Saving the Best for Last?

The next leg of the trip has always been the one that I was most excited about. If I had to choose only one leg then it would have been this one. The danger now is that North America disappoints as the truth is that while I have been to some remarkably cool places that I have not yet found somewhere that has truly stopped me dead in my tracks. This puts a lot of pressure on North America to prove that the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh is not the centre of my (the?) universe. The reality is that Dublin is wonderfully located on the periphery of a great continent in a beautiful bay with nice hill-side settings. It is small enough not to overwhelm yet big enough to catch any cultural driftwood that is floating near its waters. In terms of cycling it is the best city I have come across yet. There are very few places in the world that boast a mild enough climate such that one can ride for 360 days a year. It has coastal routes, lakeside routes, lots of twenty minute climbs in Wicklow, nice flat roads in Kildare and Meath, heavy roads for strength and only thirty minutes of city-limits before one swaps the city din for some fresh country air. What's more, there is some great technical mountain-biking and a really great road-racing scene in Leinster once you don't take it all too seriously. The problem with Dublin for me has always been with some of the 'feckin' Irish that live there. Between all the invasions of the Celts, the Vikings, the Normans, the English and the bickering of the indigenous Clanns, has anybody pillaged the city more than that vain breed of Irishman who has exhausted us all both morally and financially?

While money is a reality in the world I inherited it is important for me to be among people who understand the balance. It is for this reason that I wanted to avoid the sea-boards in the US. A lot of the cities on the east and west coast are money focused, be it the glamour of the Hollywood Hills or the competitive ethos promoted by Ivy League universities. This 'race to get ahead' that particularly dominates eastern US thought is something that I wish to avoid. There has to be another way. Thus, I am curious to see whether it is the Cascadian or Rocky Mountain way of doing things.

Another reason why I was so excited about visiting the US is that cities here tend to have a very defined personality. Contrary to European beliefs Americans travel a lot. We believe that because only a small percentage of them have a passport that they don't travel. However, the reality is that they must be among the most travelled race in the world. Everybody who lives here seems to be originally from somewhere else. If you ask an American where they are from they answer where they last lived. Even if I was living in another part of the world I would always be 'from' Dublin. In America people tend to grow up in one town, their parents' jobs or a divorce might move them to another, they go to college in another, they follow a girl/boy to a different one and then they move to settle down in yet another town. This makes them among the most nomadic people on the planet. It was an American writer (Jack Kerouac) who conceived the 'road' novel and inspired a whole generation of drifters. Of course, America is also home to the 'road-trip'. You only have to spend a short time on American highways to notice colossal homes on wheels. Indeed Winnebago and Harley Davidson are world renowned symbols of American transience. The consequence of all this moving around is that they do not have a strong sense of their roots and so search out a place to call home. Sometime between college and starting a family they tend to gravitate towards cities with well defined personalities where they aspire to fitting in. Without the burden of history the United States has managed to foster an eclectic mix of cities; Portland, Berkeley, Santa Fe and Boulder are just an example of some of the many different vibes that exist here. American transience only serves to reinforce each city's personality since only people who want to be associated with it stay. Thus, while America harbours a lot of diversity its cities tend not to be so diverse, unless of course their vibe is the cosmopolitan one of a New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

To put things in context, the country of Ireland has the population and land area of South Carolina. This is only one of fifty US states. There is no doubt that America is a large piece of land to travel through. Anyone who knows how diverse and beautiful the scenery is here can forgive Americans for never having acquired a passport (even if some cultural awareness would not go amiss).

So, if I'm looking to avoid a lot of the sea-boards then what way do I plan to go? Time to get your google maps out. I start my trip in Portland (Oregon) and will head to Seattle (Washington) via the Cascade range - that's a mountain as opposed to a rifle range! From Seattle I drop out of the Cascades to island hop to Vancouver, British Colombia. From Vancouver I will figure out what way I want to get to Banff in Alberta. Banff is the start of the Great Divide mountain-range, which feeds into the Continental Divide in the US. The whole chain is what we call the Rockies. I am planning to ride what is known in bike-touring terms as 'The Great Divide' as far as Colorado. This is a mountain-bike trail that goes across the Rockies from Canada to Mexico through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. These are mostly gravel fire-access roads that take me through Glacier, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and Rocky Mountain National Parks. While it would be amazing to be able to take my time through it I have to be conscious that the Rockies are generally only free of snow between June and late September. It is for this reason that I hummed and hawed over certain diversions to my trip. The weather in the Rockies has always kept a time-limit on things as I don't wish to wait until the summer of 2011 to ride them. As it is I'm leaving rather late but I have decided not to worry about it and like everywhere else I have been, I'm just going to ride it as I see it. I have unfolded many 2D maps during my trip so far, seeing these maps unfold in 3D as I ride gives me a great deal of pleasure.

In terms of any rush, I take consolation from the fact that there is a race across 'The Great Divide' each June and it takes the winner 18 days to ride all 4,418kms of the Tour Divide race-route from Canada to Mexico self-supported. Naturally, I do not wish to race it (this year at least) but hopefully the weather will accommodate me until I drop off the trail to explore the biker towns in Colorado.

Fingers crossed that I have saved the best for last

Marco

Gotham City

Wow, yet another new continent and there's no better place to start than in Gotham. It is always surreal to be in the States. You feel like you have to pinch yourself as while the culture is wholly familiar, thanks to Hollywood, it's always strange to feel like you are walking through a real-world set. An 'intermission' in NYC was not part of the original plan for three reasons; firstly it's on the wrong side of the continent to where I want to start biking, secondly a little luxury and some family could derail the rest of the trip for all the obvious reasons and finally, because the longer I wait to bike the Rockies the more likely I will encounter road closures due to the snow that starts to fall in late September. Thus, I always intended to save New York until the end of my 'excellent adventure'. When moving freely in one dimension having to hop back into the other is a little bit of a shock to the system. Needless to say, it was fantastic to see my brother Barry, his wife Pilu and my three year old niece, Sofia, who is away with the fairies. Mom 'n' pops flew in too making the whole thing a real family affair and as big a treat for me as pumpkin pie. We were too big a crew for the downtown appart so we spent most of the time in Barry and Pilu's pretty country home on the NY, CT and MA border in a beautiful part of the Lower Berkshires.

Naturally, I still managed to spend a few days in the city wandering around and taking it all in again. I found it very daunting to be back in a money-centre once more. The velocity of money and its importance forced me to try and extrapolate my future from my current status as a vagabond. I quickly stopped when I realised the massive gulf between me and Manhattanites but I was amazed at how much my head throbbed with thoughts of dollars while I was there. Money is very much a part of the atmosphere in New York. Such cities thrive on the salaries of bankers, insurers and lawyers. Their good or bad fortune determines the vibe of the city's eateries and shops. Manhattan ebbs and flows on the economic tides and no matter how bad things might be for some people there is still a huge amount of wealth left-over. It is very easy to get priced out of the city so as soon as the game is up, you more or less go out a revolving door waving goodbye as if losing out on a quiz show. There is always someone else prepared to try his luck. This means that while prices may move downwards due to the vagaries of supply and demand, the overall cost of living is so high that only the very wealthy can afford to stay. This is one of the reasons why I find cities so provocative. There is always a hub to a city that the prosperous maintain to a very high degree. However, the amount of have-nots that is required to support the haves is huge and so forming one's impression of NYC based on Manhattan is misleading.

I still have a strong impression of my first trip to Manhattan fifteen years ago. Being younger then, I was a little taken aback by the amount of homeless. The flickering flames from steel drums with anonymous faces rubbing their hands for warmth was straight out of the flicks. Today, however, there is very little evidence of the homeless in Manhattan. Somehow Giuliani managed to sweep them down the sewers into the sort of underworld that exists only in 'Batman Begins'. The reality is that all of society's social ills are at their most pronounced in cities. A city without a drug problem, without a homeless community and without both the rich and poor is something out of the 'Truman Show'. Obviously, New York in its totality is just like any other city but it is possible for the prosperous and tourists in Manhattan to lose touch with reality. No matter how much tax one pays is it right to marginalise the have-nots to the sidelines? Levying them with transport costs only acts as a further method of exclusion. Is it fair to promote a policy of out of sight therefore out of mind? Is there not a consequence for society in having people isolated in their own web of thought; the rich fraternise with the rich, the middle class aspire with the middle class, and the working class struggle among themselves. Living in such segmented communities only serves to reinforce the belief system of each. This belief system regenerates in the young who are never given a choice as to what socio-economic group they are born into. In the land of the free, every man supposedly has opportunity if he is prepared to work hard enough. The irony as I see is that capitalist values are exhausting for all those who work, be they rich or poor. Why would anybody want to be tired all the time?

If there was a trophy for the country that provides the biggest culture shock then it would come down to a shoot-out between India and America. I know this sounds strange to a lot of people who consider America familiar, however, I have been here plenty of times and it still never fails to make me wonder. Consider what a Punjabi, who has known nothing but the smells and sounds of India, might make of America? Likewise what would a gas-guzzling do-nut munching Yankee make of a street scene in India? I find the extremes of the States very interesting and so I look forward to trying to unlock the secret of the American Dream as only Cobb could.

Sweet daydreams

Marco

swapping the hustle for the tranquility of the country

Magic Picchu

I always knew from looking at the map that the citadel of Machu Picchu lies a fair way from the city of Cusco, however, I did not realise how difficult the terrain would be and what a trek it would take to get there. There were a dizzying amount of tours of different types but such choice was hurting my head. I decided to worry about it all later in the hope of meeting somebody with a plan that I could piggy-back. Why procrastinate today when you can procrastinate tomorrow and all that.

This allowed me to sit tight in Cusco and take my punishment for biking too long in too short a space of time. I was definitely exhausted but the local market was around the corner from the hostel, which was where I sucked up a lot of fresh fruit to replenish my stores of vitamins and minerals. Fruit is plentiful in Bolivia too, but they tend to chop it up into small pieces and throw it into a glass of peach juice or liquid yoghurt. Here they can afford blenders so 'combinado' smoothies were the order of the day.

My arrival to Cusco coincided with the Inti Raymi festival, which celebrates the winter solstice and is apparently the second biggest festival in South America. Cusco itself was mobbed and while I'm all up for a party the crowds were all a bit too much, not least the musical beds I had to play in the hostel every day as I had arrived too late to reserve the same bed for my whole stay. The parades in Bolivia are comical because everyone in the parade is getting as drunk as the people on the side of the road but in Peru it was all quite tame. After all the street processions the ceremony itself took place among the Inca ruins behind Cusco the next day. It was the whole reason everyone was in town and while I planned to go up I was suffering from a dodgy Indian curry. Once I could venture beyond the hostel I was delighted to be the only person left in Cusco. I could explore it with the camera without all the goons and people annoying me to buy stuff. By the time I ventured up the hill-side a lot of people were coming down. The ceremony took the whole day and a lot of people who had gotten up early to get a good vantage point on the hill-side were having to bail due to a rumbly tummy of the hunger variety. I don't have to worry so much about vantage points as being tall enough I can pretty much stand behind a crowd of smaller Peruvians and still see what is going on. Not much as it turned out. I was so glad not to have wasted the whole day up there. It was just like going to a Latin mass, even the Quechua were having a hard-time understanding the ceremony. The whole affair was certainly a far cry from the street parties of Lapa or Carnaval in Rio, which is really why the gringos had arrived in town.

Anyway, thankfully the whole thing was over and all the people deserted leaving me to get on with figuring out how to get to Machu Picchu. I had ridden the bike over the really long pass to the pretty market town in the next valley and that pretty much confirmed that there was no way I was ever going to bike there. You'd need an awful lot of time to climb such lofty mountains. While the trekking tours are not badly priced for what they are, I didn't have a whole lot of time available to me. Everything I looked at, even the DIY train route was coming in at more than I wanted to pay. Then, I bumped into my comrades in arms from Isla del Sol and things started to look up. I mentioned before that South America is just like Grafton Street in Dublin for the gringo; there is little chance of anonymity as no matter where you go you will keep bumping into people you know. Tarek and John were also of like-minds in terms of how they wanted to do Machu Picchu - as cheap as possible. Tarek and John had some leads and so I outsourced everything to them with the promise that we would meet up over dinner to discuss. Thanks to them I hit the jackpot; using the network of local buses and 'combis' (mini-van taxis) we could get to a hydro-electric plant and hike two hours along the train tracks to Aguas Calientes, the base-town to Machu Picchu. From there we could hike up the mountain to the citadel itself. So, while we had our plan nailed we were still unsure as to whether we could execute it in the time or as cheaply as we wanted to. I had a bus to catch and so I couldn't really afford too much delay.

John, Tarek, Harry (who I met in the hostel) and I met at the plaza at 7.15am and took a taxi to the bus-station. The taxi-driver told us to use the combi instead as it would be much quicker for not much more money. On arrival at the combi station we got out of the car and were mobbed by men and women as if we were pop idols. Each of them was busy dragging and shouting at us to get into their combi, some quick negotiations and we were on our way out of town. It seemed a crazy way of doing business but then you see them all smiling and chatting once we've made our decision and so you realise it's more a game than business. It would take five hours to make the town of Santa Maria over the Abra Malaga, which must have one of the most dizzying descents I have ever seen. The G-forces were throwing all sorts of shapes in my stomach down the back of the van as the driver was quite enjoying this part. I was a little jealous of the tourists at the summit of the climb getting ready to drop down it on mountain-bikes but then I found out that they didn't enjoy it so much as unless you are experienced in descending then you are on the brakes the whole time, which is pointless. The road itself was asphalt for 95% of it so mental note to self to drop down it on a racing bike one day. One must realise that the elevation of the peaks in Peru are like nothing I have ever seen. Normally valleys are at reasonably high elevations themselves making the peaks not so enormous but here the peaks are stratospheric compared to the troughs.

Our driver made good time despite a road-block and some near-nodding off. On arrival in Santa Maria we were quickly bungled into another taxi to the town of Santa Teresa. We didn't bargain on squeezing more passengers and groceries into the boot but thankfully these people hopped out soon enough to enable us to better cope with the very bumpy drive over another pass. The scenery was stunning and the farming even more impressive. I had never witnessed mountainsides so steep being cultivated but somehow they managed it without stepping them. I would have thought the rains would have washed the seed right down to the valley but clearly not. In Santa Teresa our taxi-driver bungled us into yet another taxi and we were on our way to the hydro-electric plant where we could pick up the train tracks to Aguas Calientes. Our driver seemed more interested in showcasing his western musical collection as his hands were more on the stereo than the wheel but thankfully he got us there in one piece. We had a couple of passengers who had been hiking the 'Inca Trail' and needed a lift. Due to the floods hikers had to change their route and could not arrive into Machu Picchu over the back of the mountain like in the past. For this section they were pretty much walking the road and in the searing heat it could not have been too much fun with bags on their backs etc. Once we started hiking along the tracks we realised that this was a very well-trodden path as we were not walking along the tracks but an actual path alongside the railway line. About thirty people were hiking with us and while we didn't get to town until nightfall, we were met at the end of the line by a bunch of girls who took us to their hostel. It was all too easy. We couldn't believe our luck; we had lovely twin rooms on the right side of town with a great shower for 5 dollars a night each. We were under the impression that we were going to get fleeced here and that the town was a dump. In fact it was a pretty nice place much like a snow-resort that was recently developed and thanks to a great deal of competition both good food and lodging were cheap and plentiful. Tarek had met a couple of friends who reminded us that we should probably pack food with us as opposed to buying it up there ($7 for a coke it turned out). We ended up making the best sandwiches ever and with a healthy does of Sublime chocolate we were well set for our 4am rise.

The reason for rising so early is that there is a peak that sits behind the citadel which only 400 people are allowed to go up each day. Huyana Picchu can only be accessed from the citadel itself so there is a daily race to be within the top 400 people at the gate to see Machu Picchu from this vantage point. The gates themselves don't open until 6am but you don't want to be too early as then you awaiting around in the cold. We set off at about 4.15am in the dark and followed a long line of people with the same idea. Needless to say, if there was going to be a race then I didn't intend to lose it so I started to break a sweat on the narrow track taking people straight up the mountain. It was only 500ms of elevation and as Machu Picchu sits at 2400ms I had lungs full of oxygen for a change. During the hike I wasn't passed at all and while I'm the slowest walker in the world in cities I can hike vertical pretty quickly. I summited just past 5am and in the end I needn't have worried as I was 11th at the gate; the other people before me must have started earlier. Tarek, Harry and John were not too far behind and after doing some market research to see how much we could sell our amazing sandwiches for we entered the citadel.

Unfortunately for me the light was a disaster for photography. The citadel was covered in cloud and so it was a case of sitting around and waiting until it cleared. The advantage of being one of the first in the gate is that you can get photos of the citadel without all the goons in the shot but as we couldn't see anything I would have to make do. By the time the cloud cleared the sun was really strong making that light very difficult to work with also. In the end conditions were too difficult to work with without a brilliant filter and a nice wide-angle lens. We did manage to snag a prime vantage point though by staking out a rock that successfully eliminated an awful lot of goons from the photos. Still, for such an iconic piece of real estate the photo-set is disappointingly bland.

People still don't know the reason for Machu Picchu's existence, whether it was as a country residence for the Indian gentry or whether it was as a big farm for experimenting with crops at different elevations using terraces. Whatever it was it is an amazing site that no camera can truly capture. The citadel itself is impressive but the lush green peaks that surround it are equally so. We had a great time exploring both Machu and Huyana Picchu and once we had demolished 'Machu Picnic' we made our way back the way we came. Our plan had been flawlessly executed until now and while we still needed to negotiate our way back we only managed to come unstuck in the town of Santa Maria. It was too late to get a combi back to Cusco unless we paid double and with the local buses being full we would have to sit it out for the night. However, we didn't give up and when the bus came through town Harry successfully negotiated us on it even though all the seats were reserved. A game of musical chairs ensued as we occupied available seats until people with reservations boarded and eventually I ended up in the aisle flat on my back trying to catch some shut-eye. While it wasn't comfortable I could now relax as I would make it back to Cusco in time to catch my 20 hour bus-ride to Lima.

It was far from an easy journey but the whole thing had been a great adventure as we only had the basis of a plan and so we never knew what to expect. Did we achieve our mission in doing it as cheap as possible, well we couldn't have done it any cheaper. To do a DIY trip by train would have cost about $125 and to take a less flexible tour about $170. Entry to the citadel alone is $43 and we managed to do the whole trip for $72 excluding food. Harry managed to do it for $50 thanks to a student card and while there are easier ways of getting there I doubt we would have had as much fun. Machu Picchu is one of the main reasons so many people visit this continent, for sure it did not disappoint and was a great way to round out my five months in South America.

Some photos are up in the gallery.

Talk soon

Marco

The Road to Cusco

My three days between Copacabana and the Isla del Sol had been very pleasant but it was time to embrace Peru. It would be only an 8k hop to the border town of Kasani and being South America it would not take much time to officially wave adios to Bolivia and hola to Peru. I would only have 530k to ride until Cusco, however, I was running out of days before my flight from Lima and so I decided to put the hammer down and bike it in four if possible. The second biggest festival in South America (Inti Raymi) would take place in Cusco in only a few days time so it made sense to get in ahead of the crowd. A stiff head-wind leaned against me the whole way making the days very long. I was also battling far more hills than I was expecting causing me to moan about how inaccurate the bikers heading South were. I couldn't understand how gringos had managed to give me more bogus information than the locals who seem to have no concept of time or distance. Of course, it was only when I explored the region around Cusco that I realised I had had it easy. Everything I had ridden north to Cusco was flat in comparison to the giant peaks and troughs that lay beyond it..

The days at the office were very long for the bike; 8am until the final moments of daylight at 6pm. However, the ride was enjoyable if a little stressful as it's never fun having to work in the afternoon to get to where you want to go. The benefit of having somewhat difficult conditions to bike through is that you become wholly immersed in the task of getting to the crest of the next climb or in trying to beat nightfall. Rolling terrain is far more fun than simply staring at wide open plains, a long straight road and a horizon that may as well be on another planet. The most fun day was when I went chasing a portal into another dimension. The portal was more a blue hole than a black one but unfortunately for me it wasn't a vortex and so it didn't effortlessly suck me in. The clouds were crashing into the peaks of the cordillera I was snaking through, little kids were on the run home from school and hail was bouncing off the roads. If you are already wet then there is no point in stopping and in the middle of nowhere there is never any point in turning back, so all I could do was ride to the round hole of blue that was peering at me through two mountain-sides under a roof of gloomy sky. The head-wind and the long slow climb to 4300ms meant that I was slipping down a water-slide of a mountain as opposed to making progress up it. The false-tops made the patch of blue even more elusive as the clouds sensed my game and decided to race me to it. I had the last laugh though as once I crested the summit I had the most amazing 40k descent down to the the town of Sicuani at 3551ms. The speed of my descent stunned both the locals and the dreary weather allowing me to race back into the searing Andean sunshine with whoops of joy. Flying down the mountain allowed me to drip-dry. It had been a great day, I was never sure if I was going to make it to Cusco in four days so it was a pleasant surprise to actually manage the 166k to Sicuani. While Cusco would be another long day of 138k on tired legs I would save myself a day by successfully completing the ride in four long days.

The ride to Cusco was beautiful; the rolling terrain was fun, the air was heavily scented with wood-chip and fresh hay and at last I was low enough to have trees along the route for company. This was effectively my last day of cycling with a load in South America and while a champagne procession to Cusco would have been more desirable it is always nice to arrive at the end of a trip with an equal mix of exhaustion and elation. Just as I made it to city-limits a puncture tried to spoil the party but if punctures are the biggest problem life can throw at me at the moment then I can repair them smiling.

Cusco is supposed to be a pretty city but if it had been possible to close my eyes until the historic quarter of town where the gringo hangs out then I would have done so. I eventually arrived into the main plaza to loud music and dancing. I did not realise they would celebrate my arrival so my horse and I stuck around to enjoy the scene before it was time to find a stable for the night. As is ever the case in the massive continent of South America; if you stand still long enough somebody you know will eventually bump into you. Andrew from Toronto, who had shared the boat with me to Isla del Sol, greeted me and pointed me in the direction of a good hostel.

Unbelievably, I had concluded my tour of South America by bike. I had arrived in Cusco, the navel of the Inca Empire, having successfully biked the southern half of the empire from Mendoza in Argentina to Cusco in Peru. While it would have been nice to traverse the whole empire and finish the trip in bike-mad Colombia I had already accepted that it would have to be another time as I can only bike the Rockies during northern hemisphere summertime. In biking to Cusco I cycled 2228k through the Argentinian Andes, another 1201k across the Bolivian alti-plano and then a small hop of 530k through Peru. I don't count the unloaded exploration I do by bike but that brings my loaded total to 8574k. I realise that this might seem a lot to some people but to me it is hardly anything at all considering I have been travelling nine months. The nature of my trip is such that it is not all about the bike but to put things in context (and I always take my benchmarks from the best in their field) the pros are currently cycling 3444k around France over three weeks. It has taken me four months to ride the 3959k from Mendoza.

Thus, just Machu Picchu and the briefest of encounters with Lima before I embrace a new continent and yet more climbs; North America and the Rockies await me.

Talk soon

Marco

clouds are pretty but it will mean it's bloody freezing until the sun finds its strength - 3900ms herePeru rail ... the quicker way to Cusco from Puno

I gulped when I saw this ... thankfully they were having a laugh!

Lago Titicaca

Lago Titicaca is the largest lake in South America. It sits at 3812ms on the border of Peru and Bolivia. It has two basins separated by the narrow straits of Tiquina where all people and vehicles need to cross by ferry. It was supposed to be a days ride from La Paz to the lake-side city of Copacabana but I forgot to check my map and left La Paz a little too late to make it there before sunset. Cyclists heading South have the benefit of a nice tail-wind and they also don't have to spend an hour and a half climbing out of La Paz. I had to cycle the motorway route to do this as the old road is too steep in sections to drag a loaded bike up. The motorway was longer but was an awful lot less stressful as I could just sit in the hard shoulder and spin my way out of the pit that is La Paz. Thus, I ended up riding until I could literally ride no further. I ran out of both sunlight and road at the ferry crossing for the straits of Tiquina. I had passed a really serene camping spot which sat high above the lake overlooking the snow-peaks of the Cordillera Real but I needed food and so I went to town not expecting to struggle with accommodation. I could only find a half-built alojamiento where I would sleep on a mattress of two stuffed bags but the next day I would be in Copacabana, which is gringo central by all accounts, so I was able to suck it up for one night.

The city of Copacabana is nicely situated on a beach between two hillsides. However, the beach is not where people tend to hang-out. People are generally hiding in the sun-traps of the gringo cafe terraces. The vibe is pretty relaxing as there is not much to do except eat and chill-out. I hiked up one of the hillsides, Calvary, to take in the sunset. The sun would end up setting behind a cloud and so it wasn't too dramatic but the changing light allowed me to have some fun with the camera. The following day I planned on heading to the largest island on the lake, Isla del Sol. This is where the first son and daughter of the Incas were born and so is a sacred place. I wanted to take a boat out to the north beach to catch the sunset. I could hike from there the following morning to the south shore to catch a boat back to the mainland but it turned out that the afternoon boats out only go to the south shore. This would mean I would have to trek the island both ways. Hiking the hilly and rocky island was not the problem, the issue was that I wanted to catch the sunset and to do this I would have to hike pretty quick to see it from the look-out. I met Jason from La Jolla on the boat who was also looking to head to the north beach and so we ended up hiking together. I had ruled out catching the sunset as I'm the slowest walker in the world but we managed to catch it and had some good chats along the way. The sun island disappointed in terms of the sunset but things started to become random and fun. We had to hike down from the hill-side in the dark not expecting the ground to be so difficult. Close to the bottom we eventually found a path and made our way to the small town of Challapampa under the cover of darkness. Due to a power-cut there was no street-lighting and it was only the candlelight of some diners in the window of a shack that gave us some indication as to where me might be able to find food and a bed. Inside Tarek, Fiona and John were having dinner. What started as a solo trip had now become a five man crew.

It's always nice having company on these trips as it's as much fun talking to other travellers in English as it is struggling to communicate with the locals in gringo Spanish. The locals on the islands were a bunch of jokers however. In all my travels I have not once been asked to pay a local tax to see something. Of course, there might be an entrance fee to sites but not a 'tax'. The locals had basically decided to charge taxes to tourists to travel across the island but then made a farce of it by having six different taxes. Basically, they were having a laugh and trying to coin it from the tourist. The overall amount of money was not large, but to have to meet these guys every 5 metres was annoying. No tourist would mind paying an official entry fee but to pay an unofficial entry fee six times is a nuisance. The islanders had made a joke of the whole thing and while they protested that it was a municipal tax from Copacabana that obviously wasn't the case. The issue I had was while the island is traditionally farmed and still is, such hocus pocus rotates people from the land to the tourist trade due to the lure of money. Do you want to be the guy who is toiling on the land from sunrise to sunset (literally) or do you want to be the guy on the hill sitting in the sunshine all day listening to the radio and coining it from tourists? If there is a tax of 10Bs and fifty tourists come through seven days a week then you are a mint in a place where lunch in a restaurant might cost you 10Bs. There were two older guys who I couldn't tell where to go because they were physically placed under an arch and so I couldn't pass without throwing punches but everyone else I had words with and refused to pay. It was all a little comical and all part of the Isla del Sol experience.

It had been a nice couple of days in a very relaxed part of Bolivia. For certain it was nice to see water again having not seen it since the beaches of Rio. As I live in Dublin near the coast it is always strange not to see water for so long. It is only when you travel that these things come to light. It seems that we are biologically programmed to have a strong connection with the landscape that watches over us as we grow up. The lake itself would just be another side to Bolivia. If it had any more sides it would be a cut diamond.

Just an 8k hop to cross the border into Peru.

Take it handy

Marco

ps - photos are up in the gallery. It was a nice couple of days with the camera. I'm not carrying a tripod so it's always difficult to shoot in low-light. All I can do is hold my breath, hence some blurriness etc.

How High Can a Bike Go?

Initially my intention had been to bike across the Tibetan Plateau, hence why my trip started in that part of the world. It turned out to be too expensive to organise on the ground from Kathmandu and in hindsight it would have been better to approach Tibet from the Beijing side if I wanted to ride the plateau self-supported. The result was that I saw Tibet by Jeep and it was an unforgettable experience. However, I was disappointed having to sit cooped up in a Jeep when I wanted to bike some of the highest road passes in the world.

Indeed, in adventure-cycling terms it is unclear what the highest road pass in the world is. Some passes have stated altitudes higher than their reality. Some people debate the basis of the word 'pass'; does it have to be on a sealed road or can it be a track? Must there be traffic to justify it as an actual pass over a mountain? In lieu of asphalt and traffic surely the fact that a public bus uses the track satisfies the criteria of a high pass etc. Most people consider the Khardung La pass in the Indian Himalaya to be the highest road pass in the world. This road goes to a stated altitude of 5682ms but GPS systems only measure it at 5359ms. Thus, there is a lot of debate about the whole issue of biking high.

Travelling across the only other high plateau in the world besides Tibet and through the second highest mountain-range in the world would provide me with a second chance  to bike high. Just outside La Paz lies Mount Chacaltaya, the 'highest' ski-station in the world at 5300ms. It is a glacial resort but allegedly global warming has melted its ice making the place redundant even in the depths of Bolivia's winter (which is rather mild). Of course nature is rarely so precise making the GPS measurement of 5261ms a more accurate guide. Thus, the ascent of Chacaltaya was the last item on my agenda before I would embrace the road to Cusco.

My friend Cristian reckoned an ascent would take the average cyclist 8 hours starting from La Paz at 3600ms. He based this on the experience of other riders but thought I should manage it in six. I thought somewhere between four and five would be more likely considering it was not all that far away. Thus, I left a little later than I should have so that I would be able to avail of the pancake breakfast in the hostel. To satisfy the requirement of a pass I would climb to the ski-station, then hike for twenty minutes around the back of the peak to take a different road down to La Paz. However, the road was far from sealed. Once I navigated the very steep lower sections out of La Paz I would have an  easier time of things. However, the first 400ms vertical only took me to the Alti-plano and from there I would have to take a hellish dirt-road to Chacaltaya. I had seen a lot of the terrain before because it is the same road I took to climb to the summit of Huyana Potosi by foot; Chacaltaya is the peak beside it. Thus, the day was more about grinding it out than taking in the views. The road made progress very slow going but I was still pedalling away with only the occasional photo-stop. Once I got to 4900ms the thin air was having an effect. If I pushed too hard then there wasn't enough oxygen to power my heavy bike skywards, so I just had to take it slowly eventually settling for little breaks every three hair-pins.

I eventually crested to the applause of a handful of tourists and a care-taker who was more than quick to show me hospitality in the form of both the most expensive and weakest mate de coca I have ever seen. For 20Bs I could have bought four big bags of coca leaves and here I was getting 4 leaves in a cup of hot water for the same price because neither of us had change ... or rather I didn't have change and he pretended not to. It had taken me four and half hours to climb without making a race of it and so I was glad that my instincts had been right as I don't like missing out on pancakes.

It was pretty windy up there and the care-taker was anxious to lock-up as he had pocketed his money for the day courtesy of dim-wit. He wouldn't let me hike around the back of the mountain claiming that there was no road there. True, it's an abandoned road but it still exists. Thus, I headed back the way I came thinking that it doesn't matter whether a road is sealed or not, nor whether it is a pass or not, it only matters how high you can actually cart the bike under your own steam. Thus, I was pretty satisfied to  be able to say that I managed to cycle my bike as high as 5261ms (mas o menos). Unfortunately for me the work was in getting back down the mountain. The road was one of the worst I have biked on making the descent particularly bone-crunching as my bike has no suspension to handle such surfaces.

The ascent of Chacaltaya is another notch in my belt. Now it's time to put all my little altitude games behind me. Peru is calling.

I hope northern hemisphere summer is treating you all kindly

Marco

Mount Chacaltaya 5261ms to the right, Huyana Potosi 6088ms to the leftthe ski-station is the white box to the right of the dipMount Illimani in the distance 6438msthe road snakes down to La Paz in the distanceHuyana Potosimade it!

In Jail

San Pedro prison in the heart of La Paz unbelievably became a tourist attraction when the English drug-trafficker Thomas McFadden, who was incarcerated in San Pedro, started giving tours to gringos through the prison. An Australian backpacker (Rusty Young) was so intrigued by the set-up in San Pedro that he befriended Rusty and bribed the guards so that he could spend three months on the inside with Thomas. Rusty Young wrote a book about the experience causing even more tourists to drop in and visit even though Thomas McFadden had been allowed to buy his way out of prison for $5000. I havn't managed to read his book 'Marching Powder' but I went along with a bunch of Irish guys I met in a hostel in La Paz. It is supposedly illegal for tourists to visit the prison, however, i can only assume that it has become accepted practice as there are a few tours a week going through it.

The reason for visiting this prison is that it is quite an unusual jail. The government gives them pretty much nothing to live on forcing them to create their own economy so that they can buy what they need. Once a week they might get chicken and at the start of the month they get a small quantity of butter, sugar and rice to see them through. Effectively the government leaves them to starve but this never comes to pass as they are reasonably enterprising. It is this enterprise that allows tourists to enter as it is both favourable for the prison guards and the prisoners that we visit. If you are a prison-guard earning only $100 per month then you are happy to cut a deal with the prisoners and take a share of the gate-receipts. If you are a prisoner then you laughing as you can have something like 40 gringos a week paying $65 each just to get in. Of course, not every prisoner is in a position to do this. This is because San Pedro prison is split in two. Both parts sit within the same high-walled compound that you can walk around if in La Paz but there is the section for the 'population' and then another one for what can only be considered upper-class criminals. I believe that there are two operators of the tour on the inside, one main operator and then other guys who are allowed to get the overflow. I'm sure this monopoly position is maintained by the guards who obviously desire that everything is kept discreet. However, having said that walking into the courtyard of the Upper Class section there are plenty of people sitting around plastic tables on plastic chairs under Pepsi parasols. Family of prisoners can pretty much come and go before the doors are locked at 7pm. Indeed, such is the strangeness of the prison that girlfriends, wives and children live there. I'm guessing there is a price for the privilege but it is seen to be a good thing that some prisoners have their wife and children around as it keeps them calm. The other thing to note is that although the prisoners have to get-up for role-call at 7.30am, that they are pretty much free to do as they please after that. They are not locked up so they can wander around the prison as they please or go back to their cells. There is not a whole lot of the upper-class prison to wander around but they can hang out in other prisoners' cells without any hassles from the guards.

Once incarcerated you must be part of the system if you want to survive. However, this takes money or connections. To simply have the right to access the upper class section you need to pay $500. Remember that this is Bolivia so unless you are a successful criminal then this is expensive. To actually live in the upper-class section of the jail then you need to get on the property ladder. There are a whole range of cells at different prices. There are communal cells which can be rented or bought or individual cells of increasing sizes and prices. Jose (not his real name) whose cell we had to pay $9 to hang out in owned a two-storey affair. It wasn't massive but it had a small kitchen and a clean bath-room downstairs with a lounge, TV-room and bedroom upstairs. It was big enough that 12 gringos could hang out with an assorted mix of murderers and drug dealers. The actual 'tour' of the prison lasted about five minutes as it is a small section of about 100 people and so there is not much to see. Thus, we just chilled out chatting to Juan (not his real name) who had perfect English and a house in every country in South America it seemed. Juan is head of security for the General Jose. Jose is the right-hand man (on the inside at least) for the supposed future president of Bolivia. His appartment/cell is a three-story affair and costs $17,000 at current market prices. Reading between the lines the 'future' president of Bolivia is the former vice-president elect. There is all sorts of stuff going on at the political level in Bolivia. The US considered Bolivia to have one of the most corrupt political systems in the world. Ironically this was when the country was pretty much run by the US ambassador as opposed to the Bolivian president. Evo Morales, the current President, is quick to remind people that the level of corruption has decreased now that he has effectively evicted the US ambassador. According to the prisoners, however, Evo Morales is the biggest drug-dealer in Bolivia. I'm not certain who to believe, for sure the dealers know their business but they also claim that the 'future' president was framed by Evo. The fact is that this guy was arrested for massacring twenty people for no apparent reason. Inevitably where power and money is concerned there is a huge amount of tactical self-preservation going on. Bolivian politics is surely no more corrupt than Fianna Fail.

While my Irish amigos were happily indulging in nose candy I was buying the most expensive tins of beer for my incarcerated German friend. Drugs are cheap on the inside but for some reason alcohol is expensive, perhaps due to its conspicuousness. A tin of La Paz beer (Pacena) was costing me 40Bs where it would only cost me 6bs in a shop ... this is for 33cl. A gramme costs 90Bs for 70% and 150Bs for 96% purity. If you like your white powder then this is cheap as chips compared to developed countries but when you are buying beers for your new friend from Munster (Germany) then it all adds up considering we spent five hours in the prison, ten minutes of which were getting in and out and another five minutes of which were the 'tour'. Basically these guys were having a laugh and making us feel obliged to buy all sorts of things so that lesser prisoners would have an income. There was the hand-made jewellery or the fake release papers in your name to say that you had been incarcerated in San Pedro. Not wanting to take a camera into a place full of criminals I paid for a photo that I never got over email.

I got to chatting to Hans (not his real name) to see what the hell was going on there. He was a professional smuggler who managed to get caught in the airport of La Paz. The whole ordeal was quite friendly as once he knew that they knew, he just accepted his guilt. Instead of stringing his innocence through the courts he took the more direct route; pleading guilty his court session lasted 8 minutes and he was locked up for 8 years knowing that he would only have to serve 2/5 of his sentence. He was 14 months in when I met him and was having a great time ... as far as prisons go San Pedro is apparently the best. He had spent a few weeks in jail in Amsterdam and while he was well looked after with a daily menu, a great library and TV, he still had to spend large chunks of time in his cell. According to Hans you do not want to smuggle into Japan as if you get caught they don't just physically break you but they mentally break you too. Still, he had even done that once pretending to be on honeymoon.

Hans route was to fly from La Paz to Lima, to Buenos Aires, to Frankfurt and onto Amsterdam. That sounds crazy to me. He got caught for two reasons; 1) they gave him a false-bottomed suit-case - the oldest trick in the book, 2) they put 10 kilos of coke in his cabin-bag which he wasn't expecting and so when a security guard picked it up going through the scanners the penny dropped that it was unusually heavy for a cabin-bag. The pay-off for successfully getting the coke to Amsterdam was only $25k. Why would you?

One has to realise that the impression one gets of these guys is that they are nice criminals. You have a laugh with them and they tell you stories. It's all very friendly stuff but in the back of your mind you have to remember that they are gangsters. They have made decisions that most people wouldn't make in being involved in the drugs game or in killing people with their own hands. Naturally you'd be an idiot to believe everything they say but they try to run the tour business properly knowing that it is a great source of income and that they need positive feedback from people that visit to generate a new crowd. Naturally they are very experienced in business as the drugs game is an industry like any other with its sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing processes and international distribution. These guys are very well connected internationally and so this fact was quite exciting for Hans; he had access to really good contacts and supply if he ever wanted to return to his trade once he gets out in a year or so.

Hans is an interesting guy. Being European he had a good education but he never went to university preferring instead to enter the drug's business. From the age of fourteen he always wanted to be a drug-dealer. As soon as he finished school he hitched a lift to Amsterdam. It starts to get even odder when he successfully established himself in Amsterdam. He had an 'office' where he made his own LSD and supplied everything bar heroin. He had regular customers and business was good. For some bizarre reason, which made no sense to me, he decided to turn his 'office' over to someone else and get involved in smuggling. He mainly smuggled between Amsterdam and India and was making a living from this knowing the trip inside and out. The most likely way to get caught with narcotics is when you are moving them. It is strange how the risk/return stacked up for him such that he would leave a steady-business off the radar in Amsterdam for international drug-smuggling but that is what he did. He still loves coke himself but has managed to wield himself off heroin twice. He used methadone for a couple of weeks and then endured three months of no-sleep to manage this. Eventually he righted himself and regards heroin to have no physical consequence to the body once you keep using it. He was active and fit and loved his mountain-biking at the time.

Just before 7pm we made our way discreetly out of the prison. It was an interesting place for sure. The prison-guards, while happy to take the cash, are prison-guards nonetheless and so the prisoners have as little as possible to do with them. They are on friendly terms but they don't engage in conversation. The part of the prison that would have been most interesting to see would have been the population. This consists of about 1000 people and so they have critical mass versus the upper-class. At times there are out-breaks where the have-nots try to storm the haves and so it is only possible to visit the prison during periods of calm. It was while visiting the carpentry room that I noticed a corner of a door missing. There were two gringo traffickers peering through the hole at us. These guys did have access to the upper-class section but had misbehaved and so had gotten thrown out. The anger in their eyes was palpable. It was clear that these guys had gone past their breaking-point and were so fueled by jealousy or regret that they had resorted to violence and sheer drug-induced craziness. I will never forget those eyes.

Marco

The World's Most Dangerous Road

'Death Road' as it is known is the biggest tourist attraction in La Paz. Well, that and nose candy. About ten years ago somebody decided to mountain-bike down this road. He had such a good time that he set-up a company so that gringos could experience the same adrenaline induced buzz. What was once a road for only the most-daring is now a closed-road for pretty much every gringo in La Paz to bike down. The road got it's name due to the amount of deaths that occurred along it while it was open to traffic. It is known as the Old Yungas Road now that a safer New Yungas Road has been completed. Traffic used to prefer the old road over the new one as it was still quicker but the road is 'officially closed' to traffic now. Officially closed in Bolivia means more or less closed.

The road is built into the side of a mountain very much like a balcony. The problem is that it is bumpy and narrow in parts with sheer drops off the side. Accidents occurred because in places there is not enough room for an on-coming vehicle to pass. The driver would have to back-up the truck and sometimes would reverse it over the edge plummeting to his death. The number of fatalities was alarming. Nowadays it's the odd gringo on his bike who increases the road's statistics.

I was quite excited about biking this road as so many people had mentioned it to me being a cyclist. I wanted to get a biker's perspective on it as opposed to the gringo perspective. Most gringos haven't touched a bike since they were BMX bandits and so their point of view is pretty much irrelevant. The appeal of this road to the gringo is that he doesn't have to pedal. The one 8k section where there are rolling hills causes the gringo to jump back in the support van before jumping out again when the road drops some more. They start the 84k 'descent' from La Cumbre at 4650ms. They turn off the asphalt and onto 'Death Road' before dropping all the way down to the town of Yolosa at 1185ms. On paper it sounds pretty amazing but I was curious to see if it felt as dangerous as people made out.

Having successfully hitched up to La Cumbre before I tried my luck a second time around. After an hour on the side of the road with nothing but shrugs from drivers I eventually jumped into a taxi to get to the top. The first part of the descent has a series of sweeping bends and was pretty much straightforward. It was enjoyable dropping but I made sure not to go so fast that I couldn't look at the impressive scenery. It wasn't long before I had completed the asphalt section and turned onto 'Death Road'. It was bumpy at first with lots of rocks making traction on the bends difficult but I wasn't riding the balcony yet. Soon I was riding on a road akin to a fire-road through the Dublin Mountains. As far as mountain-biking goes this is as good a surface as you can get. The road wasn't as narrow as expected and the bends were quite forgiving. For sure, the drop-offs were very impressive but you would have to be a total klutz to go over the edge. I can only imagine that gringos get caught out by trying to look at the amazing scenery and lose the run of their line. Perhaps if you had a blow-out you might lose control but there isn't much to cut a tyre. As far as a mountain-biker would be concerned there is nothing too technical about the descent at all. I would go as far as to say that it is an amazing descent for an experienced mountain-biker as they could really let go of the brakes and just throw the bike into the sweeping bends. They would have a lot of fun on this road for sure as It just goes on forever but there is nothing difficult about it compared to other roads I have come down in Bolivia. Other roads have Jeep tracks embedded into them. This turns them into dual single-tracks making cornering difficult as if you lose the camber of the single-track you are on it is very difficult to get control back without braking heavily or crashing. It is possible to use the whole of the 'Death Road' at all times so it is much easier to alter your line into bends. Having said all that it was clear to me why so many trucks managed to drive over the edge. The lush vegetation makes for lots of cloud and it is this thick cloud or the dust clouds from other vehicles that would have reduced visibility and caused a lot of the accidents. Another reason is that Bolivians would unbelievably drive this road at night. Of course, the mucky conditions of wet-season are possibly not easy to navigate either.

I did not go flat out on the descent preferring to take in the scenery. I have to say that it was breath-taking and possibly the most enjoyable bit of nature I have biked through on my trip so far. This leads me to conclude that the 'World's Most Dangerous Road should in fact be known as one of the 'World's Most Beautiful Roads'. Once more Bolivia has dropped my jaw with regards to its natural beauty. I descended to the town of Yolosa not realising that I still had some fun ahead of me. I had to climb 665ms vertical over 7.5k to the town of Coroico - all of it on rough cobblestones. I'm telling you, the pros in Europe have it easy.

To conclude, I have to say that it was an immensely fun day on the bike and it was clear to me why it is such a big tourist attraction. The descending itself is great fun and  the scenery just makes the experience even more spectacular. However, I did manage to confirm that it is not the most dangerous piece of biking one can do. If a cyclist puts himself on the limit on any descent he can kill himself. This road is closed to traffic and is quite forgiving in most places. This is in contrast to the Alpine and Pyrenean passes I like to hurtle down at sometimes over 80kph where the bends are far sharper and the top-speeds higher thanks to the skinny tyres and asphalt. These roads are open to traffic making a mistake on these descents fatal. Of course, the fact that inexperienced cyclists can ride down 'Death Road' in one piece must mean that it can't be too dangerous. The statistics speak for themselves but part of the problem is the inability of Bolivians to heed danger. Certainly driving it during thick cloud or night-time would be particularly dangerous but In terms of biking it in day-light it is not technically challenging at all. If people want to see dangerous biking they should witness what downhill mountain-bikers are doing. Of course, these guys are biking off road which is not quite the same thing; it's worse. Some of the descents and stunts these guys attempt are far more dangerous and much crazier than any Bolivian driver might manage.

Pics to show you how beautiful this road is are in the gallery.

Take it handy

Marco

Mark Climbs a Mountain

La Paz is impressively situated. Not only does the city of El Alto sit on the rim of its bowl but it also has many impressive mountain peaks with their year-round 'white-ponchos' surrounding it. The most impressive of these is the highest peak in the Cordillera Real of Illimani (Golden Eagle) to the south at 6438ms but to the north lies Huyana Potosi at 6088ms. This is supposed to be the 'easiest' 6000m peak in the world to climb and having only biked through the Andes I thought I should make an effort to get more intimate with at least one peak where the bike can't go.

My first mistake was to misinterpret the sales slogan 'easiest 6000m peak in the world to climb'. I assumed it would be 'easy' and so I never gave it a great deal of thought. If other gringos were climbing it then I didn't expect to have too much difficulty. My second mistake was to fly from the Jungle town of Rurrenbaque at 250ms, arrive in La Paz at 3600ms 45 minutes later and then attempt to crest 6088ms 48 hours later. This is definitely not the recommended way to do things but I didn't really fancy hanging about in La Paz too long as I know it well now. Despite spending 5 weeks at altitude and having no acclimatisation issues whatsoever, I was feeling the effects of altitude having been close to sea-level. It was a little frustrating. Any acclimatisation quickly evaporates after only three or four days at lower elevations. I confirmed this when I got back to La Paz as I was finding myself having to take very deep breaths at reasonably regular intervals to top-up whatever oxygen was already in the body. La Paz had previously been lower than the 4000m Alti-plano I was biking across so I was never breathless when I first arrived.

The option was to do the ascent of Huyana Potosi over three days or two. If I chose the three day option the first day would allow me to practice ice-climbing and to acclimatise at base-camp of 4700ms. However, I controversially chose the two day option of going straight up to high-camp. It is only a few weeks until I leave this continent and so the extra day could come in handy at some point. This decision was regrettable as I could have used the extra day on the mountain to acclimatise and also, there was a really nice bunch of mostly English lads doing the three day trek with whom it would have been nice to share the mountain.

We left La Paz a lot later than I expected arriving at base-camp at 4700ms about lunch-time. After some cold pasta I made my way up to high-camp at 5130ms. This was mostly a scramble over lots of rocks displaced from the glacier and was not much of an ordeal. It was only made slightly uncomfortable by the fact that we were carrying our own packs with all our climbing gear in them. It was only at base-camp that it dawned on me that I was really doing a 24 hour trek as opposed to a two-day trek. This is because we climb the mountain in the darkness of night leaving high-camp at 1.30am. This is standard practice as it is easier to trek on hard-packed snow at night than mushy snow when the sun is out. Thus, the itinerary was as follows: depart La Paz at 11.30am, leave base-camp at 2.30pm, arrive at high-camp at 5pm, have dinner and go to 'bed' at 6.30pm, get up at 12.30am to have some breakfast, leave high-camp for the summit at 1.30am and hopefully arrive at the peak between 6 and 7am.

The refuge at high-camp had mats that we could rest on in our sleeping bags prior to getting up to prepare for the ascent. Naturally at 5130ms it is cold although the room did start to heat up nicely with all the bodies. The problem was all the bodies however, there wasn't enough oxygen to go around the room so sleep was a little restless not helped by the restlessness of people in general. Just before 11pm people started to stir as they would be making their way up the mountain earlier than I would be. I didn't need to get up until 12.30am so all in all I would pretty much be hitting the peak on very little sleep due to all the commotion. Once I got up I had a cup of mate de coca, a piece of cake and a banana for breakfast. This was about all I could stomach at this hour and altitude but I had made sure to eat and drink well before I joined the trip so I wasn't too worried about that side of things. After a short scramble over rocks I was at the foot of the ice and snow and so it was here that I would put on crampons for the first time in my life. These clamp to your snow boots and are obviously necessary equipment to climb on ice or snow. The boots are a cross between snowboarding and ski boots and are a little uncomfortable and heavy; not fun if you have to wear them for approximately nine hours.  Once roped into my guide/amigo with Julian from France we made our way up the mountain. We were the last people to leave the refuge and so it was a cool sight stepping onto the mountain illuminated only by a quarter-moon, the stars and then the head-lights of people further up on the powder. It was probably a good thing that I could not see more than a few metres in front of me as it was a trickier climb that I expected. It was only coming down the mountain in daylight that I would see the crevasses, steep ramps and how long an ascent it actually was. The plan was simply to walk as slowly as possible saving as much energy as possible at the bottom for the harder bits towards the top. At this stage it felt like going for a cycle with Carbo, you don't break a sweat and it feels like you can put your feet up. However, Julian was having a harder time of things being a smoker and not being an active person. I didn't mind too much as long as he was going to make it. In the end I would be grateful for Julian's stops because as soon as we got to 5700ms I was not having the best of times myself. The altitude was starting to hit me and as is normally the case for me when I'm not acclimatised I started to get drowsy. I could easily have laid down for a kip and such was the impulse to sleep that I almost didn't care if I got to the top or not. While I'm sure the lack of sleep and the early morning rise didn't help, the whole thing had stopped being fun. I was climbing the mountain virtually asleep at this stage with nothing at all going through my mind but for some random thoughts of family. For some reason we had become the picture-perfect smiling family on a packet of biscuits and this bizarre image would not escape me. While we had overtaken a few groups we were not going to make the summit for the actual sun-rise, instead I would see the sun pop up from the bottom of the final face. When I say face, it is not exactly a vertical face, rather a pretty steep ramp that you need to ice-axe your way up.

Being a racer I am pretty experienced at blocking out pain signals but they still come. I knew that I was always going to get to the top but it just got to the point that I didn't care any more, I just wanted to cut the rope, go for a sleep and finish the mountain later at a more reasonable hour. I was just shocked that Julian was still on the rope in front of me; he had 'bonked' hours ago. Even when you see the actual summit for the first time, which is the last vertical 30ms, you know that it's still going to take some effort to get there and so the excitement is muted.

However, I did get there ... eventually, and the views were absolutely amazing. It was really the first time I had properly looked around. This is partly due to the fact that apart from the bright-lights of La Paz and the night-sky there had been nothing to see, and partly because I was practically asleep climbing the final vertical 400ms. On the one side was Lake Titicaca (the largest lake in South America), the other side was Mount Illimani sitting imperiously above La Paz and on another a sea of clouds floating over the Bolivian Jungle. It was pretty impressive stuff to say the least but the problem with climbing a mountain is that you have to get back down it. Thus, as nice as it was at the top it was not quite perfect as it would be another two hours before I could do the thing I most wanted to do; sleep. Unfortunately for me my climbing partner Julian was shot and so it would be a three hour trek as opposed to the usual two down the mountain. The patience of our guide was amazing but it was a little frustrating to be roped in and constantly feel the tug of Julian behind me as his body struggled to keep up. In the end I was able to smother the tiredness induced frustration as he was presenting me with an extra hour to enjoy the beautiful scenery. We were so high up that we were walking higher than air-planes were flying.

Once at the bottom I escaped the weight of my snow-boots and managed to take in what I had just achieved. Unfortunately, we were so slow down the mountain that I didn't get my chance to sleep. There was only time for a quick bowl of soup before I would have to scramble back down to base-camp. But this was not before receiving the congratulations of the nice English lads I had left at base-camp the previous day. They would attempt the summit that night so they were full of questions. I probably scared the life out of them but the truth is that it was just the altitude that knocked me out. If I had been properly acclimatised the whole thing might have been much more manageable. The actual ascent would not be that difficult if 1000ms lower because it is not technical. While being the 'easiest 6000m peak' in the world to climb it isn't exactly easy as normally other peaks are difficult to access and so there is a natural acclimatisation period built into the time it takes a trek to get there. The lack of sleep took more out of me physically than the actual ascent but it still required twelve and a half hours of hiking up and down the mountain within 24 hours. Indeed, I probably should have given the whole thing  a bit more thought but it's a nice achievement nonetheless. For certain the views were worth it and it was definitely good fun up until 5700ms.

There are some photos in the gallery to give you the idea.

Marco

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle ... Not Quite

the dude drinks water from the vineHaving had a great time biking to the river-town of Mapiri I pretty much wrote-off my first day on the boat. The two full days mountain-biking had been exhausting and with the three previous days biking in my legs plus the early rises I was shot. I spent the whole day just trying to catch up on sleep. Be it on land or water I was oblivious to the world trying to get my beans back.

The experience on the boat was enjoyable but the only confined space I like being in is bed. Still, we were able to stretch our legs on some nice jungle treks. We were making our way to the Madidi National Park via a couple of nights camping beside the river. It was all very cool stuff but for the constant biting of sand-flies. I was surprised at how little traffic there was on the river, clearly the bumpy road had become the preferred mode of transport for the locals. Indeed the people of the river and jungle were very different to the Quechuas of the Andes. The environment was at total odds to the sparsity of the Andes where trees don't exist. Here the locals understood their surroundings and the medicinal benefits of the various trees. Still, as far as jungle goes it was not quite the jungle I expected. The trees weren't impossibly tall and the vegetation wasn't very tropical. It was nothing like the humidity one would expect in the Amazon proper. But I always knew that I would be visiting temperate as opposed to tropical rain-forest. Likewise the Rio Beni was not like what one would experience on the Amazon. There were no cargo boats with people dozing off in hammocks and there were no stilted villages sitting on the water. This part of the Bolivian lowlands was oriented more to the land than the river. Still for someone who had become accustomed to the altitude of the Andes it was nice breathing in big gulps of oxygenated air and seeing green again.

Having enjoyed a very well organised and smooth journey by boat I arrived in Rurrenabaque. Once there I decided that there was nothing more for me to do than make my way back to La Paz. I was not interested in the pampas tours to see the wild-life. The animals don't want to see me so are best left alone. I had already been in the Jungle and did not fancy going even deeper in as I had concluded that while it was a beautiful side of Bolivia to see that it was not the true Amazon experience. The one thing that did interest me was the village Shaman but this was effectively a gringo day-out where people wander into the jungle, take some jungle juice and go 'tripping'. Some people do it for the hallucinogenic experience of San Pedro where your senses merge thereby reconnecting the hemispheres of the brain and the neural pathways that we have not had since we were in the womb. Other people do it for the Ayuasca, which is a jungle potion that allows you to see clarity. The idea is that you approach the Shaman with a question that you want answered, you walk into the Jungle alone, sit it out in a tent or under a tree and the clarity will come.

My outlook is principally a sober one and inwardly I am at a place where I already have a great deal of clarity. At the end of the day the gringo is a real person underneath and I respect their desire to interact with the Shamanistic world. However, a one day tour does not bridge the gap between the outlook of the gringo and the interesting world-view of the Shaman. Effectively the gringo is interacting with jungle juice and for whatever reason I have no curiosity about hallucinogenics. Thus, I decided to pass on it and made my way back to La Paz. Thus, I walked into the local Amazonas Airways office and managed to get the next flight out of Rurre three hours later. This was a light-aircraft and part of the appeal. The people on the tour suggested I look on it as a trip in itself as when would I ever be able to fly in a light aircraft for 55 euro again? The appeal was the grass landing-strip take-off and the fact that the views from the plane allow me to see the Amazon Basin and the Bolivian Jungle meeting the Andes. It sounded great but unfortunately cloud-cover and a scratched plastic visor shielding the window meant that I couldn't see much. I was back in La Paz forty-five minutes later. It was all a bit too easy if you ask me. Having biked through so much an internal flight made me feel like I was cheating.

The mountain-biking had been great and the river trip was a nice experience. It was great to see another side to Bolivia and to share the experience with a good bunch of people. However, the trip only confirmed to me that I am not a jungle person. Any time I pass through rain-forest or jungle my body becomes slightly uncomfortable. I am very much a mountain-man and as much as I love trees, they need to be alpine. It is this confirmation that gets me excited about my prospective trip through the Rockies.

Still, there is a lot to see before I get to North America.

Photos of the bike and boat trip are in the gallery if interested.

Mind how you go

Marco