Tamserku

Wow! I just just finished the famed Inka Trail to Machu Pichu. But I think it should be renamed the Inka Steps and be sponsored by Step Master. :) Four days of up steps and down steps. Some big, some small, some wide and some narrow. At times I thought the Incas must have been giants and other times I thought they were surely midgets. :) Up and down mountains and valleys, over passes, through tunnels, visiting ancient Inca sites along the way. The Inka Trail is the actual trail that the Inkas used centuries ago. It is amazing how they built it and the over 40,000km of trails that stretch from Ecuador to Chile. Most of the trail is made of stone which is even more impressive, in some cases on the side of a ... read more

It's just riding a bike, you never forget. Right? That's what I was telling myself on the way to the starting point to the 64km mountain bike ride down the World's Deadliest Road, just outside La Paz, Bolivia. However, remembering to ride a bike in your driveway is a little different than trying to remember on your way down a road that is at its narrowest is only 10ft wide with 800 Ft drop offs! Oh, and did I mention is called the World's Deadliest Road!! It is not that I don't know how to ride a bike, it's just that I never really rode one after a I got my license, 20 yrs ago! I did ride about a week ago around San Pedro which helped me remember how to use the brakes, shift the ... read more

I wasn´t sure whether I took a wrong flight or not, but when I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama the landscape outside the town looked more like I had arrived on Mars or the moon. I spent three nights here as it was the starting point for my trip across the Andes. That time gave me an opportunity to experience the charm of a small oases and the out of this world sights of the desert. San Pedro is a small oases in the Atacama desert, the driest desert in the world. It is located in northeast Chile at the foothills of the Andes only about 30-40kms from the Bolivian border. San Pedro is just a small town with a handful of adobe streets and a centre plaza. The main street is lined with restaurants, ... read more

Is there a better way to live life. At the foothills of the Andes, the mountain range makes an impressive backdrop to the beautiful little city of Mendoza. I stayed in a great hostel called Hostel Independencie. It was right next to the main square in the city called Plaza Independencie. Built on a desert, water is a precious commodity here and irrigation ditches run throughout the city. I call them tourist traps; you fall in one of these and you are definitely breaking something. However, because rain is a rarity (it only rains for about 5 times per year) they are needed to water the thousand of beautiful trees that line the streets. As it is their summer, it has been very hot here, 30+ degrees. Wondering through the city for the last six days ... read more

Well, I hadn't planned on writing another blog before I started the mountain expedition. But I should know you can never write the future before it happens. The plan today was to arrive in Buenos Aires and then transfer to the domestic airport to fly to Mendoza, that I thought left at 12:25 (that was my fatal flaw which you will see later). I arrived in Buenos Aires a little behind schedule and the customs check, bag pickup and getting though security all didn't help my cause. It was about 11:30 when I got out of the airport. After finding out the other airport was about 50kms away, I realized neither bus nor taxi was going to get me there in time for my 12:25 flight, so a booked a seat on a bus and hoped ... read more