Friday 27 April 2012

Extreme Sports (attention top gear fans)

Hola! I have no excuse for the lack of blogging other than that internet is a little patchy in Bolivia.  Also i have got pretty far behind as there's some New Zealand bits still missing.  I'm sure none of you are losing sleep over it though.

To try and catch up a bit, i thought i'd put a few activities together, some are more extreme than others!

New Zealand is well known for adventure sports and Queenstown is the adventure sports capital of the world.  You can jump off, swing over, bungee, jet boat, raft or dive anything you want to here.  Last time I was in NZ, when I did less pedalling and had a lot less grey hair i skydived, rafted a 7metre waterfall (that's higher than your house) and a whol host of other crzy stuff.  This time I have found that dicing with logging trucks on narrow roads every day is enough, well just about anyway... In Queenstown on a cycling 'rest day' i rented a dual suspension downhill bike to take to the bike park.  This is not like a bike park in Leicestershire. It is on a 900m high hill, you get a cable car up, and ride down on one of 5 different tracks, which are really steep and have obstacles and sharp bends.  This is probably the coolest sport I have ever done, though in my lycra and pink t shirt maybe did not style it out in the correct way! It was crazy how fast and steep the tracks were, even the 'easy' ones. After a few runs it was awesome though, and with only one fall and virtually no pedalling (clue is in the name - downhill) it was great fun.

A quick continent change, and a few long bus rides to the Atacama desert, the driest place on earth, and home to some very big sand dunes... Great for boarding down!
Not being a snowboarder, I did spend quite a lot of time falling over, it took a long time to de-sand afterwards!  
The real killer here was walking back up the slope to go down again.  The following day's cycling was also very tiring. 


Telling you than San Pedro de Atacama is about 2500m above sea level might explain this for some of you.
This is very high up (though nowhere near the highest place in this area), and, in simple terms there is less oxygen in the air the higher you go. When you exercise you need more oxygen than usual, and when there's less available you don't feel so good - get breathless very quickly for example.
The higher you go, the more noticeable the effects become.  Some people get acute mountain sickness, often called 'altitude sickness.' The best way to avoid this is to ascend slowly, and drink lots of water.  You might have heard of people aclimatising at altitude, or of athletes doing altitude training.  (If you are interested I can include more about this, please get in touch).
2500m is not really that high, so I just felt very unfit exercising.  Maybe I should include at this point that Ben Nevis, the highest UK mountain, is only 1344m and Greengate Lane (a little closer to home) is a piddling 90m above seal level.






On a trip across the Chile/Bolivia altiplano, I spent a night at 4200m, having been up to 4950m during the day.  I have to say I felt a little strange, a bit light-headed (or maybe that's just empty headed!) The following evening (at 3800m) a few of us tourists played football with some kids in the village we were staying in.  5 (adult) tourists vs 4 Bolivian kids.  We won... just.  I can honestly say I have never felt so untrained. Jogging a few steps made my heart hammer like a 100m sprint, and my lungs felt like they had never worked so hard.  Living at altitude all the time meant that the children had no such trouble, and they had a lot of skills - futsal is very popular here.




So why the Top Gear reference? Some of you might have seen the Top Gear Christmas specials, where they do a long distance challenge.  A few years ago, they went to Bolivia, and drove along a road that had been branded 'The World's Most Dangerous Road.'   The road is no longer heavily used by cars, as there is a new road, but in true kiwi-style, a New Zealander set up a mountain bike company doing trips down it.  What better way to spend a day out of La Paz than a very big downhill trip?! 
For those of you that haven't seen the TG show, the road is a little hazardous because:
- It's very narrow
- Has lots of gravel/rubble/mud/potholes
- On one side at all times is a very very steep drop, in places 800m, to the valley floor.
- Bolivian people are very nice, but they are crazy drivers.


To help things out, there was torrential rain for about the first 20km of riding too.  I'm not sure I have ever concentrated harder!  It was awesome fun though, so good fast bits, streams and waterfalls to ride through.  Fortunately everyone else finised safely too!


Pictures and video for this to follow...

some pictures...

There's some amazing and crazy stuff here in South America.  Here's a few highlights from the last few weeks...









 Some borders have more hi-tech equipment than others...









Lots of llama, alpacas and vicunas, though not many with such fine ear decorations as these!



Pink flamingoes, red lake, no photoshopping.
 



Salar de Uyuni - the world's biggest salt flat.  In some directions just pure white as far as you can see...
Made for some fun photos...
 




Thursday 26 April 2012

USA, USA!

Road trip time- apologies for lack of blogging, I have 3 ready to upload as soon as I can find a pc to do the photos on- I realise the pics are the interesting bit!
Driving across the States is brilliant because everything is just as American as you expect. More road trip news later, hope all's good in England!