Just one more ridge..

[Just one more ridge] Thats what i found myself thinking continuously as we walked/climbed/scrammbled up the side of a mountain and over numerous massive ridges. Today we climbed the largest mountain in Cochabamba. Tunari as it is called is quite the monster we had heard and today we realized monster was a strong understatement. We left early this morning at six am for a two hour bus ride that would take us the first 4000 meters and then the last 1200 meters was for us to try and hike. Tunari is a massive 5230 meters tall (over three miles high) which overlooks the entire city of Cochabamba.

After three and a half grueling hours of climbing, chewing coca leafs(which apperently helps with altitude sickness), listening to the rest of our group speak in German (which we understood none of), drinking lots of water and eating whatever our host mothers had packed for us we reached the top! It was honestly the most incredible view I have ever seen. We were literally in the clouds and could see the entire city. After much picture taking and finishing of our lunches we all proceded to take a nap on the the top of the mountain. I say nap meaning we shut our eyes while the wind houled around us while we tried to take cover behind whatever rocks we could find. The walk down was much simpler. It was simply sliding down a massive sheet of rock on all fours and only took two hours. Hands down the hardest hike I have ever done and hopefully the hardest one I will ever do. We saw many llamas an even encountered a local who was apparently looking for his llama. One interesting fact was that we learned was that llamas all poop in the same place. There would be one huge pile of poop. This was to mark their territory our guide said and also as Philip one of the Austrian guys pointed out was [very clean]. It has been one of the most amazing/miserable days of my life.

Last night (the night before our hike) we went to the a celebration of mother earth aka Panchamama. It was very interesting and the cermony that took place was quit inredible. Also the most famous drink Chicha was flowing throughout the night as it is tradition to chew Coca leaves all night and drink this quite interesting drink that tastes mostly like old, hot beer. We did not stay all night and leftabout eleven knowing we had a pretty hard hike the next day.

We were originally planning to stay at the language school for two weeks which would be up tuesday but since we are having so much fun and learning a lot we are goin to stay another week. Once we are back in Montero I will be able to post a lot of pictures.