Spend the morning wandering around central La Paz, alternately trying to catch a flavor of the city and then my breath. In addition to its spectacular scenery, Bolivia has the highest percentage of indigenous people of any South American country, making it a photographic feast.
In the afternoon, it’s down to business. I tend to do – or at least to think I can do – crazy things once I start traveling. And much like my aspiration to be a scuba diver, I’m drawn to high altitude hiking. Nothing technical, you understand – I wouldn’t know what to do with a crampon or an ice axe – but being above 20,000 feet has a visceral, manly sense of accomplishment about it. And we’ve been over 15,000 feet already. What’s another few thousand feet? It’s not as if I’m planning to scale Everest or anything.
And the Bolivian Andes offers some giants. Indeed, my indefatigable Lonely Planet guidebook says that ‘one of the world’s easiest 6,000m peaks’ lies almost in the suburbs of La Paz, but Huayna Potosi (at 6,088m) is 30 feet short of the magic 20,000 feet mark (for those of us still working in the Imperial system). After a little research, however, I found a mountain that breaks the 20,000 feet barrier, Parinacota (6,348 m/20,826 feet) and a company, Andean Summits that is willing to guide a novice like myself to the top. The highest peak in Bolivia is actually Sajama at 6,542 m (21,463 ft), which coincidentally is immediately adjacent to Parinacota. In 2001, local Sajama villagers and Bolivian mountain guides played a soccer match at the top of Sajama to protest a decision made by FIFA (soccer’s governing body) to ban international soccer matches in La Paz. Not a lot of people know that!
Sergio Sainz is my Andean Summits – appointed guide. He’s a slim, wiry, young guy. Mild-mannered and quiet. Not quite the rugged mountain man I’d expected, but he’s a serious professional. God knows what he thinks of my hair-brained scheme. He takes me to Andean Base Camp, which have agreed to rent me the equipment I shall need (well I couldn’t very well carry it all from San Francisco). It’s a fascinating experience selecting plastic boots, windbreaker, down jacket, gloves, harness, crampons, 4-season sleeping bag, sleep mat, goggles, head light, backpack, thick trousers, poles and a ski mask. It suddenly dawns on me, though, that this is a serious endeavor, with serious risks.
Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching tale of love and test tubes.
Speak Your Mind