Hello and Happy New Year!
Just a quickie this time (well, for me) as I've already heard from
various people how crap it is to be back at work and don't want to rub
it in that... well... we're not. Sorry. OK, I'll shut up and get on with
it.
We haven't been doing a huge amount since I last e-mailed, mainly
getting hammered with people of various nationalities... you know when
it's the festive season and nothing much is happening and you wake up
with a hangover and mooch around the streets a bit, pretending you're
intending to Do Something Cultural, perhaps visit that art gallery you
saw something about in the paper the other day... until someone cracks,
suggests a beer, and is immediately accused of having an alcohol problem
by everyone else, etc etc? That may be my longest excuse ever, but you
get the picture. And anyway, it was also a kind of sociological research
project, in which I discovered that Germans do indeed have a brand of
humour entirely their own, and it's very 'unique' and 'special'. So
there you go.
The only thing we did worth mentioning was the Road of Death, a kerazee
80-km mountain-bike ride which descends over 4000 feet of what's
basically a steep dirt track with sheer drops of hundreds of feet on one
side, guarded by nothing except a cross or plaque every so often to
commemorate a traveller who didn't live to tell the tale. We started off
in the pissing rain and were drenched by the time we reached the
unpaved bit (the last 50km), which is announced by a large sign telling
drivers to go slow, give way to vehicles coming up, keep headlights on
day and night, sound the horn at every corner, and generally not to
bother if they've any sense. There were six people plus two guides in
our group, and one guy kept shooting off ahead with the first guide,
while the rest of us had to stay with the second one. As we all paused
before starting the mad part, those two shot off, and I realised I had a
choice between either going far too fast, or having to stay behind and
go at the pace of the slowest people.
Ol' Shorty must have been smiling on me that day, because I decided to
go after the first two, and spent the next few hours in such a rush of
adrenaline I can actually feel my stomach tightening at the memory as I
type. We absolutely FLEW down - me always a few feet behind the other
two, the bike jumping crazily, handlebars battering my hands, whizzing
round curves a few feet from the yawning abysses to one side, braking
slightly on the inner curves but letting go immediately so as not to
lose any ground... then stopping on the outer curve to let a lorry or
van come up past us... the people stared down at our mud-splattered
faces and I looked up at them, grinning in delight, feeling totally
sorry for them (while they must have thought we were nuts to be actually
paying money for this)... then we'd carry on, down the slippery track,
blinking rain out of our faces, and - enchantingly - riding through or
behind the frequent stunning waterfalls.
The weather gradually got better as we got lower down, although this
created a few problems for me, as for long stretches I could neither see
(dust flying into my eyes) nor slow down at all (some people from a
different group had had the nerve to pass us when we'd stopped to rest,
and I didn't want to hold the other two up in getting past them again),
but towards the end we were encouraged by children screaming us on as we
swept past them, and anyway I was having far too much fun to care.
We'd gone at such a pace, thanks to the two nutters I was with, that
we'd finished a two-course lunch by the time the rest of the group
arrived at the village. We then had the nerve-racking experience of
retracing our steps in the van, which gave me the opportunity of seeing
all the hairpin bends, overhanging outer curves, and vertical slopes
we'd just come down - much scarier when you actually had time to look!
So yeah, I needed a few beers after that. And a comfortable seat. And
now we're back in Cochabamba, planning to go to the Salar de Uyuni (salt
flats) next week. And the other night we met a lovely couple with the
broadest Yaaarkshire accents I've ever heard, who inspired us to change
our plans from heading straight to Rio and Salvador to... OMG am so
excited... going via Manaus and the Amazon river. WOO-HA!!!!!
I don't want to jinx us by going on about it because it's the rainy
season and we're not sure if we can definitely do it yet (some roads may
be impassable), but think four-day boat trips, hammocks on deck, and,
according to our guidebook, 'shady characters' which we should look out
for before actually committing to any particular boat. Actually, I can't
take that last bit seriously, as it just keeps making me think of that
drunken, useless sea captain in Elizabethan Blackadder ("Arrrrrr!! You
have a woman's hands! I'll wager those hands have never..." etc), so if
any of you have any tips on how to spot potential axe murderers, do pass
them on... ;o)
OK, that's about all I have to report... we're off to see the Return of
the King for the second time tonight (we had to see it in La Paz first
just in case we died on the bike-ride) and I can't wait. Thank god
Mischka likes it as much as I do, although we nearly came to blows over
the shagtastic Aragorn himself... apart from that, the closest we've
come is me asking if she'd sprayed air freshener in the bathroom when
she'd actually just applied perfume - not as bad as it sounds though as
we'd just been talking about poo (again!!!) and the smell in the
bathroom generally... still, she's forgiven me now, I think...
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