I’ve been up the mountain and I had a choice – Huayna Potosi, Bolivia

I have just returned from Huayna Potosi and my initial feelings are that I will be a happier man if I never set eyes on it again. I still feel physically terrible from the ordeal, quite simply it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

The Author

There turned out to be seven of us who were gluttons for punishment; three Israeli’s, one of them a girl and each with equally unpronounceable names, a red-haired Australian called Scott who confessed he’d never actually seen snow in the flesh so to speak, a Frenchmen named Julian, and James and myself (two fine upstanding Englishmen). Throughout the entire kitting up process and drive to the first “refuge”, everyone’s spirits were noticeably high as we shared a few jokes in the minibus. Though I became a bit worried we might be out of depth when we encountered a group of Brazilian mountaineers there preparing to climb the mountain as part of their training for an Everest expedition next year!

Leading us were a group of three experienced mountaineers, all indigenous Bolivians, Quechua-speaking save for a smattering of Spanish and wearing state of the art gear “loaned” to them by the tour company. Truth be told all were probably desperately poor and reliant on the tips of tourists for their livelihood. We were told that victims of altitude sickness frequently had to be taken down the mountain by the guides and for that reason the company operated on a 2:1 tourist to guide ratio. Obviously someone had played a bit fast and loose with the remainders when calculating the needs of our party.

The first day was surprisingly civilised, intended as it was, to ease us into the task ahead and further acclimatise us to the altitude. We arrived at the refuge unloaded all the kit, took in the scenery, which was impressive, then had a nice two course lunch, (one of them being that Bolivian staple, chip soup), before heading off for a practice ice climb. That involved a 3 hour round trek and a crash course in basic ice axe, crampon and rope climbing techniques. I found the ice climbing difficult, my ice axed seemed to have an annoying habit of bouncing off the ice instead of burrowing into it, but I wasn’t worried. I’m not a performing monkey, I do it when it matters. My mood improved. This might not be the most ill-advised thing I have ever agreed to, I thought.

In celebration of this revelation and in the absence of any TV or radio or books, or indeed anything, we played charades. And by “we”, I mean me and James as everyone else pretended they didn’t know the rules and had no interest in learning them. Two man charades is an interesting game; it seemed from the reactions of the refuge’s other inhabitants to give more pleasure to the spectator than it did to the participant. I can’t imagine why. Anyway this epic encounter had to end at some point and after the excitement had died down we went to bed. At 8.30pm.

The next day we set off to refuge number two, where we would spend that night, before our final push to the summit. We retraced the previous day’s steps to the place where we practiced our ice climbing, then pushed on further, our guides leading the way, setting a pace that although not lightening, showed no signs of relenting. It became clear that breaks would not be on today’s agenda. At one point we had to walk on top of the water pipes which took water from the mountains down towards La Paz. For some reason this reminded me of the iconic scene in Stand By Me, where they walk down the railway track. I decided to lighten the mood a little bit by whistling a bit of Ben E King. Nobody else joined in. They probably had their minds on the task in hand, but I’m pretty sure they appreciated it.

The View

After about four hours or so of trudging along we reached a glacier over which a guide informed us was the second refuge or high camp. The glacier sloped up around 100m or so, regardless we were told not to bother with crampons as these were only needed for the next day. Instead we used our ice axes like a kind of walking stick and contoured up the treacherous slope, Chaplin-esque. I’ve got to be honest I did question the guides decision that crampons were superfluous to requirements for this section as we repeatedly slipped and slid our way up. But on seeing them stroll up in their trainers, casually smoking bare-handed whilst the rest of us wore two pairs of gloves each, I decided not to question their leadership. James and I pushed on to the glacier top where we sat and waited for the group to reassemble. Looking down we saw Matta, one of the Israeli’s, (who I believe may have shortened his name for my benefit), and Julian who were really struggling, lying on their backs in the snow catching their breath. We decided maybe now was a good time to start taking our Sorochi altitude pills, each one so big it practically needed two bites.

I’d love to hear how an estate agent would describe the second refuge. Perhaps as “homely”, “compact”, almost certainly in a “secluded location” and most likely as “rustic” and “oozing with charm and character”. Personally I’d describe it as a dilapidated two room shack, lacking any basic amenities, stuck on the side of a bloody great mountain 5000m up, though that may lack a certain je ne sais quoi. It consisted of a kitchen of sorts, where chip soup (inevitably) and hot drinks could be prepared on a calor gas stove and a bedroom in which the ten of us would all sleep. The three guides on the floor, the seven of us above them on a kind of shelf, huddled together against the minus 20 degree cold of outside. I can be as condescending as I like now, but it did the job. Not that there was much time given over to sleeping, mind. In order to reach the summit before the sun came up and the melting snow became dangerous, we were to be woken at 2am for a 3am start. One guide had already “bagsied” me and James, not so much impressed by us I felt as happy to avoid taking Matta and Julian who looked increasingly sick as the afternoon wore on.

As the plan dictated at 2am, we were woken and began getting dressed by candle/head torch light. 3 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of trousers, 2 thermal vests, 1 alpaca hoody, 2 coats, 2 pairs of gloves, hat, helmet, gators, mountain boots and crampons later, I was ready and looking bloody cool I’d imagine. Our guide however, broke any delusions we may have had (and I certainly did) of being fearless explorers, by roping James and I to him, like a pair of naughty horses.

And so we walked, trudged and plodded through snow and ice and any and every conceivable mixture of the two. It was pitch dark and we walked with our heads down in silence. None of us spoke. There was no small talk. This seemed appropriate giving the mountain the solemnity it deserved. As we walked higher we saw the impressive lights of La Paz, the world’s highest capital far below. Other than that we looked at the ground. Anything else became too much effort. After two hours or so, it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other. You had to find rhythm in the monotony of plodding on, to distract you from the tiredness. Occasionally we stopped for drinks and chocolate bars that my stomach could no longer take, our guide expressing approval of our progress with the odd “muy bien”. Around half five our guide instructed us to rest, we had reached the final approach. So impressed was he at our pace that he “rewarded” us with the difficult ascent: up a 60 degree slope of compressed snow and ice around 150m high I guessed. I’d hate to have pissed him off! Everyone else was “punished” with a gentler ascent along the summit ridge. Even the Brazilian Everest wannabees took the easy route.

The next 45 minutes to an hour were not pretty. Climbing as we had been taught to do so, first our ice axe, then digging the spikes of one crampon in, then the other, ensuring that two of this three anchored you into the cliff face at all times. Our guide advised us “despacio, despacio” (slowly), as if there was another choice. Fatigue and altitude were winning. Snail’s pace does snails everywhere a disservice, we would have killed to have attained snail’s pace. Ever frequently I had to demand a rest, at which point I buried my covered head into the cliff face taking the strain off my muscles, and gasped for amounts of oxygen that weren’t there. Increasingly my willpower became weaker than my lungs and we could barely go for 2 minutes before I needed to stop. Not until our progress took us within sight of the still dark summit did I discover a steelier resolve and manage to wrench myself to the top with an impressive 5 minute continuous ‘burst’.

The Summit

The summit itself proved far from the sanctuary we had envisaged, a most inhospitable place you had to be roped onto less you get blown off. Nevertheless we had made it and before sunrise. Although this latter point is, in my eyes, not so much an achievement as an oversight, as it turns out summits are pretty cold and if the sun is yet to come up you can’t see anything. Imagine our surprise then to find Matta already up there, having raced round the summit ridge route with his guide, seemingly recovered from the altitude sickness that had afflicted him just the day before. By way of celebration he decided to strip completely naked for a photograph, much to the amusement of the two guides, one of whom turned to me and said “I’ll give him four minutes”. I’m still unsure if he was joking or not. We posed for a few pictures with a Bolivian flag we had got from the recent world cup qualifier against Venezuela in La Paz, I inwardly cursed both the metric system and our decision to use it writing the mountain’s height on the flag. 6088m is just not as good as 19,976ft anyway you spin it. Subsequently I have told anyone who will listen and many who won’t that the mountain I climbed was 20,000ft, it just sounds better and is easier to remember. On our way down we encountered the others on the way up, minus Julian whose sickness did not miraculously disappear. We exchanged a knowing nod, which I think communicated congratulations to each other, commiserations for Julian and never again for any of us!

London’s Columbia Road flower market

Brick Lane, pret a porter

One guitar, two feet, three markets

Hitchhiking in Japan: It’s Almost Too Easy

I’ve never seen anyone hitchhiking in Japan. Maybe it’s because most people own a car or motorbike, and those that don’t rely instead on the fantastically efficient train and bus services.

I was curious though. Curious to see if it would work. And I soon discovered that the country is something of a hitchhiker’s paradise – especially if you hail from outside of Japan.

On the road.

Despite the Japanese not having a tradition of hitchhiking, most people know basically what it entails and, judging by a recent trip I made around the south-western island of Kyushu, they’re more than happy to stop for you. Of the nine lifts my friend Paddy and I took on our week-long trip, the longest our thumbs were exposed to the elements for was a mere ten minutes.

Somehow it seemed too easy here, like fishing at a trout farm. Weren’t we meant to be standing by the roadside for at least an hour? Weren’t we supposed to give up and take a bus?

We began our journey in Oita, a city on the eastern side of Kyushu. We walked out toward the edge of the city, put our bags down and our thumbs up. Within just a few minutes we were picking up our bags again after a young guy pulled over in a little Nissan Micra. Hardly believing our luck, we jumped in.

It quickly became apparent that our Japanese language ability was as ropey as Hiroshi’s English, but with our maps, smiles, and enthusiastic gesticulations, we seemed to reach a certain level of understanding. Or so we thought.

You see, we soon realized that he hadn’t quite got the hang of this hitchhiking malarkey, as it  was clear he was deviating from his original route. We tried to explain that the idea of hitchhiking was for the driver to take the hitchers as close to their destination as possible without the driver going out of his way. He was, however, determined to head away from wherever he was going in order to get us to wherever we were going. Such generous gestures were to be repeated throughout the week.

After exchanging small talk along the way and singing some Beatles songs together, we arrived safely at our destination and bade Hiroshi farewell. Off he drove into the sunset – back the way he came.

Each lift we got during that week was like a little adventure in itself. The Japanese are a discreet people – they notice Westerners but rarely stare, even in the deepest countryside where we’re about as common as California roll. But judging by the speed at which they stop and offer lifts, they’re certainly curious.

Some beautiful Kyushu countryside.

We saw one man in a clapped-out van give us a long look as he drove by. A minute later my attention was drawn by the sound of a vehicle careering along at high speed in reverse gear. I turned around to see the same guy pulling up beside us, winding the window down.

A few miles down the road, Yuji got on the phone to his wife. His driving was scary enough with both hands on the wheel, but now that he only had one, I was beginning to sweat a little. Then, with no eyes on the road, he turned to speak to us. “You stay. Hello family. My house.” We hadn’t booked any place to stay that night so Paddy and I agreed to take up the friendly offer, allowing Yuji to get back to the important job of looking where he was going.

“My house. Falling down,” Yuji said several times as we drove deeper and deeper into the Kyushu countryside. I put his words down to typical Japanese modesty but when we pulled up outside, I could see that it’d been nothing of the sort. It really was falling down. There was more than one hole in the roof together with some sizable cracks in the outside walls.

Yuji’s wife and their three young children dashed out to greet us before hustling us into their
falling-down house. While the mother busied herself in the kitchen, Yuji produced a bottle of sake and poured us both a large cup. The sake was as tasty as the food the mother brought us, and before long our bellies were bursting and we more than a little sozzled.

It was at this point that I was distracted by something unpleasant. There was a rather challenging odour wafting through the house, the source of which I managed to ascertain on my visit to the toilet. Japan is famous for toilets decked out with space-age control panels offering a variety of fancy functions – seat warmers; jet sprays; bottom cleaners; bottom dryers. This toilet was about as far from technology as you could get. There wasn’t any. It was a squat toilet with a hole in the usual place, but everything emptied into a giant tank. To flush everything away, you had to use the bucket of water resting in the corner. It was hard to believe I was in a country known the world over for its hi-tech gadgetry.

Two bottles of sake later, Yuji picked up the phone and said, “You phone home.” Despite my protestations, on the basis of the cost and the fact that my mother might start worrying if I was to tell her that I was staying the night in the house of a stranger that’d picked me up just two hours before, Yuji insisted. Thinking I might cause offense if I continued to refuse, I took the phone and made the call.

After speaking to my mother and telling her how I’d ended up where I was, she became, as I’d expected, worried. Her anxiety levels were ratcheted up by Yuji who, excited by the chance to speak to another Westerner, wrestled the phone from me and began bellowing down the line, “Trevy. Mummy. Happy.” It seemed that in a flash his English vocabulary of 25 words had plummeted spectacularly to just three.

Sleeping at Yuji’s house wasn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped. As the moonlight shone in through one of the holes in the roof, I could hear the unmistakable sound of mosquitoes buzzing about my ears. This wasn’t altogether a surprise as just before I’d turned the light out, I’d noticed that the mosquito screens on the windows had, just like the roof, a number of holes in them. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. It’s not easy when insects are eating your face.

The next day, after a bleary-eyed breakfast, Paddy and I packed our things and got ready to leave. Yuji wanted to drive us to the next town 50 miles away, but we felt it’d be taking advantage and so politely declined his offer. Instead he drove us to a nearby main road and within five minutes we were in another car.

This time a middle-aged woman picked us up. I pondered for a moment and marveled at her trusting attitude, as well as the relative safety of Japanese society. Back home, I couldn’t imagine a woman driving by herself stopping for two male travelers.

As with previous drivers, Kumiko deviated from her intended path in order to get us closer to our destination, but after a little while, she became lost. We stopped at one of the ubiquitous convenience stores where she asked a passer-by for directions. The passer-by wasn’t sure and called over another person. Within a few minutes there were six people gathered around the car discussing the best way to get to where we wanted to go. In true Japanese style, a consensus was reached, Kumiko bowed in gratitude at her advisers and we were soon on our way again.

Two days and several lifts later, on a ferry from Kumamoto to Nagasaki, Paddy and I walked about the passengers’ lounge with a notice written in Japanese (by an earlier driver) requesting a lift to the center of Nagasaki. Again, in only a few minutes, one of the passengers raised a hand, gave us a warm smile and offered us a lift.

On second thoughts, maybe the reason I’ve never seen anyone hitchhiking in Japan is because people get picked up so quickly.

If you’re ever in the country and feel like an adventure, consider giving it a go. You never know, you might even get invited to stay in a falling-down house.

Eight Paintings Every Traveler Should See (And Where to See Them)

Many travelers have a bucket list of places they want to go before they, well, kick the bucket. They want to see new sights, scale soaring mountains and tap their toes in exotic seas … and slowing down for a museum tour isn’t always high on that list. But sometimes it should be.

Here are eight classic paintings every traveler needs to add to their list before it is too late.

The Mona Lisa in the Musée du Louvre – Paris, France

Some experts speculate that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci

So maybe you’ve heard Leonardo’s leading lady is a disappointment. The painting is small, it is hard to see and the crowds are overwhelming. Well, it is all true. The painting is small and the crowds are big, but few paintings in the world have stirred as much mystery as this 16th century portrait. And even if she is a tad tiny, the Louvre is the largest national museum in France, the most visited museum in the world and is a 12th century landmark in the City of Lights … it can’t all be disappointing, right?

Starry Night in the Museum of Modern Art – New York City, New York, USA

Don McLean’s song “Starry, Starry Night” is based on this painting

Although he only sold one painting in his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh is a big star in the artistic world. Arguably his most famous painting, Starry Night is one of the most replicated prints in the world and is a must-see masterpiece for vacationers heading to the Big Apple. Located in Midtown Manhattan, The Museum of Modern Art has been called the most influential museum of modern art in the world.

Guernica in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía – Madrid, Spain

The painting revealed Picasso’s horror at Nazi soldiers in Spain

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica painting depicts the bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and Italian planes during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The mural was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to adorn the Spanish Pavilion during the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. It is currently on display at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid where it serves as global reminder of the sobering catastrophes of war.

The Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery – Florence, Italy

Botticelli’s political connections saved his painting from fires that destroyed other “pagan” art

The Italian Renaissance was born in Florence and thus, it is only fitting one of the most famous Italian paintings, the Birth of Venus, is housed in Florence’s oldest, and most famous, museum-The Uffizi Gallery. There is much speculation in the art world as to when and why Sandro Botticelli created his masterpiece-which depicts Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, emerging from a seashell and being handed a flowered cloak by the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons. However, there is no denying The Birth of Venus should be added to every art-loving traveler’s list of must-see paintings.

The Kiss in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere – Vienna, Austria

Klimt liked closeness-similarly nestled couples appear in two of his other paintings

Gustav Klimt’s Der Kuss, or The Kiss, shows a couple in varying hues of gold mosaic-like colors sharing … that’s right, a kiss. Painted during Klimt’s golden period, The Kiss is considered his most famous painting and it is believed that Klimt himself, along with his longtime partner, Emilie Flöge, modeled for the painting. In 2003, a €100 Painting Coin, was issued with The Kiss on one side and a studio-bound Klimt on the reverse. The painting is currently housed in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna.

The Scream in The Munch Museum – Oslo, Norway

This painting has also been referred to as “The Cry”

If one is good, then four is better … or at least Norway-native Edvard Munch thought so. He created not one, but four versions of his most-famous painting, The Scream, which portrays a tormented sexless figure against a blood-red landscape of Oslofjord. One version of the painting is housed in the National Gallery in Oslo, another is owned by Norwegian billionaire, Petter Olsen and the remaining two paintings are property of the Munch Museum. However, one of the most famous versions, a 32 inch X 30 inch tempera on cardboard, was stolen from the museum in 2004 and has yet to be returned. Now that is something to scream about.

American Gothic in the Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, Illinois, USA

Notice how the pitchfork is echoed in the farmer’s overalls

Every traveler has seen a parody of this painting in some form or another, whether it was Kermit and Piggy, Mickey and Minnie or Homer and Marge. But Grant Wood’s original American Gothic masterpiece-who was modeled by his spinster sister and his dentist is proudly displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago. Interestingly enough, this famous Iowan couple never modeled together for the painting and neither of them ever stood in front of the Carpenter Gothic house that sits in the background.

Water Lilies in the Musée Marmottan – Paris France

Monet suffered from cataracts when he completed many of the Water Lilies paintings

Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series is a compilation of 250 oil paintings from the flower gardens at his home in Giverny, in northern France. The paintings are dispersed throughout the world in major museums in France, the United States and Japan. The largest collection of Monet’s work is housed in a 19th Century mansion, the Museè Marmottan, that was the beneficiary of more than 130 paintings, watercolors, pastels and drawings when Monet’s son left them to the museum in his will.

Read about author Cherrye Moore and check out her other BootsnAll articles

Additional photo credits:
Picasso by Mark Berry on Flickr, Botticelli by MrOmega on Flickr, American Gothic by Opacity on Flickr

Laurence prepares for battle!

Ancient Roman evening dress

Gladiator gear, ready for the students

Gladiators, ready for battle!