The Ultimate Death Road

As with any unforgettable drunken night,  the next morning didn’t start off too well. Hungover and sleep deprived, we somehow forced ourselves on to a bus at 8am.

Prior to our night on the bar, we had signed up for a tour to an incredible mountain peak (Chacaltaya – without knowing a thing about it ), followed by what we long had waited to visit: the Moon Valley. When Neil Armstrong visited, he said the valley looked like ‘the surface of the moon.’

We got onto our bus, with a familiar Argentinian face from the previous day and began the ascent up to Chacaltaya .

At this stage Freya was trying to pass out to avoid feeling the motion of the bus and hoping to God she didn’t ‘chunder everywhere’. Cat was enjoying the views… until we hit the mountain roads.

You couldn’t call them roads.

As you looked out of the window, you couldn’t even see that ‘road’ our bus was supposed to be on. For all there was, was a sheer drop; terrifying, nauseating and the last thing we needed to ease our queasy stomachs.

The path was exactly like the famous Death Road, only this time instead of being on an off road mountain bike, we were in an unstable, rickety coach, keeled over from a hangover, listening to the sound of the tyres screaming against the snow as it crawled up the mountain.

We tried to take comfort in thinking that these people drive the same route everyday, so of course they knew what they’re doing.

Unbelievably, we somehow arrived to the top of Chacaltaya, a mountain once hugely important to physics for studying astrology and now one of the highest ski field in the whole world.

It was breathtaking.

We took in the view in absolute awe… until we stepped outside of the bus.

The altitude hit us like whiplash. 

We couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t keep our balance,  we could barely walk and we were freaking freezing because it was freaking snowing!

As one would expect at an altitude of 5700m! 

We knew it was lame, but there was no way we would be able to climb to the summit of Chacaltaya. Yes our pride was hurt as we saw the Canadian kids of our group bounding up the snowy tracks when we could barely walk, but we soon accepted our fate as we crashed on the warm sofas of the mountain restaurant.

It was time to try the famous coca tea. If this stuff helps with altitude,  we’re gonna down the whole pot.

And then we passed out for two hours.

Money well spent.

*

You can take some comfort in knowing that we didn’t have any other scary encounters for the following days, until…

Cat and Freya’s top travel tip:
#2 Before a hike, hydrate well, get a good night’s sleep and NEVER EVER GO BOOZING.

Cocaine, Culture and a “Cup of Tea”

Guidebooks, blogs and forums all warned us about the altitude of La Paz, standing at an outrageous 3640m. Freya being a skier and used to high altitudes, and Cat generally being a tough cookie, it didn’t even cross our minds.

It wasn’t until we were caught out of breath trying to climb the five flights of stairs to our hostel dorm room that we realised something wasn’t quite right. Yes, our fitness levels had plummeted after being on the road for so long and being lured into trying all the local delicacies. Yes, comfort eating had become a survival method to getting through long haul journeys.

But pausing for a rest on the second floor, we were going to need more than chocolate to get us through.

To the locals, their less than conventional cure was known as ‘mate de coca’. To us, it was tea with leaves from a cocaine plant, and apparently completely legal here!

We didn’t truly need a cup until the third day.

The first day in La Paz, we wandered around the amazingly cheap markets, treating ourselves to matching llama sweaters that appear to be the signature mark of a backpacker in South America.

On our second day, we visited the ruins of Tiwanaku, belonging to the first people that inhabited South America. This was 100 years before the first signs of the Incas, the biggest indigenous empire in South America. No one knows what happened to the Tiwanaku people.

We couldn’t just hit the shops and skip the culture.

That night we returned to the hostel. It started with Cat’s suggestion to venture up to the bar for ‘a cup of tea’. We had a tough hike planned for the next day. After meeting the manager of the bar, a fellow Portuguese (obviously kindred spirits with Cat), he began ordering shots and no budgeting backpacker says no to free shots. It didn’t take long for Cat to take over the DJ’s position and general management of the bar. Cat began serving drinks while the so called bar manager scrambled to take payment off everyone. Somehow, Freya always succeeded in avoiding that payment.

Two hours later, finding ourselves dancing on top of the bar with our newly made friends, we realised that we needed to start learning how to turn down freebies.

That thought was never more true when we woke up the next morning…

Cat and Freya’s top travel tip:
#1 Never drink alone. You need your friends there to document everything.