Wednesday 16 June 2010

On a high point


Saturday 5th June I stood at the highest point I have ever stood in the world. Together with the 3 students I was looking after from Messiah College, USA and some other friends I climbed up Mount Tunari, which is something like the 5th highest mountain in Bolivia. Having left Cochabamba at 6:30am at an altitude of 2,500 metres above sea level we travelled by car up to 4,600 metres and then walked up to 5,040 metres. It was only a 440-metre climb but at that altitude it was enough and we all had many rests for air! 3 of the group continued to get to the second peak on Tunari at 5,100 metres, but I had had enough by then.
On the way up we saw an Andean Fox and some Condors, which was great. Adrian, the 8 year old son of Pepe (the Filter project monitoring and evaluation guy) accompanied us on our hike, he did amazingly well. It was fantastic to see what a great encouragement his dad was in order to keep him going. They didn’t quite make it to the top but to walk up to 5,000 metres is some achievement for an 8 year old boy.

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