Things' in general were going along great living in La Paz. The Adventure Brew Hostel,La Paz's newest,was a great base and a haven away from the crazy streets of the city.Apart from biking and the odd run I started doing a bunch of stuff around the hostel for the owners and even became Gravity Assisted Tours super secret shopper.My job was to go around to all the other adventure bike companies and pretend that I was looking at booking a tour.I was given a list of the top five or so companies and a few tourist offices to check up on the cut-throat market of adventure tourism in La Paz.I would then email my report back to Alastair at Gravity so he could review the competition.My reward for my underhanded task was free trips back from Coroico to La Paz and burgers and beer at the hostels b.b.q's every Wednesday and Saturday.It was great to be able to get the ride to La Paz as I would ride from town,up to La Cumbre and down 68k to Coroico descending from 4600m to 1300m.The ride back up wasn't something that I wanted to do.I had told Alastair straight, that although I really respected his company and the trip down the worlds most dangerous road,after my ride up the Andes I wasn't about to pay anyone anything to ride my own bike anywhere.He could see my point and was cool with that.I was however happy to promote is company and sent many a backpacker down to his office to book that world famous bike tour.
The secret shopper gig almost came undone when during my first stop the sales girl,who ended up being the owner,saw me riding my mountain bike in the street a couple of days before.I guess they notice gringos' on bikes in La Paz.Come to think of it,I was the only one that I ever saw!She started grilling me about my bike and then the company mechanic came out and chipped in a few questions of his own.They wanted to know why I needed to book a tour when I had my own bike and why,if I had my own bike did I need to know all about thiers?Holy shit,what to do!Luckily for me,I was a very naughty boy when I was at boarding school and was quite used to being brought before my housemaster or headmaster and grilled mercilessly about one bad thing or another that I had done.I had developed quite the ability to make up very plausible stories that would account for why it was I seemed drunk at dinner(or in class)or deny any knowledge of how half of the two liter bottle of communion wine was missing from the Chapel.My poor brother, a year above me, suffered my misdeeds as he was one of the school prefects and had to bail me out lots.Thanks' for that mate!!
My creative mind went into overdrive and before they could say "Gringo, you got some s'plainin to do!"I was well into my cover story.You see,Mr scary mechanic guy,I have ridden my bike from Buenos Aries to La Paz(truth so far) and now my sister has come to Bolivia from Montreal(I have one and she does live there)to spend some time touring around with me.She is the one who needs the bike and I want to make sure the bikes are safe( god I'm good!).Great, no problems all around and they set about telling me all about the awesome day we would have and quoted prices and all that good stuff.No worries until they wanted me to book our places on the tour."Why can't you book your tour now"?.Oh shit again."Come on,we are very busy and we can't hold places for you"!Now they were not happy as they saw I had written everything down on a little pad that I carried with me."You see,my poor sister is at the hostel suffering from a bad case of altitude sickness and has been in bed for a couple of days.We had want to use the tour as a way of getting her down to Coroico to low altitude so she could feel better and enjoy the rest of her time visiting me".I explained that I couldn't book it as I didn't know when she would get better.Well not only was I a lying bastard,I soon became a really guilty lying bastard when everyone in the store started giving me all kinds of advice on how to make my little sister feel better.They all felt so bad that she was sick during her stay in La Paz and promised to make her tour a very special one.Talk about feeling like a prick.I felt so guilty after lying to those lovely people that I canned the rest of the days detective work and went to Olivers travels for a pint. I told them all about what had happened and they agreed that I was indeed a big lying prick!!
I spent the rest of the day hanging out at Olivers bullshitting to all the other travellers there.As it is a world cup year the most popular topic was,of course,football.I was pround that the Aussie team had qualified for only the second time but was the butt of many a joke about the probability of us winning any games at all.Usually I could rebutt those snide remarks by reminding the English of just how crap their national cricket team was.Unfortunately for me the bloody English had beaten us that year in the battle for the holy grail of cricket "The Ases".I would just have to stare into my pint and put up with the ribbing.
The next day I continued detective work and managed to find out all I needed in order to post my report to Alastair.That was until I hit the last of my intended targets for the day.This tour company was one of two the Alastair was especially interested in.They had a good reputaion and had taken delivery of a fleet of new Trek mountain bikes that were almost on par with Gravity's super cool Kona fleet.After finishing my little act and getting all the info I needed I was on my way out the door when I noticed that the bikes they had were using the same Shimano gear that I had on my tired little Scott.I actually had stopped riding as the brake pads for my disc brakes had worn out almost completely and it was now near suicidal to ride at all as I just couldn't be sure of stopping at all.The spare brake pads I had bought in Buenos Aries were in fact the wrong ones and after about 3500 kilometers of riding through the Andes I really needed new ones.There in front of me,mounted on that Trek bike, were a brand new pair of brake pads.I turned and asked if they had any spare brakes at thier workshop.The blank looks on the faces of the two people in the office showed total confusion.Nobody had ever asked to buy part of one of thier bikes before.I explained my plight and with that they called for a mechanic.He assured me that he could sell me a pair and that if I brought my bike in he would change them over for me.
Off I raced to the hostel ,grabbed my bike and after negotiating the horrendous traffic, was soon climbing the stairs to the tour office with Scott in hand.What happened next was something I never expected in a country a poor as Bolivia.With one look at my bike the lady owner of the tour company asked if she could buy my bike.Right there,right now,U.S dollars cash!!The guide that was in the store started peppering me with questions about my trip and he too wanted me to leave my bike behind.I must admit it was tempting but with all the fake U.S currency around I just couldn't trust them.Anyway I just love my little bike(there I said it!).The mechanic,true to his word changed my brake pads over for me and then asked if he could keep my old ones.No worries mate,just remind me never to ride one of your bikes if you are going to put those things into service.They were really lovely people and again I felt bad for lying to them but what can you do?
I started making plans for some new rides that I wanted to do around La Paz and with my bike working properly now I was very keen to hop back on board and do some more exploring.I had decided to see if it was at all possible to ride up to Chacaltaya on which was the worlds highest ski hill.My plan was to ride to from La Paz at 3600meters to La Cumbre at 4600meter then ride down to Coroico at 1300 meters.I would spend a couple of days there before making the huge climb back up to La Cumbre but continue on to the refuge(hut) that doubles as the lodge for the worlds highest ski hill at a staggering 5300meters.From there I would join up with a trekking company and climb the remaining 150 meters or so to the summit of Chacaltaya that's 18,000 feet folks for those who like to compare the big mountains of the world.I met with a guide that Alastair recommended and spoke to a guy in my room who had just come back from trekking with that trek.His group had summited without problem and he told me that the guide was very good.Now,could I actually connect the two adventures,Alastair said no worries in that silly Kiwi accent and informed me that a Kiwi bike race had in fact set the record for that ride.From 1300meters to 5300 meters on dirt roads,riding a mountain bike uphill for about 90 kilometers in just over eight hours.Trust a bloody New Zealander to do something so rediculously wonderful.
Things were to take a turn for the worst for me as my health started to slip and I was soon under the influence of a high temperature with a grand headache to match.I suffered through that for a couple of days before I woke up to find that I was now developing a small rash on my chest.I figured it was just from sleeping in sweat drenched clothing and didn't think much of it,until it started to spread.My throat started to hurt and speech became more and more painfull.The general feeling amoung the bachpacker clan was that I either had partied too hard (which I hadn't)or that it was altitude sickness(which it wasn't,I was sure).My nights became hell as I couldn't lie flat without coughing and my body went from hot to cold in hourly cycles.At one stretch I lay in bed for the best part of 36 hours without eating.I had to try and sleep sitting upright,propped up by pillows covered in towels to soak up the sweat that wouldn't quit and because my lungs were filling with fluid I couldn't lie down. All I could do was to try and warm up in the shower while at the same time blowing the dried blood that caked my sinuses all over the shower-stall wall.Every morning was a battle to not throw up as I gagged on the bloody phlegm that was now coating my throat.Lovely!
One morning I managed to actually get up,find some dry clothes and wander down throught he frigid hostel down to the lobby for breakfast.While I was there a group of four nurses from Australia who had given me some medication for my headache a few days previous arrived back at the hostel after being away for a five days at Coroico and the Bolivian Amazon.One look at me was all it took for the girls to fall back into thier professional nursing mode.The four of them grilled me about the what had happened since they saw me last and when I mentioned my spreading blistered rash they freaked.I was taken back upstairs and told to remove my jacket,sweater and t-shirt revealing an torso covered in small cirular scabs.I was asked if I had ever had chicken pox as a kid and I couldn't remember so off we went to one of the mamy telephone exchanges over the road from the hostel.I called my folks back in Oz and woke them up with the sort of questions that no parent wants to hear from a son who is in Bolivia.I had spent a week in Thai hosital once and I didn't want repeat the experience here.
Apparently I had suffered from chicken pox as a kid so I thought I was in the clear.One of the nurses however was in the phone booth next to me calling her hospital in Melbourne, Australia.She passed on all my symptoms to a doctor friend of hers who was on the night shift and without being able to examine me he did think that I may be suffering from the pox and not shingles as I was beginning to think.His advice,let the girls take you to a pharmacy,buy the drugs he prescribed and get the hell out of Bolivia.They then took me off to a pharmacy as told and went to town shopping.In Bolivia you can buy anything you like over the counter and as long as you know what you want there is no problem.Well with four chicks whose job it is to dish out this stuff I figured they knew what they were doing and left my fate thier hands.
It took a couple of days ingesting enough meds to bring down an rhino before I began to feel better and began to plan my escape from Bolivia.With the raw flesh from my sinuses now spreading down my nostrils and out over my top lip I really looked a sight and decided that I needed to go somewhere sunny and lie in the ocean by a beach and let the salt water do it's trick.I searched the internet for the cheapest flights north and decided to head off to South Beach Miami for a few days in the sun before continuing on to Canada for the summer.
I had a week to kill before my flight and spent the start of it wandering around the markets or sitting quietly soaking up the winter sun in the plaza in front of the San Francisco Cathedral.One of my many wanderings led me luckily,as I would soon find out,to the Lloyd Aero Boliviano offices in town .I thought that as I was there I may as well go in and confirm my flight and maybe actually pick up a real ticket as I didn't really trust the whole e-ticket thing here in Bolivia.Once I was called up to an agent and gave her my e-mail confimation she proceeded to tell me that there was no such fight as the one that had been confirmed for me.Upon checking she told me that the airline had decided to change it's schedule and that they were waiting for me to come in to find another flight.I asked her how I was supposed to come and re-book a fight when I didn't know that mine had been cancelled in the first place!I would have gone to catch my flight and it wouldn't have been there great!She wasn't interested and asked if i still wanted to fly out.I said of course and asked her when I could possibly confirm a seat.She then told me that the only fight they cold get me on in the next couple of weeks was leaving the next morning at 9am.What!I had no choice.If I waited,I would miss my non-refundable connection to Vancouver in six days time.The next day it was then.My god so much to do.My whole life to pack up in just a few hours.I didn't want to leave this wonderful place like this but what can you do.Sometimes life just sucks.
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