Huayna Potosí – 6088m

Although the mentioned mountain is in Bolivia near La Paz, I will have to start a bit earlier in order to explain how we got this idea of doing a 6000m summit. It all started more or less in Arequipa, where we saw lots of travel agencies advertising tours to the “Chachani”, with 6057m one of the probably easiest mountain of this height, because there is no technical part during the route, except you have to use crampons due to the ice. As we were coming from Lima and the “selva”, we were of course not well acclimatized and hence went to the “Canyon de Colca” for doing some trekking and also did the bike tour to Patapampa at 4910m (as previously told). When we came back to Arequipa, we went to one agency we were recommended to, and the guys told us they would offer us a guided tour if they found two other persons, because the groups have a size of 4 fellows per guide. But since no other ones were willing to do this tour, we would have had to pay a lot more and go alone. Besides, we started getting very skeptical about this company, because they did not seem really serious but rather like they only wanted to sell us the tour (“normally you have +10 degrees Celsius at the top” – a little bit strange if you take into account that Patapampa had not more the +5 degrees and is located 1000m lower). So we finally looked for other companies and guides (which we SHOULD have done already at the beginning) and found a UIAGM-certified guide, Arcadio Mamani Viza, who explained us that most companies only send their clients to some guy with mountain experience but without real formation. Now we can say that Arcadio was the first person who seemed to be honest and trustful (“you’ll have at least -5 degrees Celsius, but it can feel a lot colder with the wind”) and told us that he would guide us, of course with a higher price, but that we would maybe not have spent enough time in the altitude to be acclimatized enough, so we reconsidered our plans and decided to go to Cusco and the “Lago del Titicaca” first to do more trekking and stay longer at ~4000m.

During those days, we heard that there is also a 6000m summit near La Paz in Bolivia, namely the Huayna Potosí, which is technically a little more challenging, as you would have to do a bit of ice climbing with the ax, but definitely feasible for beginners, because before hiking up you would also do a day of training in a glacier. After looking for some additional information on the internet, we decided to go to La Paz and try and see whether it would be possible to do this mountain also in the rainy low season. We did NOT do the same mistake and asked at several agencies and also at the “Asociación de Guías de Montaña de Bolivia“, where we met Gonzalo Jaimes Rodriguez, who told us more or less that the other companies again would send the groups with some experienced guy, but no real guide. Against that, he is also UIAGM-certified and has done his formation mainly in Chamonix and the rest of France (among others rock climbing at Aguille Verte, ice and glacier trekking to the Mont Blanc, canyoning in the Gorges du Verdon), especially for learning how to realize the training and education of aspirant guides, and later he founded the Bolivian Mountain Guide School, where many people from South-America got the UIAGM diploma (you should have a look at his curriculum). He has opened many routes in Bolivia and is one of only 5 persons who reached the summit of the most difficult, 1200m high rockface of the Bolivian Andes – we could hardly find a better guide in whole South-America. Talking with him about the difficulties of the Huayna Potosí, our acclimatization and our general shape, we began trusting him a lot, and thus chose to do the tour with him, also because his price was not that higher in comparison to the others. Additionally, he was the only one who warned us that it might not be possible to reach the summit due to bad weather conditions. Continue reading

Lago del Titicaca, La Paz, Tiwanaku

Next stop Bolivia – beautiful, quiet and cheap country …. at least that’s what we thought at the beginning! Okay, to be honest, it actually is not expensive at all here – as an example for 1€ it is possible to eat two menus with “sopa y segundo” each. For the rest? Let’s see:

Our first stop was at the “Isla del Sol”, indeed a very beautiful and quiet island near Copacabana at the “Lago del Titicaca”. We spent two nights there, doing some trekking all around and across the island, and we also swam in the world’s highest lake at almost 4000m, where surprisingly the water was not that cold. Apart from this we met lots of Argentines who really seem to invade that place, chilling and hanging around on the beach while talking or playing some music. The actual adventure should start the next day, when we tried to get to La Paz. We were told that there was a strike and that the pressure measure was to block the road to Bolivia’s most important city. But when we crossed this roadblock, we were quite surprised about the Bolivian way to strike. In fact it was more looking like a big meeting or festival with many traditionally dressed locals, and the “colectivos” could pass more or less without any problems, so we arrived at La Paz only a little bit later than planned.

When the next morning we woke up and started walking through the streets (at around 8am), we were a bit shocked because every shop/café/… was closed, and this situation wouldn’t change during almost the whole day (luckily 5% of all cookshop open ~30 minutes and allow you to have a quick lunch, at least really tasty). And, how could it be otherwise, the whole city was paralyzed by buses, who were striking and who thought roadblocks are a suitable pressure measure. Besides, La Paz is definitely the most chaotic and crazy town I’ve ever seen: a few buildings with colonial architecture, but mainly dirty, loud and ugly streets. I cannot exactly explain why somehow this visit was still very nice, interesting and also quite funny. Continue reading

Peru Flashback

After we have written so much about our own experiences, it is now time to talk about the country we have travelled to. Fortunately, it turned out that it is extremely easy and very rewarding to travel to Peru. Readers of our blog have already noted the amazing variety of landscape, fauna and culture – ranging from the capital of Lima, which at some places looks like a city in Florida or California, over the Andes to the Amazon Basin.
However, what really made us love the country were the people, who are always willing to help You: You can ask every person for the right bus to take, and if You do not find anything in the shop You are in, they will tell You which one of their rivals may have what You are looking for. Moreover, they do not even try to charge You more than they do for the locals, which is not state of the art in other countries. But keep in mind that they only speak Spanish, so a few basics are nearly mandatory!
Travelling here is convenient and cheap, at least if You have time on Your side: Not all things will work from the start, but by being patient and friendly all trouble can be overcome. And since we have spent several weeks here, even a blocked road does not yield a lost day, but means some more hours of reading or relaxing at the terminal. You can reach nearly every town by bus, and especially the comfortable night buses offer a great opportunity to save time and money for the accommodation.

So, after all, Thomas would sum it up: Peru is a bit like Argentine, but of course not quite as good.

Cusco and World Wonder “Machu Picchu”

If you are in South-America, there is at least one place you cannot miss – and might it be deserved or not, you will have to visit it: Machu Picchu. Thus, of course also we went to Cusco, the former Inca capital, and stayed there one day for seeing the last traces of the Incas. Especially the “Fortaleza Sacsayhuamán” and the “Convento de Santo Domingo”, located above the Incas’ sun temple “Coricancha” are interesting and can give you a small glimpse of the masterpieces from this highly developed culture. Unfortunately the Conquistador Francisco Pizarro (“el cuidador de chanchos”) and the Catholic Church have done a really good job and destroyed almost everything or built new buildings on top of the Inca walls. But luckily those walls are a lot more earth-quake proof and hence they stayed intact while the rest of the newer construction just fell apart.

Thanks to Yuri, the owner of our hostel, we could book an alternative trail to Machu Picchu, namely the “Inca Jungle Trek”, which is a lot cheaper and less touristic than famous “Inca Trail”. Accompanied by our guide William “Wallace” and 12 Chilean fellows we passed 4 unforgettable days together. On the first one we had a crazy bike ride 50km downhill from 4300m to 1300m towards Santa Maria. Unfortunately it was raining a lot and Esteffen got a little bit cold (but did not get ill, so no need to worry, Kristine), but I must say that personally I really enjoyed that kind of weather because it made the ride even more adventurous: with the fog you couldn’t see very much where you were driving to and you had to cross lots of small rivers which almost made you fall down and of course even wetter. Luckily the guide let me go faster than the group so I could pedal quite hard and I stopped freezing all the way down, and at the end we all arrived “sano y salvo” at our first overnight place. The next day we trekked a lot through the “selva”, where we could eat lots of super-tasteful mangos, and also on a former “camino de los Incas” – quite vertiginous but very impressive view. After a relaxing stop at some hot springs we went to Santa Tereza where we stayed for the second night. On the third day we walked to Aguas Calientes, the rather touristic village at the bottom of the Machu Picchu site. Without knowing it we circled around the whole mountain on which the famous ruins are located. Continue reading

Arequipa y Canyon de Colca

Yes, we did it …. want to know what exactly I am talking about? Well, sorry, but you’ll have to read through the whole entry, as I like to tell the things rather chronologically and unfortunately for you we fulfilled one of our “desafíos” at the end of our stay in this region!

So we arrived to Arequipa, also called “The White City”, more or less one week ago and stayed at the Bothy Hostel for two nights, which allowed us to visit this charming Andean city (at about 2300m in altitude but definitely not looking like this with nearly one million inhabitants, called Arequipeños and NOT Peruanos). Especially the historic center and its architecture deserve to be “World Cultural Heritage”, with lots of colonial and religious buildings. Among others, we visited the “Santa Catalina Monastery”, very impressive due to its size, the deep colors and its former organization: the whole area is just like a smaller town located inside a town, where the nuns were not allowed to get out and the “normal folks” couldn’t get in, which seems a pity to us because the place is simply too nice and luxurious for wasting it during such a strict way of life. However, the nuns were not quite acting as Christian as one would expect – most of them had several maids for cooking, washing, sewing etc., and the poorer nuns could sell their belongings to the rich ones (of course too much mercy is not appropriate in this place, but at least the basic principles of capitalism had passed the big walls).  Continue reading