Boliver Hoschke and Kateacabana

It was time to go to a wild country with good friends of ours Kate and Oli, Bolivia was the place and the following happenings.......happened.

We started our togetherness in a place called Copacabana on the sunny shores of lake Titicaca. It's a pretty town in a great location, nestled just on the Bolivian side of the Peruvian border. We stayed a few nights here but left a little disappointed as the place enforces a midnight curfew. We didn't come to Bolivia to be treated like Novacastrians so we left for one of the most bizarre cities on earth, La Paz. Perched at 3800 metres above sea level in a strange natural crater type setting, this place looks as weird as it feels. We were not shy about our intentions and quickly hopped on the good foot and made very good use of our reasonably strong currency (80 cent beers!). Whilst hanging at a local club late on that first night, we all suddenly felt the need to leave immediately as we were all having trouble breathing and using our eyes, someone had released some sort of capsicum spray or similar in the venue and they succeeded in emptying the place in the matter of about 30 seconds! A curious tactic by a rival club owner I suspect.......

Kate and Oli had to make their way south, so we decided to have a look at Bolivia's enormous salt flats and desert on the way through the excellent mode of transport known as Toyota Landcruiser. The salt flats were flatter than they were salty, but saltier than the previous flattest thing I'd ever seen.

I feel this video captures the atmosphere of the trip sufficiently, set the volume to 11......

Salkantay sillyness.

The next chapter of our whacky adventure was the Salkantay Trek, which ultimately brought us to the famous inca ruins of Machu Picchu. This was the only activity in South America which we listed as a 'must do'. Firstly because the ruins are quite spectacular and Gabby was dead keen on seeing them and secondly, I've actually been there before three years ago as a very sick individual. I had a major case of food poisoning, altitude sickness or possibly the terrible affliction known as ruin influenza. Either way I never really took in Machu Picchu as I was rushed straight to the local clinic where Dr Nick put me on the IV drip.

So, in the spirit of redemption we woke at 3:30 in the morning (I didn't know there was a 3:30 in the morning as well) and set off for our first day of what proved to be a very difficult trek. Luckily I got my altitude sickness out of the way on the first day, where I was really struggling to breathe and constantly looking for idealistic 'natural' toilets.

I eventually made it to the first campsite an hour after the group due to extreme sphincter clenching and gnashing of teeth.

The first night was spent at 3800 metres, which I hardly need tell you is a heck of long way up and darn cold (-10c to be exact). We slept diagonally across the tent as the average 2 man tent isn't really built for someone of my......ahem.....proportions.

Upon waking I noticed that I felt much better and we bounded up to the highest point of the trek, 4800 metres, with relative ease compared to the previous days struggle. This is where we witnessed a real life avalanche! It was pretty awesome to see this from a safe distance of around 400 metres. It sounded like a jet airliner flying in close proximity and was truly an awesome sight, but nothing really that great compared to say.....um........ finishing 'Donkey Kong Country' with all your spare kongs intact or hitting a homer in baseball.

Anyway we negotiated the tricky 6 hour (!) descent to our campsite, giving us a total of 10 hours walking for the day. Not really an easy task at this distance above sea level.

The rest of the trek was really quite arbitrary compared to the first 2 days. The highlights really came at our campsites. One evening a small monkey decided that I looked 'treelike' enough to climb all over me for a while. I decided that I really didn't want parasites again, so I devised a cunning plan of distraction and speed to be rid of him with relative ease. King of the jungle my ass!

We spent a night in Aguas Calientes, well half a night, as we suffered another 3:30 am wake up call to be in line to experience the climb up to waynapicchu, which soars over machu picchu, offering an almost aireal view of the ruins. Now, to be one of the lucky ones to experience this you need to be in the first 400 people to machu picchu for the day. Given that there are no buses to the top until 630 am, you need to climb up there from the town yourself after they open the lower gates at 4:30am. We started the ascent in about 200th position and it quickly became clear that it was not an easy walk up the thousands of steep stairs to the top gates, but indeed a RACE! I felt my competitive instincts turn on and Gab accessed her inner mountain goat as well. We stormed up the climb in record time for a Novacastrian, late 20's, pigeon toed husband and wife team for 10th and 11th place out of 400 or so idiots.

The effort was worth it however, we climbed the steep ladders and stairs to the top of what I could only describe as a natural skyscraper. I haven't really been a big fan of heights since I fell off that tightrope as a young boy in Australia's only travelling gypsy circus and patchwork quilting team, but I climbed on despite the view which scared the cheesecake out of me. Once at the top the clouds parted for a spectacular birds eye view of Machu Picchu, which was certainly a highlight of the trip for both Gab and myself.

Later that day our group reassembled for an afternoon/all night drinking enduro which took us back to Cusco and it's dodgy clubs, naturally of course I had no problems securing a podium position in this particular competition. It was a fitting end for a difficult 5 days and I have no intention of using my legs in anger for a couple of weeks.

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!

Volcanos and Vitamins.

As well as my usual daily quota of doing 'cute' things to keep Gabby amused/interested, we have been getting a little bit wild lately in a town called Banos, which sits just under a 5500 meter high Volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes. I've been here before, about 3 years ago with my friend Josh, except this time I'm not depressed and lost which is quite a thing.

The town contained a rock 'n' roll bar, which we both frequented. The owner was a cool dude who even let me programme my own playlist, which he played every time I was there, which was a lot, which was awesome, which made me come back a lot, which now makes me realise he was pretty clever. I'm also a bit of a local legend now after winning a game of pool in the most awesome of fashions. I was playing a local guy with the bet of a bottle of beer as the winnings. As it was, I was actually out of money and couldn't pay for his beer should I lose. He broke and sunk one ball, I then proceeded to win the game by sinking every single one of my balls in one turn! It was glorious!

Anyway, we got outside and did some stuff including a tour of the regions waterfalls in this amusing vehicle.

Among the waterfalls were many families basking in the earthly minerals they provided....... And to be seen!!!!


Next day it was time to ascend this great big volcano, this time on quad bikes. I've never been one for 'lazy bikes' as I like to call them, but at this altitude there is no way I was going to ride a mountain bile up there. It was great fun and we went pretty bananas on them, it just cracks me up that you can rent an extremely powerful quad bike over here, capable of going well over 100kph and just ride it wherever you like - off road, up volcanoes, amongst traffic etc. Close to the top was a really neat swing over a steep drop which really gave you the sensation of flying. This is Gab flying off into outer-space.


The sight of two men in their 40's pushing each other on a swing, giggling like school girls was one to remember.



This is an interesting one, I haven't touched up or cropped these pics at all by the way, just shot them in sepia. This is the most bizarre lens flare I've ever seen.


Tomorrow we head south for more mountain related activity then into Peru within a few days, see you soon Oli and Kate!

Mugged!

Shortly after having 'Republica Del Ecuador' stamped into my passport for the second time in my life, I found out why the gringo's generally seem to consider Quito, the capital, one of the most dangerous stops in South America.

I'm generally pretty confident walking the streets by myself and in hindsight it was a stupid thing to be doing in this area, after midnight. But I was only 2 blocks from our hotel and figured that nothing too bad could happen in such a short distance.

2 reasonably big guys, lets say roughly the size of Elvis in his later days, tackled me to the ground (pretty rude seeing as I said 'good evening' to them). They held me there while another 3 guys, roughly the size of Dustin Hoffman, completely ramsacked me for everything that I had, tearing my necklace off my person. Even my scarf wasn't spared!

Here is an artist's impression of the desperate scene.

They even removed my shoes to make sure I didn't have any more cash in there, so don't believe that ol' trick fellow backpackers. The scene came to an abrupt halt when one of the Dustin Hoffman's tried to steal my wedding ring and I gave him a very nice elbow to the nose, which immediatley started bleeding (in hindsight, I think this may be the only limb I've ever thrown in anger). For whatever reason, the attack stopped at this point (I'm quite sure it had very little to do with my magic elbow, these guys could have easily killed me if they wanted to), I put my shoes on and continued my walk home.

All in all I got off very lightly, there was no intention of serious harm and I walked away with only a few bruises and scratches. I would like to thank my attackers for not being too over the top, it may seem as though I consider the whole thing a joke but I actually did learn my lesson (ok mum).