An alcoholic, a prescription drug addict and Dutch man try to climb a mountain.

So I've been a bit behind with the auld blog. So I'm skipping ahead a bit.   Basically did the salt flat tour with the group I crossed the border with.  Me and rodger were in a Jeep with Nate dog aka the throat and Mia his girlfriend(we nicknamed nates the throat because he always had a sore throat and wore a neck scarf so we had the craic and took the piss about it). Nate dog if your reading I hope your throat is better and all is well ixn Slovenia:-).

Breda, mark,Géraldine and James were in the other Jeep and we met everywhere along the way.  Anyway we all had a lot of fun and became really good friends. The salt flat tour was amazing and something I will never forget.  After it me,  rodger, Géraldine, mark,breda and James all got a taxi to potosi which is the highest City in the world. Over 4000m above sea level which also made it very hard to breath even walking up the stairs. Here we stayed in a hostel that remidnded me of the hotel from the shining. We basically ran the place and got drunk and cooked in the kitchen most nights.  Here is where we went to the llama sacrafice and got drunk with all the miners and basically had the craic.
After that we got a taxi to sucre. The taxi man drove on the wrong side of the road and hit a dog while the song lady in red played on the radio. It was all a little mental but hilarious at the same time.

In sucre we did a trek to some Dinosaur foot prints which was cool and all got drunk  together a bit more:-) loads of stuff happened in between but I'm trying to speed this up.

Next stop la paz. It was Rodgers birthday so we organised a party and a cake and we all chipped in and bought him death Road for his birthday. That night we all went for dinner and went out to celebrate the kid's birthday.

Death Road was unbelievable and not dangerous unless you take your eyes off the road (last person to die on the road was a Japanese tourist who was trying to take a photo of her boyfriend and cycled straight over the edge). Everyone says they will go really slow down the road but after about five minutes you bomb it down and forget all about how dangerous it is.  Plus you can't really go slow because your down hill mountain biking.

Anyway after death Road there was an anniversary party in our hostel. Here we bumped into jesus.  Jesus was a Dutch guy we met on the walking tour of la paz.  I couldn't say his Dutch name and he looked like jesus so I called him that and the name stuck.  We all got drunk again to celebrate death Road and jesus arriving at our hostel.

The next day really hungover is when we made a pretty retarded decision.  Myself Rodger and jesus wanted to do something different in la paz. Not the same jungle trek that most people so we thought Hey let's trek up a mountain to 6000m above sea level. It is apparently the easiest one in the world. To put it into perspective mount kilamanjaro is 5985m above sea level but technically it is obviously way harder.

So we thought Hey how hard can it be let's trek up hyuana potosi mountain.  So we went into the tour office in bits hungover and booked it.  Obviously they told us that all equipment was provided and that we didn't need our own hiking boots. So jesus and Rodge were like grand because they had converse on.  Rodger actually had hiking boots but didn't bring them because they said they would provide them. ... they didn't...Never believe a Bolivian.

The next day we went to get fitted with the equipment like jackets, crampons and a fucking ice pick. The  equipment was fairly shoddy and threy were literally just  throwing helmets and shit at us.  Anyway I was still a bit fucked from the party the night before last and at this point i started to think what the fuck am I doing.  But I got on with it and thought Ah sure it won't be two bad they won't just let us climb up a mountain without harnesses or being attached to something by rope.

So we all got in the van and hit base camp one. I think this was at 4400m above sea level.  We met the rest of the group and jesus introduced us a me a prescription drug addict, himself an alcoholic and Rodger as the Dutch man.  Everyone laughed but jesus wasn't joking.  The others in the group talked about other mountains they had climbed and again at this point we should have thought what the fuck were we doing. There is only fucking hills in Ireland and the Netherlands is something like minus twenty below sea level.  None of this set off alarm bells and off we went to hike to the practice area.  The practice area was a good hour and a half hike over rocks and along ledges that was really dangerous with sheer drops. At this point we realised they were lying about the equipment.  We had to carry our boots,crampons, ice pick and other equipment will hiking almost vertically uphill over icey rocks and they wouldn't let us put on the equipment until we reached the training point.  Jesus and rodger were wearing con like runners and were slipping all over the place. The guides just had a good laugh about this.

After an hour or two hiking with equipment on our backs  absolutely  sweating even though it was fucking freezing out we reached the training area.

I thought that since this was a vertical glacier of ice and a training area that they would at least have pins secured in the glacier and we would be roped together. Not in fucking Bolivia.  Bolivia have no search and rescue, they have no helicopters and the guides aren't trained in first aid or anything like that.

So they showed us how to put the crampons on once and generally had a good laugh at us stupid gringos. They then showed us how to walk up the glacier side ways in the crampons and how to walk up vertically and walk straight down the glacier. They made us wear a harness each but this was pointless because they didn't attach us to anything by rope even though they had fucking loads. They then showed us how to climb the glacier with just our ice pick (this was fairly dangerous because they only gave us one ice pick each).

This was all pretty dangerous but also a lot of fun and we hiked back to base camp one feeling good.  The guides still seemed a bit uninterested in our safety but we thought Hey how bad can the next day be.

The next day was supposed to be the easiest day and only hiking for three hours up to 5300m. This sounds grand unless you have actually been fairly high above sea level you wont completely understand the affects it can have on your body.

Anyway we set off in high spirits thinking it would be an easy day.  We left at about mid day and Again we had to carry all our stuff on our backs and werent aloud to put on our boots or crampons until we got past the hike over slippy icey rocks.  Again this was really dangerous and pretty much any wrong foot and your off to your death. As we were hiking a fog came in and it began to hail and snow. So there we were on the side of a mountain at nearly 5000m with our back packs in our back hiking vertically up a mountain and not able to see where we were going.   Eventually we put the gear on and began hiking through snow.

Here is where things got a bit mental.  I think the guide lost the path because of the fog and snow and we ended up hiking pretty much up vertically and everywhere you looked there was sheer drops but all you could concentrate on is where to put your foot next to make sure you don't slip or fall (keep in mind it was still snowing and we couldn't see very far ahead because of the fog).

The guides didn't really care and just kept shouting vamous a la playa and hey chicas grande titas at the top.  thinking this was hilarious which it was for five minutes then it got old.

Anyway I got really bad altitude sickness going up and was very dizzy. I also couldn't regulate my breathing to maximise the amount of oxygen I was getting.  This is fairly dangerous on the side of a mountain like this.  I can't explain how difficult it was to get to base camp two but to say it was the most mentally challenging thing I've ever done and one of the most physically challenging.  Every step required so much energy and having alltitude problems and not being able to breath made it one of the most intense situations I've ever been in.

Eventually I made it to base camp two and just fell on the snow. I was really dizzy and felt like shit.  Most of the other lads were also having altitude  problems. Two were sick and another was also really dizzy.

We arrived at five o clock and went to bed at seven because we had to get up at 2am to climb to the top. 

I thought it would be a good idea to take some valium to sleep. This is not a good idea at altitude because valium is a muscle relaxant, your heart is a muscle and actually needs to not be relaxed at high altitude because it has to pump faster to get more oxygen to the brain because the air is so thin. Anyway I never thought of this at the time but sure were all still alive so it's grand.

The next morning myself and Rodger decided not to go to the top. We had heard about a ridge at the top of compact snow with sheer drops on both sides that you have to walk along with one foot in front of the other for around twenty minutes. so we decided that the whole fucking thing was crazy dangerous and that we liked being alive. 

Jesus then decided at the last minute he wanted to try and get as far as the ridge and then rodger decided he would go as far as the ridge as well and then come back.

I then really wanted to give it ago but I was still dizzy and I knew if I couldn't get my breathing under control again then we would all have to turn back.  So I decided that I wouldn't go up plus I was dizzy and thought it was going to be crazy dangerous (which it was). So off Rodge and jesus went.  They made it another two or three hundred meters and then had to turn back because Rodger got really bad altitude sickness.

They banged on the shack that was base camp two door and said we could all go back down together.

This was really fucking dangerous as it was dark we couldnt see where we were going and the guide just kept laughing saying HEY GRINGO...YOU WANT YOUR MOMMY GRINGO.... This didn't fucking help at all since we were sliding all over the place coming down a fucking mountain.

Eventually we made it back to base camp one and none of us fell over the edge to our deaths and we all collapsed in the lodge and looked pitifully at the poor souls who had arrived full of life to try climb the mountain the next day.

Out of seven only two made it to the top and they said it was really dangerous getting there. 

Although this is probably the stupidest thing I've signed up to I don't regret it at all. It was an  experience I will never forget for the rest of my life. It has set the bar. I will forever compare everything to the mountain. Whenever I think something is tough or hard to do I will and have just thought at least I'm not on that fucking mountain!

Salta to Bolivia

So I partied in Buenos Aires for a week most of which I cant go into great detail about but lets just say I stayed in the millhouse hostel(anyone who has been to BA will know what that means). Here I met some cool people to party with but also some not so cool people. The hostel was full of English students on there gap year. If you watch the video below it will basically some up the type.

 Then then got an 18 hour night bus to salta a town in northern Argentina know for its amazing Scenery.when I got on the bus they played pitbull songs for two fucking hours.For some reason everywhere I go in SA they play fucking pitbull.
When I arrived in salta i booked into a hostel with an English couple Louis and holly I met on the bus. I also met a Scottish guy James who was travelling alone also.
Anyway booked into the hostel in salta and met a Dutch guy Rodger who is nineteen and also travelling alone ( although for some reason he lied to me about his age for a couple of days which I tell everyone new person we meet.) I did a tour here to a town called cachi that was really high up above sea level.i got to see amazing scenery on the way to the town but there was nothing much in the town but a graveyard which me and Rodger wandered around (for some reason graveyards are tourist attractions in south America).
That night me Rodger holly and louis got really drunk in the hostel kitchen on our own. I was leaving the next day to go to la quece the border town in Bolivia and holly and Louis were going to tilcarra but we wanted to try and meet in tupiza to do the salt flat tour. Rodger had been in salta for six days and anyone who has
been to salta knows six days in salta is way to many. So I said hey Rodge you can't be at that and he decided to cross the border with me into Bolivia then on to tupiza.
We were getting a night bus to the border so headed to the bus station at half twelve. Here I bumped into James the Scot I had met on the bus from BA to salta. He was with an Argentinean girl Geraldine who could speak fluent Spanish. We all hoped on the night bus together. The bus arrived at the border town a little early and it was fucking freezing.after putting on all my clothes we rocked into this weird little bus shelter full of tiny little Bolivian people and about ten other back packers. We all huddled together and decided to cross the border together as it was still night and safer to cross the border in a big group. We were all going to tupiza and it turned out many of the people I met here were going to become a permanent part of my travels for at least a couple of weeks.
We crossed the border into Bolivia all together and then me and Rodger got a taxi with a Scottish couple mark and Breda to tupiza. This taxi cost 200 Bolivinos so between four that was five euro each. Just to put that into context that was 250km for a fiver.
We were all going to the same hostel or hotel mitru in tupiza which cost a tenner a night (this is actually expensive for Bolivia) but we said feck it sure it'll be grand. We had planned to do the salt flat tour the next day but decided to give it a day because the altitude kind of hits you like a tone of bricks.
After checking in to the hostel I went straight to the pharmacy.In Bolivia you can pretty much buy any drugs over the counter so I stocked up on tablets for my stomach and bought shit loads of valium :-) although for some reason in Bolivia they won't sell you valium unless you buy other drugs first. Like everything else in Bolivia this makes no sense at all.
Next stop  the salt flat tours.