Mountain biking was awesome, but I´m getting ahead of myself.
After I made my last post Jon, Tim and I headed out to find a place to get our laundry done and then some food. I needed mine done by the next morning at 8am otherwise I wouldn´t have any clean t-shirts for my mountain biking the next day. It was already 8pm...tricky. Jon and Tim were great sports about it and ended up following me to about 5 different lavanderias until we found one that would have my clothes done by 8am the next morn.
We ended up grabbing a cheap but good dinner at a local place for about 3 bucks a person then headed off to find a place for some drinks and dessert. When it comes to food and drink in this country I tend to spend like a drunken pirate, so I suggested we head to a second story restaurant where a pisco sour was 18 soles and dessert was 20+. Jon and Tim thought that was a stupid idea so we ended up finding a place where dessert was 12 soles and we could get 2 pisco sours for 20 soles. It was awesome and our waitress had the largest breasts I have ever seen on a Peruvian woman. Score one for the Brits.
My head swimming with Pisco the three of us headed back to the hostal around 11pm where I needed to be up by about 6:30am to take a shower, pack my stuff, eat something, pick up my laundry, and catch my mountain bike tour at 8am. I suceeded at all these tasks and went mountain biking with Laura and Preeti, two lovely British girls, Liz and Blake, more Canuks telling me I need to visit Vancouver, and Judith, a Californian who works with special needs children. Our two guides were Miguel and Xavier and were, of course, super human biking machines who were completely immune to the affects of altitude, cold, rain, I´m pretty sure they could have run through fire had they wanted to.
The whole trip was one long photo-op. I wish I had taken more photos and I took a fair amount. Breathtaking mountain peaks precariously draped with misty clouds...I was biking through the set for Lord of the Rings. It was also a damn good workout. Most of the biking was downhill but there were enough uphill sections to get me huffing and puffing like a damn asthmatic, and then it started raining. Oh, that part was fairly miserable. The wind was blowing and I was freezing but I wasn´t about to stop. I changed into dry clothes and kept trucking. Appropo considering my job history.
We stopped for a bit at an ancient experimental farming site. The Inca culture experimented with terraced farming areas at different elevations to get different temperatures and wind exposure for their crops. The resulting giant, terraced pit was damned impressive and a great place to hike around for about 30 min and take pictures. I was glad for the break, I desperately needed to stretch my legs out. Mountain biking at 10k ft+ is hard!
We hopped back on our bikes and headed out. Thankfully it had stopped raining and the wind wasn´t blowing so fiercely anymore. Some more Lord of the Rings photo-ops and we biked into a small town for lunch. The food was, of course, delicious. A tomato and basil salad with two big, round quiches as well. I changed into dry clothes for the second time, the sun came out and we continued to the most difficult part of the ride.
We had already done some fairly difficult biking on steep rock covered paths and I´m not ashamed to say I walked the bike over one or two sections, but the last part of the trip was narrow with very sharp turns and a few 100ft+ drop offs on the side of the path...oh, and also steep and rock covered. I did some of it, probably more then I should have, but I was walking the bike quite a bit. Blake and Preeti were hardcore and managed to stay on their bikes for most of the freaky stuff, but Laura and Judith were even more catious than me and Liz was in the van with a nasty cold. Either way a good time was had by all and no one got hurt. I did take a pretty good tumble at one point when I was attempting to ride and sip water from my Camelbak at the same time. I failed at both endeavors. This was on completely flat ground.
We had one more bizzare thing to visit before the end of the ride. We biked to the edge of a very old salt mine type place. Something like a thousand pools of water had been cut into the hillside. When the water evaporated during the dry season, it left behind salt. It looked like a white rimmed honeycomb that belonged on the surface of the moon, not the earth.
We ended our ride at a small restaurant where our guides bought us drinks as you can see in the last pic. On the right side of the pic is Blake, Liz, Preeti, and Judith. On the left side is myself and Laura. I look about 40 years old in that pic. I don´t even recognize myself. I need new sun glasses and a replenished hairline. All 6 of us had a spirited bullshit session before we all hopped in the van to head out. The van stopped in a town and got me a taxi to Ollantaytambo where I am typing this up. I have a train ticket to Aguas Calientes and a room reserved for the night. I plan on getting up ass early, seeing Machu Picchu, grabbing a train and cab to Santa Theresa, passing out, waking up the next morning to fly 200 meters over the jungle on a zip line, and heading back to Cusco to shake my ass in the clubs Friday and Saturday night. Wish me luck!
After I made my last post Jon, Tim and I headed out to find a place to get our laundry done and then some food. I needed mine done by the next morning at 8am otherwise I wouldn´t have any clean t-shirts for my mountain biking the next day. It was already 8pm...tricky. Jon and Tim were great sports about it and ended up following me to about 5 different lavanderias until we found one that would have my clothes done by 8am the next morn.
We ended up grabbing a cheap but good dinner at a local place for about 3 bucks a person then headed off to find a place for some drinks and dessert. When it comes to food and drink in this country I tend to spend like a drunken pirate, so I suggested we head to a second story restaurant where a pisco sour was 18 soles and dessert was 20+. Jon and Tim thought that was a stupid idea so we ended up finding a place where dessert was 12 soles and we could get 2 pisco sours for 20 soles. It was awesome and our waitress had the largest breasts I have ever seen on a Peruvian woman. Score one for the Brits.
My head swimming with Pisco the three of us headed back to the hostal around 11pm where I needed to be up by about 6:30am to take a shower, pack my stuff, eat something, pick up my laundry, and catch my mountain bike tour at 8am. I suceeded at all these tasks and went mountain biking with Laura and Preeti, two lovely British girls, Liz and Blake, more Canuks telling me I need to visit Vancouver, and Judith, a Californian who works with special needs children. Our two guides were Miguel and Xavier and were, of course, super human biking machines who were completely immune to the affects of altitude, cold, rain, I´m pretty sure they could have run through fire had they wanted to.
The whole trip was one long photo-op. I wish I had taken more photos and I took a fair amount. Breathtaking mountain peaks precariously draped with misty clouds...I was biking through the set for Lord of the Rings. It was also a damn good workout. Most of the biking was downhill but there were enough uphill sections to get me huffing and puffing like a damn asthmatic, and then it started raining. Oh, that part was fairly miserable. The wind was blowing and I was freezing but I wasn´t about to stop. I changed into dry clothes and kept trucking. Appropo considering my job history.
We stopped for a bit at an ancient experimental farming site. The Inca culture experimented with terraced farming areas at different elevations to get different temperatures and wind exposure for their crops. The resulting giant, terraced pit was damned impressive and a great place to hike around for about 30 min and take pictures. I was glad for the break, I desperately needed to stretch my legs out. Mountain biking at 10k ft+ is hard!
We hopped back on our bikes and headed out. Thankfully it had stopped raining and the wind wasn´t blowing so fiercely anymore. Some more Lord of the Rings photo-ops and we biked into a small town for lunch. The food was, of course, delicious. A tomato and basil salad with two big, round quiches as well. I changed into dry clothes for the second time, the sun came out and we continued to the most difficult part of the ride.
We had already done some fairly difficult biking on steep rock covered paths and I´m not ashamed to say I walked the bike over one or two sections, but the last part of the trip was narrow with very sharp turns and a few 100ft+ drop offs on the side of the path...oh, and also steep and rock covered. I did some of it, probably more then I should have, but I was walking the bike quite a bit. Blake and Preeti were hardcore and managed to stay on their bikes for most of the freaky stuff, but Laura and Judith were even more catious than me and Liz was in the van with a nasty cold. Either way a good time was had by all and no one got hurt. I did take a pretty good tumble at one point when I was attempting to ride and sip water from my Camelbak at the same time. I failed at both endeavors. This was on completely flat ground.
We had one more bizzare thing to visit before the end of the ride. We biked to the edge of a very old salt mine type place. Something like a thousand pools of water had been cut into the hillside. When the water evaporated during the dry season, it left behind salt. It looked like a white rimmed honeycomb that belonged on the surface of the moon, not the earth.
We ended our ride at a small restaurant where our guides bought us drinks as you can see in the last pic. On the right side of the pic is Blake, Liz, Preeti, and Judith. On the left side is myself and Laura. I look about 40 years old in that pic. I don´t even recognize myself. I need new sun glasses and a replenished hairline. All 6 of us had a spirited bullshit session before we all hopped in the van to head out. The van stopped in a town and got me a taxi to Ollantaytambo where I am typing this up. I have a train ticket to Aguas Calientes and a room reserved for the night. I plan on getting up ass early, seeing Machu Picchu, grabbing a train and cab to Santa Theresa, passing out, waking up the next morning to fly 200 meters over the jungle on a zip line, and heading back to Cusco to shake my ass in the clubs Friday and Saturday night. Wish me luck!
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