Halloween in La Paz was my mission, I decided at some point while staying in beautiful Copacabana. Ever since I was on the scene of the first Madison Halloween riots in 2002, I've tried to do Halloween right!
The logistics were impossible, La Paz is 100 miles from Copacabana. There was no way I'd be able to ride all the way there, find a top hat, get a custom suit made and still be able to stand and go out on the town as Lincoln like I usually do, but everyone needs a dream.
Judging from the map I thought I had a chance. Lake Titicaca is at 12,500ft and La Paz is at 11,900ft. So I get a 600ft downhill boost into the city right? There's just this tiny dot on the map, El Alto, in the way.
So I set out, and right away it's uphill over a thousand feet to the top of a ridge that makes a peninsula. It's a big bloodsugar setback, but no hill climb was more worth it on this trip, that may have been my favorite riding of the trip or my life! I feel like it'd be a tourist crime to travel that stretch by bus, do whatever you can to get in the open air.
It was a really clear sunny day, and up there you could see all the way across the lake back at Peru. The road ripples up and down a little, so you can keep up some good momentum for once. I listened to Kraftwerk - Tour de France on repeat across the peninsula.
At one point I saw a white guy going for a jog with 3 kids following him. Not sure what his story was, there were no towns around. I also saw some kids playing soccer on a farming terrace that was maybe 8ft wide, and the ball got kicked down a few levels. What an elastic game.
Eventually I made it to the ferry town, and reapplied sugars and got on the ferry. Negotiations about the price of a person and bicycle didn't go so well, but still cheap by US standards. Included in the price was a cup of Pepsi, and I'm pretty sure the guy said there was a little coca in it. I figured if his 7 year old son was drinking it, it'd be fine.
I couldn't believe they put tour buses on those things, they were large rafts made out of local trees. If you take a bus through there, they'll put your bus on one boat, and all the passengers on another.
On the other side I saw Bolivia's navy. The country is a little sour about losing their ocean port to Chile, so they maintain a navy on Lake Titicaca.
I also saw the first sign to La Paz, 112km! So I hit the road. The whole day I think I ate nothing but candy, soda and bread, I didn't find any cafes open on Saturday. Near Titicaca I saw some of the nicest resort places, and really fancy keel sailboats. As I got into the interior it got more and more poor and dilapidated. All the kids asked for a lil silver, slang for money. I told them I didn't have any, that's why I was bicycling and not taking the bus.
After the signs to La Paz stopped appearing I started asking people how far it was, and nobody knew the distance from their home to the capitol city. They did know how long it took by bus, which became a good estimation throughout the trip. In the gnarly mountain roads, 2 hours by bus was one grueling day by bike. I got a kick out of how willing everyone was to estimate how long it would take by bike. Obese shop owners would say, with complete confidence, how long it would take to go 70kms by bike. I supposed with all my gear, maybe we would weight the same and travel at about the same speed, but I think they'd give up on the riding earlier than me.
About 40kms out, the altiplano does this weird thing where you look across the farmland and it slopes off and looks like the edge of the earth. I thought this was finally the downhill finale I earned, but somehow I was wrong.
On the final 30km stretch I watched the sun set behind the mountains in a spectacular postcard-esque display, and started getting worried I wouldn't make it and would have to free camp without food and water. Just as I was losing the sunlight over the horizon I noticed I could start to see city lights of La Paz ahead of me, and for a brief moment the low intensity of both was equal before the sun slipped away.
This was a pretty good rush now, riding in the dark with nothing but an LED headlight and no rear light in the countryside, alongside the only two lane road to La Paz, passed constantly by mini buses.
I was sweaty as hell and it was getting cold, so when I came up to a roadside fire, I decided to stop by and make some friends. As I walked up, all the kids around the fire shuffled away frightened. I said, "Soy no peligroso!!" and they came back after hiding for a few minutes. As they were walking back, I noticed the fire was almost half plastic stuff, including a doll. They asked me the standard questions, and also couldn't tell me how far La Paz was. I decided after a minute that I didn't want to breath plastic anymore, so I got back on my bike, and now they realized I was harmless enough to mess with. They followed me to the road, and yanked my bike back every time I tried to ride away. This went on for four times until I finally got away, and 2 hours later I realized they yanked my Lawrence University nalgene off. Probably needed more plastic for the fire.
On the outskirts of La Paz I was limping along hard, taking breaks every mile or so. I knew the airport was in El Alto, so I watched a plane land to judge the distance once. Lots of people were weirded out by me lying on sidewalks and stuff, but my back was killing me.
El Alto is at 13,600ft, so it was one final challenge to overcome. At the end of a 100 mile ride above 12,000ft with 50kilos of gear I had to bicycle uphill through urban dilapidated neighborhoods and keep up enough speed to dodge the hecklers.
Finally outside of the airport I rested one more time, laying on the sidewalk, and this boliviana girl walked by but veered way out into the street to stay away from me.
I stocked up on candy and yogurt one last time and then tried to make it into the heart of the city. Somehow nobody could give me directions. I found out later that I asked some people with a fruit stand how to get to central La Paz while standing on very road to it, and they said they didn't know and told me to go 90 degrees the wrong way. It was for the better though, I got to experience El Alto this way, and my brakes were not in good shape. More on that later.
I think I found the nicest hostel in all of El Alto, it was totally out of place. The last time I had used an ATM was in Puerto Maldonado, about 2 weeks earlier. I'm so glad there was one available here across the street because I was just 1 Boliviano short of checking in to the hostel for a night.
Turns out La Paz doesn't celebrate Halloween, so I didn't miss out on anything by going to sleep right away. The bed in the room was suited for Bolivians, I hung off the end of it a good foot and a half. My room also came with a TV, and breakfast, and it all looked brand new. I can't remember the name of it, but it's near the Cholita (traditional women) wrestling venue (see the Travel Channel article), right near the major street where all the bus drivers selfishly cause a traffic jam waiting to fill their bus.
La Paz had it's highlights, I wish I could have stayed longer. Instead of a long story, I'll just do one liners.
I bicycled down to the city the next day, and 2/3rds the way down my brakes were making a really bad sound, so I poured some water on the rotors and it all came off as steam.
El Alto has several blocks with buses that must be stuck in traffic for hours without passengers. I don't know how they make any money.
I missed out on the Cholita wrestling because there was some circus in town that week instead--major disappointment.
They have Burger King in La Paz, and it was the only way I found to get cheddar cheese on the whole continent.
I went to a chicken restaurant that had deep fried chicken heads in the window and a Burt Renolds looking man purchased 40 full dinners, got into his H2 Hummer and left.
I stayed in the shadiest place I could find in central La Paz, had a juggling competition against a deaf man who was either from Chile, Bolivia, Peru, or Uruguay, and was told a kilo of cocaine costs $45 in Bolivia.
Purchased tea from a place that had good luck llama fetuses for sale in the witch market (brujas mercado).
Took a taxi from the La Paz downtown back up to El Alto, got ripped on the price, and at one point they took a paved road so steep they couldn't make it with two tries and had to go a different way.
The only bit of law enforcement I saw the whole trip was cops on motorcycles telling a woman with a pirated DVD stand to move it out of a lane of traffic in the market.
$1 bills are lucky in Bolivia. Someone paid for a night in the hostel with one, and the hostel owner came up to me and asked if it was counterfeit.
---------
I'm done here, to wrap up, GO TO SOUTH AMERICA!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Juliaca and Sillustani Ruins
So I'm home now, but I have more I want to write, so I'm gonna keep going for two or three more posts. I flew back to Chicago, chilled with my family for three days, then made a mad dash across country to my new home for the winter, Kings Beach at Lake Tahoe.
I forgot to write about Juliaca before! After enjoying the sparsely populated jungle, cloud forests, and barren altiplano for two weeks, Juliaca was a surprise treat. It is on no tourist's list of things to see in Peru, since it has no ruins or museums or anything, but I think it's awesome! It's really for the altiplano people of Peru, I saw maybe one other white person in that 100,000+ city. It really is on the gringo trail, you just have to make a choice to stop there.
Some videos of the market in Juliaca,
It felt like a piece of Lima's Barrios Altos neighborhood on a tract of flat land at 12,000ft. That means the streets were packed with people and the open air market stretched on for (a few) kilometers in all directions. And since it was above 3000m elevation, everyone was gentle and friendly, unlike Barrios Altos. People bent over laughing about my height, but nobody tried to hustle me.
A few kilometers before Juliaca I saw the first white person since 14 days previous in Puerto Maldonado, also bicycle touring! I greeted him with a hearty "HOLA GRINGO!!!" He started speaking German to me, further melting my mind. He was from Berlin, and he was much more of a soldier cyclist than I. He had full serious biking clothes, a helmet, bike shoes and clipless pedals, a bike computer, etc. I was dressed in a stupid alpaca sweater with stick figures on it. Someone told me this made it clear I was a tourist. My backpack and other crap was lashed on my handlebars because I broke a spoke in the rear wheel the day before. No helmet, just a Arlington Park horseracing baseball hat. No cycling tights for me, just cutoff slacks.
This guy, Andre, did not have a sense of humor really, he was all business, Lima to La Paz, head down and hauling! He did tell me about a time he got lost and ended up on an old Inca trail that traversed over some peaks and made his effing life! I wish I would have had him point that out on a map.
We rolled into Juliaca together and I was intrigued by this huge outdoor market. He didn't have time to explore, just four days to get to La Paz, so we parted ways.
In the market there was some decent 1/4 chicken for 9am, a huuuuge mud pit in the middle of it all, tons of buses waiting to be filled, and the first sizeable bike parts selection I had seen since 3 weeks earlier in Cusco. I got some great neon mudflaps with a picture of a snarling tiger face on them. Everyone had these in the altiplano.
There was also the biggest coca leaves dealer I saw on the trip. They had massive bales of coca leaves for 80 soles, sold by old ladies. I turned them down.
This is where comical bowler hats made an appearance in traditional women's dress. I chuckled about that about every day. Apparently someone in the early 1900s ordered tons of them from Europe by mistake, and then convinced Aymara women to wear them, and they still are a fad to this day.
I really should have stayed a night in Juliaca, but I was set on getting to Puno and resting there, so I just passed through quickly. Halfway to Puno I stopped to sugar up, and these people told me about some ruins nearby, Sillustani. They made it sound like it was really close, like 5km away. It turned out to be more like 25km.
I took off on this choppy dirt road towards some town in the distance, still sporting a broken rear spoke. This was really worrying the whole time, once one spoke fails, more can quickly follow, resulting in a really unstable squirrelly wheel.
I asked a bus for directions to the ruins, and they used a preposition I didn't know, so I smiled and nodded and kept on to the town. I biked through a field up to a house built out of rocks, and the women in bowler hats looked like they were really over doing it with their traditional dress. I really don't know what happened next, but I blame the towns people. There was a group of Peruvians outside the house, and I distinctly asked, "Is this the ruins? Is this a museum?" and they fucking said YES! Then they started telling me I could park my bike in the small courtyard of the stone house, so I did. One of the guys had a button down blue shirt, I thought he was the tour guide. I started taking pictures of stuff.
Next, suddenly, the blue shirted man and some kids wanted me to walk with them to the parque. I thought this was a tour of the ruins, but it was all complete fiction in my mind! I just rolled up to some random house in the countryside with the neighbors outside talking, and they walked me over to the sports park to play or watch soccer. I realized it wasn't a tour once I saw the soccer field, and then couldn't figure out a polite way to leave, so we sat talking for a while. I couldn't stop thinking about the $200 USD in my bike seat, and my passport back with my bike.
Eventually, my plans of getting to Puno that night became clear to everyone, and we all saw some rain coming, so I got free of my friends and rushed 10km onward to the ruins. Compared to this experience, the ruins were really boring and not worth it, but the mobs of Japanese and Europeans seemed to like it.
So I made it to Puno, stashed my stuff, then took a bus back to Juliaca for a day with my bike. The bus cost 60 cents to go 40km, and at that price they wanted that thing full! Not only did they yell out Juliaca! at the bus stop 50x, they continued as the bus slowly made its way through Puno's streets. And they got it full, no problem. I'm not sure how that worked, everyone in Puno knows where the bus stop is, but I guess people miles away from there can also get sold on an impulse idea of going to Juliaca.
I had no idea where the bus let me off, I just started biking randomly without recognizing a thing for three hours. The thing I needed most was a spoke, so I hit up the bike district of sorts. It was all full of new Chinese Walmart bikes, nobody there knew how to work on them or get parts, but some lady was willing to disappear for 20 minutes off to somewhere, leaving me in charge of the shop it seemed. I tried to sell one of her bikes for 20 soles ($6), but no dice.
Eventually she came back with a spoke that was too long, but it worked well enough. The guy from the stove store next door helped me install it, and noticed I had a crack in my frame! I'm really glad he saw that, that's really no good. Neither of them wanted any money for 45 minutes of scavenger hunting, problem solving and struggling.
So I went down to the local open air welder. This is a person that's hard to start a conversation with because you walk up and they had a blinding arc welder working on some bed frame or something. I had to chime in and tell them their ground wire on my frame wasn't going to work because it was insulated by rubber from the rest of the frame (it wasn't that detailed of a story in Spanish). They welded for about a half hour, the two of them, then they wanted only $1.50! I talked them up to $3 because good christ, that's a bad hourly rate.
Next, I was biking around and noticed all the bicycle rickshaw drivers were hanging out around the same dilapidated block. There were about 7 ladies serving the same food I had at my second homestay, fry bread and outrageously thick syrupy red tea. The tea was on par, but the fry bread was pre-made and cold. Still, I didn't know where else to get this besides that one house on the mountain side. The rickshaw drivers were all sitting in their comfy passenger seats, enjoying life.
The wheelbarrow of food I chose was right in front of a huge green puddle in the street, and there was a waiter of sorts wearing shin high rubber boots, serving all the rickshaw drivers. I got some funny looks for eating with them.
After this I set out on my other mission for the day, to get a Ronaldinho soccer jersey. One of the top ten T-shirts I ever saw was this Ronaldinho jersey with a bunch of soccer action shots, worn by a gas station attendant near Cusco. Then in Puerto Maldonado there was another one with a picture of him kissing an old lady on the forehead. Really, who enjoys every second of his life more than that guy? He proposed to a Swedish soccer player at the Beijing Olympics in broken English the second time he met her. What a hero.
Anyways, I went to about 20 jersey stores, no exaggeration, and it was hard for me because I can't really pronounce Ronaldinho, and he's Brazilian so Peruvians don't give a damn. It'd be like asking for Ohio State jerseys in Milwaukee, there's a massive lake and another country in the way. Eventually, I found a place with one, but it's not nearly as cool as the other two I saw.
After that, I continued to get lost, and found and lost the bus district a few times while running other errands and randomly exploring, then couldn't find it again for a half hour when I wanted to leave.
A train went through Juliaca at one point, which is funny because the train tracks are fair game for the populous to set up their market, so they must have scrambled to pack up. Then it cuts off a major taxi street on the main shopping street, which really chills out that town like nothing else. It was nearly like going to the mall in America since we don't have taxis and microbuses passing through.
That's about it. For next time I have the bulk of Bolivia stories to tell, then this ride is over!
I forgot to write about Juliaca before! After enjoying the sparsely populated jungle, cloud forests, and barren altiplano for two weeks, Juliaca was a surprise treat. It is on no tourist's list of things to see in Peru, since it has no ruins or museums or anything, but I think it's awesome! It's really for the altiplano people of Peru, I saw maybe one other white person in that 100,000+ city. It really is on the gringo trail, you just have to make a choice to stop there.
Some videos of the market in Juliaca,
It felt like a piece of Lima's Barrios Altos neighborhood on a tract of flat land at 12,000ft. That means the streets were packed with people and the open air market stretched on for (a few) kilometers in all directions. And since it was above 3000m elevation, everyone was gentle and friendly, unlike Barrios Altos. People bent over laughing about my height, but nobody tried to hustle me.
A few kilometers before Juliaca I saw the first white person since 14 days previous in Puerto Maldonado, also bicycle touring! I greeted him with a hearty "HOLA GRINGO!!!" He started speaking German to me, further melting my mind. He was from Berlin, and he was much more of a soldier cyclist than I. He had full serious biking clothes, a helmet, bike shoes and clipless pedals, a bike computer, etc. I was dressed in a stupid alpaca sweater with stick figures on it. Someone told me this made it clear I was a tourist. My backpack and other crap was lashed on my handlebars because I broke a spoke in the rear wheel the day before. No helmet, just a Arlington Park horseracing baseball hat. No cycling tights for me, just cutoff slacks.
This guy, Andre, did not have a sense of humor really, he was all business, Lima to La Paz, head down and hauling! He did tell me about a time he got lost and ended up on an old Inca trail that traversed over some peaks and made his effing life! I wish I would have had him point that out on a map.
We rolled into Juliaca together and I was intrigued by this huge outdoor market. He didn't have time to explore, just four days to get to La Paz, so we parted ways.
In the market there was some decent 1/4 chicken for 9am, a huuuuge mud pit in the middle of it all, tons of buses waiting to be filled, and the first sizeable bike parts selection I had seen since 3 weeks earlier in Cusco. I got some great neon mudflaps with a picture of a snarling tiger face on them. Everyone had these in the altiplano.
There was also the biggest coca leaves dealer I saw on the trip. They had massive bales of coca leaves for 80 soles, sold by old ladies. I turned them down.
This is where comical bowler hats made an appearance in traditional women's dress. I chuckled about that about every day. Apparently someone in the early 1900s ordered tons of them from Europe by mistake, and then convinced Aymara women to wear them, and they still are a fad to this day.
I really should have stayed a night in Juliaca, but I was set on getting to Puno and resting there, so I just passed through quickly. Halfway to Puno I stopped to sugar up, and these people told me about some ruins nearby, Sillustani. They made it sound like it was really close, like 5km away. It turned out to be more like 25km.
I took off on this choppy dirt road towards some town in the distance, still sporting a broken rear spoke. This was really worrying the whole time, once one spoke fails, more can quickly follow, resulting in a really unstable squirrelly wheel.
I asked a bus for directions to the ruins, and they used a preposition I didn't know, so I smiled and nodded and kept on to the town. I biked through a field up to a house built out of rocks, and the women in bowler hats looked like they were really over doing it with their traditional dress. I really don't know what happened next, but I blame the towns people. There was a group of Peruvians outside the house, and I distinctly asked, "Is this the ruins? Is this a museum?" and they fucking said YES! Then they started telling me I could park my bike in the small courtyard of the stone house, so I did. One of the guys had a button down blue shirt, I thought he was the tour guide. I started taking pictures of stuff.
Next, suddenly, the blue shirted man and some kids wanted me to walk with them to the parque. I thought this was a tour of the ruins, but it was all complete fiction in my mind! I just rolled up to some random house in the countryside with the neighbors outside talking, and they walked me over to the sports park to play or watch soccer. I realized it wasn't a tour once I saw the soccer field, and then couldn't figure out a polite way to leave, so we sat talking for a while. I couldn't stop thinking about the $200 USD in my bike seat, and my passport back with my bike.
Eventually, my plans of getting to Puno that night became clear to everyone, and we all saw some rain coming, so I got free of my friends and rushed 10km onward to the ruins. Compared to this experience, the ruins were really boring and not worth it, but the mobs of Japanese and Europeans seemed to like it.
So I made it to Puno, stashed my stuff, then took a bus back to Juliaca for a day with my bike. The bus cost 60 cents to go 40km, and at that price they wanted that thing full! Not only did they yell out Juliaca! at the bus stop 50x, they continued as the bus slowly made its way through Puno's streets. And they got it full, no problem. I'm not sure how that worked, everyone in Puno knows where the bus stop is, but I guess people miles away from there can also get sold on an impulse idea of going to Juliaca.
I had no idea where the bus let me off, I just started biking randomly without recognizing a thing for three hours. The thing I needed most was a spoke, so I hit up the bike district of sorts. It was all full of new Chinese Walmart bikes, nobody there knew how to work on them or get parts, but some lady was willing to disappear for 20 minutes off to somewhere, leaving me in charge of the shop it seemed. I tried to sell one of her bikes for 20 soles ($6), but no dice.
Eventually she came back with a spoke that was too long, but it worked well enough. The guy from the stove store next door helped me install it, and noticed I had a crack in my frame! I'm really glad he saw that, that's really no good. Neither of them wanted any money for 45 minutes of scavenger hunting, problem solving and struggling.
So I went down to the local open air welder. This is a person that's hard to start a conversation with because you walk up and they had a blinding arc welder working on some bed frame or something. I had to chime in and tell them their ground wire on my frame wasn't going to work because it was insulated by rubber from the rest of the frame (it wasn't that detailed of a story in Spanish). They welded for about a half hour, the two of them, then they wanted only $1.50! I talked them up to $3 because good christ, that's a bad hourly rate.
Next, I was biking around and noticed all the bicycle rickshaw drivers were hanging out around the same dilapidated block. There were about 7 ladies serving the same food I had at my second homestay, fry bread and outrageously thick syrupy red tea. The tea was on par, but the fry bread was pre-made and cold. Still, I didn't know where else to get this besides that one house on the mountain side. The rickshaw drivers were all sitting in their comfy passenger seats, enjoying life.
The wheelbarrow of food I chose was right in front of a huge green puddle in the street, and there was a waiter of sorts wearing shin high rubber boots, serving all the rickshaw drivers. I got some funny looks for eating with them.
After this I set out on my other mission for the day, to get a Ronaldinho soccer jersey. One of the top ten T-shirts I ever saw was this Ronaldinho jersey with a bunch of soccer action shots, worn by a gas station attendant near Cusco. Then in Puerto Maldonado there was another one with a picture of him kissing an old lady on the forehead. Really, who enjoys every second of his life more than that guy? He proposed to a Swedish soccer player at the Beijing Olympics in broken English the second time he met her. What a hero.
Anyways, I went to about 20 jersey stores, no exaggeration, and it was hard for me because I can't really pronounce Ronaldinho, and he's Brazilian so Peruvians don't give a damn. It'd be like asking for Ohio State jerseys in Milwaukee, there's a massive lake and another country in the way. Eventually, I found a place with one, but it's not nearly as cool as the other two I saw.
After that, I continued to get lost, and found and lost the bus district a few times while running other errands and randomly exploring, then couldn't find it again for a half hour when I wanted to leave.
A train went through Juliaca at one point, which is funny because the train tracks are fair game for the populous to set up their market, so they must have scrambled to pack up. Then it cuts off a major taxi street on the main shopping street, which really chills out that town like nothing else. It was nearly like going to the mall in America since we don't have taxis and microbuses passing through.
That's about it. For next time I have the bulk of Bolivia stories to tell, then this ride is over!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Ohhhh Señor Jesus!
I found a Quechua language radio station near Llave. Did some recording on my mp3 player for y'all.
And then I found a translator for a USA southern baptist minister in La Paz. This guy is amazing if he´s translating this live. Wish I had more space, this went on for an hour at least. You can learn some good Spanish from this.
The Rapture! En Español!
And then I found a translator for a USA southern baptist minister in La Paz. This guy is amazing if he´s translating this live. Wish I had more space, this went on for an hour at least. You can learn some good Spanish from this.
The Rapture! En Español!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
