Arica and La Paz

I decided to spend my last few days in Bolivia on the warm beaches of Arica in Chile, with my girlfriend, the journey from Cochabamba to Arica took 16 hours, but only because we were made to change buses in the way, and we had to wait a couple of hours in the open waiting for our connection bus, typical occurrences when dealing with Bolivia's unreliable bus companies. We started at Cochabamba at an altitude of 2800 meters, but before descending to the sea level at Arica, the road goes through the Altiplano, reaching a height of over 4000 meters, though offering a more spectacular scenery than the usual flat and dull Altiplano scenery, cone shaped, snow covered mountains rise along side the road offering amazing views, after the Bolivian and Chilean check points, the road starts to descend, a descend of 4000 meters, and the land scape changes to an arid desert, in fact the most arid region in the world.


Arica is a beach resort city, that Chile won from Peru in the war of the Pacific, we arrived so late to the city, that we decided to take the first the hotel we encountered near the terminal, the next day we moved to Hotel Saint George, which looked much better in the Internet pictures then in reality, there was a lot of maintenance work going on, and the outside pool was closed, but that might just be because of the lack of water, anyway all the simple rooms were booked, and the only one available with the high end one with a Jacuzzi, so we took it, can't complain about the quality of the room or the Jacuzzi, but we decided not stay more than one night, as it was rather expensive. In the afternoon we went for a walk around the beaches and the city center, we ate at a MacDonald's, something I usually don't do, but I allow my self to do it once in a few month while on vacation, anyway we decided which beach we liked, and the next morning we went there, I found a group of men and kids playing football and joined them for a game, after the game I went for a swim to cool down, I am not sure if I would have done if I did not feel so hot from the football game, as the water is rather cold. The sun sets were lovely though, and we made sure we were at the beach at the time of sun set, on both days we were in Arica.


The next morning I took my bus to La Paz and Mauge took her bus to Cochabamba, and I had the feeling that a phase of my life was coming to and end, and that a new one was starting. The journey to La Paz took nine hours, I went down in la Cecha in el Alto de La Paz, close to the airport, with all the strikes and the blockades going on, I did not want to take the risk that a sudden blockade is announced, and I would not be able to reach the airport, I checked into a hotel close to the airport, it gets damn cold here in the night, as it is still the Altiplano here, 4000 meters height, with day night extreme temperature difference associated with it, the hotel does not have heating, so I have to be in bed to stay warm in the night. Tomorrow morning I fly to Lima, and in the evening to Amsterdam, landing on 17:;40 on the next day, Wednesday, in Amsterdam, I will take the train to Eindhoven were I will stay for a couple of days before going to Utrecht.

Climbing

The nice thing about climbing, is that it is a low investment, low effort sport, the equipment is much cheaper than that of skiing, diving or paragliding, and you can always find many climbing sites near were you live (unless you live in the Netherlands), despite my fear of heights I decided to try to get into the sport. AndesXtremo the company I did a Paragliding course with, offers climbing courses as well, my guides were Marcelo and Santiago, both are climbing enthusiasts, which just made things more fun, but also offered me the opportunity to learn from guys with a lot of experience and passion for the sport.


The course started with some indoor sessions, the climbing site was the Cochabmaba football stadium!! , apparently some climbing enthusiast found it a very suitable place to build some artificial climbing walls, in the first few sessions, the focus was on handling equipment and some technique, after that we went onto a couple of excursions to sites near Cochabmaba, and we did some real rock climbing, after my short training I was able to do some 5c and 6a routes.


We did one more final climbing excursion, this one was to Corawara, a small town on the Altoplano , about 8 hours from Cochabmaba, the plan was to get there, camp for three nights, and have two days of climbing, but I wanted to go back to Cochabamba at least for Saturday, so I can go out with my girlfriend, because we could not go out the weekend before, and it would be my last weekend in Cochabamba, so I cut my trip short by one day, and only had one day of climbing, the original plans was to leave on Tuesday, and I would have been able to do the whole trip and be back to Cochabamba for the weekend, but two days of strikes and blockades ruined our plan, typical Bolivia.


Anyway the climbing site was a rock formation 20 minute walk from the town Corawara, a typical poor and run down Altoplano village, with a military base, apparently the military use the rocky area for training and some basic climbing, and you can seen signs of the military around the area, marked paths and some constructions. On the expedition with me were Santiago, and a Swiss couple who I already climbed with in Cochabamba, Sven and Silvi.


The area itself is very beautiful, but as typical of the Altoplano, the differences between day and night are quite extreme, strong burning sun in the day, and freezing cold on the night, and at 4000m high, I was struggling with altitude as well. We arrived to our camp site in the evening and started climbing the next morning, we started with a 4 route to warm up, then the next route I attempted with a 6a+, maybe I would have been able to do that on a lower altitude, but I I did not manage to do it, and worst, I felt that I all my energy was depleted after the effort, I did not feel I could climb anymore for a while, eventually I did do a another 6a route, a straight crack going all the way to the top, I climbed it twice, the second time went faster, but still hard, and I did not manage to do it clean, I fell once midway and rested on the rope before continuing, I think 6a/6a+ is more or less my current level, I can do it, but with a lot of effort. The levels go much higher to 9 something, Marcelo and Santiago can do routes of 7 something, 8 something is four climbing freaks, while the 9 levels only a handful of people around the wold managed to do.


After climbing the crack twice, I felt I was finished and I decided to call it off, more or less, I just did the 4 route again, but this time as a leader, the difference was that the first time I did it with a top rope, meaning I had a safety rope hanging from the top of the rock, sometimes you do not have the luxury of being able to tie a top rope, and you have to do leading, in this case you have anchors along the route usually 2-3 meters apart, but you need to climb and reach the anchor on order to attach your safety rope to it, it is more risky and if you fall, you will hang from the last anchor you reached, possibly a 2-3 meter fall, so you want to avoid falling when leading, and this adds extra psychological factor, usually people will do leading on routes that are lower than there maximum level, to compensate for the extra risk, anyway I managed to do it, I felt more tense than usual, but in the end there is that feeling of satisfaction and triumph when you finally make it to the top.

Cochabamba

Cochabamba will be my last stop in South America, the beginning of the end of my trip, it is hard to believe it has been almost a year, a year that I can only describe the most eventful and rich in my whole life, but it is coming to an end, from Cochabamba I will make a stop in the Netherlands on my way home, I will be there from the 19th until the 30th of May.

When I am not with my girlfriend, I am spending my time learning a couple of sports, tennis and climbing, Carmen is my tennis teacher, she is giving classes at the Tennis Municipal, and she is doing a good job with me. As for the climbing I took a climbing course with AndesXtremo, the course with fun and very professional, but I will write a separate entry on that.


AndesXtermo is a company run by a few young sport enthusiasts, Marcelo, JP, Santiago and others, in October last year I took a Paragliding course when I took the paragliding course, and I cooked some middle eastern food for them, the dinner was such a success, that they asked me to do it again, also so that the guys who missed the first dinner will have a chance to try out my cooking, anyway I made some Kabab, Taboli and rice, the Taboli was the toughest part as it involved finely cutting parsley, mint and other green herbs, luckily I had a young assistant who helped me with that, even so I was quite exhausted after all the cutting, anyway I did not like how the rice came out, but the Taboli and Cabab were excellent, and they certainly delighted and satisfied the hungry crowd, of about 12 people.


While passing by the stadium on a Saturday afternoon, we realized there was a football game about to start, not any football game, but the local Cochabamba derby, between Aurora and Wiltzerman, Wiltzerman sounds German to me, but this did not surprise me in a Latin country that has a team called The Strongest, who by the is my favourite team in Bolivia, for no other reason than the fact that I love there uniforms, yellow and black, anyway we decided to go in and see the game, the first half was kind of boring, but the second half was quite exciting, Aurora had many chances to win the game, but in the end it was Wiltzerman who scored the winner. After the game were invited to Marcelo's house for a barbecue.

It has been rather quite in Bolivia after the election of Evo Morales, but troubles are starting again, in the form of strikes and blockades, and today a new strike started, and it is not obvious how long it will stay, I want to spend Semana Santa, somewhere nice and warm, so I hope the blockades are over by tomorrow, because now it is not possible to go anywhere.