Random cycle tours - Part 1

It was Doug's idea to climb Cotopaxi. Helen and I just went along for the ride. Turned out we needed a guide, and an ice axe, and crampons, and training - and $80 each.... and nerves - and thighs - of steel. Ten days of hard pedaling to get to the meeting point (you'll need the altitude training the English woman turned feral in Quito said) - needless to say we dropped like flies on the way up.

First to go was the Australian - threw up at base camp and never got out of his sleeping bag... We didn't know him anyway. Next was me. Having been dragged out of my bunk at 4am, force fed strawberry milk and then pushed up a vertical mountain in the pitch black wearing pink boots - I never stood a chance. Not that it stopped Manuel my guide from trying to taking advantage of a poor swooning woman with strawberry flavoured altitude problems....

Helen was next - but did manage to get up to 5700m - a superhuman effort in snow up to her thighs. Doug came back with Helen - only a hundred metres or so from the top. Turned out no one made it to the top that day - or the week before or week after - the avalanche risk was too high. - And with that - we high tailed it down to the Amazon basin just in time or Christmas in the jungle.