The first thing you notice when you arrive in South America is that it is big, busy and non-stop. Coming out of winter hibernation in sleepy little New Zealand into Lima, a bustling, noisy city of 8 million people is a bit of a shock. I t's also a d irty sort of a p lace and we were keen to get out as fast as possible. However, there were some complications for us, and it took a day or so to reach Huarez, our home for a couple of weeks.

Our bus driver didn't turn up at the terminal in Lima so we had an enforced day in the big city. Lima is big, very dirty, busy and noisy. The weather at this time of year, constant moist sea mists, contributes hugely to the grey feeling of the place. It is the capital of Peru, and seeing as we arrived on Independence Day, there was a celebration parade.

Peru is obviously quite proud or boastful of it's military, there were heaps of soldiers, tanks etc. If you wanted to invade Peru you'd probably be wise to do it on this day, and in a location far removed from Lima. Almost every branch of the Peruvian army, navy, air force and other services were there with all their toys, maybe every individual too for all we knew. The alpine assault team in their white overalls with tatty hawser laid ropes and one twenty-year old ski each made a lasting impression. Of course they all had weapons; assault rifles, cross-bows, night vision sights, machine guns..., and most of them were pretty nasty looking.

Actually the only people parading that didn't have weapons were the lifeguards and nurses; like I said they were all there. There were heaps of people hawking all manner of goods on the sidewalk. We got RSI saying "no gracias" to all the street urchins trying to sell us food, toys, etc. There were also heaps of people watching. At one point the crowd moved to follow the parade as it shifted to another road. We weren't ready for this and we got pushed along with no ability to get out. It didn't feel safe being so hemmed in, and during the melee Simon had his camera taken from his pocket. Later we were told that Central Lima is not a safe place and we were mad to go there, especially on Independence Day. After an overnight bus trip from Lima we finally made it to Huarez. It's a scrubby town (about 40,000 people) nestled in the valley between two mountain ranges. The dry rolling hills of the Cordillera Negra on one side, and the towering peaks of the Cordillera Blanca on the other. It must have a been a beautiful town with lots of colonial (Spanish) buildings until an earthquake destroyed most of it in the 1970s. Rampant, ugly and unregulated construction since then has produced a hodge podge collection of mostly unfinished, unclad square concrete block or brick buildings. Many have reinforcing rods sticking out the top ready for the next story to be added, this just makes the town look even more unfinished. But despite the way the town looks it is in a beautiful setting. There are 6000+m peaks behind the town which provide a fantastic backdrop. It's warm, around 25 or more in the day and at night it's usually a quite mild, 12-15 degrees C. This time of year is called the Andean summer, but it's actually winter. In summer it gets really wet so this mild and dry period of the year is the time to visit the Andes.

The cycling is great. Mostly the tracks are walking and donkey tracks between the little villages on the flanks of the ranges. Some are well benched and graded, others are steep, and defined only by the houses and stones walls of the paddocks. We did a couple of really good rides from near the top of the Cordillera Negra back down to Huarez. We used vehicles to get to the top because we were not acclimatized to the high altitudes. Seeing that Huarez is at 3100m in the bottom of the valley, every ride we do starts at this altitude. The trails from the top of the C. Negra are generally over 1000m of descent on wonderful, dry, narrow and technical single track. There are always a few short climbs, and even these small gains in altitude had us gasping for breath. You can climb OK for a minute or two, but once you've used up the oxygen in your muscles it's a real struggle.

Our first hill climb was a 1000m ascent to around 4000m which was OK for all of us except me. I was severely lacking energy after a couple of days without food. I had got a bit sick after eating a dodgy meal or something, and since that time I'd only had a short term lease on any ingested food. By this stage we had all acclimatized well; we'd worked out that as long as you stay aerobic you can keep climbing. As soon as you go anaerobic you have problems because your ability to recover is very limited. After climbing to the little town of Pitec on the Cordillera Blanca we descended on a trekking trail back to Huarez. This was a great trail, lots of nice technical rocky sections and plenty of good, smooth, fast, baked clay single track.

By this point we had had 7 days in a row of cloudless, 25 odd degree temperatures. Funnily enough though it's not too hot. Once you get a little over-heated all you have to do is pop into some shade and this cools you down remarkably quickly. I think the local Campastrinos (farmers) are more than a little bemused by our antics. The trails usually go right past their door steps, and most are not on established trekking routes so they don't see Gringos very often. This is great for us because its a very rich cultural experience. Despite not speaking Spanish we seem to be able to communicate a little and I've gained a little bit of an insight into how they must live. There are villages over 4000m on the Cordillera Negra where they eke out a living in the hardscrabble earth. I don't know how they grow anything in such dry soil, except for lower altitude areas there is no irrigation. But even well above 4000m there are wheat, maize and oats paddocks that appear to be flourishing. They play up that high too; we saw a soccer field at 4030m, marked out using crushed rock on the dirt and rough cropped grass paddock.

We made a crossing of the Andes (twice) on a two-day ride. It was pretty tough for me because I was feeling so awful. I had a relapse of the stomach bug that bit me a few days previously so I simply had to try and carry on and complete the ride. Fortunately most of it was downhill - if not I'd probably still be out there. We used vehicles and donkeys to help transport us to the top. The donkeys were not really that necessary, but they provided some pretty cool novelty value with our bikes strapped to the side of the pack animals. There views were amazing - mountains in excess of 6000m towering above us, massive hanging icefalls, glaciers and huge granite cliffs. Everything is simply on an immense scale. Photographs unfortunately will not adequately convey the grandeur. I saw three condors at one time, and two individual condors at other times. We were in the Huscaran National Park where there is supposed to be no grazing and development - however some is allowed because it was being practised before the park was gazetted. Despite the development, which included a huge zinc and silver mine on an impossibly steep cliff with a glacier and ice fall above it, there was huge plant diversity. The alpine zone forces plants to use similar solutions no matter where they are on the globe. I recognised prostrate brooms and heaths, tussocks, alpine daisies and others similar in form to NZ alpine plants. Farther down the valley there were brooms very similar to our natives, and fucshia and akeake like trees (we even saw a ngaio like tree on the coast in Lima). After hiking up to the Portachuelo (Col) Honda (4750m) we descended steeply, so steeply that it gave us an upper body workout - arms, fingers and shoulders were burning. Down the valley on a nice trail, and then a traverse at 0 degrees gradient above the valley. This trail was amazing. It deviated only slightly from 3715m, then returned to that altitude for over 10km, sometimes across amazingly steep cliffs. We stayed the night at Chacas and the next day we travelled up to Punta Olympica (4890m), apparently the highest pass in Peru. This was a 1500m climb from the valley on a dirt road cut through steep cliffs across amazing alpine terrain. There were tarns everywhere, glaciers above and a tiny little gap at the top that the buses somehow squeeze through. We descended about 1000m on the road, down 40 or more evenly spaced, equal length switch backs before hitting a nice single track which we followed for a while before descending down the scrubby dry clay hill slopes we are now used to. These trails are littered with loose rocks, and are very steep with many switch backs - challenging riding. Overall I guess our descent was probably well over 2000m on the second day.

There are maps at: overview: http://www.andix.com/huaraz_maps/huaraz.html

The 2 day trip we've just done is on the map: http://www.andix.com/huaraz_maps/huaraz2.html

Time to bust out of Huarez and head to Cuzco, a bit further south. We had a few dramas with airport security while getting there. It seems they don't like bike pedals and other seemingly innocuous bike tools. After getting a going over - Simon and I were OK with pedals, Hamish was refused having his on the plane. I had my bike tools refused Simon didn't! It was all very confusing and inconsistent, They totally overlooked Simon' s pocket knife, which he inadvertently left in his carry-on luggage. The security dude even checked the plastic bag it was contained in, but focused his attention only on Simon's pedals. We were in a rush to catch our flight, which didn't help matters, and we'd just spent 8 hours on a night bus (featuring movies turned up very loud, and a stifling heating system) without any sleep. Eventually the airline rescued our gear and put it on a later flight, we picked it up a few hours later from the airport. We had to mix and match bike parts from our three bikes to get two complete bikes we could ride to the airport. Cuzco is quite a lovely town - lots of very old buildings, cathedrals, plazas and history. There are also heaps of narrow cobbled streets and pedestrian steps. It's a gringo paradise, lots of shops, clean tidy, heaps of great old architecture and easy to get around.

We visited a few Inca ruins using our bikes to get around. One above a town called Pisac has an amazing location around 300m above the valley floor, surrounded on two sides by river gorges. It's so steep that much of the hillside was terraced to provide food for the inhabitants. Inca stonework is amazingly intricate. There are no gaps and they have withstood massive earthquakes that have demolished many other buildings from later periods. We found a little single track on our way back down and caught a micro (local bus) back to Cuzco. on this bus Simon caught a cold off an old woman, and true to his sharing persona he duly passed it on to each of us in turn during the rest of the trip. We went to Machu Pichu via the Inca Trail for a couple of days. It was certainly a highlight, though the way we went about doing it, on an organised tour, was not ideal. Unfortunately there is no other way due to new regulations designed to manage visitor impacts. Machu Pichu was quite amazing, actually all the Inca ruins here are extraordinary. The stone work is so precise, without specialist tools and mortar they fitted huge blocks of stone together to form massive walls. The stones they used are massive, many in excess of several hundreds of tonnes. They fit together so well you can't see any gaps between them, they are in perfect alignment, and have survived countless earthquakes. This is something the contemporary Spanish buildings can't claim - many of these have fallen down a number of times and have been subsequently rebuilt.

Cuzco is a really lovely city. Well certainly the parts of it that tourists tend to go to. I got lost one evening and ended up in a rough part of the city after dark. It wasn't an ideal situation, but I managed to find my way out. That particular part of the city was like many other Peruvian cities and towns; dirty, full of dogs, smelling of urine, unfinished and full of cars. Typical third world country really I suppose.

We got burned out on the ruins and museums that Cuzco offers, and were ready for more mountain biking. We were not able to find any really extensive and good mountain biking, though undoubtedly it's here. We did lots of pedalling, but most of this was on roads. The trip between Cuzco and Puno across the Altiplano on the train is supposed to be one of the worlds great train journeys. Certainly the scenery is superb, imagine the MacKenzie Basin but much bigger (it took six hours to cross in the train) and with lots of little houses scattered every 500m or so. The Altiplano is at 4000m, so living and grazing up here must be desperate when it is really cold. There are heaps of patches of snow around - a result of recent snow falls that were reported on the news in New Zealand. We heard these reports and packed lots of winter wollies. But until now they have remained deeply buried in our bags, so the cold weather killing heaps of people and llamas that we heard about hasn't affected us. From Puno we travelled around Lake Titicaca and crossed the border into Bolivia. Around La Paz in Bolivia are some of the classic South America mountain bike rides. Unfortunately none of the guiding companies were offering the one ride we really want to do, the Taquesi Trail. We were a bit disappointed about that, but we weren't really too sure what the situation was, and potentially we might be able to do it unguided.

We didn't spend much time resting in La Paz. There is so much to do, particularly mountain biking. We did a day on what is reputably the worlds most dangerous road - according to the World Bank anyway. It wasn't that dangerous on a bike - slight risk of becoming a hood ornament on a bus or truck I guess. But, it was no worse than a ski field access road in NZ; except there is two-way traffic, the traffic is big, the drop to the valley floor is in excess of 1000m, Bolivian drivers are crazy, it's 40km long and the drivers have to swap the side of the road they drive on (easier for drivers on the edge of the precipice to see how close their outside wheels are!). It was all good fun until we took a local bus on the way back up and the driver pointed out where the last bus went off (24 of 31 survived). The additional height of being in a bus exaggerated the view of the drop too. Hmmm, that was a bit sobering - your life entirely in the drivers hands. You've just gotta hope he wasn't chewing too much coca leaf!

We actually did get to ride the Taquesi Trail - one of the best examples of pre-Incan paving stones on a trail. After climbing a 4600m pass (not much cycling getting up to it) we descended through glorious terrain similar to parts of Central Otago. The trail was phenomenally good. A perfect and well balanced mix of technical rocky obstacles and steps, gradually downhill narrow, twisty single track and pre-Inca paving. The reports we'd read of this trail did not overstate how good it was. We read one story that noted that if you were only going to do one more ride in your life this would have to be the one. I'd have to agree; I'd rate the scenic, cultural and mountain biking experiences as brilliant. This is the best ride I've ever done. We caught a truck back to La Paz late that evening. That too was an experience. Just our luck that the particular truck we flagged down was loaded with sacks of coca leaf. At a check point four or five soldiers, plus the owners of the coca leaf all tried to establish how much there was, and reconcile this with the manifesto. It took in excess of an hour and a half, to count sacks on a 40 tonne truck by committee. During this time all the 20 passengers sitting on top of the load of coca leaves were shivering in the misty rain at 4200m. After the load was finally counted the re-packed truck was not as warm, as we were now sitting in a wind tunnel, rather than being in the lee of the cab of the truck. Going over a 4500m pass back to La Paz in a truck doing 40-70km/h was not that tropical. Hamish and I both grabbed full-on versions of Simon's cold; not a good thing as we headed to Sorata for another two days of mountain biking.

Sorata was good, reminiscent for us of cycling around Huarez. Lots of dry, dusty foot tracks between villages. Unlike the other rides we've done here in Bolivia we were on a guided trip. We get driven to the top of the hill and let loose to zoom on down. It was my first real experience of shuttle runs. I'm not sure that I enjoyed it that much - it just doesn't feel that honest. But this is the only way you get to taste these trails. Without a guide, and this is the only company that guides to Sorata, you'd just get lost or simply never find the best trails. From La Paz we did one more ride before heading home. This was on the Jungle Rail Trail, an ill-fated attempt to connect La Paz on the Altiplano with Coroico in the Yungas Jungle, close to the Amazon Basin and all the crops produced there. The rails were never laid, but the alignment was finished. Recently the trail was cleared and widened to allow vehicles on it. Previously you had to take a machete to force your way through, now there are Armco crash barriers protecting you from the 1200m vertical drop into the valley and road signs. Fortunately slips prevent vehicles using the road so we had it all to ourselves. One last day of lovely scenery, huge hills and tough riding before heading home.

Simon was heading to the US, so Hamish and I left him in La Paz. We got a bus to Puno - the first half of this ride was in a tiny little mini-van (not a bus as we'd been told) with 14 other people! After we got to Puno we had dinner, and Hamish swallowed something, which got stuck in his throat. He thought the foreign object was still in his throat, and after declining the offer of cough lozenges from the pharmacy they finally directed us to the hospital. "No, senor, El medico por favor". Puno regional hospital was a real eye opener, there were still gobs of blood on the floor and curtains from previous patients, chipped paint ... It was hard to tell who were the doctors and nurses, in fact the woman treating Hamish could well have been an orderly for all we knew. They had a look down his throat with a wicked looking flashlight that they dropped on the floor just prior to inserting in his throat, and ascertained there was nothing drugs. I had to walk half way to La Paz through the hospital corridors to get the prescription, pay the cashier in another department of the hospital and return to collect the medication. Wow!, we got a needle and a vial of some stuff. I wasn't too sure what we / I were going to do with it - at least it looked sterile in it's wrapper. Fortunately for me, but not for Hamish who hates needles as much as he hates spiders, one of the doctory looking people gave him a jab in his butt with what turned out to be an anti-inflammatory injection.Then the drama started!

The next day we mooched around Puno for the morning. Hamish was all right after his excursion to the hospital the night before, phew! We booked a place on the bus to Juliaca airport. "Yes senor, the bus will get you there for the 3pm flight". Confirmed our tickets at the airline office. "No problemo, your tickets are at Juliaca airport". Had a long breakfast, walked to see Lake Titicaca (cess pit) and bought some food for the journey, and the long wait at Lima airport. The mini-van to the airport was late, it was overloaded (17 in it this time), underpowered and slow. It took in excess of an hour to reach the airport. When we got there our tickets were not waiting for us as promised, and there was a big problem - they hadn't been paid for. They didn't accept credit cards, nor traveller cheques. "What! first you say there is no problem and the tickets are ready, now you won't accept our money!". "Cash only mate". We didn't have enough cash in our pockets for two plane tickets, nor enough time to get any cash from Juliaca before the flight, and our scrounging from other passengers didn't garner enough cash to buy the tickets. There was another flight - but it was full. We were waitlisted, and after a very nervous wait, got on the first leg to Arequipa. From there things got worse. No room on the second leg of the flight to Lima, and no other flights - so we were going to miss our connecting flight to Buenos Aires. A potential solution was formulated; take a 14 hour night bus to Lima, catch the first Buenos Aires flight the next day and link with our Buenos Aires to Auckland flight which didn't leave until late the following day.

Right, onto the bus - wasn't a bad trip. Probably the most comfortable, and definitely the longest we'd taken. Finally got to experience 'bus bingo' complete with trivia questions. Arrived in Lima, took a taxi in rush hour to the airport (one hour plus from the bus terminal!). Guess what? No flights to Buenos Aires until late that day. This was definitely the low point of the return journey, we missed our flight to Auckland. There was no one from Aerolineas Argentinas at the airport, and they weren't answering the phone at the office in town, so we didn't know if we could rebook our flights. The only other flight option was business class on American Airlines, ooch $US3000 each. After about five hours someone from the airline arrived. "Yes, we could rebook the flight, but it was full"! Ahhh, we had to wait until 8pm to get on the waitlist. So we camped out at the airline counter to ensure we were number one and two on the waitlist. Achieved that, then we made nuisances of ourselves hanging around to make sure we got any spots on the flight. Yippeee, made it. It was a very full flight, and a very uncomfortable flight - still managed to sleep through most of it though. We had to spend an extra day in Buenos Aires because there was no connection the following day to Auckland. Good to spend some time there. It's a cool place - keen for an adventure there next. Looks like some good biking in the mountains, and the peso has devalued such that it is really cheap too! It was nice to finally line up at the counter in a civilised country with a valid ticket for our flight home. It wasn't a great end to our trip, we lost lots of energy from all the stress and nerves, but this is typical of travel around South America, you can't trust anyone to give you the full story. They tell you what they think you want to hear just to get your money.

Overall it was a fantastic trip, with the travel hassles on the return journey being the only blight. The mountain biking was superb, you have to be pretty pragmatic about what you want to try and achieve because the hills are huge. Transport is generally pretty good, but you have to take it on Peruvian or Bolivian terms and timeframes unless you want to pay big bucks for individualised transport. The highlight for me was the Taquesi Trail and getting to see Machu Pichu. Regrets? Not knowing Spanish, while it wasn't strictly necessary for getting around and surviving it would have made it easier, and we would have been able to be more selfsufficient in our mountain bike adventures.

It would have been a real advantage in getting more from the cultural experience; being able to communicate better to Peruvians and Bolivians would have enhanced our understanding of Sud America.