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.