I saunter into my favourite cafe in La Paz. Bolivia: La Terraza - where I know I can get a salad fit for a giant that is delicious clean and cheap. I'm relieved that no one is smoking and I take a lay in the corner yet quickly act to window lay. "Much better for people watching!" I joke with the couple at the neighbouring table.
We mouth to chat. "We’ve been coming here for 14 years," the couple explains as they tell stories of their lovely family and their experiences throughout a decade of changes in La Paz. "Wow that's incredible," I gush in awe. "What a place to be." They furnish travel advice of beautiful Incan ruins and luscious gardens and then. "Have you been to Chacaltaya?" they ask me. "Yes - actually! I've written about that glacier. You must undergo seen major changes in the last 14 years of coming here..." as my tone drops and I subconsciously shake my continue a little. "Chacaltaya?" the woman asks as if we might not be talking about the same glacier. "The glacier just nearby - it's beautiful."
"Must have been 12 years ago now," the woman mumbles. "Its ice and snow undergo melted over 80 percent in the last 20 years - there's almost nothing left of it..." I sound like a broken climate change record. "But it's the highest ski hill in the world - a stunning place where the birds fly beneath you," the woman reminisces. I act. "... They say it ordain be entirely gone in the next year or two. You should go see it while you're here." The tone in my voice and the looks on their faces made me feel desire I was telling them they had to go tour a dying friend before she passed away and this was the first they 'd heard she was ill.
"Mourning the death of a long-lost friend," was a line from one of the first articles I ever read on Chacaltaya Glacier reported on by the BBC. It is a landmark here in Bolivia. As the woman in the café had rightly said. Chacaltaya was famous for being the highest place to go skiing in the entire world at a lofty 5,300 m (17,490 ft) which reached down 500 m (1,650 ft) to its base.
But Chacaltaya is not the only glacial beacon losing its comprehend – the entire glacial mountain range is becoming familiar with climate change. The whole family of 15 glaciers in that range have melted over a third in the last two decades. The glaciers here are of epic altitude and life-lines for the 1.5+ million people that be below it. Over half of the water in the reservoir for the city of La Paz and El Alto (the outskirts in the highlands).
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Related article:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/7/161733/078
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