La Paz and Surrounds (Best post yet?)

From the tiny town of Uyuni, with one main street, two ATMs, three greasy burger stalls and four randy dogs, we catch the night-bus to La Paz. We've some travelling companions in Leila and Tobias, the Swiss couple who endured Sr. Toro's music with us over the previous three days. The bus is rowdy with travellers from all points, and the driver soon spices things up with some music. There's an immediately familiar feel about it: I'll name that tune in one ... and if the next song is Rod Stewart, then it can only mean one thing ... oh please God no! It's the same mixtape - there is only one 80's collection in Uyuni. Let us off!!!

Some plucky soul complains to the driver, and we are rewarded with peace, although he does switch off all the lights. The road gets nasty and for the next five hours we might just as well be strapped to pneumatic drills. Praise be to the local pharmacists who dole out Valium over the counter. We take one each and feel no pain until La Paz hoves into view. We later talk to a fellow traveller who had taken the same bus the night before; it fell over onto its side. Bolivian buses...

And what a view! The city rears up on all sides, houses clinging to the steep sides of the city bowl. To the East, the three monumental, snowcapped peaks of Illimani rear up giving the city a truly dramatic feeling. We find a nice hotel right in the centre, a street away from the hecheceria, "the Witches market". Sure enough, the photo of a stall in the Rough Guides' must-do section matches precisely what we see; llama foetus anyone? A bit of a stroll takes us up into the Aymara section of town, populated almost exclusively by ladies in enormous skirts, twin plaits and tiny bowler hats, a fashion imported by the Italians. For street after street it's one great market. We buy some socks, a wad of corny, cheesy paste flavoured with anise, and of course a bag of coca leaves. Such is the cultural attachment to Coca here, a museum is dedicated to it.


- Huh? They knew we were coming...


- View of La Paz, Mt Illimani looming in the background


- La Paz


- Another La Paz street


- Your typical Aymara lass in a typical Bolivian town


70km West of town is the important ruin of Tihuanacu, part of a pre-Incan civilisation that lasted for 2,700 years. It's not as fun as we would have liked, especially since the Bolivian achaeologists have taken the trouble of moving the most impressive pieces into a museum. One of the gates of the main temple might have graced the British Museum had there not been a revolution, and some of the monoliths were used for target practice by, variously, the army and football fans. Shame really. Anyway, we learned what the llama foetuses are not beer-snacks, but used as burnt offerings to Pachamama for good luck.


- Who you looking at, four-eyes? One of the monliths at Tihuanacu


- Three thousand years of culture neatly summed up in a gurn


50km in the other direction is La Cumbre, a 4900m-high pass and start of the famously hideous road to the low-lands: the road of death! This road drops 3000m over sixty-four desperately windy kilometres. It was built after the Bolivian war with Paraguay (really, why did they bother?), by Paraguayan prisoners in the 1930's. Since then, more people have died driving the road than in the whole of that war, hundreds per year.

So, why, might you ask, are we planning to travel down this road at all, let alone on bicycles? Because it's quite simply one of the most stunning roads on the planet. We climb onto our Canadian-built downhill-specific bicycles with some trepidation. Our guide is a young German chap, whose very vocal philosophy is "easy-going". It turns out to be anything but. A descent of 3345m in 64km makes for a day of sphincter-clenching action! The first thirty km are made on tarmac, mostly downhill, 6km uphill. I'm afraid to admit that we both have to push for at least some of that; 3500m up is lung-busting territory!


- Only Leila was sensible enough to have a broken hand: she went down in the van.


- This is the easy bit at the start


- And here we go!


- Disgruntled, tired and thirsty after the only uphill section


- Tobias thinks it's too easy, but he was born up a mountain!

A little further down we hit the Estrada de la Muerte proper, a dirt road carved out of near-vertical cliffs, dropping ridiculously 1000m straight down. On the way down, making constant use of some incredibly good brakes, our butts are pounded by the terrible surface. We stop at notable corners, where our guide tells us stories of crashes, and inevitably, deaths. On the French corner a French girl hit the front brake, went over the handlebars and over the edge. On the Italian corner, an Italian came face to face with a lorry and went over. On the Israeli corner two stupid boys came together, one went over. At the San Juan waterfalls, a bus with 60 people went over the edge thanks to a drunk driver. And so on.

The views are spectacular when we stop, but letting gravity take us down is a nerve-jangling experience and requires full concentration. Two of our fellow riders take a tumble, bit no-one is hurt, or lost over the edge. It's far worse coming back up. Now we have the luxury of looking sideways, rather than at every rock and stone, and the precariousness of the road is all too evident. It's a rip-roaring trip, highly recommended!


- Into the valley of death rode the 16, plus two guides and a couple of minivans...


- A rare idle moment for our trusty machines


- Told you these shoes would match something...


- The French corner. Hit the front brakes too hard and you too could have a cross and a corner named after you!


- 34km more of this!


- One of the guides shows his mad jumping skillz. Of course Ana volunteered - she's in the middle! (pic courtesy of Leila & Tobias at leilatoby.wordpress.com)


- Taking a breather by a sheer drop (pic courtesy of Leila & Tobias at leilatoby.wordpress.com)


- Skillfully avoiding falling off the road while getting soaked by the San Juan falls (pic courtesy of Leila & Tobias at leilatoby.wordpress.com)

(We have some more stunning pictures of this ride which we'll try to show you next time. Technical issues once more stand in our way thus far.)


Flushed with the success of an adrenaline packed day, Leila, Tobias and we two take ourselves off to our favourite bar, Sol y Luna, and get merry on Coca mojitos and draft Bolivian ale. Leila and Tobias, being the healthy, outdoor, active, Swiss types that they are, have decided that they want to climb one of the local mountains in the Cordillera Real, don't we want to join them? Of course we do.


- Eat my bill! There's no way we drank that many Bolivian Mojitos!


So we do, setting off on Friday on a guided expedition to Huayna Potosi, a peak of just the odd 6088m high. Kitting up is an experience in itself: waterproofs, great mittens, the promise of a head-lamp (you'll see why later), gaiters, inner- and outer-boots, crampons, and an ice-axe. Lucy and I have stocked up on coca-leaves and mouth-numbing coca pastilles to combat altitude problems, and Snickers bars because it's the only excuse we'll get.

As we approach by car, the mountain looks pretty damned imposing, with blank rocky faces and great swathes of pure snow. How the hell are we going to get up that?


- We're going to climb THAT!? 6088m of Huayna Potosi


- Huayna Potosi in the background, an ominous sight in front


Our first stop is the Huayna Potosi refuge, a simple hotel under the mountain, next to a ripe, green lake. We are told to get togged up, which we do under the guidance of Tobias (he's useful up a mountain) and the local guides. A quick lunch of a soon-to-be familiar menu follows: vegetable soup, pasta, coca tea. Then we're out, trekking in full kit for 90 minutes to the end of a grubby glaciar. It's training time, so on with the crampons for some sideways walking up and down the face of the glaciar.

Something more challenging follows as the head guide, Feliciano, shins up a 5-metre ice wall, tosses down a rope and begs us to follow. Hack with the ice-pick, bash in the crampons one-two-three, haul yourself over the edge. Not too difficult, really, except that one of my boots flies off, and lucy bashes her knees. Next is a taller steeper ice wall, and then a dodgy piece of repelling, which means walking backwards down the slope suspended on a rope. This is quite good fun! We take a hairy walk back to the refuge by moonlight. There's a roaring fire and plenty of coca tea to keep us warm.


- Halfway up the mountain we "enjoy" a rest


The following morning we wake up, have breakfast, go back to bed, have lunch and then make the journey to the second base, laden with heavy backpacks. It's a gruelling three-hour climb up an indistinct path over rubble and finally up to the snow-line. Exhausted, we collapse into the basic metal hut waiting for us, and eat soup, pasta and coca tea. At 6pm we attempt to sleep. It's difficult enough, but the buzz-saw snoring of one of the guides (in fact our guide, Felix) makes it impossible.


- Trudging. How tired does Ana look? She's not pretending! (pic courtesy of Leila & Tobias at leilatoby.wordpress.com)


- Welcome to hell. Our "refuge" (pic courtesy of Leila & Tobias at leilatoby.wordpress.com)


- How many of us are going to sleep in that? And where's the toilet?


At 1am (yes, 1am) we afix crampons, and then we're off, headlights providing the only illumination on this moonless night. We're immediately tramping up anonymous tracts of snow, following the rope attaching us to Felix. It's tough going from the start and doesn't get any easier. Our only focus is the next couple of footsteps and when the next stop will be. After a couple of hours we reach our first real challenge, a wall of snow 70m tall. This is seriously hard, but using our new skills we can just make it up. We pass some fresh vomit. Leila and Tobias have gone bombing on ahead, along with others in our party, but we're "happy" going at own pace. More uphill tramping follows, for what seems like hours, because it is for hours, until I think I might just fall over and die of exhaustion. Then comes the final obstacle, the final hurdle, and we can't just quite do it. At 120m up a 200m wall of ice we call in our chips, hands and feet bereft of feeling thanks to the cold. Felix is happy that he got us up to 6000m, and that's good enough for us, just 88m short of the summit.


- Ugh, I don't feel so good. Wait a minute, what's that "thing" coming out of me? Aaarrrgh...


- Celebration: we've stopped going upwards!


As we start the descent, at about 6am, the sun finally comes up and reveals the extent of our achievement. This is a strange, beautiful and hostile place, not anywhere we thought we would ever be. We're pretty proud to get as far as we did. The descent is difficult enough in its own right, thighs and calves burning over the snow, and our patience and concentration sorely tested over wonky rubble and loose scree. It takes four hours in total to get back to our refuge.


- Finally, the sun's up.


- We're going down! Look at at all that snow!


- Moi, and Tobias, wearing our special animal masks. God knows where we got the energy to look so menacing


- Leila and Ana Lúcia looking far cheerier than they feel


From the comfort of a La Paz internet cafe we can be critical of ourselves for not making it right to the top, but 6000m is actually pretty good for first-timers like us. Thanks to Leila and Tobias for forcing us into it, and for my excruciating blisters!


- Leila, Tobias and the gruesome twosome enjoying a blurry post-mountain farewell

La Paz has been really interesting, but the constant chest heaving and elevated heart rates are exhausting. Time to get back to sea level...

Mega-Post: Salta (Argentina); San Pedro de Atacama (Chile); Uyuni (Bolivia)

It's a big couple of weeks in this update as we bid goodbye to the big, flat Pampas and Chaco and say yo to the long, tall Andes and Altiplano.

Salta
Last time on theTravellingWoods we were larging it as best we could in Asuncion. From here we bus it to Resistencia in Argentina, and thence to Salta in the North-east of the country. At first look it's just another town, another grid of one-way streets, another set of churches. Our first stop is the municipal camp-site next to a council estate. There's a horrid empty lido next to the horrid wonky tents that are already pitched on horrid dirty ground. And people are living here: gypsy kids run riot, the bath block is disgusting.

We're disheartened, and return to the town centre to find a hostel. From this point on, things look up. There are lots of tourists like us about, and that means there are bars and restaurants aplenty. The main square is quite charming, even when taken over for a farmers' demonstration, and the churches are actually pretty cool too. There's even a cable car (or 1070 steps) up the hill.


- Splendidly ostentatious churchery in Salta

But the main event is out of town. We take a car and guide, the feisty Raul, for a day-trip up into the mountains, following the route of the now defunct Train of the Clouds. Wow! The valleys and passes are breathtaking ... at 4100m we're reeling about feeling more than a little nur. Out come the coca leaves: a wad in the cheek does seem to do something for us, and keeps the queasiness bottled up until our lunch in a pueblito on the high plain.

El Mojon is a one-llama town, with a solar oven (a great big reflecting mirror on a gimbal), a globe of wires hooked up to the town's only mobile phone, and a tiny greenhouse where chilli, celery and even vines are growing. The restaurant is charming, with salt-block tables and cactus-wood doors and ceiling panels. We eat the only llama, on tagliatelle, and a mug of coca tea washes it down. Show us more! There's a nice salt-flat (although nothing to what comes in Bolivia), then a majestic high pass where vicuña roam and a Chilean lorry has beetled onto its back. The colours of the rocks in the Vale de Huamahuaca are entirely amazing, and seemingly uncapturable on camera.


- Cactile fun


- First taste of the high life. Dizzying stuff


- Lunch: tagliatelle with Llama sauce, cactus-wood bread-bowl, salt table


- The cutest church in the Altiplano


- A bendy bit of road which goes on forever

On the way back into Salta, Raul turns to politics, and explains why the Falklands are Argentinian territory (they even get a mention on the weather forecasts), recounting with unerring accuracy the background, crucial events, dates and numbers of casualties of the conflict in '82. Raul is 25, half-Chilean, drives a fiat 600 and wants a proper sound system for it. We quickly put war-talk behind us

San Pedro de Atacama
From Salta, it's a 10-hour bus ride into Chile, through the high Paso de Jama and tracts of extraordinary desolation, in the daytime for a change. The Chilean and Argentinian border posts are 160km apart, such is the lack of anything up here.

San Pedro is, indeed, in the Atacama desert. It's a low-rise town of adobe buildings. We again try our luck with campsites, but one is just a dust-bowl, and the other is truly squalid: two tight lines of tents ranked either side of an open culvert. We find a hostel instead. San Pedro is all about the tourists, unlike the picture painted in the recent "Tropic of Capricorn" programme on the Beeb. There are hundreds of grubby Europeans and Americans here, getting hot and bothered about geysers and sand-boarding, and spending wads on flash food and pisco sours. It's the most expensive place we've been by far.


- Adobe style in San Pedro, outside our favourite restaurant


- Inside our favourite restaurant. Love and Pisco!

We get out of town on foot and bicycles. Riding (well, mainly pushing) one's bike through the Vale del Muerte is exhilarating and extremely knackering: low oxygen levels, a relentless sun, and lots of sand are the norm, but the views are splendid. We also hike up to a nearby ruin of a pre-Incan civilisation, Pukara, sensibly positioned on a steep little hill. From here one can really see why anybody chose to build in this unpromising bit of desert, for there is a running stream, and an oasis of trees and shrubs.


- Heading off with hope into the Vale del Muerte. About 5 minutes later we started pushing


- Now, what do you think this means? Aliens? Sign at the entrance to Pukara


- Up in Pukara, the oasis of San Pedro and great big volcanoes in the background

Into Bolivia, to Uyuni
From San Pedro there is but one way to get into Bolivia: on a 4x4 tour. We travel with four others: a tall Swiss couple, a spiritual Frenchman, and a Belgian teacher. Our driver is the taciturn Bolivian, Sr. Toro. He looks a little like Harvey Keitel, with one cheek a-bulge with coca leaves. His steering wheel is emblazoned with a golden, slinky, girl motif and he wears an F1-style boiler suit. From time to time he removes the ignition key, while we're moving, to spool a music cassette. His favourite is an 80's mix tape, that he plays repeatedly. Eventually, we're reduced to fits as Kim Wilde fires up yet again. We convince him to play some latino beats instead.


- Bo-liviant!

This is a truly spectacular business, taking three days, and visiting some of the most unearthly places on, well, Earth. We're talking green lagoons, hot springs and bubbling mud, red lakes coated with borax and studded with flamingoes, snow-capped volcanoes, deserts, wind-sculpted rocks, enormous salt flats. The nights up here, at over 4000m, are freezing cold, and turning over under the heavy blankets leaves one breathless and headachey, with or without Coca leaves. Hard to descibe adequately, so here are some snaps.


- The famously otherwordly Laguna Verde


- Hot springs at 4000m


- The gorgeous Laguna Colorado where we stayed for a frightfully cold night


- wearing all of our clothes. Bloody freezing, it being 4600m up, with a gale blowing


- Bubbly, stinky stuff at 5000m


- The stone tree, wind-sculpted for your pleasure


- Just swinging in a tumbleweed rail-town


- Dreaming of stowing away

Eventually we cross the immense Uyuni salt lake. We should be listening to a symphony in salt-flat, instead we get Dire Straits.


- The Salar de Uyuni is the perfect place for silly pictures like this. There's 12,000 square kilometers of the stuff


- We were chased off this cactus island in the salt-lake by a man on a bicycle and his dogs

On the far side of the Salar we are dropped in the tiny railroad town of Uyuni, the next step to La Paz, more of which later...