Rolo on Tour

Having survived the Death Road I was looking for new challenges and I was about to find one near La Paz. But we will come to that further on in this entry…
Before I went to see some Wrestling in La Paz. But not some usual Wrestling, but Cholitas Wrestling involving women fighting in their traditional outfits. As I have never seen Wrestling live, it was interesting to see, but I guess it is a little bit too simple-minded to draw more attention to me than for this one visit.

The guy just lost his wrestling match, but what is he doing now??

So as I said it was time for a new challenge. And this one presented itself in climbing the mountain Huayna Potosi – lying at an altitude of 6088 metres – to be done within 3 days.

The first day consisted of getting the equipment, driving to the base camp at 4700 metres and practicing on a glacier the skills needed for getting to the top. Well actually most of those things ended up not beeing needed, but all in all it helped to get accustomed to the equipment.

Are you ready? I was born ready!

The second day consisted of walking up to the second camp lying at 5300 metres. It involved carrying all the equipment in (and outside of) my bagpack, which made it quite heavy:

Carrying that uphill, lots of fun 😉

Having done that it was time to relax a little and enjoy the views. And relaxing was very necessary as we had to get up at midnight to start climbing to the top. But who can sleep at 6 pm and at this altitude? I can´t and so the task of climbing the mountain had to be approached without sleep.

Anyway me and my guide walked for about 5 hours during which my speed decreased continously due to the altitude and the resulting lack of oxygen. At the beginning the rhytm went like step, step, exhale, step, step, inhale while at the end it was more like step, exhale, inhale, break, step, exhale, inhale, break. Anyway we arrived a little bit too early in my opinion at the top at 6 am and were waiting for the sun to show up. But how nice was it to be at the top! 6000 metres is a real freaking height and I am not sure if I will ever do it again, but it was all worth it, even if I was feeling the effects of those efforts for some more days in my body.

Welcome to the internet mountains, I´ll be your guide!

On the top of Huayna Potosi

Time to celebrate!

Been there, done that…

I thought I had to show you the nice outfit I was given to

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