Highs And Lows

Days 141-142

With Emily's bike fixed Lake Titicaca beckoned. We visited the “floating islands” from Puno – just 5km from shore people still live on islands made from reeds (and move around on boats made of reeds, and live in houses made of reeds, and make souvenirs for tourists out of reeds). They are anchored down most of the time to stop them drifting off into the middle of the lake, but if a neighbourly dispute occurs between islands they can up anchor and move on!

Moving round the (not-actually-the-world's-highest-navigable) lake we crossed the border into Bolivia and on to the small town of Copacabana from where we visited one of the more conventional stationary islands, the “Island Of The Sun”. We didn't really have long enough to get into island life due to the bike delays back in Puno and had to settle for a rapid and shepherded tour, but it was still a beautiful place where you could imagine the sun being born (as per pre-Incan legend). Bolivia is the cheapest country we've visited so far, and to celebrate this fact we visited the most expensive restaurant in town for it's famed chocolate fondue - yum!

Days 143-144

Our final venture onto the lake was our most precarious ferry crossing so far, on a rickety wooden raft with designated bailers, but both bikes made it to shore intact, and on to La Paz just in time to sign up for a trip to see the local wrestling that evening. It's WWF style but lower budget, and includes women wrestlers in traditional dress (and also midgets apparently, though we weren't lucky enough to see them!). A very entertaining evening, for all the gringos in the front row as well as all the local families, many of whom were clearly avid followers.

There were some excursions we wanted to do out of La Paz: climbing Huayna Potosi, and visiting the Amazonia wilderness from nearby Rurrenbaque, so we made some bookings. Since everybody keeps telling us stories about how bad the roads in Bolivia are, we also decided to ride 40 minutes out of town to visit “Motorcycle Tours Bolivia”, a company advertised in our hostel. This turned out to be an excellent decision. Firstly the ride took us through the other-worldly “Valley of the Moon”, but more significantly the main guy there was incredibly helpful and friendly. He told us about all the different routes for the rest of our journey in Bolivia, things to see, road conditions, how far we could get in a day, where the petrol stations were, etc. We relayed our sorry story about the tyre and he was also able to help with this – he took us to the poshest motorbike shop in La Paz (a Honda dealer) and they somehow found, tucked away out back and much to even their surprise, a single tyre which just happened to fit the back end of a BMW! Bolivia is probably now completely out of large motorcycle rear tyres.

Days 145-147

In the Galapagos we met an English guy, Chris, who told us of his hike up Huayana Potosi, a towering peak in the Andes standing at 6088m, and showed us his photos and videos. Immediately we were enamoured with the idea, and since then Emily has had us marching up every nearby hill to try to gain some level of fitness suitable for climbing the mountain. We were driven from La Paz up to base camp at 4700m and had a practice crampon / ice axe session on a nearby glacier which went smoothly enough. The next day we hiked for a couple of hours up to high camp at 5130m and had the rest of the day to acclimatise, with the plan to sleep early, then set off to climb the mountain proper at around 1am and arrive at the summit for dawn. Emily has a history of altitude sickness, but we had been pretty high for a pretty long time at this stage and we were hopeful that she would manage. We weren't holding our breaths though – about one third of people fail to climb this mountain, usually due to altitude sickness on the final hike up from high camp.

As the day at high camp wore on, Emily started to feel bad. And then worse. She was unable to eat dinner and had to use the bathroom a little too often for comfort. At about 11pm she woke up, and just managed to make it outside before being sick. At midnight when we all got up to get ready for the trek Emily only managed to go to the toilet three times then go back to bed. So as Ric, the Canadian guy who had joined us at high camp, and their two guides hiked up the mountain, Emily alternated between sleeping and dashing to the outside toilet located 20m down a slope from the refuge (running there, and crawling back).

Ric meanwhile was walking, jumping crevasses and climbing ice under a moonlit sky in record time. It normally takes about 4 to 6 hours to summit from high camp, and despite the fact that they had to take some long breaks near the top so that they had a bit more light for “el cumbre” (the summit), Ric was up and back down in just five and a half hours! Part of the reason for the speedy return was that he wanted to see how poor Emily was doing, but unfortunately by the time he made it back to high camp he was so knackered all he could do was sleep rather than nurse his fiancée!

Climbing back down to base camp a couple of hours later was probably a bigger struggle for Emily than it had been for Ric to reach the summit, but we made it eventually and it was a huge relief to get back to our hostel in La Paz, with a private bathroom just steps away from the bed, and to meet our French friends there, one of whom (Thom) is a doctor!

Days 148-150

Emily spent the next few days mostly in a state of pain, exhaustion and despair while Ric kept himself busy running around looking after Emily and, regrettably, cancelling our trip to the Amazon: we didn't have time for Emily to get better AND to go the jungle, and trying to do both at once seemed foolish. Dr Thom kindly examined Emily and kept an eye on her, advising that it was most likely a viral thing (albeit a nasty one) that we just needed to sit out. But when Emily felt no better two days later we decided to go for the drugs – one day of antibiotics, or maybe just one extra day of resting, and Emily felt a whole world better!

Her recovery was just in time for us to ride The Death Road (Emily riding pillion in case it was a bit too much excitement so soon). The road isn't as dangerous now that they've built a wider, asphalt, less precipitous option that the majority of traffic has diverted to, but it's still an incredible thing. It hugs to the edge of the mountain with sheer drops, amazing views, a narrow, loose dirt surface, and many blind corners. And people do still die: in the motorbike shop back in La Paz we met English ex-pat Robin who used to run mountain bike tours down it (one of the most popular tourist pursuits out of the Bolivian capital) and he told us that just last week one of the mountain bike tour operators with the best safety record lost another two tourists over the edge. Going up (by motorbike) is purportedly much safer than going down (by mountain bike), though, and you'll hopefully be glad to hear that we made it back to La Paz in one piece.

We picked a good day to ride the Death Road as it happened to also be Election Day in Bolivia. This meant that very few vehicles were allowed on the roads anywhere (we blagged it with the “but we're just tourists and don't really understand” line), giving us beautiful traffic-free conditions the whole way. The only tricky bits were all the impromptu street parties we had to drive though, with food stalls, families out for walks, kids playing on the street, etc, but it was great to soak up the holiday atmosphere on the way through. Fingers crossed that the “right” person gets elected president and a load of road blocks and protests don't flood the country in the next few days...