viva la paz!

All carnied out, we left Oruro and took the short trek north to La Paz, the beautiful and enormous and very high capital city of Bolivia.

These are some flea bites I got from the hotel bed where we slept in Oruro. Seems the fleas were not pleased with me.

La Paz is a cool ancient city, its streets lined with vendors selling all sorts of beauties and uglies, artisan goods, 100 year old blankets and rugs made of llama wool and natural dyes, incan figurines, dried llama fetuses, you name it. We ate some of the most delicious food Bolivia has to offer -indian, lebanese, and local, all done right.

But we didn´t come to la paz to play in the city! We came to be hard core. So we signed up for an ice climbing trek with a nice little tour company, and headed our for Huyana Potosi, one of Bolivia´s modest 20,000 foot peaks. Our guides, two Aymara men, kicked ass. Scaling ice walls with ungloved hands, they lead us over a glacier and kept us alive as we scampered up and down its mighty walls.

This is the refugio where we slept (and did not get bitten by fleas). A lovely lady made us breakfast, lunch, and dinner while we played by the lake and lounged by the fire at the base of the mountain.

The trek to the glacier. Me, Tom, Ben and Britta our good buds from Santa Cruz, and two fly canadian kids we met along the way.

Mis crampones

Super bad guide number one

Super bad guide number two

Super bad glacier.



Tying in before dropping over the edge into a little glacier gulley.

Big crack in the glacier.

There are probably words for these things, but our guides spoke Aymara, so I don´t know them.

Climbing a big face of the glacier, an axe in each hand. So cool. But not particularly easy.

Made it to the top! I couldn´t make a fist when we were done, my hands were so exhausted.

A view of the top of Huyana Potosi with a fresh blanket of snow and an avalanche that had just come down.