alex chiang: web 6.0

After our last exciting episode (the one where I shat into a plastic bag), Cara and I ended up in La Paz, Bolivia.

For our next exciting adventure, we decided to embark on a mountain biking trip down the WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS ROAD — dum da daaaah!

At least, that’s what the gringos call it. The locals, on the other hand, call the road from La Paz to Coroico something else — “el camino del muerte”.

So for US $50, we paid for the privilege of riding up to the top of a peak named La Cumbre (in a minibus with 14 other clients) and coasting down on mountain bikes for a 3600m (11,800 ft) vertical descent.

Executive summary: it kicked ass.

Slightly expanded version: yes — riding down the WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS ROAD (dum da daaah!) was somewhat scary.

Often, the road is only wide enough for a single 18-wheeler truck to drive on, and so uphill traffic gets the right of way.
Downhill traffic must wait at little pullouts for uphill traffic to pass. If the two shall meet, then the downward bound traffic must back up to a pull out.

Also, downhill traffic must drive on the left. This is to afford the driver the best possible view of his outside wheels (so he doesn’t fall off the side of the mountain (guardrails? ha! hahahahahaha! stupid gringo! ha!)).

Quick stat #1: an average of 26 vehicles disappear on this road every year (one every two weeks).

Quick stat #2: The worst accident occurred when a driver drove his truck over the edge, killing himself and more than 100 passengers in 1983.

Quick stat #3: Last year, an Israeli girl died while on the very same bike tour (albeit with a different company) when she lost control of her bike and just flew off the edge. The fallout from that accident — the company stopped guiding for three days. (Our group enjoyed a nice snack of chocolate and bananas near her memorial.)

Bonus tidbit: Just last week, a truck fell off the edge, but the driver was able to jump out just in time.

The road is extremely heavily travelled, and our group of 16 gringos careening down it on mountain bikes in controlled chaos had to constantly avoid getting squashed like bugs by a fully loaded 18-wheeler (with the right of way) barrelling up in the opposite direction.

Free advice: if you ever decide to have the same adventure, make sure that you get a bike with a w-i-d-e seat. Four days later, my ass is still sore from the pounding it took (no — you may NOT quote me out of context).

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Adventure #2

The next day, back in La Paz, and looking for something to do, I decided to hike to La Muela del Diablo (the Devil’s Molar) and see what I could see.

After bouncing around in a minibus for half an hour (to the dismay of my ass), I was dropped off near the trail to la Muela.

Trying to find the exact direction I was supposed to head, I spoke to an old woman with no teeth, selling fruit juice. Due to my deficiencies in Spanish, and her deficiencies in dental hygiene, I couldn’t quite figure out what she was saying. But she kept repeating a few words over and over to me — “cuidado”, “peligroso”, and “muerte”. I thanked her for the advice and continued on my way.

Five minutes later, I was stopped by an extremely old man who also lacked teeth, and wanted to talk to me about la Muela. It turns out he was an old miner, and he was caught in a rockfall and showed me the stitches on his upper thigh (ugh) to prove it. Over 90 of his friends died that day. He wanted to give me advice, but I couldn’t understand a damn word he was saying, so 20 minutes later, I just thanked him and started walking away.

Further up the trail, I met another woman, who upon seeing a gringo headed towards la Muela, kept on saying “cuidado”, “peligroso”, and “muerte” to me. She also made the international hand signal of running her index finger across her throat. I thanked her as well, and continued on my way.

Finally, after a solid 45 minutes of upward hiking, la Muela came into sight. The thing looked pretty cool, and I slowly made my way towards the base.

There was a hiking trail up to the top, but since I fancied myself a rock climber, I picked out a line that I thought would
be a more adventuresome route to the top.

Getting to where I wanted to start was difficult because of a huge mound of fallen rocks and pebbles was in my way. As I climbed the mound of scree, every step caused the face of the mound to shift and slide downwards, so I could only make about three inches of upward progress for every step.

Luckily for me, Bolivians are terribly unconscious about environmental issues, and throw their litter wherever they
please. I found a nice section of rebar that I could use as a makeshift walking stick, and with that, made my way up to where I thought I was going to start climbing.

La Muela del Diablo looks like a real rock formation from far away, but upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a bunch of smaller rocks stuck together with mud, dirt, and twigs. In other places, where there is no mud, but just a face of rock that appears to be climbable, the rock just snaps off randomly in one’s hand.

So there I was, 20m off the ground, unroped and by myself, wondering if the next handhold I grabbed was going to just break and send me hurtling through space. I had already climbed over an overhanging section that I didn’t think I could climb back down, and I was feeling very small and very stupid, not to mention scared to wit’s end.

After a bit of deliberation, I decided that I could climb down afterall, and with sphincter clenched tight, I slowly made my way back down to the bottom.

Glad to be alive, I hightailed it back to La Paz and spent the rest of the day doing safe touristy things like visiting the
local self-supporting prison.

Happy hour in Cusco is a great thing. Most bars offer two for one mixed drinks, and so three nights ago, Cara and I decided to engage in a demonstration of the elasticity of alcohol sales.

For those of you who have not had a course in microeconomics, the following translation should suffice: we wanted to get rip roaring drunk for cheap.

Anyhow, after polishing off 4 gin and ginger ales in the space of an hour, we managed to slightly intoxicate ourselves. Just for good measure, I drank another two (albeit at full price (US $2 each)).

After stumbling home and laying in bed for a few minutes, Cara decided she wanted to engage in a cleansing purge of her gastrointestinal system. Since we didn’t have a garbage can, she was forced to find various plastic bags (which she doubled bagged) into which the vomitting occurred. She ended up filling two of them, and left them for me to dispose of the next morning.

We enjoyed a few chuckles about that one the next day. Or rather, I had a good time laughing at her, since I — clearly the drunker of the two — didn’t have to puke at all.

Which brings us now chronologically to two nights ago, wherein I engaged the Peruvian delicacy of cuy. Cuy is how the Peruvians write guinea pig.

Just in case you weren’t paying attention, I am indeed talking about GUINEA PIGS.

Now I’ve got a pretty strong stomach, and I’ve eaten some damn strange things in my life, so I thought I had a decent chance at eating this thing. But when it came, skinned and baked on my plate, with its head intact, ears clearly visible, claws curled up, and internal organs falling out, I could only think one thing: this thing is disgusting.

I managed to choke down a few bites, but had to stop after that. The taste was initially similar to chicken, but then right afterwards, turned into a foul rodent sort of taste. Not that I’ve eaten many rodents before, but just imagine what a rat tastes like, and there you go.

Yesterday, we took a bus to Puno, which is a town on the shore of Lake Titicaca. The eight hour bus ride could only be described as hellish, as the cuy from the previous night came to take its revenge.

Let’s just say that I also had gastrointestinal problems, although from the other end of the digestive tract.

Of course, this would not have been so bad had there been a working toilet on the bus. Alas, there was not.

And so, that is how I found myself, in a moment dripping with karma and irony, shitting into a plastic bag on a decrepit bus in the middle of Peru.

Hope you weren’t reading this during your lunch break or something.

Some random notes (because I’m not feeling focused enough to write a cohesive narrative type thing):

• Ancient Incan ruins. They litter the Peruvian landscape, and for some odd reasons, lots of people love them. I’m not one of them. However, we did go to Machu Picchu, and that was pretty cool. The ruins are admittedly nice looking amidst a beautiful setting of mountains, river valleys, and some snow capped peaks in the distance. This cynic *can* appreciate some things…
• The Incans were great planners and builders. I don’t know if I would call them great engineers, though, since they didn’t have to deal with the most important issue that ALL engineers have to deal with — limited resources. If I had a huge population of slave labor to do my bidding, I bet I could make some pretty cool stuff too.
• There are two ways to descend from Machu Picchu: take a bus down a long winding road (US $4.50!), or take (a lot) of stairs. There is a tradition of local boys to dress up in traditional garb and wave goodbye to the departing bus of tourists at the top. Then, as the bus makes its way downward, a boy will race down the stairs and wave at the bus at every switchback. At the end of the trip, the boy gets on the bus and asks for tips. They make about 20 soles (US $6) per day for doing so.
• Yours truly decided to race with one of the boys, and so there I was, sprinting down this Incan staircase at top speed, hoping I didn’t turn an ankle and fall flat on my face and break all my teeth. We must have made a strange sight for the tourists, as a small (10 years old?) boy dressed in Incan clothes and a dirty looking sweaty gringo with a ridiculous hat on, waving at every turn. I was able to keep up with the little bugger, but now my legs are killing me.
• I would pay upwards of US $100 for the following: - a hot shower - a cold drink that is actually cold - a meal with American sized portions (no wonder Peruvians are so short!)
• The hostel where we are staying is interesting. The showers are typical of many in South America. There is a single tap for cold water. The shower head consists of an ELECTRICAL contraption that “heats” the water immediately before it falls on your body in a sprinkling of tepid (giardia infested) water. If you are not careful and accidentally touch something metal in the shower, like the knob that controls the water, you get mildly shocked. If this doesn’t seem wrong to you in some way, you have problems.
• Peruvian paradox #1: There are about a grillion stray dogs (and other animals) roaming the streets. Also, ANYONE who drives a car here is certifiably crazy, and as far as we can tell, there aren’t actually any traffic laws. Yet, we have seen ZERO instances of roadkill. The animals here have street smarts that the pampered pets in America lack.
• Përuvian paradox #2: The health and sanitation standards here are lax, to put it mildly. Like most places in South America, you can’t drink tap water. Yet, you will NEVER get chicken in the States as fresh and tasty as you can get in Peru. The livestock doesn’t get any funky weird growth horomones or antibiotics or other stuff common to USA poultry.
• Huzzah to the United States for making it to the quarter-finals of the World Cup. If you are not watching and supporting our boys, then you are missing out on the greatest sporting event EVER. The level of athleticism and competition in il copa mundial is simply at another level that steroid filled ludicrously rich thugs in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, etc. will NEVER reach. I promise.
• Our plans have changed, and we’re no longer going to be in Peru for our entire trip. I’m going down to Lake Titicaca (the source of constant hours of giggling for third grade boys all over the US) on Friday, and then we’re headed to Bolivia. From there, we’re not totally sure what we’re going to do, but visiting Argentina and/or Chile are possibilities.
• Alex’s Pet Peeve: traveler’s who say they’re going to “do” a country. Example: “Oh — we did Thailand and the rest of southeast Asia. After Peru, we’re going to do Ecuador and etc.” What the hell does that mean, anyway? “Doing” a country makes travel sound so cheap and tawdry.
• Long trip insight: going to a place with NO idea of what you’re going to do or when you’re going to leave is dangerous. You get bogged down by day to day living, and the feeling of boredom and quiet desperation that you’re not doing anything can be overwhelming. It’s ok not to have the details planned out, but you should still have a big picture in mind while out and about for a long period of time. Travelers need to be like sharks — constantly on the move, and thinking about the next thing to do. It sounds like it could be stressful, but to do otherwise is to languish slowly and miserably until you just want to go home.

Ok — enough drivel out of me for now. Cheers!

Hola,

It’s been a while since my last communique, and so common sense would have you think that this email would be chock full of exciting adventures and mishaps.

Not so.

I left Huaraz a week ago for the tourist town of Cuzco, and my life has been nothing but mundane since. Everywhere you go, someone is trying to sell you something, whether it be a postcard, a shoeshine, a crappy watercolor, a meal, or something else.

In fairness, entrepreneurism and begging are only two points along a continuum, but frankly, I’m getting a bit tired of having to fend off all the locals out to make a quick sole ($0.33).

The city of Cuzco is brilliant, if one is a typical tourist and appreciates such cultural things as “art” and “ruins” and “history”. I am totally museum-ed out, and will probably break down whimpering and twitching if I have to look at yet another image of Christ being crucified.

Can’t wait to leave this town…

God loves drunks and fools, and although I’m feeling dizzy, the sensation is from high altitude and not Pisco Sours. Thus, I must fall into the second category.

Which, incidentally, is just fine by me, insofar as I am in at least one of the favored groups.

I had known myself to be a member of the idiot contingent (our king: George Walker Bush) for quite some time. That much was made known to me by my friends as I explained my summer plans:

Me: I think I’m going to go to Peru and climb some mountains. I know that I don’t have *any* mountaineering experience at all — none whatsoever — but I’ve read the relevant parts of Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills.

I don’t exactly have a partner lined up either, so the plan is to just see what I see in base camp. If worse comes to worse, I’ll just follow behind another party, and if they move left to avoid a crevasse, then I’ll move left too.

Friend: Oh.

Me: Say — are these crampons supposed to rattle around this much on my boots?

Friend: *blank stare of horror*

Slowly, I acquired the gear that I needed — or at least the gear that I thought I would need. Crampons (rattly), boots (leather), and ice axe (”security object” in airport parlance). There was some other stuff too, along the way, but mostly, that’s it.

And then I found myself in Huaraz with Cara. We did some fun things like sport climbing (in one of the premier alpine spots in the world!) in Monterrey, ice climbing on the snout of Pastoruri glacier (5000m), and the 4-day Llanganuco-Santa Cruz trek. After all this fun, she left Huaraz (and thus, my trip report) for Cuzco.

I spent one more day frantically trying to gather some last minute beta for Pisco, and managed to get my crampons to actually fit my boots (they had to be slightly modified with a hacksaw). The one comforting thought that I had was that everyone that I talked to was saying “Pisco es muy facil.”

For those of you that don’t speak Spanish, that is translated as:

Pisco is very easy. Even for you, gringo boy, you obvious walking lump of human incompetence, who has to ask for beta on the EASIEST mountain in the entire Cordillera Blanca, and perhaps even the ENTIRE WORLD. Please don’t die and ruin our tourism industry, as we enjoy it very much.

So I hopped on a bus and got dropped off at the appropriate hairpin turn, with a pack full of my gear and much more food than I could expect to eat. I walked uphill for much longer than I really wanted to, and 4 hours later, I was at the refugio.

The original plan was to continue past the refugio for another two hours to camp at the moraine camp. Ha! Things look so close on the map! Ha ha!

Instead, I crashed at the refugio, and woke up a few hours later at 7 pm. Wandering downstairs, I found two friendly New Zealanders, Wendy and Philip, and we chatted it up. (They referred to themselves as Kiwis once in a while, but I couldn’t (and still can’t) figure out whether I was allowed to refer to them as such. So I didn’t (and won’t).)

I told them of my new plan: to sleep for a few more hours and then make an attempt for the summit, directly from the refugio. They, not knowing about my painful lack of experience or logic, seemed to think my plan quite reasonable.

Aside: I think it’s a good thing that we (humans) can pick and choose the parts of ourselves we reveal to others. Otherwise, the knowledge that the person calmly sitting across from you is, in fact, a stark raving mad lunatic, would interact very strongly (and badly) with your own set of neuroses to the point where we’d all just be huddled in a corner, hugging our knees and rocking back and forth and whimpering softly wondering just what it was, exactly, that we’d done to deserve to have to exist with such a giant bunch of whackjobs (and vice versa).

So I went to bed and woke up around 2 AM feeling quite miserable. Sleeping at 3100m and then 4600m the next night isn’t exactly the best way to acclimatize. It was raining (quite luckily actually), and so I went back to bed, relieved that I didn’t have to climb the big scary mountain just yet.

The next morning, I decided to make my way to the next higher camp, in the moraine field, with Wendy and Philip, as to be a few hours closer to the summit. This act turned out to be one of the few good decisions that I made, as the path across the moraine field from the refugio to the camp site was difficult enough to follow in broad daylight, let alone the wee hours of the morning.

Wendy and Philip turned out to be better acclimatized than me by about a factor of a grillion, and after kindly waiting for me to catch up (wheezing and aching) a few times, I told them to just go on ahead, and that I would eventually find the campsite (or get eaten by a giant Andean condor that had mistaken my painfully slow movements for death throes).

At last, I got to the campsite (4900m), and after recovering, pitched my tent. In the meantime, my two New Zealander friends were practicing crevasse rescue. At this point, we thought that I was going to tie in on their rope (for my safety), so I paid attention to the point that I could.

After realizing that there would be no way for me to keep up with their speed (and the small fact that the webbing I brought could either be used for a harness or prussiks, but not both), they seemed relieved when I told them that they should just continue as per their original plan and not to worry about me.

Dinner conversation was typical climber’s talk, and it was when I learned about the extensive alpine experience that the other two had. Wendy let it slip that she thought Pisco was a punter’s mountain — very easy and not technical — and suddenly my trip clicked into focus.

It’s like that moment at the poker table, when you’re looking around wondering who the mark is, and you can’t find him, and you realize that it’s because it’s you.

I was the punter, and I really had no businesss being on that mountain, with my complete lack of experience or common sense, inadequate gear, and no plan for contingencies. But I had become comfortably dumb, and was going up anyway.

Aside: I’m going to switch into the present tense now. My Spanish is quite limited, and the preceding few paragraphs were written the way they were, because quite frankly, I miss being able to use the past tense correctly. I thank you for your indulgence.

It’s 4:30 AM now, and we’re on the move. The sky is brilliant and firey with stars, and the clarity is stunning. The air is cold and thin and hurts when you breathe sharply, but no matter, as the only thing to focus on is to put one foot in front of the other and continue upward.

An hour’s gone past, and I’ve finally made it to the edge of the glacier. Wendy and Philip are roping up, and I’m simply trying to catch my breath. They wish me good luck, and start off, not looking back. Wendy has stated that if I’m going to do something dangerous (ie, climb the mountain unroped), she doesn’t want to know about it.

My crampons go on easily, and they fit quite well, post hacksaw modification. My toes are a bit cold, and that worries me a bit, but obviously not enough, because now I’m actually on the glacier (my very first glacier!) and I’m actually climbing the mountain (my very first mountain!).

The snow is hard, and my crampons bite like teeth on crisp crepes. Once in a while, I try and have a drink of water, but the process is long and involved, as my Nalgenes have frozen shut. There must be a better method, but this punter doesn’t know it.

Ever so slowly, I make my way up to the col. I am taking one breath per step, but at least I’m constantly moving. The sun is starting to peak over the mountains to the east, and the clouds are starting to bloom iridescent shades of dark blood red and royal purple. It’s a constant battle of wanting to move onward versus taking pictures.

I’m moving along the ridge now with the sun shining brilliantly happily and altogether mercilessly on my unprotected face. Onward and onward I trudge, never making very fast progress at all. The only thing I can think about is to keep following the footsteps in front of me, and that maybe, some day I’ll be able to stop and go to sleep.

A party is coming down, and now I’m hearing an American voice tell me that he too was going solo, but turned around because of a collapsed snow bridge that he didn’t want to have to cross. I notice that he is roped up with a kind party that didn’t want to see such a nice young man fall into a deep and cold hole.

I don’t like hearing the words “collapsed snow bridge”, but if nothing else, I want to go see what it looks like, so I continue heading up. There is a party of three behind me, and they are gaining quickly, and maybe they won’t mind crossing the crevasse (and maybe they won’t mind letting me tie into their rope (thoughts of a punter at altitude)).

Wendy and Philip are coming towards me now, and I know that they’ve reached the summit. They ask how I’m doing, and I reply fine, and they reply back (in that cheery Kiwi (oops!) way) good on you! I ask about the snow bridge and they mention something about being able to step across the narrow crevasse, but that it’s something that I’ll have to figure out for myself whether I can handle it or not.

They continue down, and I continue up. That party of three is very close now, which makes me nervous, because I’m traversing across a face of rather soft snow, and I’m hoping very badly that they don’t try to pass me — at least not just yet.

Praise be that they wait until after the traverse to pass, and just as well. A big angry cloud has enshrouded the entire peak, and I can see about 10 feet in front of me. Warnings of disorientation in whiteout conditions echo through my brain, and I think about turning back — I really want to turn back — but I’m young and stubborn (danger, Will Robinson!) and dumb, so I keep going.

The three are taking turns jumping across something, and they’re not roped either. When I get to where they are, I can see both sides of the crevasse quite clearly, and it doesn’t look that wide.

Really, it doesn’t.

It wasn’t that wide, I think to myself, now on the other side. Thank gods it wasn’t that wide. But no matter, as there’s more trudging to be done, and so I do it.

One last steep section, and I see the Austrians ahead of me, and they’re stopped. I wonder if there’s another crevasse to be hopped, and they tell me that there’s nowhere to go.

I’m not going to summit, I think, and I’m disappointed, but that’s ok. And then I understand that they mean that there’s nowhere to go but down, because we’re on top.

And so, I’m standing on the summit (my very first summit!), the summit of Pisco (5752m), wrapped in a blanket of cloud, and unable to see a single damn view, but the punter has made it to the top of the punter’s mountain!

I ask one of the Austrians to take my picture (that probably won’t come out because I’m shooting ISO 100 but even a dark smeary smudge will be enough to satisfy me) and it’s 11 AM, and I’ve been trudging for a long time now, and now I have to trudge back to my tent way below, but at least I’ll get to sleep soon, which is good because this punter is tired.

Sweet.

Mountaineering sounds a lot more fun than it actually is.

Don’t get me wrong — there’s a lot to be said for getting to the summit of a big mound of rock, snow, and ice (even if it’s cloudy as all hell, and you can see only 15 ft. in any direction), but unless you are either:

• a) famous enough to warrant an entire support team dedicated to you
• b) lame enough to have to hire a guide (and porters and cooks) to drag your sorry ass up the mountain

you’ll have your work cut out for you.

Sadly, I am not in category (a), and luckily, I’m not quite in category (b).

So it came to pass that I had to carry all my own gear and food for four days up an annoyingly steep trail for a lot longer than I wanted to have to hike, avoiding burro poop (both fresh and dried) all the while.

On summit day, the sky at 3:30 AM (when I started) was quite clear. Due to my poor acclimatization, I moved slower than frozen snot, and by the time I made it to the summit at 11 AM, it was enveloped in a gigantic murky cloud. Rather anticlimatic, methinks.

But I made it, eh? So — Alex’s first mountain turned out to be somewhat of a success.

Pisco — 5752m (18,981 ft)