Chacaltaya Mountain

On our last day in La Paz we took a day trip up to Chacaltaya Mountain. Chacaltaya used to be a ski resort (the highest in the world, and the first in South America) but you can't ski there any more since the glacier began melting and was completely gone by 2009. We figured it would be one of our last chances to easily get above 5000 meters (we'd only been to about 4900 meters previously). We would take a bus part way up the mountain and then hike the remainder. The bus took us up thorugh La Paz, and El Alto, where the working class of La Paz mainly live.

That night, it had snowed in La Paz, making the narrow dirt road up the mountain even more challenging for the bus. On the way up to the mountain kids were making snow creatures.... we make snow men... they make snow llamas and snow rabbits!

  

The bus couldn't make it up to the base, but the driver was determined to try, and we ended up getting off the bus (along with everyone else) because the driver was pretty much backing up over the edge of the cliff to "get a run at" the next switchback. We started hiking at around 5000 meters, and were told we wouldn't have time to make it to the summit at 5300m, so we turned around at around 5150 meters. 150 meters doesn't sound like a lot but you move pretty slowly at this altitude, even if you are acclimatized.

We packed a lunch for ourselves, one which has kind of become our staple market lunch around here: buns, a can of tuna, a huge avocado, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Absolutely amazing, and all made possible by one handy swiss army knife (thanks Rob!).

We ended up waiting forever for half the group (including the guide) who decided (without notifying us) that they were going to try and summit the mountain anyways. We all got tired of waiting, and the bus driver made another attempt at trying to drive part way up, but we got off again because the driver was insane, and we didn't feel safe in the least. Here is a view of La Paz from El Alto on the way back down.

That night, Kayleigh, Russ and us took a night bus from La Paz to Uyuni to meet back up with Dewey (who headed down there a day earlier) for a 4-day salt flat & Bolivian desert tour which we had arranged from La Paz.  Keep posted, this next post might take awhile to get up because there are so many great pictures, and our internet connection is frightfully bad... we'll get it up as soon as we can!