Well, here we were again. The year was 1996 and it had been easily five years since we last climbed together. We were doing long-distance planning on this one for almost a full year now and the big day was finally upon us. The past several weeks had been a hectic flurry of buying stuff, packing, unpacking, repacking, last minute packing and last minute buying and more repacking that had finally brought us from both sides of the continent and two countries and deposited us in Miami, on an airplane, bound for of all places…Bolivia.
We felt that all was good and in order with our little universe, as we finally settled into our seats for the seven hour flight. Soon though, some poor elderly lady decided that now that we had reached cruising altitude that it would be a good idea to get her coat and leave the aircraft. Doug helped the flight attendant get her back to her seat, and all was good again. Well almost. The lady is back. It seemed that the time had come once more for her to get her coat and leave the plane. This was a recurring event that happened every fifteen minutes or so for the entire flight. It turned out that she thought we are on a train, not to La Paz but to the moon. Yeah… the moon! It’s kind of sad how things can go with people as they age. Just to add to the mix some guy later on passed out in the aisle just in front of us, bringing the flight attendant down as well as upsetting the beverage cart onto us. It was hardly an uneventful flight. Hours later as we were getting ready to land and they were holding the moon train lady in her seat; our friendly neighbourhood flight attendant gives us a bottle of wine for all our trouble. All really was good after all!
Passing through the ramshackle Bolivian customs and immigration was a breeze and soon we were on our way to a hotel downtown, but not after some considerable bargaining and haggling with the cab driver about the fare. It was a cold, clear morning and dawn was just breaking. The views as we descended the nearly 700 metres into La Paz were just so cool with the snow-capped Andes glowing orange in the rising sun. We had gone from sea level in Miami to the airport in La Paz which is at almost 4,000 metres in a matter of hours; so what was even cooler, in our minds at least, was that we were not experiencing any untoward effects of the altitude…yet.
La Paz
Our hotel, the Hostal Republica is a quaint old building with two courtyards that was once the residence of General José Manuel Pando who served as Bolivian president from 1899 to 1904. Even though he was apparently a popular leader he was assassinated in 1917 in events that grew from his criticism of the new government. The current owners said that they were some distant relatives of his. We checked in although the rate had increased from what we were expecting to pay. This turned out to be our most expensive accommodations during our entire trip at eleven dollars US per night per person, but seemed worth it because the place was comfortable, convenient to downtown and to the bus terminal and we found the staff to be very helpful. We went to collect our bags that we had left in the entrance way however, only to discover that my small pack is gone! Some Bolivian rat bastard had swiped it. This was a real drag. In that pack were my water filter, water bottles, hats, socks, bandanna, gaiters, super-gaiters, noodles and a ski pole. Not to mention that it was my summit pack too. Thank goodness I had just taken out my pile jacket and camera. It was a good thing though that they never made off with Doug’s small bag since it carried his double boots, and that would have been a disaster. This is one of the reasons I always wear my boots on the plane. Never, ever, ever, leave your stuff unattended, not even for a minute. All was now not so good or in order, but we would have to be flexible, make do, and cope with the loss; realising it could have been worse.
Going over maps at the Hostal Republica
We soon learned that a bus would be leaving for the frontier with Chile first thing the following morning, and after some discussion, the girl at the hotel arranged to have two tickets delivered to us that afternoon. The son of the owner also went out and got us five litres of kerosene for our stoves. He wouldn’t accept any payment for either his time or the fuel. He was apologetic because apparently one of the staff, a maintenance guy named Oscar had some white gas from Peru but it had gone missing. Things going missing being a pretty common thing around here. What is not common is white gas, which is about as rare as an honest politician in South America. Oscar though, was a great guy who helped us out several times during our stay. It looked now as if we were finally all set and back on track. We found a great little vegetarian restaurant where we had both lunch and dinner that day. We also stumbled on quite by accident a store having a map of Sajama for sale; good maps being another rarity here.
It was cold as a meat locker in the hotel room but the bed was smothered with a stack of blankets, and I slept well. The staff had arranged to have a taxi waiting to pick us up and take us to the bus terminal, I was dubious but it was there right on time at the stroke of early, dark and cold. Our duffel bags must have weighed forty kilos each, and even with that we had left a bunch of stuff at the hotel for storage. We laboriously dragged them through the dirty terminal in the pre-dawn hours to of course the last bay in the station. We were acutely aware now for pickpockets and thieves, but it would have to be a sturdy thief indeed that could run off with those pigs. A more likely danger is having one of the countless stray dogs piss on them while we were having a cup of mate de coca waiting for the bus to board.
We were chuffed to blue lights as we were still feeling well, with little or no ill effects of the altitude. This had been one of my major concerns about this trip all along. We are going to be going considerably higher quite quickly, and according to conventional wisdom we are breaking most if not all of the acclimatisation rules by going too high, too fast. We were only at sea level yesterday and today we are over 3,400 meters. What we had been doing in our favour though was drinking lots of water, drinking lots of coca tea and taking our Diamox. I was still worried though. People die from pulmonary edema at lower elevations than we were at now, not to mention cerebral edema as well. Once affected the only remedy is rapid evacuation to a much lower altitude. Where we are going was much higher yet and there is no such thing as a lower altitude for several hundred kilometres in any direction, and is so remote I don’t believe that there would be anything even resembling a slow evacuation, let alone something rapid.
But it was really much too late now for such thoughts as the bus was starting to board. This was quite the bus too. It was modern, clean, and with a working lavatory. They even served a snack as we got settled into our reserved seats. We had told the driver that our bags should go in the tanks because they would be difficult to put on the roof. But he knew best. As it turns out they can’t lift them to the roof anyhow so they have to unload the forward tank and put that luggage on the roof and our stuff underneath. Off at last and only thirty minutes late. Everyone had been telling us that the ride to the Sajama area will take about five hours. Yeah right. If the road is as bad as it was purported to be it should take a gruelling ten or twelve.
The bus seemed to be taking a rather strange route but people on board assured us that it is all right. All right! Soon we arrived in the small town of Patacamaya at 3,764 meters, the road was still paved and they served us breakfast on the bus. For some reason unknown to us the bus had to take the back roads through the town and these were not paved. They had potholes the size of a big wall haul bag and were very bumpy and dusty. We bounced our way through the narrow streets almost losing teeth and jarring kidneys on the way. Finally we were on new pavement again. The countryside was open and bleak. Pico de Sajama was now plainly visible in the distance and we were really eating up the kilometers on this excellent road. Ah, a detour. Now this was more like it. Again, very bumpy, twisty, dusty, and up and down steep hills; exactly what third world adventure travel is supposed to be about. Soon our reverie in this detour was broken as once again we ended up back on the highway speeding to our destination. We were making approach route plans as we got closer to the mountain. Finally we got a really good look at it and comparing it to what we had on our topo map. We had now decided that we would attempt it from the north. There is a small village, I believe called Tomarapi there, and the contours looked pretty good on the map, which aligned with the relatively gentle slopes that we could now see from this vantage. The only drawback is that the snow level looked very high, not at all good from a water perspective. This made some sense, for a mountains northern aspect to be drier than the south, when in the southern hemisphere as we were. We hoped to be able to hire mules in this village. Doug went and discussed with the driver where to let us off. When he came back it looked as if there was a second drawback to the north side of the mountain besides a possible lack of snow… It turned out that not only was this road newly paved (within the last four months) but it no longer goes around the mountain to the north but to the south! Yikes! There goes that plan. As it happens it does go by reasonably close to our originally planned south side route between the tiny villages of Sajama and Lagunas.
Nevado Sajama Bolivia’s Highest Point
So that was it. The bus unceremoniously dropped us off at the side of the road just outside of Lagunas at an elevation of 4,200 metres, and motored off and out of sight in a puff of diesel smoke. I felt lonelier than when that chopper dropped us off on top of the Dome on Mt. Robson. The scenery was stark but strikingly beautiful. The mountain was looming over us but was actually still quite a ways off. This is a high desert, with not much other than sand and scrub, and salt pans. Off in the distance are the twin volcanic peaks of Paranicota and Pomerape that straddle the border with Chile. It was cold and windy with only some high cirrostratus clouds; which were the common conditions we encountered for the majority of our trip. There was virtually no traffic on the road, maybe one or two trucks each way per hour, if that. I guarded our gear while Doug wandered off into the village to see if we could somehow wrangle a way to get closer to the mountain and also to inquire as to the whereabouts of a gringo who supposedly lives in these parts who has a lot of beta about the peak. I was left just sitting there with a pile of gear, quite alone on the Altiplano…
To be continued…..
You have done some amazing things 🙂