We weren't quite sure how we would react to altitude - I have chest troubles, asthma and the like, Anne wasn't quite as fit as she'd hoped for the trip, My doctor (Rob Niven) wasn't sure whether it was a good idea or not. This trip was our first test and if it was too much for us then that would mean that later = no Cuzco and therefore no Machu Picchu !
It was rather hot so we were well greased and covered. The tour would look at the various lunar-like landscapes and would include a rather high sand dune and watching the sunset and the resulting changes in the colour of the landscape.
The landscape was spectacular, lots of outcrops of wierdly shaped rocks
and winding gorges- lots of deep red sandstones mixed with quartz and
various minerals ending in -ite (some of which I remembered from my
fourth year Geography esp as there was a South African in the group
which reminded me that Bauxite -leading to the production of Aluminium-
was a major export of that country - Mr Jackson would be proud of me! 41
years waiting for that bit of information to be used!!!)
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| What's around the corner? |
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| The desert - or at least a small part of it! |
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| somethingite! |
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| intrepid explorer takes it all in her stride! |
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| group manages to get through thanks to Anne's amazing strength! |
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The dunes were rather spectacular- beat the hell out of Newbrough Warren on Anglesey!! They were rather high and the surface, being in the heat all day, was intensely hot. You can imagine, therefore, our amazement when the guide announced that the only way forward was to go down the face of the dune and that the best way to do this was barefoot!
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| it's a long way down! |
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| ...and up! |
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| ..but nothing phases our intrepid explorer! |
It was quite exciting to be honest and just as we had finished the guide announced we were only halfway down!! The sand was burning hot near the bottom and didn't get any cooler under the surface so, although we were sinking a couple of feet into the sand, our soles (but not our souls or ar..) were getting lightly roasted!. There waas abit of euphoria around as the task had seemed rather daunting from the top.
The final leg of the journey was up the Great Dune (meaning the one we had just, literally, hot-footed it down was just a tiddler). Actually there was a rock path alongside and around it so our hearts relaxed - for a short while! By now the 3,000+ metre altitude was beginning to tell and the walk up was rather demanding for us altitude novices. Some of us older people trailed behind a bit on the quest to catch the perfect sunset over the Great Dune ( after all how many sunsets had we seen????? or more likely would we still see? - (sounding a bit of an old codger now!!!) - or at least that's how we publicly rationalised it - we were just too knackered to go any further!
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| Going..... |
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| ....going.... |
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| ....going... |
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| .....gone! |
the sunset was pretty spectacular actually. No pollution, no clouds and altitude can clearly make a difference.
so that was our first day at 3,000+ metres. We had been a bit breathless at times especially later on in the day as we got more tired but not so much that we felt it was impossible to go any further.
We tried that out the next day where we were going to travel to over 4,000 metres!
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