Desperately seeking Desert

Hello!
Well the title really is meant to say desert, not dessert, so I'm sorry if you were hoping for a tale of an exciting mudcake experience or something of that sort! If so I'm sure I'll be able to comply sometime in the near future, as the seeking (and/or making) of sweet things is a fairly frequent occurrence for me. Just not this time.

I went on a "Desert Trek" last week. Basically a whole bunch of people went camping out near Broken Hill.

Some of us rose before dawn to watch the day come awake.

Many hours were spent around the campfire sitting, singing, cooking, eating, praying, laughing, sharing and listening to stories - or just watching the glowing, sparking embers.

We spent time alone, time just to listen and to be.


We spent time walking, adventuring, climbing rocky hills and ridges, chasing goats, climbing through gorges and round water-carved pools. Hanging with good friends.

I lapped up the wide wide desert skies, soaked myself in the golden wintery sun and the potent campfire heat, and felt the spirit breathing life.

It was very very good.

Sometimes the night was beautiful
sometimes the sky seemed so far away
sometimes it seemed to stoop so close
you could touch it but your heart would break
sometimes the morning came too soon
sometimes the day could be so hard
there was so much left to do
but so much you've already done oh God...
- Rich Mullins

Thanks for chance to step out of it all and bite beautiful reality.

Epic Bike Ride

I had such a fun week in Costa Rica. Met cool people, went rafting and hiking and all sorts of fun things.. but I am just going to tell one story:

The Epic Bike Ride.

So we were in a little town called La Fortuna, just near Volcano Arenal - which is alive (CR is a scary place, it´s stuffed full of fire-breathing mountains!).
I and the 4 friends I was travelling with at the time were a bit tired of all the overpriced tours and so decided to explore Arenal our own way.
The problem with Arenal is that there isn´t really any transport around the place (apart from the aforementioned tours). After many extended debates of what to do, where to go and how to do it, we hired bikes, packed sandwiches, loaded up with several gallons of water, and took off for the rest of the day.
We´d asked the bike guys´advice, and he´d suggested going to a waterfall nearby. You had to pay to get in, though, and it wasn´t near the volcano. We asked how long it would take to ride around the outskirts of the mountain, to the lake.
"It´s a long way," he says, looking us up and down. "But you´re young and strong-looking" (I think he was mostly looking at the two 6-foot-something Swedes when he said this) "so I reckon you could manage it."
We set off.
Going up the first hill, I started to wonder if maybe this wasn´t going to be the pleasant day on the bike I´d visualised. Then there was another hill, and another, then a little down, then more up. And up. And up we went... we discovered all the quirks of our various bikes´gear systems (there were many). As the afternoon wore on, the hills seemed ever steeper. The pauses to admire the view grew longer. The waterbottles grew ever lighter. The sweat dripped ever quicker (yeah, still haven´t gotten the stains out of my shirt :P)..
Finally, all of a sudden, we had made it to the hot springs. These were not just any hot springs. These were not the builtup commercialised prettified super-expensified hot springs. No, for these, we had inside information. We ducked off the road right opposite the Tabacon Resort-thingy, under the bridge, and there it was. The loveliest little stream you ever saw, surrounded by forest, with little waterfalls, totally natural, and steaming hot!
We relaxed our aching muscles there for quite a while..
Then off again, circling round the volcano (which had its head in a cloud most of the time), to the lake. A couple of hours of solid biking, an hour or so of relaxing, and we had made it!!

We sipped coconuts from a stall there, took it all in, and discussed whether to venture the long road back. Would we make it by nightfall? We had no lights on our bikes, and there wasn´t any streetlights in the country..
We decided to give it our best shot.
We didn´t ride back, I think most of the time we flew. So much more downhill than we´d expected: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

And we sailed into La Fortuna, triumphant, just as the light faded from the sky.

I think the roundtrip was about 30km. Such. A good day.