PURRTY
I am now in the desert. There is nothing growing. It literally is a flatness of dark stone surrounded by mountains of the same stone. Sounds depressing but it really looks rather beautiful. Since I apparently can now upload pictures i shall try to post tomorrow or the day after.
HOW I LEARNED TO SANDBOARD
Today i made the heroic effort of waking up about ¨4-45am to hike up the tallest dune in the world--Cerro Blanco--and to sandboard down that same dune. After much huffing and puffing and stopping and rationing of water we got to the top. Well, almost... Our guide ran ahead, seeing as he has already done this climb twenty thousand times, and we were left about 100m from the top or at least close to the top figuring out where to go for ourselves. As it also happens, the thin layer of loose sand that we were trying to climb was just covering a compacted'sand base, off which there was no way to push off yourself. after trying for a bit to climb up gollum-style on all fours, i had given up since i kept sliding down to no end. So then, brilliant thought hits me, must dig footholds. Unfortunately most´stones´´that happen to be in the area are also made of sand. so that didnt work so well. I did find a tiny rock that didnt fall apart and for a while tried to dig foot holds with that, but at some point i ended up slipping furter down than when i started. Then it dawned on someone that we had to dig a bizillion more of these little footholds that kept getting filled up with sand. Meanwhile, our guide has been gone for all this time we´re flopping around on our bellies. Having been defeated by the dune we figured we´ll try to make our way down and either do the less steep and less dense 4 hour ascent or go to another side of the mountain to go down the boards there and then just hitch back. As we were sliding on our butts trying to use sandboards as a break and getting underwear full of sand, our guide resurfaced and couldnt come up with anything better than to start throwing rocks at us. brilliant. anyway, we all ended up sliding-walking-slipping down another side of the dune, which turned out to be too densely packed to try to slide. you literally would go 10 feet and stop. Whimpering from the enormous blisters from the sandburn on my heels, I made it down only to be told that pretty much all other tourists with like one exception normally make it to the top. I dont think we were the most whimpy bunch, and dammit, i´m going to do that thing with clamp-ons one day!!
PENPALS
Well my pen pal has gone missing again. We´d been considering doing the circuit through northern Chile, Bolivia and some of Peru together. Oh well, off to Cusco i go then!
PICTURES
I am trying to upload pictures to irrka.buzznet.com
I am now in the desert. There is nothing growing. It literally is a flatness of dark stone surrounded by mountains of the same stone. Sounds depressing but it really looks rather beautiful. Since I apparently can now upload pictures i shall try to post tomorrow or the day after.
HOW I LEARNED TO SANDBOARD
Today i made the heroic effort of waking up about ¨4-45am to hike up the tallest dune in the world--Cerro Blanco--and to sandboard down that same dune. After much huffing and puffing and stopping and rationing of water we got to the top. Well, almost... Our guide ran ahead, seeing as he has already done this climb twenty thousand times, and we were left about 100m from the top or at least close to the top figuring out where to go for ourselves. As it also happens, the thin layer of loose sand that we were trying to climb was just covering a compacted'sand base, off which there was no way to push off yourself. after trying for a bit to climb up gollum-style on all fours, i had given up since i kept sliding down to no end. So then, brilliant thought hits me, must dig footholds. Unfortunately most´stones´´that happen to be in the area are also made of sand. so that didnt work so well. I did find a tiny rock that didnt fall apart and for a while tried to dig foot holds with that, but at some point i ended up slipping furter down than when i started. Then it dawned on someone that we had to dig a bizillion more of these little footholds that kept getting filled up with sand. Meanwhile, our guide has been gone for all this time we´re flopping around on our bellies. Having been defeated by the dune we figured we´ll try to make our way down and either do the less steep and less dense 4 hour ascent or go to another side of the mountain to go down the boards there and then just hitch back. As we were sliding on our butts trying to use sandboards as a break and getting underwear full of sand, our guide resurfaced and couldnt come up with anything better than to start throwing rocks at us. brilliant. anyway, we all ended up sliding-walking-slipping down another side of the dune, which turned out to be too densely packed to try to slide. you literally would go 10 feet and stop. Whimpering from the enormous blisters from the sandburn on my heels, I made it down only to be told that pretty much all other tourists with like one exception normally make it to the top. I dont think we were the most whimpy bunch, and dammit, i´m going to do that thing with clamp-ons one day!!
PENPALS
Well my pen pal has gone missing again. We´d been considering doing the circuit through northern Chile, Bolivia and some of Peru together. Oh well, off to Cusco i go then!
PICTURES
I am trying to upload pictures to irrka.buzznet.com
posted by Irene @ 3:09 PM
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