Monday, May 01, 2006
All well in La Paz
A quick note that the Jungle crowd are all in La Paz and expecting to catch the plane tomorrow (Monday) as per schedule.
The group on the jeep from Rurrenabaque had an 18 hour epic getting here in one of the unreliable jeeps we had to get to the Pampas. They had stops to weld the suspension back, repair the brakes and I'm not sure what else. They became very concerned that the driver was too tired to drive and sang to him for some time before he turned the radio up.
The group in the mini van had a superb driver and arrived in 15 hours. We generally stopped for 5 minutes every 2 hours and never for more than 10 minutes. Not sure how that would go in a NZ drivers log book. We also got to drive up the (still incomplete) new road that will replace the WMDR. An incredible feat of engineering that not surprisingly has chewed through $US80m.
Today 7 of us rode from Chacaltaya (5,300) to the bottom of the Zongo (900m). What a buzz. From Ski field to banana belt in less than 3 hours of riding. I have some bruises and scratches on parts of my anatomy that will hurt on the plane tomorrow. Bill sustained some damage to even more delicate parts - both accidents occuring while fooling around at the start and nothing to do with the full-on blast down the rough gravel tracks.
Ross
The group on the jeep from Rurrenabaque had an 18 hour epic getting here in one of the unreliable jeeps we had to get to the Pampas. They had stops to weld the suspension back, repair the brakes and I'm not sure what else. They became very concerned that the driver was too tired to drive and sang to him for some time before he turned the radio up.
The group in the mini van had a superb driver and arrived in 15 hours. We generally stopped for 5 minutes every 2 hours and never for more than 10 minutes. Not sure how that would go in a NZ drivers log book. We also got to drive up the (still incomplete) new road that will replace the WMDR. An incredible feat of engineering that not surprisingly has chewed through $US80m.
Today 7 of us rode from Chacaltaya (5,300) to the bottom of the Zongo (900m). What a buzz. From Ski field to banana belt in less than 3 hours of riding. I have some bruises and scratches on parts of my anatomy that will hurt on the plane tomorrow. Bill sustained some damage to even more delicate parts - both accidents occuring while fooling around at the start and nothing to do with the full-on blast down the rough gravel tracks.
Ross
# posted by Ross @ 3:42 PM 
