Blog / Just My Cup of Tea

23 November 2011

Today is much the same as yesterday - same road, same rolling hills. Tea trees on the higher ground, bananas lower down. We're let off a little by the terrain, with small ups and downs alongside a river before heading into a 10km climb that rapidly became challenging. We keep thinking we're done going uphill, but there's always more.

We take a late lunch around 3pm, and the pork fried rice provides the fuel needed to finish the job. More climbing and we almost stumble out onto a flat road through what is clearly a future suburb of Pu'er. I get going on a 28-30km/h pull, and we cross the flat in no time. A short pop uphill and we're flung into a fast 5km descent into the city. It's grown up so much my map is useless. We sniff out downtown and check into the best hotel of the trip so far. It even has internet access in the rooms. Back on the grid!

We do some sums and work out we've done some 9900m of cumulative elevation gain in the last five days, significantly more than the height of Mount Everest. We think we might now deserve to call ourselves climbers.

83km, 16.1km/h, 5hr8min, cumulative elevation gain 2200m, 708km

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