Chachani - 6075m!!!!!!!!

This is very long and boring so dont read this if your not interested in mountains, I just wrote it to remind me later on!

So I decided I had to conquer a mountain and Arequipa was the place to do it. The mountain was actually a volcano called Chachani, 6075m high, although the otherone called Misti looks a lot cooler, the guide cheekily made it seem as if the higher hill was easier, it was not!

The first day was fairly relaxed, after weeks of acclimatisation in La Paz and up to 5000m on the Salt Flats, a 2 hour climb from 5,000 to 5,300 was easy going. In fact, it gave me a little too much confidence considering I was unsure if ide make it with the old asthma, leg and hepatitus... The day of our climb to base camp another group of 10 had already tried for the summit and only 3 made it with similar results expected for our group. The group was mainly french speaking, a french couple, 4 swedish guys, 2 of whom over twice my age, an american, 2 Venezualans and myself. The french couple were cool, the guy had a similar crevass story to myself - Him and a freind fell part way down before stopping themselves with their snowboards, digging them into the edge of the ice cliff. They waited 3 hours holding on before they were spotted by some skiers on another mountain, an hour later the rescue team coaxed them into jumping onto the hanging rope ladder, wow. Im not sure how the fell exactly when snowboarding down to stop themselves with snowboards in their hands but it may have been lost in translation. His girlfriend was a 4rth year medic in france paying less than a 3rd of my tuition fees! Anyway, After arriving at base camp we set up our tents and gear, I shared with the american, Christian (not English Christian from Argentina and Machu Picchu etc) who was one of about 4 suffering from alititude sickness along with the french girl and the Venezualans. We ate an early supper of chicken and veg soup before heading to bed which didnt exactly go as planned. The tent and my sleeping bag wouldnt zip up at all so all entrances were open to the wind giving me a nice 4 hours or so to lie there freezing whilste watching Christian sleep like a baby.

At 1am we got up to start the ascent in the starlight which was just amazing. Putting on all our gear was a little difficult under a pathetic head tourch but some swiz fellas helped me out. The first thing I noticed was that the pace was brilliant, each burst was just about long enough to keep warm without getting puffed out...dont get me wrong, that was pretty slow but I think excusable when factoring in the altitude. After about 40 minutes we passed the rocks and entered the snowline where we took our first break to fit on the crampones and ice axes etc. At this point we lost the French girl who I thought was fine but the altitude really got to her. The Venezualans also pulled out here but Christian looked much better than the climb to base camp.

Shortly after putting on our gear we had to scale accross a near vertical cliff edge for an hour with no trail to walk accross, just a thin line of footprints carefully placed and ice axe holes next to broken prints where the odd person slipped. Luckily it was too dark to see the drop very cleary but at this point we had begun to see the lights of Arequipa below us, the second largest city in Peru. The next 4 hours we pretty dark and long with the pace considerably faster than most of us could manage so the only noise was heavy breathing and crunching through ice. As the sun rose it revealed our toughest stretch up to 5,900 from 5,300 (having gone up to 5,700 and back down in the hours before). It was this stretch that almost ruined my climb, I had a mild asthma attack which made it a hundred times harder than before, falling from the leading position to about 30 metres back from the main group with is much longer than you would expect at that hieght. When I eventually got to the top of the peak, the guide told me 3 more hours to go and my heart sank, I was certain I had to turn back but he told me there was no point, it would be harder than carrying on! 10 minutes further and I saw it, the peak! A small hill in the middle of a gigantic mountain sitting in front of me, my determination kicked in and the rest of the group cheered me on as they waited at the base taking their first break since hitting the ice about 5 or more hours before. I took a much needed break and we waited another 20 minutes for Christian and the one of the older swiss guys to catch up.

The last burst to the peak was easier than the peak before because I´d had my first drink of water and a few nuts, it took about an hour but I made it to the summit! The view was incredible, the whole of Arequipa and the top of the neighbouring volcanoes including the active volcano Misti. We took some photos and just stood laughing for about 20 minutes before heading down, most of the group had made despite a couple of guys feeling very sick.

The way down was horrendous! My crampone broke metres from the summit which was "fixed" with elastic from my trousers. Every few steps it came off which for the first hour wasnt such a problem, once I reached the near vertical cliff the guides had no idea what to do. They agreed it was too dangerous for me to continue but might a not funny joke about the lack of a helicopter service in Peru. Crap. One guide followed me for about 20 minutes before leaving me on my own to catch up with the main group, everybody was completely out of sight and everytime I lifting my one foot witht he crompone I slipped a little, plunging the axe into the ice to prevent a 1000m drop. Christian came back for me when he saw the second guide pass him, realising I was alone and tried to create more of a track for me to cross but it didnt help too much. We both eventually arrived in base camp about 20 minutes behind the rest having been 2 hours behind when I finished crossing the cliff edge.

After another 45 minutes to the pick up point and packing up all the gear I finished the 12 hours of solid climbing, having conquered my mountain, woohoo!!!!!

Cruising the dunes with a board and a buggy...

We didn´t go to Cusco in the end, we decided to go to a place called Ica, and then on to a tiny town called Huacachima which is an Oasis in the middle of a sand desert. There are giant sand dunes surrounding the town which is all situated around a little lagoon. We got off the bus at 8am and went to grab some breakfast in Ica before heading to the mummy museum, it was full off shrunken heads and perfectly preserved bodies that still had ears and hair. They also had a miniture version of the Nazca lines, old drawings in the sand which you are supposed to fly over to get a good view... bit expensive for us so this was a nice alternative. We then got a taxi into Huacachima and booked into a hostel which gave us a discount for booking a sandboarding tour with them. The sandboarding involves a rollercoaster Dune buggy ride up to the top of the dunes where you sandboard (imagine snowboarding but on sand and with dodgy wooden boards and velcro straps) down and get picked up in the buggy again to take you to another dune. If you get bored of the traditional method it was way more fun to lie on the boards and go down on your front, this will all great until Drew got sand in his eyes and I managed to take a chunk of flesh out of my hand. Covered in sand and knackered by the end we watched the sunset over the dunes, it was pretty awesome, the sand dunes all turn pink just before the sun goes down. After that, headlights on we went for another crazy buggy ride before we were dropped back at our hostel. The next day we spent the morning in the small town chilling out in the hostel´s hammocks and walking round the lagoon before heading off to Ica again to catch our bus to Cusco where we had arranged to meet up with the big Bolivia group to do Machu Picchu. The morning was made interesting by two giant tortoises first fighting over lettice and then mating continuously for a few hours, it was quite painfully slow but very funny. (videos to follow).
We arrived in Cusco an afternoon before everyone else and productively slept for the majority of it. We found a relatively cheap hostel, the only downfall the disgusting smell of sewage, we checked out early the next morning and got ourselves a room in Loki, Cusco´s party hostel where we were meeting everyone else. This day was spent as productively as the last, after the morning spent hanging around to get our room, breakfast and a shower, we all decided to look around the city, this got us as far as the main square and a nearby restaurant. It was Georgie´s last night so we hit Cusco´s night life and got free drinks to last us through, this was great fun until 4am when the repetitive spanish songs got too much for us and we headed back. Monday was spent Machu Picchu tour shopping, another unproductive activity as after a few agencies we headed back to Loki and booked it through the tour agency there...

Peru

We arrived in Copacabana early evening, then had to spend quite a while searching for a hostel as most places were taken over by nationals ready to celebrate their national holiday. The town was completely packed out, stalls selling food drink and souveniers everywhere. It was quite a good night but the music went on till the early hours of the morning so we didn{t get much sleep. The next day we spent the morning looking at the town in daylight before getting a bus across to Peru that afternoon. We arrived in Puno at about 4pm and literally had just enough time to dump our stuff in a hostel before we were hearded straight out onto a tour of the floating islands on lake Titicaca. The floating islands were pretty amazing but very cold, they are made intirely from reeds and there were about 60 floating about. Their houses, beds, tables, boats, everything was made from the reeds and they let us look around. Their way of making money was to sell handicrafts to the tourists and when we arrived they were so happy to see us, all waving and smiling. We had booked the tour and hostel on the bus on the way there, we got quite a good deal on both of those but also booked a bus to take us to Arequipa the next morning, that was not quite such a good deal! The man said the bus left at 8 30 so we got a taxi to the bus station at 8 only to find that not only had we paid pretty much double for our tickets, but the bus had left at 8 and they wouldn{t put us on the next bus. Drew was feeling pretty ill at this point and I was left trying to explain to the tourist police (who were on our side) what had happened, he eventually got us a deal which meant we only had to pay one more fair rather than two but it was still an expensive journey! We arrived in Arequipa eary evening and looked around the city, its really beautiful with lovely colonial buildings, our hostel has a rooftop seating area which looks out over the whole city and the mountains, one of which Drew is currently climbing. I decided to stay in the city for the extra two days instead as there is alot to see and its really warm here which makes a change. Today i visited a monestry dating back to the early 1500s, its massive and they call it a city inside a city, it took me two hours to walk round the whole thing. It has little cobbled streets and bright flowers everywhere. Drew gets back tomorrow and i think we are going to get a bus to Cuzco tomorrow night.

Drunken ride with a deadly drop...

We managed to get our room in Loki hostel and it did turn out to be alot of fun, it has its own bar which is pretty cheap and is full of travellers. We met up with Christian and Richard, the guys we were travelling with in Sucre, and decided to go out with them that night. This was probably not the best plan as later that day we booked to go on Death Road with a company called Xtreme, we paid less than half the amount of Gravity which is the advised company with all the safety equiptment, 60quid though and we paid 25! The night out was fun, the next morning was not! We had to get up at 6 and drive up to the starting point of 4700m, we were both feeling pretty sick and the 3 other girls from our hostel who went with us were pretty glad they didn´t go out too. They gave us jackets and trousers to put over our clothes, and we got gloves and helmets so it was all safe enough. The bikes were in ok condition, not brilliant though and the brakes were not what I had hoped for. We started off on a practice run down a tarmac road which was a hell of alot safer than Death Road itself except there were quite a few cars who came round the corners a bit too quickly. It was strange as there was snow at the top of the mountain, yet when we had finished the ride it was warm jungle. At the top of Death Road we asked if there were many cars, our guide said no, two minutes later a car came speeding past us and down the mountain! The road was a dirt track, stupidly bumpy with a 1000m drop to our left. At one point we rode under a waterfall which was pretty amazing except the road was alot more slippery there and the drop to our left was just as big! After about 10 minutes all of our hands were stiff from holding the brakes non stop and our bums were seriously bruised from all the bumping. We rode past alot of graves on the way down, one for a bus crash which had killed 70 people and alot from bikers high on adrenaline. There was a cross in memory of an English biker who had died on the road in May this year, they had put up a couple of wooden bars across the place where he had fallen, to be honest I don´t think they will stop anyone else doing the same thing there. We finished the ride at 1100m in blazing sunshine, the views down the whole of the road were amazing (when you were brave enough to take your eyes off the road) but by the end we were all pretty tired.When we reached the bottom of the road and were taken by minibus to a hotel in Coroico and allowed showers before an awesome buffet lunch. We then headed back up Death Road in the minibus to La Paz. After the night before me and Drew were feeling pretty terrible, mountain biking apparently doesn´t cure hangovers, so 6pm and we went straight to bed. We have spent the past two days doing not alot in La Paz, I´m still not bored of the markets and there is an awesome Arabic restaurant with really cheap food which we have been to pretty much everyday. The market food is also really cheap and good, you can get a ball of mash potato with meat and onions in the middle for about 9p so we havn´t been spending too much while we have been here. Tomorrow we are off to Copacabana, a town on the bank of lake Titicaca. There is an island that you can go and visit from there which sounds quite cool, its quite small so you can walk from one side to the other and apparently the views are amazing. After that... PERU

Jungle Time

We spent one day in La Paz before booking our 20 hour dodgy bus ride Rurrenabaque, the town nearest to the jungle tours. We had heard some pretty bad things about the bus before hand but the only other option was to fly for 50quid so we decided to risk the bus as it only cost us 6. The bus set off 3 hours late, Bolivian timing is not up to Western standards, however, when the bus actually turned up it looked as if it had been dragged out of a lake and shoved on the road. They opened the door and water spilled out, the whole bus was dripping wet including our seats which had been double booked as it was so we ended up having to argue our way into different seats that they were reluctant to give us. Anyway we eventually set off up the mountain only to find that we were in fact at the top of Death road and were going to head down it in this soaking wet bus. At least the views were amazing! Our driver also seemed to have a death wish, instead of driving on the right away from the 1000m drop he decided to be gentalmanly and try to kill us by letting cars pass on the inside. 10 hours in and our bus broke down on the sketchy road and we spent a good two hours changing a few tyres and getting the engine to work again. We eventually arrived in Rurrenabaque and got mobbed by touts trying to sell us their pampas tour deals, we had met a group of 6 Irish guys on the coach and they gave us a pretty good deal for our group of 8. We set of an hour later after no sleep and covered in dust on the way to the river to begin our tour. The river was about 3 hours drive away and 10 of us crammed into a tiny jeep in the boiling heat (actually quite a nice change from the bitter cold of La Paz). About an hour into that and we broke down again and sat on the dusty road in the heat for another half an hour while our driver come mecanic fixed the jeep. We eventually arrived at the river and all piled into our little boat to go down the river to our accomodation, we got an animal tour on the way which was amazing within minutes we had seen at least 5 aligators and so many birds. On the way we went passed dolphins and turtles, fed some monkeys, and watched capybaras eat green leaves (yes dad its actually true). Our accomodation was little jungles huts set by the river with a watchtower to see the sunset, we also had a resident aligator called Fred who was semi friendly and Drew kind of stroked him. The next morning was possibly one of the worst of my life, a 3 hour anaconda search through knee high stinking sludge. After 2 and a half hours of no snakes our guide eventually dragged one out of the bushes and proceeded to wave it in our faces, a few people got to hold it, including Drew, until one guy let go of its head and it bit two people and was dropped on the ground way too close to me, the guy then picked it up again came towards me and put it right next to my feet, I don´t think I have ever been so scared in my life!!! Anyway, we eventually made it back to the boat through the disgusting mud and went back to the hut for lunch. The afternoon was amazing and definately made up for the morning, we went a bit down the river and swam with pink dolphins, they brushed passed our feet and were so close to us. It was a little bit disturbing as 100m away were aligators and crocodiles. The next morning we got up at 5 to see the sunrise and listen to all of the animals waking up. After breakfast we went pirranah fishing, our group caught 6 (4 caught by the guide) but neither me or Drew caught anything. It was quite cool though because they then cooked up our fish for lunch. After that we headed back down the river, into the jeep for a 4 hour journey back this time (flat tyre, again). We stayed in Rurrenabaque for a night before the 20 hour bus journey the next day back to La Paz. The town was quite cool, built pretty much just for tourists and they served some good and very strong cocktails. We are back in La Paz now, back to the cold and trying to get ourselves a room in Loki hostel, pretty much backpackers central with cheap alcohol and nice dorms. Was a bit strange as yesterday morning after getting off the bus staying at our hostel was this girl Jess who was at Toggs with us, small world, who new Bolivia was the place to be this summer? Think we are going to try and book to do Death Road for tomorow, this time on bikes, apparently on average there is only(lol) one death a year, they didn´t mention who many injuries though....