South America

Lots of things have happened since the last post.

I decided to go on another mountain biking trip. I ended up meeting a guy who runs some pretty aggresive downhill mountian biking trips and decided to go to the nearby town of Sorata with him. It turned out there was a huge festival in Sorata (Fri, Sat, Sun) so it worked out great. We left La Paz on Saturday morning at 10 AM and drove 2 hours towards Sorata. The final leg of the trip to Sorata was a 4 hour downhill ride on a very narrow Inca trail. The others in the group were not paying tourists like myself...they were experienced downhill mountain bikers with all their own gear. I was definitly the novice of the group. Within the first 10 minutes I found myself at the bottom of a 6 foot sink hole because I was not able to orient myself correctly to pass a narrow 6 to 8 inch wide section of the rocky path. I think I had the guide worried for a moment that I wouldnt be able to keep up, but after that incident I kept up with them pretty well. Below you can see the narrow Inca trail that we were riding on.

Sorata Mountains
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At the end of the ride I was exhausted and sore. Travis, the guide, said it was time to take the bikes to the storage unit and I was happy that I had made it through the day without any injurys. Next thing I know he bombs down a huge flight of stairs. There were little kids all around me encouraging me to go as well. It was too late to chicken out but I knew that if I crashed and burned the kids would have a field day making fun of me. Luckily I made it down without incident.

The next day I relaxed in Sorata and enjoyed the festival. They had even converted their football stadium into a bull ring for their annual bull fight. It didnt really turn out to be a bull fight though....they didnt try to kill the bull, they were basically just teasing the bull for awhile.

Bullfight Spectators

After taking a bus back to La Paz I checked into Adventure Brew hostal. It turned out to be pretty nice, clean and had a free pancake breakfast in the morning. On top of all that, it has its own micro-brewery and every night that you stay there you get a free beer.

The next morning I wandered around La Paz with the intention of seeing two sites, the Coca Museo and the San Pedro Prison. The Coca Museo was intersting but small. It talked about the significance of the coca plant for the local people, the changes that occured when the Spanish arrived and a little about the production of cocaine.

After the Coca Museo I headed to San Pedro Prison to have a look. An English guy I met told me about a book called MARCHING POWDER (I think) that is set in San Pedro Prison and it sounded pretty crazy. I expected there to be some sort of tour or something but what I saw when I arrived was very surprising. As I walked along the sidewalk in front of the prison (which happens to be in the middle of a neighborhood) I looked to my right and there, 10 feet off of the sidewalk, was a large gate with hundreds of prisoners peering through the bars. Some guy form Holland starts yelling at me in English to help him because he has no food and no money. According to the kid who read the book, the prisoners inside have to buy their own food and can even buy their own property inside the prison. None of the prisoners had uniforms on, it looked like they all had their normal clothes on from they day they were thrown in there. I asked the guy what happened (still standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the neighborhood) and he told me he was in there for drugs. How long? I asked. 28 months.....WITH NO TRIAL, he yelled back. After a few more minutes talking with him and the guards he wanted me to come in and talk to him and I think the guards were going to allow it. However, the thought of going too close and being stuck in there for 28 months for no reason scared me a bit so I bailed back to the hostal.

Next, I decided to catch a night bus to Potosi to check out the silver mines. This would be my first night bus of the trip but I had a nice seat that reclined almost all the way into a bed so I didnt think it would be too bad. I actually slept pretty well, which turned out to be part of my problem. I had heard a few stories lately about backpacks being stolen from the bottom cargo hold of the bus so I decided to take my bag on board with me. I had my small bag under my feet and my bigger bag directly over my head. After reading for a bit I fell asleep like everyone else. When I woke up in the morning, my large bag that I had stashed over my head was gone. The bus had made a stop or 2 in the middle of the night and someone made off with my bag. All he (or she) really got out of the deal was a nice backpack filled with random half dirty clothes and a cheap sleeping bag. Now I´m travelling really light with just a small shoulder bag. I went to the market today and bought some sweatpants, 3 shirts, 3 pairs of underwear and 3 pairs of socks for about 30 USD. I think this setup should at least keep me warm until I make it down to Santiago.

Even though my bag just got ¨nicked¨ as the English say, I decided not to let it bring my trip to a standstill. After I filled out a police report (just for the hell of it) I headed out on a tour to check out the Silver mines. This turned out to be pretty intense. First we suit up in some miner gear and head to the miners market where we are supposed to buy presents for the miners. Did I mention this is an active mine that is being mined by hand by kids as young as 15 years old? Anyway, we bought them some coca leaves, some soda and some dynamite. Yeah, it was sick how easy it was for me to walk into a store and buy 2 sticks of dynamite (Nitroglycerin) and 2 small plastic bags of Ammonium Nitrate. After a brief tour of the silver processing plant we dove into the mine. It looked exactly like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Very narrow dark passageways with a narrow train track setup running down the middle and Bolivian miners running everywhere. Once we were in a narrow tunnel and heard a train of rocks barreling down the tracks....the guides yelled and we all had to run out of the tunnel to a wider area before we were crushed by the 3 small train cars full of stone. As we made our way deeper and deeper into the mine we stopped, talked to the miners and gave them presents. Apparently, some of the miners work a few 8 hour shifts a week followed by a 24 hour shift. Crazy. There were many differenty mining ¨groups¨as they were called (like cooperatives) and some were well off and some were not. The well off ones had electric motors to hoist the huges baskets of stone from the depths of the mine, small gas powered tractor things to pull the train cars of stone out of the mine, and pneumatic jackhammers. The groups with less money had do to all the labor by hand: hoisting, pushing carts, and hammering with a baby sledge hammer. Wow. It was tough to walk through the mine without thinking of the possibility of an earthquake ruining my day. After making it out of there, losing my backpack didnt seem like such a big deal.

Mine Entrance

Train used to transport rocks

I think this guy said he has been working in this mine for 25 years.

Mine access tunnel

Me in the mine hoping for no earthquakes

Me holding dynamite

Me in mine access tunnel

Oh yeah, we kept one of the sticks of dynamite and the guide showed us how to arm it and then we set it off outside the mine. Something tells me that this tour would not be allowed in the States (or most other countries for that matter)...perhaps a little too dangerous. I´m looking forward to a calm and hopefully safe next few days.

Tomorrow morning I´m headed to meet up with Scott again to tour the Salt Flats of south western Bolivia. After that I´ll head south through Argentina on land or fly directly to Santiago a day or 2 after Scott.

Send emails.......and don´t worry about the backpack, Ill live. I´m sure whoever stole it is in much worse shape than I am.

Andy

Yo,

Here is the phone number that you can call to leave me a message.

614-364-4282

This number will allow you to leave a voicemail on my SKYPE account which I usually check at least once a week.

Inness is the only person thats been leaving me messages, thanks Inness, so I wondered if the rest of you had this number or not.

Feel free to give me a call and then, if the computer I'm on has a mic, I will be able to call you back for only 2 cents a minute.

Later,
Andy

I know of a few friends and family that read this blog regularly and I really appreciate it. However, Im wondering if there are many others reading this that Im not aware of. If you are reading this blog regularly but I havent talked to you in awhile, please send me an email and let me know.

andrewcharleshughes@gmail.com

Thanks,
Andy

Yesterday I did the Bolivia Death Road mountainbiking trip. This road is very famous for its high number of deaths per year. I think 43 or so have died this year so far. The trip started at around 4700 meters at 9AM and over the next 5 hours we made our way down to 1300 meters. Overall the trip was amazing. The first half was paved and very fast downhill. The second part is the dirt and rocks and is the famous death road section.

About 3 months ago a large truck fell off the edge and many people died. The people from the surrounding area held protests in La Paz because they were angry that it was taking too long to open the NEW road which is a lot safer. As a result the government rushed the opening of the new road and now most vehicle traffic takes the new road. This was nice because we didnt have to deal with traffic on the way down.

Here is a picture showing what it was like at 4700 meters at the start of the trip.

During second half of the trip the road became very narrow.

Here is an example of what often happens when the truck drivers are too tired to navigate the tight turns and narrow road.

A good pic showing how steep the cliff is.

At the end of the trip the climate was dramatically different. It was like 75 degrees and sunny. Amazing.

Here is where we had a nice buffet lunch that was included in the tour.

Beautiful mountain range near La Paz

PS:

One of the guys in our group was from Italy. The below picture shows the worst fashion disaster I have ever seen.

Just a quick update:

2 days ago I crossed from Peru into Bolivia. I spent 2 nights in Copacabana and took a boat trip out onto Lake Titicaca to check out some islands. My first night in Bolivia the whole town lost power during a huge thunderstorm so we had to wander back to the Hostel in complete darkness. People told me that things work kind of upside down and backwards in Bolivia and the power outage was the first indication that it might be true. The other thing I heard was that Bolvia was very inexpensive. The fact that I paid $1.39 per night for my hotel room is proof....amazing.

Now I´m in La Paz and I´m getting up early to do some downhill mountain biking in the morning. I think we are going to start at 4670m above sea level and a few hours later we arrive at the bottom which is less than 2000m so it should be an intersting trip. I went to the shop today to check out the bikes. They are pretty cool bikes that cost about $3500 dollars and have full front and rear suspension and front and rear disk brakes. I´ll try to have some pics up soon.

Scott and I made it back from our 3 day adventure from Cusco to Machu Picchu so here is the recap...

On Friday night we packed our bags with the essential items. Tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, about 2 days worth of food and approx. 5 liters of water. We were not sure when and where we would be able to buy food and water so we decided to play it safe and take more than usual.

On Saturday morning we left Cusco in a shared taxi headed for the small town of Santa Maria. There is not much to see in Santa Maria but it was a perfect starting point for our hike. We set up camp on a concrete slab inside a hostal courtyard and then headed to dinner. The reastaraunt we chose only had one dish...chicken. I was skeptical but it turned out to be some of the best chicken I've ever had, no joke. If you're ever headed to Santa Maria let me know and I'll tell you were to find it.

We woke up a little sore and wet on Sunday due to the concrete slab we were sleeping on and the rain in the middle of the night. Within an hour we were hiking towards the next distination, Santa Teresa. As I mentioned before we had decided to do this trek without a guide so we didnt really know what we were getting into. After about 2 or 3 hours the trail got a bit tricky and we were started to wonder if we were going the right way. We saw a mountain hut and decided to go ask if we were on the right track. If not, we were prepared to turn back and find another way (taxi) to Santa Teresa. About 20 minutes after we arrived at the moutain hut a guide showed up leading 2 Spanish guys. We decided to follow them for the next leg of the trip because the path was so confusing.

Bridge ruined by a landslide on the way out of Santa Maria. Landslides are very common here.

During the next few hours we hiked an Inca trail along the edge of a mountain. The view were amazing. See photos below.

Just relaxing and enjoying the amazing view.

Scott headed into the dense Jungle

Me near the highest point of the trail for the day

Scott carefully navigating the narrow path along the Inca trail.

After a few more hours, a few bridge crossings and a rickety cable car river crossing we made it to Santa Teresa. We found a legit campsite with actual grass (we were thrilled to have a grass campsite after the concrete the previous night). Take a look at the view from our tent on Monday morning. Notice the family of chickens walking past.

We expected Monday's hike to be less challenging than the previous day and that turned out to be true. The day started out with another cable car crossing. The only difference was that this time we were solo (without guide and Spanish guys) which made the crossing a bit more exciting. See picture below of Scott in the tiny little basket crossing the river.

Here is a pic of Scott as we were hiking towards Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu.

Half way to Aguas Calientes we reached the hydroelectric plant where the road stopped and we had to decide to wait 2 hours for the train to Aguas (8 USD), or just walk along the tracks. We decided to walk along the tracks and we made it to Aguas shortly after the train.

Taking a break along the train tracks on the way to Aguas.

Here Scott is trying to use commando tactics. He thought he could calculate the trains distance from the vibrations in the track....what a dork.

On Tuesday morning we decided to get up at 330AM so that we could start our hike by 4AM. Our hope was that we would be able to make it up to the MP gate before the first tour bus arrived. Without our large backpacks we were able to make it up to the gate in only an hour and 20 minutes. We were first in the line!!! It was great because the tour group behind us had hiked up early as well because they REALLY wanted to be first in line. They sounded pretty disappointed that we beat them!!
When the gates opened at 6AM we ran up the path which rose in elevation a few hundred feet in order to get the first pictures. The goal was to get some pictures without any schmucks in the background.

Check out these pictures from around 6AM before the clouds had lifted. It looks like we are floating.

After the first couple shots we headed to a lookout point on the other side of the ruins. We were with some Ecuadorian kids and we had the whole area to ourselves so we broke out the Fiesta Caja and played some Radiohead and some techno for about 45 minutes as the clouds lifted......Amazing....

Next we up another 1000 or 1500 feet to Wayna Picchu. There were quite a few ruins up there as well and the view of MP from up there were great.

Below are some other pictures from between 10AM and 2 PM that turned out pretty decent...

Trying to be fancy with the camera....I don't really know what I'm doing though.

In the afternoon we just chilled out on one of the lower terraces and listened to music. Here is a pic of Scott dancing....the Fiesta Caja was really pumping out some killer base hits that afternoon.

This view shows the road that the bus takes up to MP. We hiked right up the middle of the switchbacks (through the jungle) instead of following the road.

Another view of MP.

We are leaving Cusco today to head towards MP.
I'm really excited because we decided to do it without a guide. Yesterday we rented camping gear and went grocery shopping for food. Today we leave by collectivo taxi to a small town about 5 hours away. We will camp one night there. The next day we plan to walk about 7 hours and camp at another town. On Monday we will spend a few hours walking to a hydroelectric power plant and then probably catch a quick 3PM train to the town at the base of Machu Picchu. The alternative is to just walk alongside the tracks for a few more hours (depending on how our legs feel). Early Tuesday morning (4AM) we will walk up to MP for the day!!

FYI...Scott and I Hasselhoffed the computers in the Hostal last night.