It is impossible to avoid coca tea in Bolivia. You will be offered the tea with the green leaves on any social occasion, and if you wish to imitate the locals, you will chew on the leaves, once the tea has been drunk.
The brothers walk in silence – most things have already been said after 30 years of working together. Once in a while, Adolfo turns on his radio, so they can listen to the news. At the time when there was no bus running past the road to the mountain, the brothers and the other employees sometimes had to walk all 21 kilometres from their houses.
The best room in the house of Samuel and Martha Mendoza is dominated by photos and paintings of the mountains in general and of Mount Chacaltaya in particular. The family also has a small collection of private photos from Samuel’s workplace – and of him skiing.
This is what’s left of the Chacaltaya glacier
Every day from early morning until late evening Samuel’s wife Martha opens their little shop, positioned between the street and their house.
Normally, the Mendoza brothers catch the bus at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, heading for Mount Chacaltaya. Before they go, they have breakfast, brush their teeth, and shave. Samuel has to go and get bread for his wife’s small kiosk before he leaves.
The remaining evidence of the old, closed skilift show how people once skied down the mountain.
Samuel has just returned from the mountain. He is drinking a cup of coca tea and eating a slice of bread, as it will be a couple of hours before dinner is served. Today, the family is having maize soup – again.
Samuel Mendoza finds it sad that his old friend, the Chacaltaya Glacier, is gone. The only things left in the place that used to be a ski run are a rusty steel wire from the broken ski lift and lots of slate stone that make walking around a risky business.
The highlands above La Paz and around El Alto are dry and bare during late winter. The winter and the rainy season begin in late September, and after that, the land thrives for a while. However, the rainfall is heavily reduced owing to climate change. In January 2009 for instance, the precipitation was only half the usual level.
The Mendoza family invest a lot of energy in Martha’s small shop. Every morning, before leaving for the mountain, Samuel for instance goes to get freshly baked bread for the shop.
Normally, 50-year-old Samuel Mendoza and his 57-year-old brother, Adolfo, walk straight from the bus to the chalet. They are perfectly fit after having taken the walk almost every day in the past 30 years. Moreover, they have grown accustomed to the rarefied air, so they are only taking a break for the sake of the journalists accompanying them.
There are always more tourists coming up to Chacaltaya on weekends. Most of them take the exhausting walk from the chalet to the mountain’s second (and highest) peak, which is located 5,395 metres above sea level. At this altitude, the air only contains one third of the oxygen which is present at sea level. For some older tourists, the walk is too exhausting, so they stay in the chalet’s scruffy restaurant called ’Gaststube’ where they will often buy themselves a cup of coca tea, which is believed to be a good remedy against high altitude sickness.
In the place which used to be a glacier, complete with its own ski run, there are still some scattered lumps of ice left. On warm days, however, they melt so quickly that the water forms a brooklet a few metres from the steel wire that constituted the tow of the broken ski lift.
When the ski lift was still working (the old Volvo tractor engine has been non-functional for a couple of years), Samuel Mendoza was responsible for operating it if there were people on the ski run. Smiling almost like a child, he sits down by the old, dusty control panel and shows us how the handles work. And suddenly, on a spontaneous whim, he shows us how to get on and off the simple lift – and how to swing your body, including skis, into the right position afterwards.
Bolivia’s water distribution system is old and outdated. La Paz, the capital, and the neighbouring city of El Alto – with just under two million inhabitants all together, or 25 per cent of the total population of Bolivia – depend on melt water from the mountain glaciers nearby. However, the water travels to the water utilities in ancient, open canals, and almost half the water is lost before it gets to the utilities.
Almost all of the Mendoza family. From left: Ximena (24), Gustavo (10), Samuel (50), Ronal Samuel (17), Martha (46) and to the far right Bianca (20). Maria Loisa (15) had already left for school that morning.
Right below Chacaltaya’s second (and highest) peak, there is still a small
patch of glacier. That is where Samuel Mendoza and his sons ski once in a
while. They rarely take more than two runs, however. The ski lift is broken, and it is extremely exhausting to walk up the steep slope at an altitude of 5,300 metres.
Martha spends the often long wait between customers keeping the account.
If you step out the Mendoza family’s front door and walk just under 30 metres to the left, you will end up at a crossroads. There, if you stand in the far left corner, you will be able to catch a glimpse of Mount Chacaltaya which is located about 15 kilometres away on a bee-line.
One night it hails in El Alto. The hail quickly disappears, but Samuel’s and Martha’s children and their friends manage to make a small snowman and engage in a quick snowball fight. All the boys of the family know how to ski, though some are better at the sport than others. They have learned their skills on Mount Chacaltaya. The ski run is gone, but on rare occasions, it is still possible to ski a little above the place where the ski lift ended earlier on.
The Mendoza family lives in El Alto – an ’extension’ of La Paz, the capital, which is located in the valley 400 metres below. El Alto is much poorer than La Paz, and the inhabitants are mostly native people who have come to the big city from rural areas.
Martha with her daughter Bianca. From the shop’s window one can easily keep track of what is happening in the neighbourhood.
The Mendoza family’s street.
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