Flying into Bolivia one quickly notices the mountainous landscape which is quite characteristic for a large part of the country. Patches of civilization are located on very different altitude levels and often separated by mountain ranges and (in lower regions) dense forests. Getting from one spot to the other can thus be a bit of a challenge. When the Inca reigned in the region, they too had to deal with the terrain and connected their settlements and cities with a number of trails, of which some can still be walked today.
We compared a number of different options and went for the Takesi Trail, which leads through a variety of landscapes and would take us up to almost 5,000m and then slowly descend to roughly 2,500m at the end. It was the three of us, one carrier and a guide. Well.. they told us he was a guide, but "Fritz", as they introduce him to us, was a bit of a strange character, as we found out later on the track.
Before the actual hike started, we had to drive a few hours from La Paz to the starting point of the trail. While the roads in Bolivia are in good condition as long as you are in the cities or on one of the new highways, the situation is a bit different once you leave the main roads. I tried to film a bit of the drive, but the jeep bounced around in an almost comically exaggerated way:
The guy with the red hat is "Fritz", by the way. I love how he stoically sits there like it's a boring morning commute
The jeep brought us to the lower part of a slope, at somewhere around 4,500m altitude. Without a single word, Fritz had already started walking up the path and we hurried up to follow him. Stating the obvious, walking uphill a steep slope with a backpack can be fairly exhausting. Add the effects of altitude (which we also briefly touched upon in the post about La Paz), and you can hear your body telling you to sit down and take a break in an increasingly pushy tone. Since the surface was mainly rubble and our steps would sometimes give in when it moved, every single meter upwards had to be earned.
Like on every hiking tour, moments of regret kept creeping in and I thought of comfortable sofas like a starving person might think of T-bone steaks. While I suspect the others might have occasionally felt so, too, we only gave each other sheepish thumbs-up gestures and kept on climbing.
Reaching the top of the ridge and standing above the clouds gave us a majestic view over the valley. It felt like some sort of achievement, but in reality, we had barely covered 5% of the full distance. Our carrier looked exhausted already. I use the word "carrier" lightly since it was basically a kid of 17 who, as we found out later, was an IT student and had never done a longer hiking tour before. Since he did not even had a proper backpack, food supplies and all tents had just been thrown into a bag which he was now carrying with ropes (!) tied around his shoulders. Not the most professional of setups, and certainly not the most comfortable. But now that we were on our way, the only option we had was to reach the town of Chojlla, somewhere under the blanket of clouds that stretched to the horizon.
Fritz urged us to walk on in his very own way: silently marching on without notifying us, and we hastily packed our stuff to follow the already distant figure down the trail.
Walking down I kept wondering how long it must have taken the ancient workers to set up the path. A simple task like peeling an orange is already exhausting in this altitude - to carry heavy rocks around and fit them neatly into a path, which you first need to carve out of a mountain, is a formidable task indeed.
The path leads through a valley between the mountains, where alpaca herds graze the open fields. Occasionally, a less shy specimen would cross the path and watch us trot by. Combined with the clouds, which slowly flowed down the valley in front of us like some sort of fluffy syrup, the whole scenery had a surreal atmosphere.
Majestic af.
The Takesi trail can be done either comfortably in 3days/2nights or you go for the very manly 2days/1night option, which is what we did, obviously. But really it was mainly because we are cheap and the price was significantly lower for the shorter option, and at least partly because we only had a rough idea of how exhausting the trail can be. While it sounds easy enough when you consider that the majority of the trail goes downhill, it does strain your joints quite a bit and we were all glad that we were equipped with hiking sticks to take some of the weight. Since we had started our hike hours later than we had initially planned, we also knew that we had to limit the number of breaks to make it to our camping location before nightfall.
On our way we passed various ruins and abandoned settlements. Hard to say how old they were, but they do fuel the imagination - scenes of pre-colonial times, when the trail was not a unique holiday activity for local hikers or three European dudes in functional clothing, but part of an ancient infrastructure on which goods, people and stories were transported.
We also walked past some not-so-abandoned settlements on a few occasions. Back home I feel like I am pushing the outdoor life when my phone reception is down to two bars, so I had a hard time to even begin to fathom what life must be like growing up in these mountains.
Since we had started late, the sun had already gone down when we made it to the designated camping site for the night: a field in front of a worn-down building made of stone. Unfortunately it was still bright enough that we could see the field was all but fully covered in dung. Apparently from a single donkey, who was visibly proud of his productivity and was roaming the field to mark the last remaining clear spots. Unfazed and without a word, Fritz started setting up the tents on the most comfortable looking piles. Since we were quite tired and dangerously hungry, we decided to ignore what we would be sleeping on later and focused on our dinner and getting a fire going.
The beautiful thing about being far away from the next city is that no street lights interfere and compete with the night sky. Nightfall revealed a glittering display of thousands of stars, and the faded glow of the Milky Way stood out against the dark-blue canvas of the Bolivian sky. The rest of the night was a bit noisy, since the donkey wanted to make sure we would not forget about him and spent a good part of the dark hours circling the tents, yelling and shitting with almost admirable tirelessness.
In the morning we climbed out of the tent onto our dung field and had a strong coffee while the sun came up behind the mountain range. There are worse ways to start a day.
Don't look down, don't look down
We left the site and continued our descent through the now considerably greener and more humid landscape. Suddenly our mysterious guide Fritz stopped in his tracks. Curious, we walked closer. He turned to us: "I really should tell you something about the history of this trail," he said in Spanish. "Finally!", we thought, pleasantly surprised. We held the straps of our backpacks and looked at him expectantly. "I really should," he repeated. "But I'm too tired." With that, he continued walking down the trail, ignoring our protests.