South summit of Illimani

Final thoughts on Bolivia

So as today is my final day I have created a list of things I'll miss and won't miss about Bolivia.

Things I'll miss:

· The ubiquitous 20 cent hamburger
· Paying only $150/month for a nice apartment
· The view of Illimani from my apartment
· DVDs and CDs for $1.25 each (i.e. lack of intellectual property rights)
· The 60 cent four course lunch
· Being made fun of everyday at the office
· Bus rides for $1 per hour
· Living 15 miles from glaciers

Things I won't miss:

· Being sick for 3 days from eating the 20 cent hamburger
· Being confined to the city for a month due to political demonstrations
· Having to haggle daily for the price of bananas from the same woman... for a year (as if I didn't remember what I paid yesterday).
· Everyone running into you on the street even though they walk at the blistering pace of a block per 15 minutes.
· Being out of breath walking up the street despite being in good shape
· Being stared at everywhere I go
· Washing my clothes out back at the "lavanderia" (read: sink) with ice cold water every week for a year.
· Buses from the 1920s
· Bus rides for 20 cents per hour that only go 10km per hour and are filled with 70 people and 1,000lbs of potatoes
· Bolivian roads - or lack thereof
· Dodging cars, and the occasional cow, donkey, or llama while running and biking
· Bolivian logic (see note below)

Bolivian logic lesson (i.e. paradox):
Never ask questions (if you care about the answers)
Only ask questions if you don't care about the answers.
This is because answers are only useful for entertainment value.

Example: Greg: "Why does Bolivia have a Navy - they have no coast?" Bolivian: "But we have rivers!"

Bolivia is an interesting and unique place and can best be described as organized (at times) chaos. There is an absolute dearth of reason, logic, and accountability. To quote a good friend of mine, "Bolivia is a country without handrails". No one will keep you from doing extremely dangerous and absurdly stupid things - in fact they often encourage it (like biking down the "world's most dangerous road"). I doubt that anyone would believe the fantastical nature of my stories (I doubt I would if I hadn't lived them myself), but they are all true none-the-less. Such is life in Bolivia, or as I often think... F--king Bolivia!

Illimani is no joke.

Illimani - The Beast!!!

I just got back from climbing Mt. Illimani with my friend Porfilio, who I found out en route has a family in a small village that is only a two hour walk from base camp, and which also happens to conveniently be the last stop on the bus route from La Paz. That is to say where the rutted-out dirt track ends and the really-rutted-out-with-erroded-parts-having-already-fallen-off-the-cliff-4x4-only-if-you’re-crazy-enough-to-take-it track begins. Picture the Hummer commercial. [Rich, you’re the only person I know stupid enough (or should I say brave enough) to actually try it.]

At 21,125 feet (or for the metrically inclined - 6,439 meters) Illimani is the second highest peak in Bolivia, and is a huge 7 kilometer wide massif that looms over La Paz like a giant. Although as the crow flies it’s only about 20 kilometers away, because there are several canyons and deep valleys to go through, it’s over 70 kilometers by road. And that 70 kilometers takes 7 hours by bus! Our return trip seemly had the entire population of La Paz piled in (each person with a huge sack of potatoes they piled in the aisle and then sat on) and yet we still stopped to pick up more passengers. Porifilio said that this was much better than before (only two years prior), when they piled everyone like animals in the back of a flat bed truck for transport. This type of transport still exists somewhat and I witnessed such a truck on the way back.

Porfilio’s village has no electricity or machines of any kind and their way of life is not that different than it was here 2,000 years ago. They use only hand tools and oxen to plow the fields and harvest everything by hand. Aymara is the spoken language, and the only people who speak even a little Spanish are those that have worked in the cities. It’s amazing to see that there are still people in the Western Hemisphere who live that way. They grow a lot of potatoes (there are at least three words for potato in Aymara), and some other fruits and vegetables, but the majority of meals consist entirely of small potatoes.

Anyway, the first day we had breakfast (potatoes) with his family and then loaded up a horse with our gear and walked to base camp. The second day we walked from base camp at 4,700 meters to high camp at 5,500 meters and en route had lunch (potatoes). That night I slept well despite the disquieting sound of avalanches every 15 minutes thanks to the diazepam I took before bed.

The next morning we woke up at midnight and started our summit bid at 2am. From high camp it was completely snow-covered until the summit, except for a few sections of mixed climbing. The flattest grade on the route was about 30 degrees, but most of most of it was not that nice, and there were 5 sections of 70 degree ice walls for 50 meters or more. I am supposed to be in pretty good shape, but I was exhausted and out of breath ever few steps. Porfilio must have told me about 20 times (starting after about 1 hour) that we were “near the summit”, and each time he said it all I could think was, “bullshit, we’re not even close!” Having read a description of the route in a book, I knew that it should take between 5 and 7 hours, and since this was written for mountaineers I thought the best I could expect was about 6 hours. But eventually, and is always the case, the final time he said it, we actually were close, and we reached the summit just in time to see a stunning sunrise. I was amazed that it only took us 4 and a half hours.

When I reached the summit I collapsed like a sack of Aymara potatoes and after a few minutes the only thing I could muster the energy to do was to get out my camera and take a few pictures. It was far too cold to stay long (minus 20 degrees) so after 15 minutes we headed back down. Also on the way up I fell into a small crevasse that was covered by a foot of snow. It was only about 3 feet wide and 20 meters deep and I was up to my waist into it with my arms splayed out keeping me from falling completely in (pretty much like the scene in the movie “Alive”), but as I was tied to my climbing partner I wasn’t as freaked out as I would have been otherwise and was able to crawl out without much trouble.

When we descended further down it was like magic as my strength returned and the return trip took us only 2 and a half hours walking slowly. It wasn’t until we got back to high camp that I realized I couldn’t feel my toes, nor could I remember the last time I could feel them. I borrowed good quality plastic mountaineering boots, but they were a little too small. When I took them off all 10 of my toes were red – for the medically inclined, up to the metatarsals. At least they weren’t purple. In the mountaineering world red is good, purple bad. It’s the closest thing to frostbite I’ve ever had, and now even after 2 days they are still numb. In a few days they should be better.

We had breakfast at high camp and his wife had hot coffee waiting for us. After a hour break for breakfast we broke camp and headed back down to base camp where a donkey and porter were waiting for us. There we ate lunch (you guessed it, potatoes) and I fell asleep. They woke me up to say “vamos”, but didn’t even wait for me to put my shoes on before they were off.

People have often asked me what was the hardest thing (physically) I’ve ever done, and I’ve always had the rather lame answer that it was sprints at the end of football or basketball practice. But now I can unequivocally say that climbing above 20,000 ft. at an average grade of 40 degrees takes the cake. Only about 40 people climb it per year (we saw no one for 3 days), and on average two of them don’t make it down.