La Paz - Being sick, climbing Huayna Potosí, and visiting the Yungas...

The first few days in La Paz we didn’t do a lot. It was great to meet lots of other cyclists once again, so we spent a lot of time talking, walking through the city, or just doing nothing. Eventually I got really sick too, a thing that seemed to be really common here in La Paz, so another few days of rest were necessary. Through David, an Austrian cyclist we met at the Casa de Ciclista, we also got to know Christian, a Swiss backpacker. The four of us decided that we’d like to climb Huayna Potosí together, one of the easier 6000ers around La Paz. So on the 28^th of June we all met in the office of an adventure agency, however, they had some problems with the transport, so we had the chance to go for a second breakfast before we left in a minibus towards the base camp at 4800 masl. After lunch we hiked up to the high camp at a bit more than 5100 masl, it was a rocky hike, lots of loose stones but nothing very difficult. Nevertheless, we could feel the altitude, it's a lot more exhausting to hike up there than back in Switzerland and I noticed that I was breathing like crazy! At the high camp we got some hot tea and cookies and shortly later we were already served our dinner and at around 6 pm everyone was in bed, as the alarm was set to midnight...

High camp toilet at 5130 masl

However, as warned by our guides, none of us could really sleep. Apparently people are hardly ever able to sleep at altitudes above 5000 masl if they are not used to it. So when the alarm rang at midnight, all of us were still really sleepy. It was good to get a coffee before leaving the high camp in the middle of the night at around 1 am. Stefan and David formed a rope team together with their guide, Franz, and Christian and I, together with our guide David, formed another rope team. David turned out to be the better guide, as he insisted on hiking really slowly and therefore we hardly had to take any breaks. Franz, in contrast, hiked much faster and took lots of breaks... The climb wasn't difficult, there was just one spot where we had to use our pickax and the last slope was pretty steep, otherwise the only difficulty was the altitude.

On our way up to Huayna Potosí 

After hours of hiking, finally the sun rose... :-) 

Astonishingly, Christian and I were the first to made it to the summit just before sunrise; shortly after us Stefan and David arrived as well and then more and more people joined. We had some hot tea at the top to celebrate our success, but soon it was so crowded at the summit and we were so frozen that we started our hike down again.

Finally! We made it to the summit! :-)

Gorgeous view from the summit of Huayna Potosí

One of the sunrises I enjoyed most...

On our way back down we finally saw how beautiful this mountain is...

We were all really happy that we made it, it was a great experience!

The four of us: Me, Christian, David, and Stefan -
Happy but tired once we were down again...

Back in La Paz the four of us went to a restaurant and cooked a delicious lasagna in the evening, as we definitely had something to celebrate! After this we needed another day of rest, especially as we really needed to sleep a lot, the night before climbing Huayna Potosí was quite short... After going that high up, the next mini-trip led us quite far down: We wanted to cycle the most dangerous road of the world, also named "Death Road" and spend a day in the Yungas... So together with a German cyclist we met at the Casa de Ciclista in La Paz, we left early in the morning and cycled up to the Yungas bus station in La Paz. From there we took a bus to La Cumbre, a pass north of La Paz, as we were to lazy to cycle up these 1000 m of altitude... Up there we took our bikes of the bus and unlike all the "normal" tourists who cycle this road with a tour agency, we didn't take the new, paved road to the entrance of the death road, but the old, unpaved "road" (or what's left of it...), where we had no traffic at all and where we could avoid the hundreds of tourists who cycle the death road every day...

Hmmm - And where's the road???

The old road down towards the Yungas

Even though we were constantly cycling downhill we didn't advance very fast, the road was too bad for that and we were pretty happy to have good brakes. It was pretty fascinating how the landscape changed: From one moment to the other we didn't find ourselves in the arid altiplano-landscape anymore, suddenly we were surrounded by lots and lots of vegetation and by the time we got to the beginning of the famous death road we were in the middle of a rain forest.

Entrance of the death road - By now we were already in the rain forest :-)

We were lucky, as all the commercial tours were ahead of us, so we had the road for us and could really enjoy the beautiful, green, and wet vegetation surrounding us. It was easy to imagine that this road was extremely dangerous when all the cars had to us it, as there's a single lane and often all there is just next to the street is a huge cliff...

Once below the clouds we had a beautiful view over the Yungas

From time to time it was better not to look down...

Adventurous bridge...

Additionally, the road is pretty bad, we were shaken a lot and honestly, once we made it to the end of this street I was glad no having to control my handlebar constantly anymore. 

After weeks in the Altiplano all this green was like balsam for our eyes!

Water and dirt road = a lot of mud

Our first sight of Coroico

However, at the end of the death road there isn't a lot, so we had to climb another 500 m of altitude on awesome cobblestone to get to the handsome town of Coroico.

The steepness was actually enough of a challenge,
it wouldn't have had to be cobblestone too...

On our way up we met a Czech couple of cyclists and we spent the evening with them...

Coroico

The next day, Lars, Stefan, and I decided to hike to some waterfalls close to Coroico, which turned out to be quite an adventure, as the trail wasn't really a trail anymore and the waterfall (there were supposed to be three, but we only found one) was a joke, it looked like it was the drinking water supply for the surrounding villages and accordingly there was a big fence around it and lots of pipes all around... From there we walked to the next village and took a bus back to Coroico and then another bus back to La Paz. The bus driver was driving so terribly that actually I was more scared on the new, paved road than the day before on the death road... :p