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 →

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 →