family and claiming to have hot water 24/7. At 24 Bs ($3us), the price was good, but the window was unable to shut all the way, making the cold drafts off the lake a real problem at night. We decided to spend the evening hiking up Cerro Calvario, the large mound standing a few hundred feet above Copacabana with amazing views and steep slopes plunging down to the lake´s surface. We watched the sunset and got back into town after dark. After wandering about for a while, dad and I finally sat down with a large bottle of Inca Kola and spent an hour or so trying to stay warm while people-watching. When we arrived back at the hostel, I decided to test the hot water claim. The shower head was caked with so much lime that I had to scrape away with my pocket knife – getting gently shocked once by what appeared to be some bad wiring in the shower head – before any semblance of a decent spray was able to get through. The water was sort of tepid, but there was so little of it that I ended up having an extremely cold shower, which was made longer than necessary because it took so long to wash the soap and shampoo away. I shivered under my bed´s four llama wool blankets for most of the night as our room´s temperature plummeted to around freezing, and got very little sleep.

The next morning we caught the first ferry to the Island of the Sun. We paid 10 Bs each fresh off the boat to a little local man so that he and his countrymen would let us access the south side of the island and its ruins. We spent the morning hiking (there are no vehicles or roads on the sizeable island, only a few donkeys, a couple of llamas, and an ancient network of Inca and pre-Inca trails) to the main settlement on the south side of the island and making up for all of the conversation that we had lost this past year. When we reached the southern settlement (an additional 750 ft. or so above the lake level), we looked around for a hostel, ended up having to fetch a little cholita out of her field to give us a room (which was 30 Bs, relatively windproof, had a private bathroom – without running water to dad´s dismay – and also claimed to have hot water for showering down by where you had to fill up your pail of water, although I didn´t test the claim) and we immediately went to a nearby cliff-side hut for a delicious lunch of quinoa soup and Lake Titicaca trout. After lunch and some more talking, we started hiking along the western coast of the island to reach the north side. After about an hour, however, we came across a small house with several self-proclaimed gatekeepers who blocked our path and requested 15 Bs to access the northern settlement and ruins. Needing to save our money for food and transport off the island, we opted to hike around to the southern tip of the island to see if we could make a round trip loop back to the southern settlement. After hiking past a moderately impressive Inca-era palace to the southern tip, the path begin to peter out to a barely discernable and very steep goat trail. Eventually, as the sunlight began to fade, we had to turn back to find a more established pathway. That night we managed to change over some spare American dollars that my dad happened to have at the Inti-Kala Hotel´s little eating area, where we had dinner.

We woke from a comfortable deep sleep the next morning to the sound of braying donkeys outside of our window. The roosters were running a bit late didn´t start to crow until nearly an hour later. We had a leisurely breakfast, not aware of how far we were going to have to walk to reach the north side of the island, and set out to pay the gatekeepers at around 10:30. If we had understood the Island of the Sun´s scale, we would have known to set out much earlier. The island´s geography is such that each small mountain seems like it ought to be the most prominent one on the island, until you reach the crest (and sure enough, the path gets as close to the sun as possible at each and every peak, affording great 360⁰ views but costing in efficiency) and realize that the old Inca trail continues on over several higher peaks in the distance. After paying the gatekeepers, we continued hiking at a good pace for about four hours before we came across the first ruins complex. La Chinkana, the principle ruins complex on the north side of the island, had by far the greatest scope of all the Inca and pre-Inca ruins I have visited thus far. It had a spectacular long corridor of arched recesses where religious idols might have stood, a spring that gave running water to the lower half of the complex, multiple galleries of differently shaped rooms and corridors, several perfectly level sun decks terraced out over the cliff, and a number of places where the pieces of the original stone roof remained intact. After some brief exploration, we decided to reassess our time schedule. We realized that we wouldn´t have time to walk back to the south side of the island to catch what we had been told was the last ferry at 3pm, even on the more efficient eastern coastal trail. With that in mind, we knew that the same ferry served both the north and south side of the island – making its way north after it had dropped off the passengers bound for the south side and heading south once it had picked up all north side passengers bound for Copacabana – so we decided to try to catch the ferry from the north side, which supposedly left in time to be at the south side dock at 3pm. We hurried along the eastern part of the Inca road for an hour or so before we reached the remains of the main sun temple. As it turns out, contrary to the picture that many guide books paint, the only thing left of the once splendid sun temple is a large sacred sacrificial stone and a high stone wall. I had heard that it lay somewhere in a private field, so I was very polite in asking several elderly local ladies spinning wool outside of a nearby house if they might be able to help me find it. One of them went to fetch her friend, who incidentally happened to own the cornfield in question. She led us through a gate and up onto a large terraced field, where the wall and stone were. The “expert” stonework in the wall had deteriorated somewhat and it was clear that the designs on the sacred stone hadn´t been protected from strong erosive forces for quite some time. The most remarkable thing about these ruins, however, wasn´t the ruins themselves but the lady who owned the cornfield. She clearly appreciated my interest in this particular piece of Bolivia´s pre-colonial heritage, and so she began to tell me about the temple´s glory days, or at least what she had heard from generations past. She taught us how to say Father Sun and Mother Moon properly in Aymara, and regaled us with stories crossing five centuries of residual anger against the Spanish colonists (calling the 17^th century Spaniards “dirty thieves” in a disgruntled tone when telling us about how they stole the alleged two-meter diameter golden visage of Intitata – Father Sun – that used to adorn the crumbling wall). After our chat, dad and I had to skedaddle to make it to the northern settlement on time. When we finally reached the shore of the northern settlement, we found that the ferry had left a mere half-hour earlier to apparently dally around the southern end for more time. At this point, I became seriously worried about the possibility of being stuck on the island for another night. We didn´t have enough money to pay for both a hostel and passage back to Copacabana, which meant that we would have to look for a comfy, hidden, and secure spot in the frigid open air that night. Fortunately, we ran across a private boat operator looking for a party of gringas we had passed on the trail earlier in the day, who happened to be headed on the same circuit that we had taken. He told us that the last ferry actually left the southern dock at 4pm and offered to give us stowaway spots on their private boat ride for 20 Bs each (a private boat ride to the south side can usually be hired for 210 Bs). The problem was that dad and I only had 70 Bs ($10) between us, and the ferry to Copacabana was allegedly another 20 Bs per person, making us 10 Bs short of the total required to get off the island that day. I explained our problem to him and he told us to wait for him while he went to look for the gringas, telling me that he could work out a deal with his buddy, who happened to be the ferry operator, so that they could split the 10 Bs loss (such a typically Bolivian situation; the ferry leaves the north side early so that the operator´s buddy can pick up some extra business with any stranded gringos). Unfortunately for us, the party of gringas was being guided by a feisty Bolivian woman, who, upon hearing about our deal, demanded that we pay an even share of the cost. We talked to the gringas themselves, who were from English speaking countries, if they would be willing to take the eight American dollars left in my dad´s wallet in lieu of Bolivianos. They seemed friendly enough and agreed, although they took their sweet time in buying snacks and dawdling around so that we didn´t get underway until after 3pm. Once on the boat, there was nothing to do but rest and wait. The driver knew about our time constraints, and was trying his best to get his friend some more business, so urging him to go faster was pointless. We arrived at the little harbor on the south side about an hour later, just as the little ferry boat was motoring away from the dock. Our driver signaled to his buddy, who slowed the ferry to idle, then maneuvered our boat near the back end of the little ferry, at which point we threw our backpack into the other boat and jumped onto the rear deck. After the rough and indiscreet boat-to-boat transfer, I promptly paid the ferryman, and took a seat inside the little cabin, completely relieved to be on our way back to Copacabana. I watched as another unfortunate gringo argued with the ferryman about leaving his friend behind. Upon entering the harbor in the private boat, I had seen the friend in question race to the end of the dock as the ferry began to push off, seconds too late; he was left standing forlornly at the end of the dock. The ferry operator decided to stop at the southern palace ruins, letting the passengers off to sight see for a half hour, and sure enough, the private boat putted into view, with the unfortunate gringo´s friend on board, docked alongside the ferry, the two gringos were reunited, and both the private boat operator and the ferryman received some more money (on the way back to Copacabana, I asked the friend how much the private boat guy had charged him to catch up with the ferry and he said 60 Bs). We arrived in Copacabana about 3 hours later, walked up the main street, and immediately bought two seats on a bus back to La Paz. I got a window seat, so I was able to watch the scenery – or lack thereof – go by and read the curbside graffiti as we wound through the streets of El Alto on the way back from La Paz. Every single statement went something along the lines of “Free El Alto, death to USAID,” “USAID CIA = Terrorists,” “Damn it, go home yankees,” “USAID out of EL Alto now, the people have spoken,” etc, etc. I don´t know how much actual support these slogans have, whether it was a small group expressing a minority belief, but I have a suspicion that those feelings are shared among a significant portion of El Alto residents. As a city of radical Evo supporters, I´m sure they´ve eaten up his anti-Empire rants with enthusiasm (Evo´s administration has done some good things for the country, for instance we saw a number of new bridges serving what were formerly very inaccessible settlements during our time in the La Paz countryside, but some of his policies – foreign policies in particular – exhibit the logic, realism, and maturity of a second grader). I´ve heard rumors floating around about evil US scientists putting chemicals into the grain bags to secretly sterilize Bolivian women. As if Bolivia, one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, was deemed by the US government to need a check to its continuing high birth rate. It´s this general attitude that, at certain times, irritates me to the point of wanting to support Obama in eliminating all trade preferences for Bolivia, stop all taxpayer-funded aid, and simply say ’good riddance, don´t accept any assistance then, enjoy the miserable poverty. ’  When we arrived back in La Paz, we had to sort out how to get a safe cab back to our hotel from the cemetery (almost all major incidents of tourist kidnappings followed by subsequent emptying of bank accounts and murder have involved fake cab drivers, fake police, or fake fellow “friendly” tourists preying on gringos around the cemetery area). As we were getting off the bus, we happened to see a gringa travelling alone (one of two Americans that we met in our entire time roaming western Bolivia). After talking to her a bit, we discovered that she was an American working with an international non-profit sponsored by Northwestern University. Concerned for both her safety and ours, we decided to share a ride. I happened to spot a legit-looking radiomovil (a taxi from what appeared to be an established company with the company´s phone number emblazoned on the roof), flagged it down, and negotiated reasonable prices to both our destinations. After we got in, however, the cab was approached by a policeman. The policeman asked some questions, I told him that we were Canadian (dad and the American girl had no clue what was going on and were talking loudly in English), and did my best with the La Paz accent to give off the impression that I had lived in La Paz, or at least spent a considerable amount of time there. I gave very specific directions to our destinations, to let both the cabbie and the policeman know that I would immediately notice any unscheduled detours, and sat right behind the driver so that I had some leverage in a worst-case scenario. Whether the policeman was authentic or not, he stopped bothering us, and we were off, with me asking pointed questions every time the cabbie took side streets to cut around the heavy traffic. We dropped the Northwestern girl off first in a safe part of town, near the government palaces, and then we finally made our way back to the Condeza.

We replenished our supply of cash and spent the next two days hanging around La Paz, enjoying the city, and trying to stomach some food. The altitude had dealt a definite blow to my appetite and stomach. It was hard to find any food that didn´t make me feel extremely nauseous, and I had lost almost all desire to eat. This is a common phenomenon is acclimatization; with a little over half of my normal level of oxygen available, my body had to understandably send more blood to vital organs, leaving less necessary things, like my digestive system, to temporarily shut down. With all of the hiking that we had been doing, our blood chemistry was no doubt a little funny as well, with a likely buildup of excess of CO2 making it acidic. With our body systems operating a bit slow, dad and I set out to hunt for fast-digesting carbohydrates. For our next few days of acclimatization, we tried to make relatively safe (sometimes even expensive imported goods, like Pringles chips) carbs and lots of liquids mainstays in our diet. But it was difficult because my body had relatively little desire to absorb any nutrients whatsoever. On the third day, we went to the main bus terminal to grab an overnight sleeper bus to Potosí (4070 m or 13,353 ft. in elevation – the name being based on the Aymara and Quechua words for “thunderous explosion,” which was reportedly what Huayna Capac´s Inca vassals heard when they were considering mining there, along with the message that the hill was intended for other masters – presumably the Spanish). I was conscious to get seats with the most available leg room for dad, who is by no means Bolivian-sized. We ended up getting seats closest to the door, which stayed pretty cold all night due to the drafts. After getting perhaps less sleep than I would have liked, we finally arrived in Potosí. We had arrived just before sunrise, so we spent some time huddling on a cold bench in the bus terminal waiting for the city to wake up. After the first rays of sunshine began to hit the streets of Potosí, marginally warming things up, we began to walk uphill towards the central plaza in the hopes of finding a bathroom and a café serving warm food or beverages. I snuck into an open office building to use a private bathroom and was chided afterward to use the disgusting public bathroom at the nearby market – which was incidentally closed at such an early hour. We continued walking towards the central plaza, but before we could find a place to eat breakfast, a tour lady flagged us down wanting to know if we were interested in going on a four-hour tour of the mines in Cerro Rico, the once rich mountain overlooking the city (mentioned previously in the entry about the Bolivia trip). The price was good, so we accepted. We were directed onto a bus a few moments later which took us up to a house closer to the Cerro, where we changed into protective yellow raiment, thick rubber boots, helmets, and headlamps. Our guide was a little Quechua woman from a mining family who appeared to be very friendly with the miners. She took us shopping for dynamite, coca, alcohol, and soft drinks for the miners (which all had to be piled into our jacket fronts to keep from getting stolen and so that we could climb through the small passages with more ease), and then we piled into a little van and began to drive up the twisty dirt road to the Cerro´s mining camps. As if I hadn´t had enough exposure to the lovely arsenic, asbestos, silica, and acetylene vapor/dust cocktail the first time around, there I stood, decked out in yellow and ready to walk back into the closest thing to hell on earth, this time dragging dad along for the ride. All told, the tour went fairly well. The guide took a definite liking to me as she realized that having me translate for dad and a Norwegian man in our group was more effective than trying to use her limited English. She was very impressed by my pathetically small Quechua vocabulary, and began teaching me various words and idioms as we walked and climbed single-file through the tiny passageways. Pretty soon, I became the teacher´s pet. She insisted that I be the first one behind her so that we could continue talking about everything from current politics involving Santa Cruz to her family history with mines and their Quechua heritage. After the tour, she ended up going out to lunch with dad and me. We continued to talk politics, both American and Bolivian, and when I started gently probing for specific points of resentment towards the DEA, CIA, the State Department, the American people, and their causes, the guide simply directed me to read “Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina” – the book that Chavez gave Obama at Summit of the Americas – and gave me her email address to discuss it once I had finished. With that, we parted ways. I had entered Potosi with a small backpack and I was about to leave with a homework assignment, it figures. Dad and I went to the plaza to wait for La Casa de Moneda (The house of the coin – Bolivia´s former national mint, and the minting site of the colonial Spanish Reales that funded the Armada) to open. We spent the afternoon taking a tour of the fortress-like minting house, wandering around town, and making our way back to the bus terminal. The overnight bus seemed to be slightly heated this time around, and we slept well. With only two days left before beginning our first scheduled climb, we spent the remainder of our time in La Paz, trying to eat safe and tending to any suspected lingering infections or other medical qualms. We browsed the Black Market in the hopes of finding a nice xbox-related gift for my brother, but it appears that xbox has yet to really enter the market here. Videogames aren´t very big business here for obvious reasons, and the only thing that we were able to find were a few Super Nintendo and Playstation games along with a N64 console – not exactly what my brother wanted. We also tried to visit the Calle Jaen museums (dad was particularly interested in seeing the museum devoted entirely to Bolivia´s lost coastline after having seen the navy slogan on Lake Titicaca), but they appeared to be closed. I explained the main exhibits – idols to , the god of wealth, and a mask that was worn each year by an unfortunate campesino who was selected for the burden of dancing repeatedly to the point collapse followed by eventual death – and then we spent some walking around the Plaza Murillo where dad got to see the Palacio Quemado (“Burnt Palace,” which is the presidential palace but owes its name to the repeated gutting and fires it has experienced in various coups throughout Bolivian history). On father´s day evening, we happened to be waiting to pick up some laundry on Calle Illampu, when we stumbled upon some fellow gringos having a conversation that was simply too precious to forgo transcribing here:

Gringo1: I went to the Aymara new year’s celebration this morning at Tiwanaku. It was absolutely crazy; people guarding the ruins with machine guns and all sorts of weirdos in tinfoil hats turning out for the winter solstice, it was like something out of a sci-fi movie. I couldn´t even get close to the Sun Portal or the dancing.

Gringo2: Yeah? Glad I didn´t go. How´s your stay been so far?

Gringo1: I´ve never been any place so consistently f***ed up. I hate to say it, but this place actually makes Cambodia sort of organized. The guy tells me there´s hot water, but then I turn on the shower and I get like 15 seconds of hot water. “Try this other one,” he says. Same deal, so I must have tried like all 15 showers in the place. No good. One thing after another just gets messed up, no one is ever where they are supposed to be. Even the crime is totally incompetent. Just a bit ago, a guy tried to do the old throw-some-shit-in-your-face trick to steal my stuff, except he caught me at an angle, so it just sort of glanced off the cheek, and the stuff was some weird like seasoning or herb or something. So there I am, fully aware of what´s happening, not letting him steal my stuff, and I´m like “what the hell is this, oregano?” And earlier today at the solstice festivities, a guy walks right into me. It wasn´t even crowded at that point, but he bee-lined right into me to try and rob me. I notice what´s happening, so there I am, holding onto the camera around my neck with one hand and holding the guy by the scruff of the neck away from me with the other. I get a good look at him and the guy is like a ridiculous freaking hobbit. I´ve taken to carrying around a fake wallet with expired credit cards, but I hope I don´t have to use it.

Me: Haha, yeah, the theft can be kind of ridiculous. One of my friends in Santa Cruz got mugged at gunpoint (shout out to Spenny), and he only had a crappy cell phone and a tiny bit of money to give the guys, so they took his shoes because they looked kind of nice.

Gringa3: Yeah, but who in Bolivia would actually fit into shoes that big? I agree, it´s really hard to deal with the cold without hot water. In Africa we didn´t have hot water, but it was warm there so no one needed it. And what the hell is with all of the electrical tape and the showers zapping you? As far as the craziness here, this is definitely on par or maybe worse than the Philippines, I´d have to say. It´s impossible to know anything, count on anyone, or get things done reasonably. The altitude is also hard to cope with….

On climb day, Marco showed up at the Condeza at 9am to introduce us to our guide, Ismael Quispe, an Aymara man from a small village at the base of Illimani (mountain #2 on our agenda). We loaded our packs into a small van and started driving out to Huayna Potosi. We made a stop in El Alto to buy extra batteries for our headlamps as well as some candy for summit day. We drove through several shallow valleys in the altiplano until we began the steady climb to Zongo´s Pass. As we approached the foot of the mountain, Huayna Potosi (meaning “youthful Potosi,” also called Bolivia´s ice pyramid, standing at 19,974 ft.) looked increasingly spectacular and challenging. We had a late lunch at the lodge where the road ended, and began the climb to high camp. The trek wasn´t very strenuous, and mainly consisted of scrabbling across a variety of ridges, rockslides, aretes, and a few exposed rock faces. There was a permanent wooden refuge established at high camp where we met up with the other expeditions on the mountain, along with easy access to some steep glacial terrain. We arrived, socialized a bit, sipped some coca tea, and went out to practice some climbing and self-arrest techniques with our ice-axes and crampons. I tried out my new glacier glasses, slightly battered boots, wind pants, crampons, and everything seemed to be in working order. The slope wasn´t ideal for falling drills because it was so steep and icy, but we made do with what we had. After we were satisfied with our reaction times, we trudged back to high camp to meet up with the other expeditions. We chatted with two Frenchmen and a Dutch woman while sipping soup and trying to stomach some rice for dinner. Bedtime came early that evening, as the sun went down and the temperature started to drop rapidly. We all bundled up and slid into our sleeping bags, side-by-side, barracks-style. It was near impossible for me to fall asleep, and 1am came way too quickly, but I was feeling wonderful considering the 17,500 ft. of altitude. I had a good appetite for the little bread and coca tea that we had for breakfast, and was feeling really good by the time we had geared up. We were on the snow by 1:30, and started the long climb up the first glacial face. Just as we were about to reach the first little col, a screw came loose in my right crampon, causing it to separate from my foot. We lost a lot of ground to the other parties as we had to spend some time repairing it. Having fallen a little behind schedule, we didn´t stop long to rest once we reached Campo Argentino, a wide saddle sheltered from the wind, at about 3am. We dug our water bladders out of our backpacks because most of the water had frozen, blocking the camelback tubes hanging around our necks, and then we were on the move again. We passed several randklufts, caverns, crevasses, shelves, fallen avalanches, and crossed a few bergschrunds. As we climbed up a fairly vertical wall onto a high shelf, we experienced what seemed to be another drastic drop in temperature and had to spend some time insulating and changing the batteries on our headlamps. We finally plateaued onto the final corrie facing the giant arête leading to the summit at about 5:30. Making our way up the sheer rock and ice cliff side was definitely the most technically challenging aspect of our climb. We shortened the distance between us and made sure to keep good rope tension as we put faith in the toe pieces of our crampons and began to depend heavily on using our ice axes. The vertical ice and rock climbing was the most interesting, dangerous, time-consuming, and tiresome part of our morning. We had to weave around inconveniently placed penitentes the entire way, but we finally reached the massive arête’s thin crowning ridge at about 7am. We took a bit of a rest at this point (I´m currently working on a way to upload the brief video clip I took, so that you can see for yourselves some of the spectacular views that this particular spot afforded). We then traversed across a giant exposed ridge of snow and ice until we reached the large white pyramid leading to a distinct cornice: the summit. During the last few steps to the summit, I recall thinking that I was more exhausted that I had ever been before. 

So there we were, leaning against the icy little snow bank at the summit, 19,974 ft. above sea level, with a little over one third of our normal oxygen level available. The drama was lost somewhat by our total fatigue and the looming prospect of heading back down. After a few minutes of rest, one half of a candy bar, and a few pictures, we began to descend. We had to be very careful about our foot placement on the technically challenging cliff side, concentrating hard to avoid the uncoordinated mistakes brought on by exhaustion. We reached the large shallow corrie about an hour later, and it was fast going from there. As the sun continued to rise, so did the temperature, making the footing a little less firm and increasing the risk of avalanches. Although we were in a hurry, it was fascinating to see some of the amazing scenery we had unwittingly walked past in the dark. I was also surprised at the mileage that we had covered. In the pitch dark, I had had no sense of distance or scale, I could only judge how far we were from any given feature by the bobbing little dots of light from our fellow climbers’ headlamps as they changed their pace or began to vertically ascend. It turns out that we had walked much farther than I had estimated. We finally reached high camp at around 10:30am, had a quick lunch, packed the few items that we had left behind that morning into our backpacks, and began the descent back to the trailhead. We got back into La Paz at 6:00pm. We tipped Ismael, treated him to a beer, discussed basic logistics for the next day, and then settled down in our room at the Condeza. Dad lay down on the bed and, for lack of a better term, temporarily died for about two hours. I, while tired myself, took the opportunity to go out to an internet café to let mom know that we were still alive and well. When I got back to the room, dad was in the exact same state as I had left him. I busied myself organizing things until he woke from his quasi-coma, at which point we decided to get some dinner. We wanted to celebrate, but refused to spend a significant amount of time walking around, so we settled on Pollos Cochabamba, a fast-food type of place selling the most calorie-packed plates of fried chicken I could possibly imagine. After munching our fill of chicken and plantains, we went back to the Condeza and zonked out.

The next day, we awoke at an ungodly 7:00am. We wolfed down a few pieces of toast, Ismael met us at the hotel, we walked down the street to a lovely equipment rental agency called Andean Base Camp to get me a better-fitting helmet, and we were on our way to Illimani (meaning “golden eagle” in Aymara, standing higher than anything on the North American, Australian, European, African, and Antarctic continents at 21,122 ft. or 6,438 m). We spent several hours winding through a system of deep canyons outside of La Paz before we reached the single-lane dirt track that would take us to Ismael´s village at the base of Illimani. When we got to the village, we ate lunch at Ismael´s house and then spent the rest of the day doing some relaxed trekking to base camp. Once at base camp, we settled in for the night, changed into warmer clothes, and then spent a long time guarding our stuff from an enormous pig while we waited for dinner to cook. We were left quite cold and quite bored, as the pig seemed content to munch on worms that it had dug up and went to seek shelter when the sun went down, whereas we were stuck waiting for dinner, which took an obscenely long time to cook, and ended up having to eat in the pitch dark. Our sleeping mats combined with the spongy dead grass underneath our tent were quite comfortable, so I went to bed early and slept well that night.