Happy New Year!!

A quick summary of 2008; Started out with a three week IB- trip to Vietnam, followed by a solo one week tour in Laos. Coming back I had five long months in Trondheim writing my final diploma (still taking time to go to Switzerland to see my friend Max from Singapore and having two weeks at home for Easter with loads of snow getting to go skiing every day). My masters (which was the source of a lot of tears and woken nights) was handed in the 17th of June and luckily managed to get me a pretty decent grade in the end. Summer was relaxing, no work only pleasure. End of July I went on a 10 day sail trip on Libra doing parts of Svalbard - amazing! And then, the 19th of Aug I left for South America and before I know it; its 2009!!!

The 31st of Dec I and 3, significantly more fit and experienced, bike guides left La Paz for an alternative New Years eve celebration on bikes. Got to see parts of Bolivia that, judging on the attention we received, not many gringos get to see. This means no Lonely Planet who could advise us on where to stay, eat and drink, nor are there any maps of the area, or at least maps that are correct... This resulted in not quite knowing how far it was (further than first thought) or if we would get a room for the night. In the end we did find a small village that would let us have a room in the end. When we arrived we had a New Years eve toast with the local soccer team before pretty much laying flat in our "beds" getting served rice, chips, egg and tomato. The only reason we were awake at 12 was that the locals were partying hard outside and when we finally fell asleep around 1 am our drunk friend came barging in with some unidentifiable meat (Dale whom ate the whole thing in the dark said it was chicken, in daylight it was easily identified as pork), banana and potatoes. The morning after we paid, which pretty much involved insisting our amigo to take the money (he wanted the equivalent of 50kr or 7$ for accommodation, three meals and snacks for 4 people, we wanted to pay him 4 times that). Not our everyday in La Paz when it is a daily battle not to be over charged for everything.

New Years Eve

One thing we did take for granted was that we could get water on the way. I can now advise you the following; going outside the usual tourist areas bring loads of gringo friendly water, or at least purifying tablets!! The second day was quite a dehydrating experience with 5 hours uphill, 20-something-celcius and no water (our main source of liquid was coca cola!!). However in the end, after getting a lift the last killer uphill we reached Irupana where we could gorge in water, have two dinners and take a hot shower (great even though having to wear clothes we had been wearing a couple of days).

The ride

The 3rd day it was a five hour bus ride through the Yungas almost back to La Paz, jumping of (rough estimated) 30 km from home and then riding back. The last part was done through crazy La Paz in dark... the scariest part of the trip. Alive, home and clean the crew and Gus went to Argentinean Steak House having 600 gr of beef each...

A perfect way to end 2008 and start 2009....

Christmas 2008

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas. For me Christmas pretty much began the 22nd when Dale got a tree for the guys’ apartment. The tree with alternative ornaments accompanied by the other Christmas decoration is found below (Aunt Karin I promise, the Christmas penis was not my idea!)

Anyway, the four of us watched Elf (a great Christmas movie with Will Farell), while two of us continued with a bad horror movie before going to bed about 3-4 am. Already at 12ish the next door neighbor started yelling and shouting (covering pretty much all the bad words I know in Spanish and some in English). However right after going to bed he started, what I thought was, slamming things making it impossible to sleep.... After a small nap in the morning we woke up to 20-something bullet holes in the wall, including some chattered glass and wood where we were watching tv....

The 24th I worked from 9 am to 5 pm, having Christmas eve dinner (hamburger and chips) at the only open place: the Irish pub after trying to order take-away from Mr.Pizza. And as a Christmas present the Bolivian police decided to let the crazy neighbor out. He has however luckily not chosen to show his hate for gringos the last few days.

The 25th I woke up to coffee in bed followed by champagne breakfast, followed by wine, fernet and whisky, and finally a Christmas dinner which was great but a bit neglected as a consequence of the previously mentioned liquids. One of the highlights of the dinner was Swedish Mike's meatballs that started out at meatballs and ended up as meatcakes to my enjoyment.

To the left the Swedish tradition of making meatballs while on the right you find the Scottish tradition of drinking a lot of whisky....

And next: New Years!

Pictures from home

What does NOT help when you are getting a bit homesick and want to spend x-mas with your mom, dad and little brother and sister(s):


However, I did manage to change my ticket in the end so for the next holiday (Easter) I will be home!

Both me and time have been flying

Not very frequent blogg updates,I know... but time is flying in La Paz. I am living with Kass (a nice english guy working at Oliver's travels), his girlfriend and a pregnant cat (which I am uber scared is going to give birth while I am at home alone - Tone Mette if you read this give me some tips from your year long exprience of midwifing for your cats). Try to do some spanish lessons but I am soon giving up, I work pretty much five days a week and go on an occassional bike ride. The result of Friday's trip is found below. Warning: These pictures do NOT do justies for my injuries, which where located pretty much all over my body.

I am just super glad that I didn't break anything or loose my teeth (or went down the 500 m cliff not far from me). A less fortunate girl can be seen if you go to You Tube and type in "frontbreak face plant"...

So what do you do two days after being beaten up, and with a knee that is the size of a small tennis ball? Go on a new bike ride! Here is one of the pictures from me and Osmar's trip on Sunday. Great weather, amazing Bolivia, three punctures and two tired souls at the end of the day . I should say that I look cool in the picture below, but don't be fooled! I did almost sacrifice my teeth - again - while going down, or at least trying to, some stairs....

And if anyone was wondering; no I am not coming home for Christmas and it is not to easy to change my flight as first being told. So when I will be back in Norway is a mystery...

Facebook

Facebook is good to have when you are out travelling meeting loads of people, but it is also a great tool to have some control over what happens back home. Like how my clothes are doing and what fun stuff they are attending. Featuring my little sister Kine who has been in my closet and putting pics on facebook (storesoester ser deg!):

World's Most Dangerous Road

An article about the WMDR and the company Gravity which I am working for (in Norwegian): http://www.dagbladet.no/dinside/2008/09/19/547430.html

Me doin the road for the second time

Back in La Paz, "for good"

In the end I decided to stay another few months in Bolivia so Tuesday I said good bye to Jitka and headed north again. That ended up being a looong journey. First of all, Bolivia has about 10 meters of asphalt which is pretty much distributed around La Paz. This makes all bus rides in the southern region quite bumpy and subject to a high probability of failure. Secondly the roads are narrow with hundreds of hundreds of meters drop on either one or both sides of the road (which kinda makes it more comfortable taking the night bus - what you don't know doesn't hurt you). Anyway, I was all set for a hell of a ride that night when we left the bus station about an hour late (normal), but after about 30 min we stopped. A truck was stuck in one of the curves and there we had to wait for 8 hours (!) before we could continue the 8 hour bumpy road to Potosi. I missed my bus to La Paz and had to take another night bus. This was more comfortable with room for European legs, asphalt almost all the way and we had only one stop (for about an hour) due to mechanical default...

The last few days I have tried to sort out my life a bit. I have talked to a mountain bike agency here in La Paz and it seems like I'll be working there for a couple of months (meting the bosses tomorrow to get everything settled). While yesterday Bolivia finally got to me after three months with a cooperative digestive system. I spent most of the day alternating between the toilet, the bed and the couch in the common area at my hostel. My one trip out of the hostel was quite unsuccessful.. What happened? I decided to get out of bed to get a sandwich and some juice at a cafe about 5 min from here. Long story short; I ended up having a black-out and came to my senses having some guy taking my pulse. I got my sandwich in a bag and a nice couple from England followed me back to my hostel... The really depressive part of this story is that I had to have gotten these nasty bacteria from the awesome food at the Arabic Restaurant or the amazing empanada-ish things stuffed with potato and chicken from the old lady on the corner. Neither which I am ready to give up... Anyway today is a much better day and I could treat myself to an “expensive” lunch since my food expenses yesterday was kept at a minimum…