Day 8 Zip Lining for Coffee!!
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Day 8 was Bone's Special Day to lead with Liz, and he had every intention to turn it into a typical Bone shambles!
Bone's Strength: Focus (And the Team)
The Undeniable Pressure of Existence ~ Patricia Fargnoli, from Duties of the Spirit You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
It was a lovely poem. Liz is a lovely, thoughtful amazing Lady. However the Poem is not Bone. Bone shared his two cents on focus and how it relates to a team by no other (and no better) than Glenn E. Bo Schembechler!
The Team, by the Field Marshall Bo! ~ “We want the Big Ten championship and we’re gonna win it as a Team. They can throw out all those great backs, and great quarterbacks, and great defensive players, throughout the country and in this conference, but there’s gonna be one Team that’s gonna play solely as a Team. No man is more important than The Team. No coach is more important than The Team. The Team, The Team, The Team, and if we think that way, all of us, everything that you do, you take into consideration what effect does it have on my Team? Because you can go into professional football, you can go anywhere you want to play after you leave here. You will never play for a Team again. You’ll play for a contract. You’ll play for this. You’ll play for that. You’ll play for everything except the team, and think what a great thing it is to be a part of something that is, The Team. We’re gonna win it. We’re gonna win the championship again because we’re gonna play as team, better than anybody else in this conference, we’re gonna play together as a team. We’re gonna believe in each other, we’re not gonna criticize each other, we’re not gonna talk about each other, we’re gonna encourage each other. And when we play as a team, when the old season is over, you and I know, it’s gonna be Michigan again, Michigan.”
After Bone shared the quote the men were in tears and the women,,,, Bo who? bewildered. So much for gender equity and on for an awesome, on the Andean Flat, and into the tropics!
A Decent Descent !
The Day before had been easy in that while it was downhill, it was relatively flat, today,,,,, a little different!
Hiker poles weren't just a novelty but a need. As the picture below tells the tale that a miss-step was a loooong way down, which led to a lot less chatter amongst the Team in the Morning! After a particularly precipitous place on the Inkan Trail the Team came to an amazing sight, the Amazon River.
"Liz!! Ain't supposed to be Bigger" Mike and Bone
We all know that the Amazon River is the largest river in the world in terms of its discharge into the Atlantic Ocean and either the longest or second longest river in the world, contending with the Nile River for that honor. More than 2,300 miles from its mouth, upstream from the city of Iquitos, Peru, the Amazon divides into the Marañón and the Ucayali Rivers. The Marañón is the shorter of the two rivers but has the largest flow. The two most distant tributaries from the mouth of the Amazon are the Ucayali tributaries, the Apurimac and Mantaro Rivers.
The Unbelievably beautiful Headwaters of the Amazon!
The Marañón, Apurimac, and Mantaro rivers originate in the high Andes of Peru at elevations of more than 16,000 ft above sea level, with Pacchu Mama significantly helping with that provisioning from her Glaciers. All three have been claimed as the source of the Amazon. The Maraňón can claim to be the mainstream source of the Amazon, but the Ucayali and its tributaries are longer, 1,701 miles compared to 879 miles for the Maraňon. Liz had the Team journey by the Apurimac tributaries. The waters looked clear and pristine, but there were no takers to sample it!
Hurry Up Bone! Mike
An Iconic Waterfall!!
"Welcome, Welcome to the Jungle!"
A Goofy Heavy Metal Band
The Trail essentially followed the river for the next 5- miles. There was a number of significant number of interesting drops in altitude which as the day headed towards midway, it was starting to get a bit sticky! Mike and Bone moved down into the upper Amazonian Jungle!
Mike and Bone, Lunching in Paradise
A Bridge Too Far?
After lunch Liz took Mike, Bone, and the Team deeper into the upper Amazonian jungle tracing the River. There was a lot more growth, everywhere! Trees began to cover the clouds, and you could begin to hear birds and other fauna of the Jungle!
In the afternoon, the Team split out into small groups, Mike and Bone were graced with the light-heart color-er of the light Regine! Mike and Bone talked Regine about her eclectic life (She had spent two weeks before this trip in a Peruvian hit by herself!) Growing up in Brussels, her and Bone discussed the amusements of Brussels in the Grand Place and Mannekin Pis!
Chasing Kurtz into the Heart of Darkness!
One of the scariest part of the Book "The Heart of Darkness" (turned into the iconic movie Apocalypse Now) is in fact the darkness of the Jungle. Even in the middle of the day the growing canopy blocks out the light and gives refuge to noises that can be interpreted as predatory. The whole Team started to look around more as they headed down the path!
"Zip-Lining Away!"
Sung to Paul Simon's Slip-Sliding Away!
By 5:00 PM it was freakin' hot and humid! Whataya expect in the Jungle! The hike was much longer and harder than the day before. Liz gave everyone a choice: 1. Hike another hour up and around a ridge to the Lucma Lodge, or 2. Zip-lining 1/2 mile over a mile in the air to the other side!!! Adrenaline junkies Mike and Bone were the first across! Zip-lining was almost as much fun as skydiving for Bone! In fact EVERYONE chose zip-lining. It was a fun activity that was a surprise that Liz had planned for!
Hiking in a Dramatic Landscape!
On the other side everyone was jacked from the ride across and starting the last 2 miles ready and revved, having cooled off going 50mph flying across the valley on a thin wire. As they continued their journey up a hill, they musta been hallucinating, because there was the smell of Starbucks,,,, Coffee?
"Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, Cappuccino, Javaaaah"
A Line from Dantes Peak
It is a well-known fact that Peru is one of the top 20 coffee producers in the world as of 2014. It ranks fifth in the export of Arabica in the world market.
The three prominent coffee growing areas, located in the eastern slopes of the Andes, are Chanchamayo, the Amazonas and San Martin regions, and the southern highlands. St Ignacio, close to the Ecuadorian border, is the centralized area of coffee plantations in northern Peru. Arabica is the dominant coffee crop, 70% of which is typical, 20% is caturra, and the remainder being of other types.
Honest to Gosh Coffee Trees
Chicken and Coffee? Where's the Waffles!
"Them be Coffee Beans!"
About 75% of the coffee growing area lies at an elevation range of 3,300–5,900 ft, and planting done in the shaded areas is to the extent of 2,000 plants. Farming is done largely by small farmers, and coffee is handpicked.[4] Organic coffee is grown on 220,000 acres.
Coffee produced in the country is mostly exported, and during 2012, 264,343 tons was exported to US, Germany, Belgium, Colombia, Sweden and others. As Liz talked about the Peruvian Coffee Industry in the last mile they came up on a little village.
A Little Village outside the Lodge
Iconic Mountains in the Junglescape!
A Peruvian Starbucks!?!
The little village turned out to be a local craft coffee producer, who will roast coffee for whomever was interested and give it to them the next morning. Mike and several of the other bought 5 pound bags. With everyone getting their caffeine on, the Team headed to the very cool Lucma Lodge.
The Team at Lucma Lodge!
One hell of a place to soak and see!!!
Mike and Bone threw there stuff in their room as fast as possible because Lucma Lodge had one thing that no other place they had stayed at, that was a pool! The Boys bid their fellow travellers adieu, grabbed two cold beers each and jumped in the pool. Their backdrop was the picture above. They were now close enough to sea level to enjoy all the "benefits" of summer heat and humidity (remember, the Southern Hemisphere has Summer opposite of Meechigan!) Mike and Bone watch rain roll in through the mountainous valley and could see the crackle of lightening and roar of thunder,,,,, as they sat drinking beers in the Pool. Fortunately the Dinner Bell and common sense prevailed before the Boneheads were fried in the pool by an errant bolt of lightning!
Raju, Pisco Sour Sorcerer Supreme!
Dinner this evening did not serve any exotic rodents but was still delicious, however the actual entrees were soon forgotten by the amazing desert, custom-made Pisco Sours!
The Team's good friend Raju who had been helping Liz showed what a renaissance man he was, historian, adventurer, climber, and Peruvian Barkeep of the finest sorts !!! He regaled the Team with the history and more importantly the recipe for the perfect pisco sour, which includes:
1.Mix the pisco, lime juice, simple syrup, and egg white in a cocktail shaker
2.Add ice to fill, and shake vigorously. 3.Strain into an old-fashioned glass, and sprinkle the Angostura bitters on top of the foam. ...
4.Serve immediately to Mike and Bone!
The Perfect, Pisco Sour
Raju offered Team the opportunity to make Pisco Sours and Mike and Bone were more than willing to be the guinea pigs (no eating!) for their Team mates. The Boys sample, many, (too many!) Pisco Sours over the next few hours and went to bed well lubricated!!!!