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Posts tagged ‘cycling’

Dec 13

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camino de la muerte – WMDR  (the world’s most dangerous road) – 3000m downhill biking

I heard about it last year when travelling through Peru and i was thinking never over my dead body would i do this. On top the guys were wearing these impressive T-Shirts confirming they had done the death road. After speaking with my hiking guide from earlier in Bolivia who himself was a guide for the death road i got more comfortable and decided to book it.

After having breakfast in a pub at 06:30h in the morning, they took us with a bus up to La Cumbre at 4700m. There we were handed out the jackets, pants, helmets (they even helped us to mount our gopros), gloves, face masks and then the bikes. The bikes were in perfect condition with hydraulic breaks each individually fitted as you like rear left or right as you wished.

Before going down we made a little Pachamama ceremony by pooring a bit of alcohol on the road, on the tire and obviously taking a sip ourselves. He explained us where to ride: on the left side = the side next to the edge and not to the mountain. This comes from the time when this road was indeed the most dangerous road in the world due to its narrowness (at times just approx 3m). This doesn’t seem to bad at first sight but bearing in mind that big trucks were crossing it was! So by driving down on the left, the driver could always watch if the wheel is still on the road and not yet over the cliff. Needless to say that many accidents occured at the time. However since 2007 the new road is in place and now the road is almost only used by bikers, hence a lot less dangerous. So one of the most dangerous subjects is your camera… and other bikers and our guide told us to simply forget even the thought about fiddling around with the camera/phone while biking. Because the road is narrow, you drive on the ‘wrong side’ and it is not plastered but dirt/gravel with some quite big rocks now and then – aye aye we stayed focused.

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So as we set off i was pretty nervous and my stomach was not fine (though this could have been from all the Lama meet and potatoes and Coca Quina from the days before) but after the first few km i gradually gained confidence and moved ahead in the group. After a few stops i was heading to the front group as the rest was just really too slow – so it was me and the boys rattling down behind our guide.

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Luckily while biking you actually don’t realise how deep the drops are (up to 600m) – i only realised when looking at the videos!  There were some tricky curves and narrow sections but the guide always explained section by section so if you didn’t overestimate your speed it was kind of fine. Except when you got out of the ideal lane and ended in loose gravel and forgot that one shouldn’t break. I know the biking experts have a laugh now – but i normally don’t bike……  so a couple of sweaty moments but that was it.

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In fact one girl did fall and her bike went over the cliff – but the guide tied a rope to our bus and lowered himself down to the bike (assume it was not too deep, because our guide said he has only 100m rope with him. Because if one would fall deeper there is no more rush to recover him).

Ah yes after the 3000m downhill biking we also couldn’t resist to go on the zip line ‘the flying fox’ and this time i did it superman style…  flying through the valley at a speed or 90 km/h was an amazing feeling!

it was a great day and i am now also proudly wearing my ‘i biked the death road’ T-shirt! Normal Lama – Crazy Lama – Call me Lama – Super Lama!!!  Can only reccomend this to anybody who happens to be in La Paz 🙂

Oct 11

Kawaguchi-ko – 2 day cycling around Mt. Fuji (apparently)

We looked so much forward to this cycling tour around Mt. Fuji, but Typhoon No. 18 faded a bit too slowly and so the didn’t even catch a glimps of Fuji-San while surrounding it with the bikes.

Anyway the trip bared otherwise some funny moments, for example the Japanese style room we had at the Kawaguchi-ko Station Inn (a premium hotel…. 😉  kind of Jugi-style but with an Onsen on the top floor which was quite ok). However when getting into the room it is kind of funny if you only see a coffee table and nothing else. Not to mention all the ‘Pantoffel-terror’ before you actually manage to get into your room ha ha… in the toilet we even had wodden flip-flops… the click clock did for sure remind you not to leave the toilet with them – can be an advantage…

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then next was – in Kawaguchi-ko is last order in the restaurants around 19:30h. So as we had the hand over of the bikes etc. upon arrival we had exactly 20 mins to find the place in the pitch dark village (hardly no streetlights) without a map and the restaurants with their names only written in Japanese. Of course we didn’t find the one intended to go to – but it was a kind of survival tour, either we get something now or we will have to go to the supermarket and eat crisps… so then better stay in the one where they said they ‘re-open’ the kitchen (they were busy cleaning the kitchen when we arrived!) So that day was the Sushi day. Sushi for lunch and Sushi for dinner…. hmm a bit a lot of cold fish but it was delicious and accompanied with the Shogun Movie on the TV it was really funny… clear case where Tarantino gathered his inspiration for Kill Bill from.. ha ha

(eeeh better don’t show this pic to the Sushi class teacher…)

In the morning we got off with the bikes in our brand new Japan Cycling shirts full of hope to see Mt. Fuji – but nope. First day was pretty easy around 500m ascent and approx. 80km. So we arrived quite quickly at the other place Fujinomiya where the dinner quest got repeated (just with the difference that i was convinced we will find this restaurant from Tripadvisor…. forget it – it was the Korean BBQ by the station in the end which was actually pretty good!)

Day 2 was the tougher one… 1500m ascent on a distance of approx 80km. Clearly we needed a decent lunch when doing such serious cycling 😉

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hmmm i know, there are so many food pics of the whole Japan holiday… but Japanese food is outstanding and you always have so much time to take pictures during a meal. Again from cycling some funny go pro’s if i only could upload them. looking forward to staying again in some hostels in Southamerica… maybe there somebody can help me. These are the places where you learn all sorts of things!

Oct 11

Kyoto

The former capital of Japan… but in fact nowadays the place where you can still see REAL Japan. This city was one of the few who had not been bombed to ashes during 2nd world war – what a wonder because this city boasts with old wooden buildings, colourful shrines, temples, sublime gardens and beautiful kimonos. Hard to believe that Kyoto counts 17 UNESCO world heritage sites, 1600 temples and 400 shrines… to be honest i wonder where they are hiding them all, we only saw maybe 20 shrines, 10 temples and 5 gardens or so. You start to lose track as you move along.

Kyoto worked excellent for us as it was much smaller than Tokyo and our hotel was on the top of the train station which is a comment thing in Japan. This makes travelling a lot easier and hey every taxi driver knows where the station is even if you haven’t written down any address!

The first day we did a walking tour around Gion ticking off some of the most important sites of that area including Kyyomizu-dera (no nothing about deers – they come in Nara) it is the temple you must see in Kyoto if you only have time for one – unfortunately the main building was under construction, so cannot really confirm this statement of LP and doesn’t count for autumn 2014…. However from its terrace you do have a great view over the city.

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The other 8 bullet points in the walking tour i cannot really remember and yes there were more temples, more incenses that got burned by us and more shrines we walked through and more whishes got written on these wooden plates for a long healthy and happy life.

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The nice thing though in Kyoto was the tradition of the Japanese clothing. We saw many Japanese in Kimono’s visiting these sights… even some western people were walking around in them. You could even rent one for about USD 30.00 for a day.

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They had all kind of colours and different patterns in a way you think this would never match but in itself it was almost like a painting. Flowers mixed with geometric patterns, very traditional with cherry blossoms or orchids, anything is possible and they all have something in common they make women beautiful. You could call it the Japanese answer to our dirndls ha ha.

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Day 2: we rented bikes to a) be able to move faster among the different sights that were spread all across the city b) have some fun with driving on the left side. Interestingly the most difficult part was to find the bike rental shop after we got off the subway.  Once there all became gradually easier as the roads of this city are like a grid pattern (apparently based on a GO board) which makes it fairly easy to navigate even if half of the streets have no name signs.

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So off we went to discover more of Kyoto’s treasures such as the Nanzen-ji. A Zen temple with the classic dry gardens, where they make patterns in the gravel, build cones from sand and even this one had a small pond all carefully fitted together like one big painting. As you can see in the ‘gardening pic’ – there is not much about meditating when actually making it…

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The next one was Kinkaku-ji, the temple with its facade covered all in gold – luckily it wasn’t a sunny day as i think one would have been blinded by the sheer light – vanity! The temple is situated in a beautifully maintained garden combining trees and a little lake in which the golden temple was shimmering.

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We started to run out of time and the weather was threatening… so we turned back and went for a pitstop in the all-time safe place: starbucks ha ha – sometimes a true relief as you don’t have to think ‘what may they have’… always clear case and it tastes always almost the same – not the best in the world but very relaxing – as predictable – for sure.

Day 3: visit of the Imperial Palace which was formerly the home of the emperor once Kyoto was still the capital. Admission is free but you have to apply for it in person and with the passport the day before. Unbelievable that we actually managed to arrange this as we are normally the ones who don’t foresee these kind of implications..

Thus we enjoyed a very good tour around the different buildings, gates and rooms in order to get a hint of an idea how life must have been when the emperor, his family and their entourage lived there.

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After the tour we quickly grabbed a taxi and drove across the town to go and see the Tenryu-ji temple (the garden pics… camera refused to accept more temple pics ;-)) and the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove which nearly didn’t fit anymore into the time frame. Luckily we managed as the Bamboo Grove is one of the most photographed and peculiar sights of Kyoto. However if you manage to take a picture without anybody else int it you were really lucky. But it was quite impressive to stand in the middle of this sprawling bamboo ‘forest’.

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Kyoto definitely a must if you go to Japan – plan enough time for this gem of a city!