Bike or bust!

Monday, July 12th
I woke up at 6am to meet up with my new fellow travel adventurers. The group consisted of Chris (New Yorker), Ben (Ohio), Jeff (Ohio), Mike (Minnesota), Connor (Scotland), Ally (Scotland), Orla (Ireland), Mark (Ireland), Pierre (France), Audrey (France), our guide Leo (Peru) and me...so basically 3 women and 9 men. I was happy. Ha! We all met on the bus and we got along swimmingly straight away. We drove 3 hours through the majestic Andes to our drop off point. The scenic drive was absolutely magnificent. They call the area surrounding Cuzco "the sacred valley" Once we arrived at our destination, we were given our bikes and met with our guide Leo. He seemed like a reckless jokester. So the 12 of us set off down this insanely windy cliff road in the Andes mountain range. We would bike down over 2500 meters (about 7500 ft) in 3 hours. The first part of the ride was on a paved road; however, the last half was on a rocky, bumpy, dusty, under construction trail. I was a lil nervous for the ride because I'm not the most confident person on a bike. The ride was scary because we rode down the edge of a cliff for miles on end. It was a pure adrenaline rush. The view was amazing! The mountains looked like no other I've ever seen. At the top of the Andes you could find glaciers and a tundra ecosystem. However, at the base of the mountains was a lush lowland tropical rainforest. It was a beautiful contrast. We flew down the mountain sometimes going ridiculously fast speeds. I say that now...but probably...in actuality...I was going 5 mph downhill. Ha! Towards the last 20 minutes of the ride my rear tire went flat, it sucked, but worser things could have happened. After we decended down the mountains, we arrived at our hostel for the night. We had some good conversation, good beer, and some good laughs.