Life's Adventures: 2008

This past weekend Miles called me up and said he wanted to run around Mt. Rainer. Sure Miles, why not, or we could go down to the Snoqualmie falls and jump in at the top, would probably hurt a little less long and have a higher chance of survival... I havent run longer than 20 miles in a long time. Well we can just take it easy. Ok, sounds like a plan, a not so well thought out one at that, but a plan nontheless. Given that i had friends in town Sunday afternoon and needed to be back at lunch Sunday, and that Kimberly, Matt and Ruri decided to join as well chances dwindled to actually circumnavigate the dang thing,

but we had a bail option since Matt's girlfriend came out later, and the weather was gorgeous.

We started at Mowich Lake at 8AM, clocking about 4-5Miles per hour including the climbs for the first few hours.

The scenery was out of this world, i could not remember ever having done a better trail run in my life, sure the current one alwasy sticks out, but i think this will go down as one of the top 10 in my final tally. The company was great, and we moved at similar speed until we night broke.

Then the speed dropped immensely, and we just could not get a rythm g

oing, too many breaks, and general tiredness made it pretty clear I wont be able to make the 93 miles and make it back in time. As an endurance athlete with a wife that has a decent but limited range of acceptance of "lateness due to trainings taking longer than planned" i decided to go for the safe option, rather than the "ask forgiveness later" option. This option actually reduced pain both short and long term! Miles, Ruri and Kimberly joined me in cutting the course short at mile 68, while Matt and Erin who joined him at 68 finished up the 93. Nicely done Matt, I ll

just have to do it again, GLADLY!

And we are finally on the road again!
Yumay and I flew to Bogota beginning of January, and sure enough, Yumay´s bag flew to Lima, a little ahead of schedule for us..... After dealing with all that missing bag stuff and having to change pesos we did not get to the hostel until way after midnight, and sure enough it was full, but finally we crashed dead tired in a dumpy place not too far, waiting for our travel luck to improve a bit.

"The before picture"

Next morning we checked in to our backpacker hostel, found mail from Andres, a guy we met at a Christmas party in Seattle, who actually was from Bogota and had lots of friends there. Armed with tons of local what-to-do info (thanks Andres!) we explored the city, climbed to the local mountain to overview the gigantic city... totally out of breath (Bogota lies at 8800 feet and the top of the ¨little hill¨is at over 10´000 feet!).

Sundays the city of Bogota has what is called a ciclovia, they shut down half of the city´s major streets and tens of thousands of people from the age of 2-100 walk, run, inlineskate and cycle about the city.... incredible! Yumay and I ran for over 3.5h and close to 20miles that day, it was certainly the best way to see the outskirts of Bogota. Hopefully the US cities will pick that up sometime soon... traffic is decreased significantly as its tough to drive on half the streets, and people there seem much fitter too!

Through Andres we met Santiago, Carolina, Tono and Mimi, and they showed us around the city, and since Monday was a holiday, we got to drive out of the city north and enjoy the beautiful countryside, and had a phantastic barbecue, something of a barbecue i have not had since argentina, boy do they like their meat here, and do they know how to prepare it well!

Santi, Carolina, Tono, Mimi and Yumay enjoying the grilled meat and the view

Anyhow, after a few enjoyable days in Bogota we were ready to explore more of the county, so we headed north to Cartagena, a nice colonial town, hot and humid right by the ocean, and a good stopover to the even nicer northern towns.

Funky christmas displays and Cartagena old town

We pretty soon headed up to Taganga Beach, a stone´s throw from our main goal, parque tayrona, one of the most beautiful, unspoiled parks i have ever seen. Its a Jungle park by the ocean, filled with hiking paths and pristine beaches. There we spent 3 days hiking and camping within the park.

Yumay relaxing....

Wannabe Tarzan....

Playa brava.. we had the whole beach to ourselves

One of our main hikes, 6h to one of the beaches, we did not see a single soul, but lots of great bugs, huge spiders, snakes and butterflies... it was simply incredible and left us breathless and alone on a white sand beach. Certainly the best place to visit in Colombia. After the few days of trekking we spend a few days in a really nice hostal in Taganga, and then headed out to Ecuador.
We were beind schedule so we decided to fly, as we had a boat to catch on Galapagos islands, and almost did not make it. After we flew fine and safely to Bogota, our next flight to Quito looked fine. They announced about 5 times that they were cleaning the plane, thats why we could not board yet... nice... a very clean plane.. so clean that it apparently could not fly no more.. eventually they took the plain away with no announcement, and hours later brought a new one... now apparently Quito had too much fog and no planes could land anymore, so aound midnight they shoved us off to a 5 star hotel somewhere in Bogota, nice, but not really, as we only got like 3h of sleep and then needed to get back to the airport... unfortunately the game of fly cant fly continued on way into the day and with 13 delay we finally took off.. phew! So we immediately flew off to Galapagos and made it finally on time!
On the Galapagos islands we met Mike and Anna, they have been on a 6 months honeymoon and we were super excited to see that our paths will cross and booked the Galapagos trip together.
Thing was Galapagos is expensive, so we decided to go for the cheapest Boat (out of like 50 boats available), the Yolita. Originally designed for 12 passengers (and even then too small), they upped it to 16 a few years ago... its tiny, super old (actyally its 28 years old and in 2 months will be taken out of service), and full of termites (no joke), but hey, you get the see the same animals, eat the same great food and have the same guides, for less than half the price of a medium class boat, so we endured the painful heat and sound from the engines at night, and had quite the amazing 8 day trip. 8 day trips are designed such that you see a major part (about 50%) of the islands and the wildlife...

The trip was totally worth it, and I want to go back one day, from a friend we heard it may be able to be done in a kayak (sure, quided, but think of doing a multiday kayaking trip, WOW!)...