Sitting in Nate’s in the Ottawa airport waiting for flight.
Last Canadian meal before beef time!
Dreary weather is looking in on us from the outside world. Overcast and the like.
I’m peering out at a robin’s-egg blue Air Canada plane at gate 17. Ours is next to it.
C-GJWO is our equipment. Airbus 319. Looks air-worthy. We’ve got about 1:15 till lift-off 0:45 till we board.
Update: there was a gate change, we were actually at Gate 15. Don’t know what the tail ID was. Sorry kev.
17/01/08
Hello hello hello. What have we here? Some curious readers? Well, I guess the post and picture really don’t leave all that much to the imagination, do they? You already knew that I was planning on summiting Taranaki today, and, well, I did. And rather quickly at that. I had all sorts of concerns vis a vis weather, time to climb, clouds rolling in, finding a way there, and so on and so forth, but yet again, things worked out splendidly for the little cyclist that could. I’m super-glad that I tacked on this side trip on my North Island touring schedule. As it turns out, the weather was brilliant for my climb, and everything was great. I’ve put a map up on the ole blogosphere for you to check out. Yep, there’s a lot of pictures to go through, but hey, they’re worth it. The stats are for just the climb and descent part, not including the drive up to the mountain, in case you are wondering. For more details, read on.
Howdy all!
Well, hard to believe, but we´ve now got less than a week of this great trip left. I guess all things must come to an end. On the plus side, the time really hasn´t seemed to fly, meaning we´ve really been enjoying the trip, and it truly has felt like a proper getaway!
We´re back from the Inca trail, and no worse for wear. If you´ve ever contemplated heading south and seeing this area, I would definitely recommend getting back to nature and doing some proper hiking. Our 4 day journey wasn´t exceptionally difficult, but it had it´s ups and downs (literally). One of the downs would probably be the fact that on the day we started, Apu the sun God decided that it was time for rainy season to start. For most of the trail, the mountains were shrouded in clouds, and yes, we did experience both hail and heavy rains at various points. That being said, it certainly didn´t dampen (get it, dampen?) our spirits or reduce the experience in any way.
My personal favourite part of the journey wasn´t the trail, or even Macchu Picchu itself, but the hike we did on the site of the ruins, which was to climb up Wayna Picchu, (Young Mountain), the bigger peak behind the ruins. It is an uphill trail that is incredibly steep in parts, and culminates in a peak of a few really big boulders that you´re free to scramble around (1000s of feet above the valley below). We took some great shots from there, and both remarked that ´liability insurance´ obviously isn´t something required in South America. But obviously since I´m writing this, we both made it down in one piece. The rain even let up while we were up there.
24/01/08
Well, I’ve finally done it. I got on a ferry and made my way to the spectacular South Island of New Zealand! I’m not really ahead of schedule, but I’m also not behind schedule either. I’m pretty much right on time 😉 Isn’t that nice? You see, you can’t really worry about schedules when you haven’t created one to follow. Tee hee. I’ll have a good 8 weeks to explore down here, and from what I’ve seen so far, it looks like even that might not be enough, especially if the first 35km of biking over here is any indication. As per usual, I’ve put together a map of my days journey. Note that this map also includes the ferry crossing on the map, but the statistics I’ve put up reflect only the biking on either side of the crossing, so the numbers are accurate for the biking. Check it out, and read on for more about another great day in the saddle.
Well, it’s high time that I put fingers to the keyboard and started sharing with you all some of the stories from […]
