The perfect day!

I had the best time with Marty and Odette on Saturday. Marty's from Aus and Odette's from the States. We decided to hire bikes and cycle around the lake district area of Bariloche.

This is Marty and mua in our supercool bike whilst Odette shows off her little pinky bike with training wheelz. Did we look GOOD!

The course we took contain lots of stops along the way. From doll houses (Marty loves dolls), lake side beaches (which we swam in the freezing cold water!), coffee stop at golf houses, lots of photo opportunities and finally to a home brew pub for dinner and drinks. There were also pebble skipping competition along the way (which I won I won I won!!!)

All in all a perfect day!!!

Lets climb a mountain!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, these 3 fella's (well 2 guys and 1 chick) are about to climb Cerro Fitz Roy. A beautiful granite peak at 3405 metres. But because of the straight vertical granite face you can't just hike up this mountain and lots of technical (rock and ice climbing) skillz are required. Ok so you can't quite see it here as it is in the background, but I have post other photos of this amazing mountain in the blog.

Anyway, I spoke to these Argentinians. They reckon they can get to the top in 2 days, around 26 hours of climbing all together. Good luck to them!

Torres del Paine National Park

I spent 4 days hiking at Torres del Paine National Park. An amazing park in the Chilean side of Patagonia. It certainly is my favorite hike in South America, as everyday I got to see something different. Me and Jens (my German partner) followed the classic "W" shape route hiking from the West to East side.

This is our camp site on day 1, situated at a beautiful camping spot called Paines Grande. As you can see I have beautiful mountains for backdrop. There are also a lot of tents around us as it is peak hiking season right now. And no wonder too as we had an absolute jewel of a weather throughout!

The trek on day 1 is along a very expose ridge, with a huge river full of ice bergs floating down the side. It also explains for the state of these trees. Unfortunately the wind took it's toll on a German girl I met. She got pushed over by the whilst attempting to take a photo. She ended up rolling down the hill and breaking her leg. Yicks!

This mountain range in the French valley is what I saw on day 2. Basically you trek high up to this valley, and at the view point you are surrounded almost all the way (260 degrees) by mountains.

Unfortunately I lost Jens on day 3 of the trek. He had to turn around because of a stuff knee. It was a bit daunting for me being such a green camper as it meant that I had to carry everything whilst climbing more hills. Nevermind coz I did it! :)

This is the legendary Torres del Paine at sun rise on my last day of trekking. Seeing the golden rays of the sun touching the tip of these 3 granite rocks. Shaped by centuries of the retreating force of glacier ice, was mesmerizing. The rocks perturbs into the sky sharply and stand out against the surrounding landscape. The highest point is the middle - Cerro Paines Grande at around 2750 metres. The South Tower is at 2500 metres whilst the North Tower is at 2460 metres.

I can now go home happy. I have came to South America, and have seen everything I wanted to.

The Patagonia region was the last must-do thing on my list. And it has not disappointed. In fact, I may go as far as to say... It may have been the highlight of my trip in this region!

Me and my new spikes

Still alive, and lots to share. I just got back north from the incredible Patagonia region of Southern Argentina and Chile.

The days were spent hiking, camping, climbing and meeting many local Argentinians and foreign travellers. The weather has been perfect, no clouds, and the view.... senfuckinsational... Just look behind me, check out that magnificient peak. And guess what... There are many, many, many more.

I was truely blown away by Patagonia. And I will be uploading photos and sharing them with you.

San Gil, Bucaramanga and beyond!

I have been visiting the self proclaim adventure capital of Colombia; San Gil, near the border with Venezuela.

I came here to absail down this huge 180 metres waterfall! It look big too when we got there! However we found out that only one section is possible to absail. That section is 80 metres long so it still look huge, dangerous and exciting!

Well, going down has never been a problem for me, so me and another kiwi (Andy Gale from Hamiltron!), work our way down the face of the waterfall, into the thick of it all. It was exciting stuff allright! The rock was slippery and I was reduce to jumping down it McGyver style. :)

Here are the photos! The one above is of Andy going over. The one on the left is the 80 metre section that we went down. If you zoom in to the photo you will be able to see the ropes we used to absail.

Today I am in Bucaramanga, basically my last stop in Colombia, before heading into Venezuela.

Colombia has set the bench mark for me in terms of my favorite country in this continent. The people, the landscape and the adventures have been all top stuff. The only low point would be in their culinary!

I LOVE CRACK!

Crack climbing that is!

This is what I did today!!! :) :) :)

I finally got to do some real climbing after a long break. Today, Laird (my Canadian mate) and I went rock climbing at El Peñol, a massive piece of granite rock, judding out of the countryside, 2 hours East of Medellin.

We started off with a long 30m climb, graded at 5.8 and called the Kurakata. The climb was a good warm up, and it was also Laird's first outdoor climbing experience and kodus to him as he top it!

This photo is taken for a climb called Alcatraz, rated at 5.10B and is 25m high. It is my first proper crack climb, as you can see from the photo, the jagged age goes all the way up. In fact, the whole route is 80 metres, requiring 3 multipitch climb. It would have been so cool to do the whole thing!

Just Check out the view!

El Peñol is situated in a very pretty area, surrounded by lakes and beautiful countryside. Many rich folks from the big city of Medellin have bought holiday houses out here. As you can see their houses, and the occasional speed boats out on the water. I certainly cannot complain about the view, nor the beautiful climb.

And finally, here is our guide: Yon Monsalve. He is a 31 year old Colombian from Medellin and has been climbing for 12 years. He is a great climber, and have set 3 of the 4 routes we climbed today.

He has had first hand experience with Colombian's war with the rebels. He got shot on the back of his shoulder, with the bullet piercing his left shoulder, and busting his jaw. So now he has a slightly crooked jaw. The shot put him in a coma for 2 days. This happened to him at the age of 17, whilst he was in the Colombian army.

Quito Climbing

I finally baptise my zapatos de roca (climbing shoes) on Tuesday. After buying those beautiful babies (La Sportivas) from LA I have been wanting to use them.

So I found this bouldering place call MonoDedo (One Finger) near La Coruna Calle (road), about 20 minutes walk from home. Inside there were all these monkeys climbing everywhere.... I felt like a bloody pig compare to them. I SUCK and am sad to think that I have lost all my form (what form LOL) after 4 months of absence.

But Al / Steve / Anna / Nick and the rest, I am still gonna KICK your asses when I return! :b

Climbing Shoes

Yey! I finally got myself a pair of climbing shoes. I have been holding off until I got to LA to look for them. These babies that I bought are La Sportiva Cliff (http://www.sportiva.com/products/prod/996). Not the hottest looking thing out there but since when did climbers ever care about fashion ;) and they were cheap! At 60USD it is a bargin!

For the outdoor enthusaistics out there I purchased my babies from REI Sport (http://www.rei.com/). One of the biggest outdoor store in the States. They have everything here! All, except for my beloved NZ brands like Macpac, Fairydown and Ice Breakers.

Rock Climbing!!!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG! I finally got to climb, after a massive 2 months absence I am back!!!! And today, me and my guide German (pronounced "Herman"), checked out a local canyon at a district name Calambucos, about 20 minutes away from Arequipa.

At first sight the canyon looks amazing, it is high and steep, at up to 80 metres from the ground up. But we approach it from above, so we found a lower spot and had to abseil (aka rappelling) 60 metres to touch the bottom. We did this over three stages which was pretty thrilling.

But disaster struck as soon as I made my first abseil (and waving to the camera for the above photo!). My bloody daisy chain broke!!!!!!! It was hook to my bina and to the belay rope, and I still had 15 metres to go so it was a very tense moment. I manage to get down ok after literally lowering myself down the rope! On the second photo you can see German abseiling down the steep face.

But we recovered, and carry on with our climb once we reach the valley below. I only did 2 climbs today, the first climb was called "Cho Cho Loco" which literally mean "Crazy Cho", somebody´s name I guess! It is a 6A climb and is 25 metres. There were enough holds for me so it wasn´t too bad, but the granite wall was slippery as hell so I had to be very careful with my feet. The second climb was a goodie! It is call "La Calavera", and German mumble something about it name after a human skull. Yicks! It is a 6 climb and is 50 metres high, therefore it is a multi pitch climb. THIS IS MY VERY FIRST MULTI PITCH CLIMB AND I WAS EXCITED AS HELL!!!! For those who don´t know what that is, it means you climb up halfway, gather your ropes and continue with the rest of the climb whilst your partner belays you from the halfway point.

I didn´t fall off once, but then again German did the lead since I need to learn how to belay from above. But man oh man, the second disaster struck after we got to the top. We could not get back down!!!! German only had a 50 metres rope and it wasn´t touching the ground like we wanted. So we had to climb up the canyon and find an alternative route down. It was one of the shittiest walk I had to do as I was wearing my climbing shoes, by the time we got back down (it took just as long to go down as to go up!) my toes were all blistered and bloodied from the shoes.

Never mind, it was a good day for me. I really enjoy getting outside and practising my hobby! And as we were so high up, the view from above was fantastic! The last photo shows the perfect cone shape volcano Mount Misti (5822 metres) in the background. Followed by our canyon in the middle and yours truly posing with way too much sun block and Snickers chocolate stain in my teeth, along with German.

On a side note, German is only the second person I know who was born on the same day, month and year as me!!! The difference is he is married with 10 kids... :p

The World's Most Dangerous Road

This is it! Officially term the "World's Most Dangerous Road" aka "Death Road".

The following picture was taken at the "official" start of the death road where we were given more instructions on how to handle the scary gravel road.

The road starts higher then Mt Cook, at 4,700 metres and descends to 1,100 metres. Which equates to a MASSIVE 3,600 meters descends! The total length of the bike ride is 65 km long and it took us about 4 hours to get to the bottom. The bike ride was insane and thrilling.

This photo, taken above 4,000 metres to show the trail snaking it's way down the side of the mountain.

This is another view from the top of the mountain ranges unfolding into each other. It is beautiful out here I tell you!

For more wicked and insane pictures of the death road search Google!

FOOOOOOOOOS!

OMG OMG OMG OMG I found FOOS! A whole plaza filled with Foosball tables! So it is true!!! That South Americans love their Foos! There were so many tables I thought I´m in paradise! Me and my mate Laird went to this vanue last night, and challenged all the locals kids to a game.

And guess what He-Man, J-Man, Shanmus, Smelly Al, RC, Wilson and the rest of the Frucor posses? We KICK ASS!!!!! Oh yeah mofos we won all the matches!

How it work in Bolivia is this, you pay 1 Bolivianos for 5 chips, each chips inserted into the chip slot gives you 5 balls. Which gives you 5 rounds of game play. The loosing side at the end pays for the game.

The tables are also slightly different to ours at Frucor. The side are all rounded to keep the ball moving, so tring to do trick shots off the side is way harder. Also, the goalie cannot move sideways beyond the goal post so no fancy trick shots from the goalie either. Finally, when a ball goes dead (corner dead zones), they pick the ball up and do a reverse goal kick from the second line defenders. If kicked well it could send the ball straight into the goal post!

We played many games, and tonight we plan to head back to the plaza to play more games before I take off to Cochabamba. PRO 1 is BACK! :)