The real reason we all came,,,

We just spent the afternoon with the Operation Smile team.  They received us like heroes! But truly these guys are amazing... all of them working for free, most of them using up vacation time from surgeon or nursing jobs. They even took us into the Operating Room (dressed in full Scrubs!). They asked us to pass on their sincere thanks to everyone (both junketeers and fund-raisers) and wish that as many of you who can still visit the hospital do go. I really recommend going.Very humbling stuff.

As for us, we fly out of Asuncion at 5am tomorrow. Good luck to everyone still trying to make it some way or another. It was amazing to meet such a great group of people. I hope to stay in touch with as many of you as possible. (PS let me know if you want to come skiing in Switzerland... open invite to all)

Energetic Sofa over and out.

What happened next...

After the quite lamentable balls up from Team Adventurists, who were unable to fulfil both of the only things they were meant to do with our 750quid per team (1. Buy Mototaxis on time, 2. Sort out paperwork to travel across South America), no team with less than one month available for this adventure was able to complete it in a Mototaxi. (that would be most of them then).... We shall wait patiently for an appropriate apology and compensation suggestion (free trip across India perhaps?)

 

However with so many people giving us so much money for charity, a group of us decided to continue the adventure in the most appropriate way and try to get to Asuncion by any land means possible.. no easy feat it turns out... since the Bolivians forgot to build any roads south of La Paz.

 

Things started off easy enough as we jumped on a bus from Puno to La Paz. At one point we had to dismount as apparently the best way to get a bus and its passengers across Lake Titicaca is to load the bus on to a raft to be drifted across the Lake. (no motor on this raft of course... just a guy with a stick), and seperately make the passengers float across in a boat powered by a 50cc engine. Sadly none of us knew the Spanish words for  "why not build a bridge" so engineering advancement will have to wait. 

 

We arrived in La Paz around midnight and crashed out in a great hostel - the Adventure Brew House - this organises Mountain Bike trips down the Road of Death and Drinking its own Micro Brew. I didnt enquire if the combination had ever been lethal. The next day, since we were too late to join in on the mountain biking and the only bus to the Salt Flats was at 7pm, we decided the most sensible thing to do to pass the time was drink, so this is what we did for 7 hours. Needless to say this made the bus journey for every other passenger very enjoyable. And very enjoyable for us when we woke up at 4am with deserved hangovers, still with 4 hours of bus journey to go in something not really ressembling "quality comfort bus" down something not even close to ressembling "a road".

 

Spent the next day at the Salt Flats. Pictures will follow when I can find a computer with a Usb connection.... but amazing. I cant do it justice with words alone so wont even try. Spent the evening watching one of the guys we were with attempt the 19 shot challenge in the Extreme Fun Pub (its real name), before catching the night train to the Argentine border. Aforementioned 19 shot chalengee was not the easiest character to manouvere on to public transport in front of public transport armed guards. 

 

The next day was another full day of travel, first negotiating the Bolivian/ Argentine border and then travelling via 2 buses another 800km to Salta. This is the first town we had been too in about a week with paved roads, no dust, cars less than 20 years old, fully complete buildings, and a modern feel. It also served remarkable Argentine Beef and fantastic Argentine Wine. All in all a great place. No need to go into details but we met some really fun Argentine Police also and avoided getting a bed yet again. For any relatives reading this I assure you that absolutely everything is fine. 

 

We hastily exited my favourite town of the trip, literally waving goodbye to our new police friends, who had kindly turned up to make sure we caught our bus and settled in for a 21hour bus journey (night 4 with no bed). Finally we arrived in Asuncion this morning, exhausted but very happy to have made it, travelling over 4000km in 4 countries using Plane, Taxi, Mototaxi, bus, combi, boat, train and foot. We will be back in Europe on thursday (I hope). Catch up with many of you then.

Next moves

After yet more delays we are haivng to cut our loses and to try and salvage some sort of trip now. We´ve left Bertha in Puno. Very sad to leave her behind as she has performed remarkabely. Not one thing went wrong with her. whiel other teams were breakign down left right and centre, bertha just kept chugging along and i have every confidence we would have made had it not been for the 8 days of delays (and counting) that have been thrown our way.

Booked onto the 2.30 bus in Puno to La Paz. Heading down to the salt flat the day after befopre moving into argentina and then paraguay. should be there for tuesday/monday i hope. Guy will fill you in on the rest of the news.

 adios

Puno no papers day 2

Still stuck in Puno. Now got 6 days to do 3000km. The rest of the teams trickling in now. Looking less and less likely. Starting to get a little frustrated ...

Photos

By the by... we´ve uploaded some photos on facebook if your interested at

 

 [**http://tiny.cc/BuwGd**](http://tiny.cc/BuwGd)

Big hugs to all.

Puno no papers

After a leisurely morning photographing Cuzco and waiting for our exit papers ... or more precisely exit papers for the mototaxi, we left mid afternoon for a mad dash 400km south to Puno, where we were told the papers would be waiting.

Mid way through said dash, at what must be the worlds highest toll booth at 4300m, the police pulled us over for being too ridiculous a vehicle to be on the road after dark. Luckily our inept linguistic skills bamboozled the coppers to such an extent that a fine was avoided and instead we were to make our way to the village of Santa Rosa to spend the rest of the night.

We arrived at Santa Rosa around 9pm to a particularly frosty reception. However we managed to negotiate a room in the only hostel (less than 2pounds a night!), and even managed to hide Bertha in the back with the sheep. Sadly, the hospitality stopped there and no one would serve us dinner, so we retreated to the hostel room with a banana and can of tuna between us. En route we tried to pick up some bread - 8 buns for 1 sol.... when Phil pulled out a 20sol note we almost ended up with 160 bread buns to accompany our can of tuna!

Realising we were not welcome we escaped at first light and drove the 4 remaining hours to Puno, perched precariously on the side of Lake Titicaca. And here we wait...... we are reliably told the papers we need will be here this evening.... hand delivered by a trusty member of the Adventurist staff. This, it seems, is the only reliable way the papers will ever reach us, after they have tried bribing, employing and threatening a range of locals to do this task to no avail. God love South American bureaucracy in all its guises.

Hopefully tomorrow night we will be in Bolivia, only slightly behind schedule.

42 hours of driving later...

The belated starting pistol finally fired on Thursday morning and the Mototaxi Junket got underway.

We gingerly powered our stead through the security gates and we were off....

5 minutes later we gingerly pushed our stead back in to the security gates for a quick tuition on kick starting a mototaxi with a flat battery. By 930am we left for good.

Day 1 - Huancayo to Huanta. Like virtually every other team we made a wrong turn when the tarmac ended and instead of taking the genteel dirt track around one of the worlds largest canyons, we took the Hairraising Unofficial Road of Death 2 through the canyon. The road was just about wide enough to accomodate a mototaxi but still frequented by enormous lorries (all going the opposite direction of course). We precariously edged forward along the cliff face for 8 hours, finally emerging at the other end just as dusk was settling. We made a quick trip to hospital to get me some oxygen and then settled in for the night (Im fine Mum - dont worry)

Day 2 - Huanta to Chiceras. With news filtering in that one of the teams had decided to plunge their vehicle into the aforementioned canyon (luckily no human damage but a rather smashed mototaxi), we set off to bag our first 4000+m peak. Amazing scenery as you can imagine... and some very confused locals as 100 gringos powered up the Andes at 10km/h.

Brilliantly as I took my turn behind the wheel to drive down the first peak, Phil decided to tell me about his vertigo.

We managed to reach the town of Chiceras by nightfall. You wont find it in any Lonely Planet guide, but great little place on the edge of the Andes. It was fiesta time and the locals were partying. I managed until 9pm.

Day 3 - Chiceras to Cuzco. Up at 5am and 17 hours of driving over four 4000m peaks with views of snow capped mountains almost 6000m around us. Amazingly, apart from a permenantly flat battery, our mototaxi, now lovingly known as Bertha, has held together remarkably well so far. Finally at 4pm we were back on paved roads for the first time in 3 days and decided to push on to Cuzco, finally arriving at 11pm, having driven the last 4 hours by moonlight. Again, we managed a massive night on the town for Halloween. One beer and bed by 12!

Hopefully we will get to Puno today, but need to wait for paperwork to arrive to allow us to cross into Bolivia, so a bit of sightseeing this morning before forging ahead. Currently we are ontrack and just ahead of the pack so keep fingers crossed for us.

Love to everyone and thanks so much for the donations... we have reached our target!!  

Power of Dreams Cancelled says Honda. Local supplier has other ideas

Mototaxi Junket is almost a non starter.

President of Honda Peru cancels the release of 70 shiny new mototaxis on Friday following a tongue in cheek article in the Peruvian Times. Apparently Honda can skydive their name in the sky and fly a balloon over the Niagra Falls but they cant trust their own mototaxis across South America! It seems the Adventurists dream too big for Honda.

Luckily a local brand, Lifan, has stepped in to filled the void and managed to build 70 mototaxis in a week and delivered from the amazon basin by raft!! (Strangely their mototaxi factory is in a town only accesible by boat and plane)

So we remain at the starting line with a 3 day delay as they sign the paperwork. The off will be Wednesday morning and then the real fun begins.

In other news I (Guy) have now eaten Guinea Pig and drunk far too many Pisco Sours. (Brandy, Egg White, Sugar... the perfect weightlifters cocktail it would seem.... and great for drinking in large quantities at 4000m). Plus Peru must be the only place in the world where you order a Coca Cola and receive Narcotic leaves in Hot Water.

Tonight we meet the Mayor, tomorrow we buy Jerry Cans and a puncture repair kit and practise some more on the bikes. Yesterday we practised a little bit. Tally to date - 3 rolled, 7 broken (on a flat football pitch). Stay tuned for how we fair taking on the Andes.