Aimee's Got a Brand New Bike

Aimee brought a new bike back from the US on her last trip.  This Saturday, she took it for its first ride with me, Ariel, and Anne.  We planned a ride from our house 2,000' up to Muela del Diablo, 3,500' down an abandoned road to Puento Lipari which is now mostly singletrack and then 1,500' back up on the road to our house.  The estimated time for the ride was 3-4 hours.  Our estimate was a little optimistic.

Here we are on the initial part of the climb to La Muela:

Aimee and her new Santa Cruz Juliana:

Taking a break after the steepest parts of the climb to La Muela:

Lucky me!

Lucky Aimee!

Aimee making the final climb to the shoulder of La Muela:

Aimee sucking air at 13,000':

The climb took 1.5 hours and ascended about 2,000'.  Ariel and Anne making it look easy (it's not):

La Muela with greater La Paz in the background:

Winding away from La Muela toward the descent: 

Getting closer to the descent:

At last, the descent:

On one of the endless switchbacks:

Anne takes a look at how far we have to go down:

Steep canyons around here:

Aimee and Anne work their way lower:

Aimee appears happy but was having a hard time on the descent because it was her first real mtb ride on challenging terrain:

Puento Lipari is at the mouth of this dry river:

Ariel waits patiently for the more cautious descenders:

The trail was crossed by many water gullies, some rideable and some not:

Near the end, we crossed an area being developed for new houses:

Aimee and Anne dropping off the edge of the world:

Where's Aimee?  She had a flat.

At the bottom of the hill, we ran into two large and very aggressive dogs.  It was unpleasant but no one was bitten.  The abundant loose dogs are the thing I like least about Bolivia.  Here we are riding through Mallasa after ascending about 1,500' from Puento Lipari.  The troops are getting tired:

Anne is French which explains the post ride smoke:

The ride took about an hour longer than we expected, mostly due to riding the descent slowly.  It's a ride I will certainly do again as the climbing is great training and the descent is really fun.

The gory details:

Ride length:  19 miles
Elevation gain: 3,500'
Moving time (for me):  3'09"
Elapsed time: 4'57"