06/02/2012 - Bolivian Salt Flats Tour - Day 1 of 3

The company that we organized this tour with fucked us around a little bit this morning giving us a 4x4 worse than the one promised to us yesterday.
With a little bit of a debacle we didn't have any other choice than to he into the car and start the trip.
It was a tight squeeze in the back but agreeing to rotate around the car over the next few days it won't be all that bad.
The first thing we set out to see was a train graveyard, personally I was pretty stoked to take some surreal photos of the wrecks by using some photoshop techniques meanwhile everyone else thought it was a waste of time. We only stuck around for 15 minutes before heading to the salt flats where everything brightened up - the reflection of the sun on the flats made it hard to see without sunglasses.

We were given some opportunity to take some great photos using some props we brought along and of course I brought Boing for a bit of a photo shoot. Photos below.
Our driver who we will be spending the next 3 days with doesn't speak a word of English and everyone else in the car doesn't speak any Spanish, my Spanish is still very broken and I have no problems asking questions and understanding the answers but beyond that I am lost, still I was used as the translator for the group. Haha, let's see how this goes.
The salt flats were very impressive seeing many cloud formations form into storms in the distance with the sun directly overhead meaning I, along with many others got sun burnt.
We drove for several hours back through Uyuni and headed further south thinking that all the other tour groups would be doing the same thing but our driver seemed to take us on a more scenic route through a couple of flooded roads were at one point we got stuck and the car wouldn't start again, after the driver doing some work under the hood finally got the thing started and we went to see some rock formations during the overcast sunset.
We finished the day in a small and what seemed to be a mining town where we were shuffled into little rooms that seemed cosy enough but I had by far the worst bed. The couples had their own rooms meanwhile I shared with Samantha from England who filled the last spot in the car.
The make shift building we stayed in was better than we all expected along with the food for dinner where soon after we cracked into the rum and UNO that was all fun and games until heated but funny arguments broke out about the rules of the game, 'twas still fun though.

 

05/02/2012

It was another awful bus journey lasting an excruciating 12 hours on unpaved rocky roads, it was incredibly difficult to sleep despite the use of 2 sleeping pills I bought yesterday.
Arriving in Uyuni I was delirious and was in dire need of a bed.
Again I joined Pete and Nadia to a hotel which was pricier than we expected but we were willing to pay not to have the hassle of finding a cheaper place.

Meetin up with the Aussie couple from yesterday we went searching for a tour company to sort out a 3 day trip of the salt flats and surrounding lakes; it was quite the ordeal trying to he what everyone wanted, like always I was easy and didn't really care so long as it wasn't too expensive. It took us all day and part of the evening to finally get a company at a good price with an itinerary and vehicle everyone was happy with.

There was a lot of waiting around and time killing to have everything organized and in a town like Uyuni with absolutely nothing to do other than this tour we were trying to organize we were bored shitless.  Taking a look at the deserted ferris wheel at one end of town to eat an icecream was the highlight of the day.

04/02/2012

Despite having an early one to avoid a hangover today I still woke with one. Hangovers for me are getting worse too, I think perhaps I will have to stop drinking excessively altogether.  Anyways I booked my onward journey bus ride to Uyuni for this evening where I will do the 3 day tour of he Bolivian salt flats and scenic 4x4 jeep ride around the area.  I hung about the hostel for most of the day until I was hungry and set off with a Danish girl (Tina) for lunch at the market.  I showed her around parts of the city as she had only just arrived. At 6 I joined Pete and this is misses Nadia along with another couple to the bus station to get our bus to Uyuni.

Huanya Potosi – 6092 meters to the summit.

03/02/2012 - Hiking 6088 meters up Huanya Potosi - Day 3

Getting out of bed at midnight to begin a hike is something Im positive I've never done before and that is the reason why I had such difficulty doing it; good thing was that I wasn't the only one, all nine of us struggled getting out of our sleeping bags to face the freezing cold room to eat the stale cold bread with rancid margarine and jam downstairs.
After warming up drinking some coca tea and affixing all the gear I along with the others were set to go.
It was a daunting experience setting off in the pitch black of the night equipped with only a headlamp to light the way.
I was tied to our guide named Super Mario with an Australian guy (Will) and a British guy (Alex) we were put with Super Mario as he was the fittest of all the guides and I and the two others were categorized as the fittest of our group.
With the help of coca leaves to chew on we pushed ourselves to the limit reaching the summit, trenching through snow and feeling the effects of lack of oxygen at such a high altitude.
I was lucky not to have a headache and sickly feeling like a lot of the others did but on a few occasions I did feel light headed.
It took a tedious 5 hours to reach the summit and we were informed that only a few of us were going to make it but we all eventually made it to the summit for a spectacular view looking down at the surrounding mountains. Unfortunately the sunrise was blocked by cloud cover but we were lucky to have the weather we did as yesterday's groups couldn't make it to the top because of a snow storm - it is rainy season at the mo.
It was a good thing I brought my GPS because it gave us a rough estimate on how much more we had to climb along with the exact height we reached 6092 meters!
The last 50 or so meters on a ridge to the summit was treacherous as there was a 300 meter drop off one side and 50+ on the other, the thing is that this only revealed itself when the sun rose and we had to head down from the summit. The safety meeting we had last night spoke of in the unlikely event of someone falling from the ridge you had to counteract the fall by jumping off the other side of the ridge, this is exactly where Will slipped and fell thankfully staying on the ridge path but as I saw him collapse I almost shit myself ready to respond by jumping off the opposite edge.
The hike back down was the worst part of the trip as my knee started playing up and became unbearably painful but having 3 people roped to me I didn't have a choice other than enduring the pain and push through it.
Unsurprisingly we were all unbelievably nackard and sleeping in the minibus back to La Paz wasn't an option as not only was it cramped but the roads aren't in any way forgiving.
Arriving back in la Paz I checked back into the wild rover, munched down some food and crashed hard for several hours.
The group of 9 of us that did the climb met up and went for dinner at an expensive Indian place down the road, the food was delicious and some of the best food I had in Bolivia.
I tried making this last night in La Paz a party night but after two stines of rum and coke during happy hour at the hostel I was pretty smashed, I bounced around the hostel chatted to a bunch of people raving about how amazing the hike was and having a great time but that was short lived as I started dribbling, an indication I needed to go to bed.
Just got to say I conquered that mountain 6092 meters!

 

Reaching the Summit

Boing reaching the Summit!

The Terrain Profile when climbing Huanya Potosi

02/02/2012 - Hiking 6088 meters up Huanya Potosi - Day 2

Today was quite disappointing as we only hiked for 2 hours from 4800 to 5200 meters to the base camp. We did this in the morning so we had the whole afternoon and evening to entertain ourselves, chatting and playing more card games.
Much like the previous hut we stayed in last night we slept on mattresses in the attic but this time surrounded with notes written on the walls by mountaineers who made or attempted to make it to the summit, most of the notes written made the group of us a little frightful of what we were going to embark on early tomorrow morning.
After dinner and a quick run down of the itinerary we went to bed for our midnight wake up to start climbing the 900 meters to the summit of Huanya Potosi mountain.

Chewing on Coca Leaves

The group of us reaching the cabin for night number 2