1 Sept 2012

Kicking Mountain Ass.


Today we needed to tackle one of the biggest obstacles on this tandem adventure. The 'Hai Van' mountain pass that lays in between Da Nang and Hue. You can take a tunnel through but we decided to pick up the glove and go for the real deal. Cycling across...




We woke up eager to get started and as the hotel staff promised they got the tire fixed. My question to them was actually to replace it with a new one since the tube has been repaired a few times. I looked at it and immediately noticed that it was only half inflated. Pretty sure that it wasn't gonna last long again and yes... Only 1 km on the road and the tire went flat once again :-)



We were in the center of Da Nang so we started the search for a bike shop and a brand new tire. We asked a local to write down what we needed on a piece of paper since not many people speak english.


Armed with this piece of paper we did a few blocks asking around. People were pointing us in various directions and after going around in circles for about an hour we met 'Silver', a Vietnamese bloke that lived his entire life in Australia. He helped us to finally find the right guy for the job.





Silver with his chopper
 We got the tire replaced and scored a spare tube. We were finally ready to tackle this bloody mountain! The road was going along the coast and goes up to 600 meter in about 5 km. I can tell you... That's almost constantly 10% uphill and trust me that's steep!



We switched to the lowest gear and started pushing. The first part went pretty well but this road just kept coming and coming. Not only that, right at that moment the sun decided to make it's appearance for the first time of the day so temperature climbed quickly unlike us :-)


Sweat was gutting out of our pores and the effort was getting to us. While we were suffering locals on scooters were racing past enjoying the show.We needed to take about 3 breaks to make it all the way to the top.








Once there the gratification was huge!

From there on it was all downhill to the other side of the mountain. We jumped on the bike and started coasting down with a beautiful sunset colouring the landscape by our side.

Happy about our accomplishment we arrived in the city next to the coast and looked for a place to eat and sleep since this effort took a lot of our energy.

A truly Victorious day.

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