La Paz

At first La Paz looked like a run down city, where all the buildings were made of the same red bricks and an oxygen tank was needed to walk to dinner. But after a week here I have come to respect and enjoy the worlds highest capital.

The morning after I arrived, I decided to take a free city tour that was run by my hostel. Normally I don't participate in these, but decided to give it a shot based on a recommendation from one of my room-mates. The 4 hour tour did not disappoint and I learned much about the Bolivian culture and why the government hates America.

On day two I took the newly opened teleférico up to the booming city of El Alto that looks down on the bowl of La Paz. They have a huge market there on Thursdays that features everything from monkeys to hand guns to a stall with singular shoes, just in case you happen to loose one in your pair.

The next morning I did a mountian bike tour of the World Deadliest Road. And as if the 3m wide unpaved road with 700m drop offs is not scary enough, we decided to go on the day that it was snowing and very foggy and rainy in lower elevations. My whole group survived but on guy from France some how lost his bike off the cliff when he fell.

I then departed for my 3D/2N climb of 6088m high, Huayna Potosi. After getting fit with all my gear we drove about 2 hours to base camp. After lunch my guide and I hiked about an hour to the lower part of the glacier to learn techiques and to practice climbing an 80 degree face of the glacier.

The next day was spent trekking to the high camp at 5200m and an early night in preparation for the climb the next morning.

On day 3 we woke up at set out at 2am to make the sunrise at the summit at 6:30am. We traversed the glacier for 4 hours in the dark, climbing ice walls, jumping over crevasses and walking rock ridges to reach the summit and the amazing views that come from 6088m. The rest of the day was spent getting down, and back to La Paz in time to catch my overnight bus to the silver mining city of Potosi.