Weekly tribulations and Huraz

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Well Hello,

College has started recently which has meant that many of the workshops are not as busy any more. Its a shame but it means things are easier!! For football we now breeze through the training and get into a match, sometimes we have to make up the numbers, its quite fun. Boxing is going ok, we broke a mirror when sparing the other day which is another squeeze on my budget but oh well. Oh and my camera's out of action, I got loads of sand in it and some mechanisms broken.....balls!

This weekend we decided to take a trip to Huraz. Huraz is situated North East of lima, its about 8 hours bus journey from where we are. We decided to take an overnight trip, its so much cooler and you sleep for most of the journey. We paid about £8 each for exec seats at the bottom of the bus, I fell asleep for part of the journey and didnt pop my ears so they felt wierd for hours.

Huraz is about 3.1k straight up from where we are, its quite a mess as an earthquake wrecked much of it a couple of years ago. Its still far more established than the project. That morning we planned to go straight into an activity. At first I planned to go gorging but Richard suggested Mountain biking. It was a large trail (about 20k, 12 up and 8 straight down) I thought "why the hell not", having never actually mountain biked anywhere I regretted this caution to the wind decision 😊.

It took us all day and parts of it literally made me thing my legs were on fire. We saw some ancient monuments and eventually got to the top, reference my picture clutching the sign!

To the right of that sign was a route straight down the hill to Huraz, I had never gone downhill in a bike, especially with an incline and a whole load of rocks and holes, it was a very dodgy dirt track. I strated off slowly and kept coming off, then relalised that the only way to conquer my problem was to go as fast as I can, it worked.....scared the hell out of me though!!

That night I was shattered so had one beer, some food and passed out. We arranged to go to Lagoon 69 at 6 the next day. It's meant to be unbelievable and I must say I was not lied too.

It was meant to take 3 hours to scaled the switchbacks and terrain and 2 hours down. It took me about 2.15 hours, but becasue I had powered it up I was having difficulties walking, concentrating, breathing and for once.......talking! The whole journey I told myself I was going to dive into the Lagoon and nothing was going to stop me, well when I arrived it really was so utterly gorgeous, the glaciers and the top of surronding mountains feeding straight into the lake made me reliase that its so cold I may actually have a heart attack, its safe to say I didnt but it was the coldest i've ever been!!

That night we spead back to Lima and started work on the project again, felt quite tired to say the least, nice weekend though.

Adam

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Photos

Mountain biking
Painful bum cheeks is a good expression!!