| Jeff Poulter & Graham Tillotson: 5th October 2004 |
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La Paz - Day 1
La Paz is a large city of about one and a half million, set in an enormous bowl-shaped valley. The city has been built up the sides of the valley so that thousands of little houses all seem to have been built one on top of the other. At night the town centre is surrounded by a million fairy lights, high up, in all directions except one. That point of the compass is reserved for mount Illimani, a snow-capped giant that is the glory of La Paz. At about 6.30 in the evening just as the sun sets, its low light paints Illimania blush pink. Glorious sight.
As Gareth had flown out to join us, Graham and I decided that for one day at least we should play tourists. We talked it over and decided to visit mount Chacaltaya about 40km outside La Paz. At the top of the mountain is a ski resort purported to be the highest place in the world accessible by road. To go higher anywhere you need to climb. So, for the princely sum of $10 apiece we booked the last three places on a minibus leaving early the following morning.
Mount Chacaltaya
Tuesday dawned bright and sunny and before eight we squeezed our way into the Nissan bus to join six other turisticos, three Dutch, one French, one Australian, and one German. The bus ground its way up the steep side of the valley out of the city centre and bumped its way over appalling roads through the grubby urban hinterland. Once out in the country we made better time until we turned onto the road to mount Chacaltaya. This was another dirt and gravel affair with still some 20km to go to the top of the top of the world. Sitting in the back, I was glad when we arrived. The road to the top was single lane winding its way switchback after switchback to 18000ft. From miles away we could see Chacaltaya and later, the even higher mount Potosi. In the lower mountain ranges a lot of metal, notably tin, has been mined over the years. The whole area is rich in minerals which shows in the colour of the rock sides and the lakes. Huge slab rock faces are green or rust or blue or white. The many lakes which seemed like puddles so far below us also sported garish colours. The clear ones reflected the blue sky; some were cloudy with rock flour so they were emerald green; some lakes had collected tin mine run off so were chrome yellow; and most spectacularly, two lakes were deep crimson red. I have no idea what mineral causes that. I've never seen anything like it before.
When we got to the top we were given mate de coca (coca tea) to help with the altitude. It may even do that but it tastes quite nice and I'm sure its illegal anywhere else to make tea with a handful of coca leaves. Wrapped up warm yet wearing sun hats against the mega-high UV, we set out to climb the last 180 metres to the summit of Chacaltaya. It was exhausting even though we tackled it slowly and sensibly but at that altitude, there just ain't no oxygen. As we walked to the top we scrabbled over igneous rock very high in iron. The shale-like rock had broken into geometric shapes, some like shards of glass, others rectangular and cuboids, but all a deep rust red. The combination of angular shapes and rust made the mountain side look like a scrap yard.
It would take too long to describe the views from the top. But briefly,
below were the coloured lakes, to the side mount Potosi completely snow
covered, at the head of a range of other snow capped mountains which receded
into the distance. In the opposite direction away in the distance was La
Paz, and all around were brown hills and black mountains ranges all smeared
with slabs of mineral colours. Everyone took squillions of photographs
and, when we had stopped panting, gently slid down the slope to the waiting
minibus. The descent down that goat track with a 5000ft unguarded drop
on one side was pretty scary, but it got worse.
Bandits - Phew we were lucky to tell the tale !!!
We had been driving about five minutes when the driver suddenly braked hard, slammed the bus into reverse and started to back up the hill fast. I was sitting in the back so I was taken by surprise and jerked forward. As I did so I saw a man with a black balaclava climb up onto the road from the drop, run to the side of the bus, pointing a gun at the driver and screaming. Our driver decided on the better part of valour and stopped. Immediately he was hauled out of his seat and the side door of the bus yanked open. He, along with the gunman, got in the back while our guide, a woman called Carmen, was removed from the other front seat with equal ceremony and also bundled into the back. Three more gunmen, all hooded, one with what looked like a second world war sten gun, got into the front and started to scream at us "baja, baja" which I and the others took to mean get our heads down. We obliged. One gunman started the bus and turned off the road onto the hillside and drove much too fast over rough moorland, the bus bouncing off rocks and hillocks, crunching and crashing. I sneaked a couple of looks at the gunmen trying to decide whether they were political activists intent upon kidnapping us or straight forward robbers. They all look the same to me.
After ten minutes or so of bouncing off the ceiling and sides of the bus, it suddenly stopped. All the gunmen except one seemed very nervous, and one was also very young, maybe a late teenager. The calm one, obviously the leader, was much older, perhaps in his forties. They all had appalling BO. We were constantly being reminded by the waving of automatics to keep our heads down and one by one, we were pulled out of the bus and made to lie face down on the ground. All our pockets were searched, wrist watches removed and finally our shoes as well. By this time I was pretty sure it was just a robbery. And, really weird, I didn't feel frightened at all at any time. All our stuff and 22 shoes were stuffed into rucksacks and bin liners which they had presumably brought with them, as they stripped each of us of our possessions.
Then they started panicking and yelling "vamos" at each other. (Gareth heard a mobile phone ring and we think it was a fifth robber, a look-out man, telling them that there was a truck coming along the road.) One jumped into the minibus, U-turned it and roared off down the hill. However, he neglected to wait for the other three who ran as fast as they could with arms full of swag, chasing the bus. A bit Ealing comedy.
We all got up off the ground and re-assured each other that we were all OK. Trouble was it was bloody cold. We were still 5000m high and a cold wind was blowing strongly. I was dressed only in a T-shirt but, thank goodness, found my sweatshirt which they had dropped; otherwise I would have been in trouble. Well, more trouble that is.
No shoes, but alive and kicking !!!
Having assessed the situation - no shoes, 40km from La Paz, desolate mountain, one bottle of water and bloody cold - the English tried humour. Hey ho. So we started to walk down the side of the mountain to a road we could see in the distance. It was pretty spiky underfoot and Graham and I had but silk socks on which is the equivalent of bare feet. Gareth found a shoe which he put on and which eventually gave him a blister. The others were hardy trekking types so they has double thickness hiking socks (well, that's the version from the Brits). Almost immediately we saw a truck coming in the distance, billowing clouds of dust. Claude, the Frenchman with the thickest socks, ran towards the road as we hobbled in his wake. The truck driver stopped, took a long look at Claude and drove away. Only a Gringo, after all.
So there was nowt for it but to walk. We walked for two hours covering five or six kilometres of rocky road. It were right painful and best forgotten. Eventually a farmer drove past in a pick up and, er, picked us all up to massive relief all round. I have never been so grateful to place me tootsies on a nice flat, smooth, metal truck deck. Half an hour later he dropped us at the pumping station of La Paz's reservoir which was guarded by two policemen, reasoning that they would help. There we were, eleven of us, burnt crisp by the sun, footsore and by this time without water. So what did Bolivia's finest plods do ? Why they locked the gate in case we should try to get into their pumping station. And, no, they didn't have a phone so piss off. True, true.
We then commandeered a water company truck which drove us a couple of miles to the furthest outskirts of La Paz where there was a sort of bus stop. Buses here are of all shapes and sizes but the most popular are the colectivos, small mini buses. Our guide persuaded (we had no money of course) the driver of one to take us back to our hotel.
Where's the police now !!!
By this time the nine 'survivors of Chacaltaya' had pooled stories, life histories and details of travels to date. We were now all the best of friends. While the hotel made us tea, Carmen called the police who duly arrived. After an hour they decided that as they were the emergency police and this, clearly, was no longer an emergency, they couldn't help us. Try the tourist police. Nope. Try the policia nacional (the dickwits who were guarding the pumping station). We were beginning to feel very important and that every care was being exercised to ensure our safety.
Claude, our Frenchman, had had enough by this time so he called his embassy who told him to sit tight and they would come back to him.
Eventually Carmen rounded us all up to go down to the La Paz police headquarters. All except Claude, who was awaiting his embassy. We trooped to the head nick where we were shown into a large unkempt office with four or five non-matching desks and three upright manual typewriters. There were two computers: on one a chap was trying to compose a letter of which he has written three paragraphs and never got any further in all the time we were there; the other computers were wired to a music website which played bad, bad Bolivian pop.
Taking down our particulars !!!
A policeman was assigned to take our statements. He asked us each to make a list of everything that was missing and its value in US dollars. He then wrinkled his forehead at lists in Dutch, German, English and Australian. Carmen tried to translate while he then re-wrote everything, by hand, into a lined ledger, in Spanish. By 8.30 we had been there for about four hours with Gareth, Graham and I having consumed but one cup of tea since 7.00 that morning when we had a single bread roll each. To say that we were upset, scandalized, angry and frustrated would have been to put it mildly. Insults were ringing loud and clear in several languages. Then Claude arrived with a minder from the French embassy. M'sieur minder had chauffeured him around to have new passport photographs taken, bought him coffee and snacks, had a whip round for some money and now arrived at the plod shop to kick Bolivian ass.
We were told to return the next morning at 9.00 to pick up copies of the police report in order to claim from our respective insurance companies, so we de-camped to a restaurant and indulged in gallows humour, group therapy, and beer until midnight. The Bolivian authorities took a heavier slagging that the bandits.
Jeff 05.10.04 |
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