I'm reading a book called "Watching the English - The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour", written by an anthropologist named Kate Fox. The more I read it, the more I feel like there's an Englishman hidden inside of me, and that's pretty scary. Especially for a Frenchman. Anyway, it seems like this "Englishman inside of me" is a lazy guy. He keeps procrastinating every time he thinks he should write on this blog... But the time has come for an update.

Last time I wrote, I was in La Paz, just a few days away from my biggest adventure so far : the climbing of the Huayna Potosi, a tourist-friendly 6.088 meter-high mountain. I felt a need for something different and physical at that point and I had met a few guys who had done it. I don't think I would even have dreamt about it otherwise. My biggest mountaineering achievement so far was probably under 3.000 meters. And my latest attempt at doing any sport was a two month-old mortification at playing tennis.

The walk up began on August 26th, with eight other mountaineering apprentices and five guides. It took us a couple of hours to go up to 5.100 meters (from 4.700), where we spend the night in a quite comfortable refuge. As we arrived quite early in the afternoon, we had plenty of time to think about all the different painful ways of dying while climbing a mountain. We went to bed very early and tried to sleep, but all of us were really tense. We had to wake up at 1 a.m., to be able to start walking at 2. And so we did. In the dark, each with his headlamp on, crampons and ice axe too. And three layers of clothes. And so we went, tied to one another with a rope and at least 5 hours to the top.

My butt on the mountain

It was a really strange feeling to walk like this in the dark, in the cold. One hour, two hours. Everything fine. Keep going. And then your start to be really breathless, and you try to switch off your brain. No, it's not painful (even if my boots were too big). No, my water is not turning into tiny ice cubes in my bag. And no, I'm not exhausted. And finally, just before 7 a.m., my butt on the very top of this f... mountain. The sunrise. The cold. And this orange shade of light on a sea of clouds. It was amazing, just amazing.

I spare you the details on my awful journey down. It took me over a month to recover from the blisters I got on my feet. I was dirty and exhausted, but felt like a hero.

I spent a few more days in crazy La Paz and then went for a couple of gorgeous days on Isla del Sol, an island on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. My next stop was the Centre of the world, nothing less. Cusco, now in Peru, and formerly the capital of the Inca Empire. From there, I went to the world famous and very touristy Machu Picchu. It was quite impressive, but I still felt a bit disappointed. Too many tourists have this effect on me...

The second of my two weeks in Peru was spent mostly in Arequipa, which was very pleasant and relaxing, and just shortly in the cloudy and busy Lima. I caught a flight to Brazil and enjoyed the last two weeks of my trip in São Paulo. I was awaiting sun and gorgeous Brazilian girls in their bikinis, I got two full weeks of rain and matching clothes (anyway São Paulo is quite far from the Ocean, so people usually don't wear bikinis in the street).

I've been back in France for almost two months now. And my life is far from being back to any kind of normality. I've been visiting friends here and there, first in France, and then in Belgium, Holland and England. I saw Amsterdam and London for the first time and I'm really glad I did.

Now I have just one thing on my mind : finding a new job. I'm staying at my sister's and enjoying the quiet life. And sending CVs. Trying to get my brain back to "normal life" mode.