Days 385-387: Death Road and La Paz (Part 2)

So I decided it would be a good idea to do a bike ride down something called "Death Road" in Bolivia. Death Road (also known as the North Yungas Road) comes by its name for being one of the most dangerous roads in the world until a safer alternate route was finished in 2006 connecting La Paz with the lowlands.  Before the new road was finished, more than 200 people a year died along the narrow mountain road that drops off in many place in sheer, unprotected cliff.  Now that there's a much safer, more modern road through the mountains the North Yungas Road has largely been abandoned by vehicles, and so it used almost exclusively by cyclists.  Not having cars to deal with certainly makes the road much safer to bike down than it was, but it's still a dangerous ride that numerous people have died on, and injuries are common.

Even though my Peru tour group was finished I signed up to Death Road with five other brave adventurers that had been part of the group with me.  We were joined by three people from the company organizing the bike ride.  Two of them accompanied us on bikes (one leading, one roaming around and taking pictures for us) and another who drove a support van with extra equipment and food (driving very carefully) down behind us.  We were strongly discouraged from bringing cameras, as many of the injuries and deaths have happened when people were trying to take pictures while biking and not focusing enough on the road, and I was happy to let one of the pros handle the duty (even if the pictures aren't as great a resolution).

The bike ride starts high in the mountains, at 4650m (more than 15,000 ft) and goes nearly 70km, dropping down to 1200m by the end.  The drop in elevation means that the route is almost entirely downhill, so there's maybe 10 minutes of pedaling for the entire journey.  The change in elevation also causes a large change in temperature, so we'd strip off layers progressively as we descended.

The route itself was a blast.  In addition to the sharp turns and huge drops the road was also quite bumpy in places, and in some sections you're forced right through waterfalls, getting soaked.

When we finally reached the end of the road we stopped for a buffet lunch with some of the different groups that had done the ride and enjoyed a nice swim in the pool.  One woman in another group had a serious crash and broke her arm on the ride, again highlighting that you have to be careful.

We took the newer, safer route in the van back to La Paz.  Unfortunately construction on a road higher up the mountain was causing a series of minor rockslides, so all the vehicles along the road had to stop and wait for them to finish, and then for somebody to come and clear the road enough to let us through.  It was getting pretty late by the time we finally got back.  Since our group phase was over I had to check into my new hostel, which was a very Irish hostel/pub in central La Paz.

I stayed there for a couple more days, mostly just walking around La Paz exploring different areas.

"Zebra crossing" guards.  These crossing guards were awesome, making cross-walk guarding into a performance art with their high energy and antics.  I was sure that this must be some local group that chose to do this, but I have later evidence that this might be a broader thing.

When I finally checked out I found my way on foot to the main bus station, and through a lot of waiting and communication struggles finally managed to book and board a bus from La Paz to Uyuni. I ultimately got on the wrong bus (but going to the same place) but when the error was discovered the driver luckily decided it was easier to just let me tag along than to try straightening it all out.

Days 382-384: La Paz (Part 1)

La Paz is (depending who you ask) the capital of Bolivia, and at 3640m (about 12,000 ft) the highest capital in the world.  It's right in the heart of the mountains, giving it some pretty gorgeous scenery, but also making it so that just about every street in the city seems to be steep, which was just fine by me.

Our hotel was right in the middle of the part of the city with all the markets, and our first destination after checking in was to visit the famous witch's market (Mercado de Brujas) that was only a 5 minute walk away. The market is a source of different sorts of charms and remedies, some as simple herbs and sometimes as... slightly stranger things.  Because it has become such a tourist destination the entire area also now sells a lot of more touristy souvenirs.  It's a little unfortunate, but that's just kind of the way the world goes.

Llama fetuses.  A key ingredient?

Various charms and love potions

For the people in the group this was one of the last days to do shopping before they returned home, and since we only had a part of the afternoon we mostly just stuck around the market area looking at different stalls.

The next day we got on a bus to head out to the Tiahuanaco archaeological site.  Tiahuanaco isn't nearly as famous as places like Machu Picchu (I had never even heard of it), but it was the capital of an empire that ruled over much of western South America for more than 500 years, well before the Incas.  The visit was split into a few parts, first checking out a museum about the history and finds, and then to visit the excavated ruins.  I'm not going to go into tons of detail, partly because other than dry historical details not all that much is really known (there wasn't written language, so it's a lot of guesswork).

On the way back into La Paz we got a great view down at the city and the surrounding mountains, which just gives a good idea of how unique the city is.

The third day in La Paz was the final as a group.  We mostly split up to check out different things (or for some, to relax in the hotel).  I went with two others from the group to explore some of the other sites of the city, but I wasn't in a huge rush because I was planning to stay in the city for a few more days after the group was gone.  We spent much of the day exploring some of the other nearby markets.  Like a lot of places in the world, the markets seem to group similar vendors on the same street together, so if you want sewing materials you go one place, if you want tools you go a different place, if you want counterfeit clothing or dvds, you go somewhere else.

A few of us who were staying longer also met up with a special travel company to make special plans for the next day - a plan I had looked into a few months before, and was eager to try.

Days 380-381: Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca is pretty famous for a number of reasons.  It is one of the largest (by some measurements, the largest) lakes in South America, and the highest navigable lake in the world.  It also boasts some pretty neat culture.

We got an early start with a bicycle-taxi race through Puno down to the harbor.  We were going to be doing home stays on one of the remote islands in the lake, and since they don't have much chance to get outside supplies we went shopping to buy a few things for our hosts.  A lot of this was cooking supplies like rice and condensed milk, but we also picked up a few small things for the kids.

The tour boats out onto the lake are almost entirely locally owned and operated.  There are no big tour companies, it's mostly just individual people who have saved up enough money to buy (or rent) their own boat.  Our boat was piloted by a young husband/wife team from one of the lake's many islands.

For awhile we just enjoyed the ride as we rode out deep into the lake.  The water is extremely blue, probably due to a combination of the depth and the elevation, and the surrounding land is a fringe of mountains.  Our first stop was at Taquile Island.  Taquile is especially known for its textiles, and walking up the path toward the village on the island there are people trying to sell you different sorts of clothes and jewelry.  One of the interesting things about the local people is that for them knitting is exclusively done by men, and weaving exclusively by women.  There are a lot of very colourful designs, and we discovered that each of the island communities had their own unique designs and special codes for them.  Men, for example, have bright striped hats, and the colours and arrangement of the stripes indicate where they are from and their marital status (among other things).  We had a nice open-air fresh seafood lunch on the island, and checked out a textile shop where all the different families could sell their clothing.

After leaving Taquile it was on to Amantani, which is where we were going to spend the night.  As we headed up towards the town we were met by the different families that were going to be hosting us for the night, and split up.  After a brief stop at our new homes to drop things off we headed to the center of town which is a sort of communal area.  "Town" is a bit of a stretch as a label as there's no real roads, and the buildings are just a loosely grouped patchwork of small farm plots and low buildings.

This one was my home for the night

Considering the mud brick nature of the community it was a bit startling to find a pretty state of the art (if small) soccer facility at the town center.  We got challenged to a game by some of the young men of the community, and after an intense match we ended in a 5-5 draw.  They weren't content with that though, so they challenged us to another, shorter game, which ended 2-2.  We decided to go sudden death to decide a final winner, and ultimately edged out the locals 3-2.

Afterwards some of the local boys brought some instruments over and we had a small concert / dance in the community center building.  It felt a bit forced, since it's obviously just a show they put on for the benefit of tourists, but it was interesting to hear what their music is like and dress up in some of the traditional garb.

My "little sister" for the day

Next we went back to give our little thank you gifts and have dinner with our host family.  There were 2 others from our larger group staying with the same family as me, and luckily one of them spoke enough Spanish for us to have a bit of a conversation over dinner with them.  We'd jokingly been referring to the couple hosting us as Papa and Mama, but came to discover that I was actually like 5 years older than my Papa.  They had 3 children, the eldest of which was 9 years old - a bit startling since the hosts were only about 24, but obviously in a small cut off community where everybody farms things work a little different.

There's no electricity, and because of the low numbers of livestock on the island most meals are vegetarian ones.  It was an early night, since it's hard to do much after dark in a place with no electricity.  A pretty intense hail storm hit randomly in the middle of the night which made sleeping a little hard since the roof above us was made of metal with nothing to insulate against the noise.

In the morning we had breakfast and headed out to help with some of the labor.  We learned later that many of the people from our groups were asked to do a little farming, but in our case we were taken down to the small dock and helped lug heavy bags of cement back up to the community.  Apparently in one of the households a teenager had gone out during the hail storm and collected a bucket of hailstones which was then used to make ice cream in the morning.

We had a bit more free time and the son of our little family took us on a walk around that part of the island so we could see a bit more.  We ran into a few others from our larger group getting a similar tour, and just wandered around together.

We said goodbye to our hosts and returned back down to our boat to visit one last stop in the lake.  Probably the most famous of the Titicaca islands is Uros, a community of around 50 floating islands.  The islands are constructed out of layers of reeds, and are generally centered around an extended family.  There are a couple islands with schools for small children, and reed rowboat "school buses" that ferry kids from the surrounding islands to school.  It's certainly a unique culture, but it's really dying out quickly these days.  The islands that are still there seem to largely survive off tourism now, and it sounded like many of the young adults go to Puno or other mainland cities to work, so it's likely just a matter of time until the community dies off.

It was now time to head back to Puno, and get on a bus to drive around the lake and out of Peru and into Bolivia.  The normal route was closed down by protests, but the slight detour didn't effect the trip much. After around a 4 hour ride we were pulling into La Paz, Bolivia, which would be the final country of my trip.

Days 378-379: Cusco Pt II and Puno

We had a day to relax after the hike back in Cusco before moving onward.  I'd already covered a lot of the more obvious places, so this was a bit of a relaxed day for me.  I went to a small chocolate museum, which you may remember was the second such museum of my trip.  It was interesting to see how the topic was covered differently in Peru (which was one of the early countries to grow and trade it to Europe) compared to Belgium.

There were also some protests going on in town, which became a bit of a reoccurring theme through the rest of my time in South America.  This one was entirely peaceful, but it did give a different feel to the city center.

The next day was largely travel as we took a 6 hour bus ride southeast to Puno, a city on the shore of Lake Titicaca.  We only had time to explore the city a little and we didn't really get too far beyond the main commercial area and market.

Not a terribly exciting couple of days overall, but after the hike a few quiet days were nice before a busy day exploring Titicaca.

Days 374-377: The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

There are two main ways to get to Machu Picchu.  You can take a train from Ollantaytambo into the mountains, then take a bus up to the site, or you can follow in the footsteps of the Inca and get there by foot following the famous Inca Trail through the mountains and cloud forests.  It's not hard to guess which one I was interested in.

For me, the Inca Trail was a bigger draw than Machu Picchu was, and it was a major reason that I went to Peru over some of the other countries in South America.  To preserve the area only 500 people (of which only 200 are hikers) are allowed on the trail a day, and you can't do it without going through a group of some sort, so being able to do the hike requires booking months in advance.  If you're going to Machu Picchu though, I feel this is the only real way to go.

Like many of my tours, I was doing the hike (and the general trip in Peru) through GAdventures.  I really like their immersive, adventure approach to travel, plus they're Canadian.  You may have wondered about that 200 of 500 people on the trail being hikers.  The other 300 people are porters who literally carry all of the campsites from location to location on their backs.  I have a few mixed feelings about it, but it's just the way their system works.  The companies employ a lot of the men from local mountain villages, and local laws prohibit tourists from carrying their own things, or setting up any sort of permanent shelters for campers along the way in order to put as much money back into the local economy as possible.  We also had two guides for the hike, Henry and Evelyn, who were a blast.

Our porter group

We were doing the classic route of the Inca trail, which is 82km done over 4 or 5 (4 for us) days, starting along the Urubamba River.  The first day of the hike is the easiest, as you're covering the least distance and heading upwards at a pretty gentle gradient.

There were a few small settlements along the trail on the first day, but as we went signs of habitation got more and more sparse.  Machu Picchu is far from the only Inca ruin in the area, and being able to see and investigate all the other sites along the trail is another big reason why I feel the trail is far better than the train. Some of these ruins we'd only see from the distance, but others we'd be walking right through.

At many of these sites Henry and Evelyn would give little history lessons on the trail and the Inca.  One of the things I found interesting is that all of the larger Inca settlements are strung out about 20km apart because they only had llamas for pack animals, and this was the limit of how far they could carry things in one day.  I just find it fascinating how the reliance on llamas instead of horses completely changed the organization of the empire.  In addition to the education, Henry in particular was something of a character.  There were jokes for just about everything, and he greeted each new view by lifting his arms expansively and exclaiming "Welcome to my office!"

By the time we got to the first campsite our porters already had everything set up for us.  This became a regular (and slightly embarrassing routine) where we'd set off in the morning, our porters would tear down the campsite behind us, then at some point would go walking/jogging past us their large packs.  Then, when we finally would get to the new campsite in the afternoon they'd  have everything set up and clap and cheer for each hiker as the made their way in.

Our group with our porters and cooks (I'm top right)

The second day was the steepest, longest climb, which suited me just fine.  The first day we had all stuck together as a group for the most part, but here things strung out a lot more as people broke off into smaller groups to go at their own paces.  Throughout the day we'd take a few breaks to let people catch back up before continuing on.  A few people had been hit pretty hard by the altitude, and we just tried to keep everybody encouraged and motivated.

The morning was mostly hiking through forest, but then in the late morning things opened up again.  The hardest part of the hike was probably a stretch where you hug the mountains on a steep climb up to a saddle between the mountains that's known as Dead Woman's Pass.

Dead Woman's Pass was the highest point of the hike, and there was a lot of downhill to come.  The third day is the really hard downhill section, but we got a taste of what was to come before we got to camp.

The third day had developed the cheery moniker of "The Gringo Killer" for its huge number of very tall, steep steps both up and down.  We were also hiking through an area that is almost always submerged in cloud, so there was a persistent drizzle and obscured views for most of the morning.  We'd been really lucky with weather so far, and had a lot of great mountain views, so I didn't mind having reduced visibility for awhile.  It actually created a really neat effect as things would fade in and out of view as clouds moved around us, giving the trail a very haunting atmosphere.

Visibility continued to come and go through the day, generally as we climbed up above the clouds then dropped back down into them.  We did stretches hiking through cloud forest which lived up to the name, but finally, after delicately working our way down all those steep stairs got below the clouds again to get some more nice open views before the end of the day.

Those last two pictures are from a stretch of Inca terracing that was a short detour from our final camp. There were a few llama just grazing in the grass, and apparently the government brought them here to help keep the grass short, since any sort of mechanical maintenance is difficult in such a remote place.

We went to bed early on the third night in preparation for a stealthy middle of the night start.  There is a locked checkpoint along the trail just past the third campsite, presumably so people don't sneak into Machu Picchu in the middle of the night and cause trouble.  The gate opens at 5am, and then it's only an hour fast hike to Machu Picchu.  The problem is that the path is fairly narrow, and if you get caught behind another group you can get pinned back and take much longer to get there.  We wanted to get out in front so that we could get there before the other groups and have a clear view for the sunrise.  This meant getting up at about 3am and queuing in front of the gate.  We were the second group in line, but once the gate finally opened most of our group managed to pass them.  It's a hard, steep hike, and we were going at full speed, so it was pretty grueling, even if it was very short compared to our previous days.  There is one stretch near the end where you have to climb a set of stairs that is so vertical that it's more of a wall than a staircase.  When we finally did get to our target, The Sun Gate, 4 or 5 of our group (including me) were quite a bit ahead of the bulk of the hikers.

The sun gate is aptly named.  It's built into a little divot in the surrounding mountains and as the sun rises it shines through and slowly spreads to illuminate all of Machu Picchu.  This is another place where often the visibility is not so great, but we again got lucky and had almost a perfect view.

Once the sun had risen we climbed down the rest of the way to check out Machu Picchu.  Henry took us around to the important parts of the city, showing us the temples and giving us some more background, then we split off to explore.  The crowds were really picking up by this point, which took away from it a little, but it's still an amazing place.

Henry and Evelyn, our guides

I also took a narrow, cliff-hugging side path off on a short hike to check out the Inca Bridge, which is another wild example of Inca engineering, but not something I'd want to cross these days.

After relaxing and exploring some more we finally took the bus down to the town by the river for some lunch, then took the train back to Ollantaytambo, and then a bus back to Cusco.  We were all pretty worn out, but it had been a great hike, and among my favourites of the trip.