Megavalanche

It's has been an eternity since I posted anything on here, I'm very sorry my adoring fans but I've been so busy! Yeah right!......... in fact our lives generally revolve around eating, drinking and catching buses to the next place to eat and drink.

We've had some great times in Peru, starting with the beach town of Mancora. Although it was full of 'beach people', they generally stayed out of my way and I stayed out of theirs.

After 7 days of laying around, watching sunsets and doing as little as possible it was time to see some familiar faces...........

We hauled ass down the Pan American highway for a marathon effort of two 25 hour bus rides which would eventually get us to Cusco in the Peruvian highlands. Our friends Oliver and Kate 'see the radness' Hoschke were there in the final days of their volunteer program. It has been fantastic seeing them and they certainly have been the cure for any home sickness we may have been experiencing.

Oli and I promptly got back to the roots of our friendship and went mountain biking.

This was no regular roll in the park though, it was Peru's own Megavalanche course located high in the Andes, just two mountains south from machu picchu.

The drive up took around an hour and a half as our four wheel drive negotiated countless switchbacks I knew we were in for a very serious ride. You could see the trail crossing the road and dropping off into narrow rocky chutes, which did nothing for my nerves at all!

Starting at a whopping 5000 meters above sea level, we descended down to 2000 meters in the space of only 25 kilometres. That's damn steep! The trail was rocky and very demanding on the arms with massive boulders and cat food tin sized loose stones randomly scattered in inconvenient places the entire way down.

I managed to have only one crash and was pretty happy to walk away from the trail almost unscathed as it was one of the most difficult rides I've ever done.

Here's Oli's friend Paul, who was also volunteering at Peru's Challenge, showing some big balls as this was one of his first ever mountain bike rides.

Here's Oli, who looked as comfortable going down steep shit as when I met him ten years ago.


Three happy boys feeling lucky to be alive!