El Gran Cruce de La Estrecha de Tiquina - Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Racing at over 13,000ft. - Who Stole the Oxygen?

Last week they held the annual swim across Lake Titicaca at the strait of Tiquina, so I thought it’d be fun to compete. Consider that the water is about 50 degrees (12C), but the bigger obstacle is that it’s at 4000m (13,500ft). Anybody ever tried swimming at 13,500ft? Even though I workout everyday at 12,500ft I get winded just walking around there. So it a bit tough, but really interesting because I was the only foreigner there, and hence the object of much attention. Luckily I have a wetsuit here, but everyone else covers themselves in grease – like people attempting to swim the English Channel in the 1950s. Afterwards they interviewed me for the newspaper and two television stations. Wow, giving an interview in Spanish is tough. By the end everyone knew my name and literally everyone (about 40 competitors and twice as many spectators) came up to me as we were leaving to say goodbye and thank me for coming. All the naval officers there came up to me before I got on a bus back to La Paz and said, “Greg, gracias para su participacion.” All the tourists coming from the lake gave me these looks, like “who the hell is he?” It was really crazy. But just another day in Bolivia.

Then Sunday I competed in “El Maraton” de La Paz, and even though it was actually only a third of a marathon I think it is deserving of the title as the partial pressure of oxygen here is only about a third! It was the biggest race in Bolivian history with a turnout of almost 19,000 runners and I was surprised at how fit many of them were.

Several people ran with backpacks, one girl ran with her dog, and one guy ran in a Shrek costume. I couldn’t believe that there was still a guy in front of me near the end of the race wearing a backpack. It was motivation to pick up the pace and pass him.

The craziest thing was the start. In typical Bolivian form it was totally disorganized, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I was trying to figure out if both sides of the street started at the same time so I asked a policeman, and he said yes. But I didn’t really believe him so I asked another policeman, who said that one side was for men and the other for women who start later. Great. Then I asked another and he said, no they start at the same time. The 4th said it was men on one side women on the other. Classic Bolivia… nobody has a clue about what’s supposed to happen. So I got in on the crowded side, just in case. They were going to have a several wave start with wheelchairs going first, then professionals, then men, then women. But when a couple pros stepped over the line to move up to the next line, a few other people stepped over the rope as well, and then all of the sudden everybody thought the race had started and started pushing forward. The police were trying to hold the line but were powerless to stop the mob of 19,000 people pushing forward. Finally people realized it was a mistake and stopped at the next line. The police tried to get everyone to move back with a megaphone that was only loud enough to be heard 5 feet away, but people yelled “no carajo, vamos vamos!”

When the finally started everyone went at once and there was a dead sprint uphill. Two seconds later it looked like people were already a half kilometer away. Everyone was pushing which caused several people to fall down and subsequently get trampled by 100s of people. I thought for sure someone was going to die because no one cared about running on top of the people lying on the ground. Despite all the excitement, I finished towards the front (at least in the first 1,000) with a time of 67 minutes, which I thought was okay considering that there were over 500 meters of hills.

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

In Need of Salt Anyone?

I took a long weekend 2 weeks ago to go to the Salar de Uyuni, which is the largest salt desert in the world. And when they say it is salt, they really mean it. It is 12,000 square kilometers (180km by 97km) and the depth of the salt varies from 50cms to 10 meters! Everything is completely white, and I was in disbelief – I kept picking up the ground we were walking on to taste it. Yep, salt. Five minutes later – yep, salt. I think there is more than enough salt there to feed the world for the next thousand years – without exaggerating. It was just after the end of the wet season (i.e. summer) so there were parts that were still covered with water and it made an otherworldly mirror effect, where the sky and the ground looked the same.

It was a four day trip, and you’re thinking, how much salt can I take? But in reality you leave the salt desert after a day and travel through the Uyuni altiplano, which is filled with snow-capped active volcanoes, red, yellow, and brown deserts, thermal geysers, hot springs, as well as blue, red, and green lagunas with pink flamingos (yes, pink flamingos at 4,500 meters). The lakes freeze over at night with their one leg frozen in it – then they use their other leg to try to free themselves from the ice for several hours. Not my idea of a smart animal. But it helps that they stand on only one leg.

Then we crossed the border and went to San Pedro de Atacama and as soon as we crossed the border the dirt tracks turned into paved roads, and we passed from the 19th century into the 21st. The contrast is striking. For example, a 4 course lunch in Bolivia costs about 60 cents, while a 2 course meal in Chile costs about $12. The landscape surrounding el Salar de Atacama is striking in its own way, with huge sand dunes, and a moon-like desolate mountainous terrain. Getting back to Bolivia proved to be a more difficult task than one would think. Everyone I asked about going back, said (I’m not kidding), “why would you want to go back to Bolivia?” I’m not sure why that mattered but saying that I lived there cleared up the issue slightly. Everyone in Uyuni said it was “no problem” to get back there, so I should have known right away it would be absolutely impossible. After I exhausted all the possibilities of trucks returning to Uyuni, I finally asked if there was a bus to Arica, which is the northern-most town in Chile and the only other way to get to La Paz. “Sure, it leaves in 20 minutes,” I learned. With the next one not leaving for another 2 days, I had to run back to get my stuff and the guy at the bus office promised me they’d wait 5 minutes for me. I got back 5 minutes late and (of course) the bus had already left. The office guy was like, “What? We waited.” As is the norm, he was clearly lying, and knew that I knew that he was lying. At that, I had a bit of a fit and told him that we were no longer friends, which they never like to hear. So finally, after some negotiation (and a few choice words you won’t find in a Spanish dictionary), he said there was a bus to the next town and there I’d have 5 minutes to change buses – I weighed my odds, probably 20 to 1 against, but went for it anyway. To my great surprise I made it, despite being dropped off at the wrong station. The road on way back to La Paz was beautiful and passed by the Sajama national park with the highest peak in Bolivia. It was a bit of an ordeal, but nothing that you don’t get used to in Bolivia.

The general rule of thumb is that if anyone says, “it can’t be done”, it’s usually incredibly easy to do. And if everyone says “you should do this” or “it’s no problem to do that”, it’s completely impossible. For example, I was advised by a local once to take the train to Potosi. I looked at him long and hard and responded that there was no train to Potosi. In fact, not only is there no train, there are no train tracks. He just shrugged.