La Paz

I was able to sleep for a few hours on the 12 hour bus from Sucre to La Paz and it surprisingly reached La Paz on time. Morgan and I walked to our hostel to drop off our luggage and went for breakfast. After breakfast, we started shopping for tour agencies to book our tour to Huayna Potosi, a 6,088m mountain just outside La Paz that we could summit in 2-3 days. Quite a few offer that tour and we elected to go with the cheapest since the added value of the other agencies didn't really matter to us.

The 3-day tour was leaving the next day, so I went back to the hostel to do some work. At night, we decided to test our luck with a restaurant similar to Nativa (in Sucre), but that was a failed experiment.

Huayna Potosi

The next morning, we checked out of our hostel and went to the tour agency office. There, we dropped our stuff that we wouldn't need on the mountain and were taken to the base camp located at 4,700m above see level. Our guide, Theo, took us on a short hike to a nearby glacier to practice using crampons, some repelling and ice climbing. The purpose of the first day was to have us acclimatize to the altitude.

The next day, it was time to hike to high camp (at 5,200m). We were joined by an austrian girl, Nina, who opted in doing the hike in 2 days, and another guide (since it is a requirement to have at most 2 people per guide). When we reached the high camp, both Morgan and Nina were suffering from altitude sickness, but decided nonetheless to continue the hike the next day. At high camp we had dinner at 5pm and went to bed a 6pm.

The next "morning", we got up at midnight, got ready and started our hike at 1am. The goal was to reach the summit (located at 6,088m) at around sunrise (6-6:30am), but due to bad luck (and some bad judgement), we did not reach our goal. Nina decided to turn back at around 5,400m, taking one guide back with her and Morgan got exhausted at around 5,950m so we both had to turn around (since each must be accompanied by a guide).

I will admit that I am a bit disappointed that I didn't make it to the top. But looking back, the hike was still fun:

1. When we left high camp, it was so dark that you could see the milky way, countless stars and a few shooting stars;
2. All in all, I got to do some 7 hours of hiking in one day;
3. I climbed up (and back down on the way back) a vertical ice/snow wall using just the dim light from my headlamp to find my "holds";
4. I made it to 5,950m (the highest I have even been) and didn't feel a slight discomfort beside a small shortness of breath. Nothing that a deep breath would fix immediately.

We made it back to La Paz at around 1pm, picked up our stuff from the agency and checked in to our hostel.

I spent the next day working. In the afternoon, Morgan, Remy and I went to a bike agency to book our Death Road biking tour for the next day. Afterwards, we got a multi-pass to ride the La Paz teleferico for a view of the city from above. We rode the Teleferico for about 2 hours and then stopped for a dinner at an Argentinian Parilla.

Biking the Death Road

The next day, we were at the bike agency at 6:45am and we took a bus to the start of our ride, situated at 4,500m above sea level. We started our initial descent on paved roads for about 8km and then reached the actual road nicknamed Death Road. It is a narrow gravel downhill road, with many winds and turns, perfect for biking. We kept going downhill until we were at 1,800m above see level.

There we stopped at a small hotel with a pool to have lunch, before making our way back to La Paz, arriving at 7pm.

For the next 3 days, I mostly did work the whole day. On Friday, I took a collectivo to Sorata, which is famous for some kick-ass mountain biking.