3 days in Andorra

Yesterday we returned from a big group trip to Andorra. There were 16 of us in total, 12 first year IESE students, 3 friends, and yours truly representing the second year. We rented a 16 bed chalet on the mountainside.

For those who don't know, Andorra is a tinny country squished between Spain and France. It has skiing in the winter, great hiking in the summer and is historically insignificant. We decided to use our four day holiday to drive the 3 hours up to Andorra and explore some of its surroundings.

Above you see the 16 of us who decided to hike for one of our days. There are 5 1/2 Americans, 5 Germans, 3 1/2 Indians, 1 Bulgarian and 1 Moroccan. There is also one Hungarian midget but he is hiding in the back. You will find out why very soon...




Our trek was to peak the highest moutain in Andorra. Not very high at just under 10,000 feet but if you consider we came from sea level in Barcelona to 6,000 feet elevation at the trail head and gained 4,000 feet in the 5 mile ascent to the peak, you realize, this was not an easy hike. In fact, the hike was so difficult, the midget didn't make it. Below you see Velio after finishing off the last of the midget. Lucky for him we came prepared with dental floss. Fact: Bulgarians love eating midgets. Its true, look it up on Wikipedia.

There were small lakes all over the mountain range. They are fed by the snow and rain that occur quite frequently in dem der hills. The day before our hike it was raining and lightning so we were quite lucky with the weather...or were we???
Party on the peak. Who brought the strobe light?




I guess no strobe light is needed when you have millions of pieces of hail coming down. In case you are wondering, this photo was taken with my new Canon 40D SLR camera using a Sigma 18-200mm lens. I bought the camera while in the states and couldn't be happier with the quality of the photos.

After enjoying the hail turned slush turned rain storm for about 2 hours of total awesomeness, the guys who finished the hike earlier (Zach, Gurveer, Steve, and Naresh) greeted us with cold beers. I mean, really, is there any better way to finish an 8 hour hike to the highest peak in the country after being pelted with hail, sleet and rain for hours??? Actually, yes there is, about an hour later we were all relaxing in the thermal pools located in the center of the city. Its not easy to be an MBA, but we do the best we can.

This final photo shows the hail/snow that was happening in the mountains while we were making our way down. This is the view from our chalet.

10 more days until I leave for London for the big exchange. Until then tengo mucho espanol. I also need to finish off a technical note on Social Entrepreneurship in Health Care that I'm doing for my internship.

BIB - Back In Barcelona

After a wonderful summer, I am back in Barcelona studying Spanish. The first part of my internship in Kenya was an amazing experience. My time back in the states was relaxing and fun and now I am finishing up the second part of my internship while concurrently taking Spanish and preparing for my exchange program in London. I leave in two weeks.

I will fill in some more details about the last few months in a future post but for now, I will discuss some good news and some bads news. The bad news first, yesterday I had my first real accident on my moto. I was driving to school as calmly as I have ever driven. I entered a roundabout with cars all around me. I needed to get over to the right so I was looking in my mirror and for no reason whatsoever, the car in front of me stopped. I noticed too late and although I hit my brakes, that didn't prevent me from smashing into the back of their SUV with my poor little blue moto. The noise was terrible. I was convinced my whole front end was destroyed. My initial reaction was shock, followed by, "oh crap, now I'm going to get run over." But the little moto that could didn't even stall. The SUV started to move and I noticed a great big dent in their back bumper. I followed the person as they moved out of the rotunda. Now I thought about dealing with the police and insurance, tickets, all the other crap that happens after an accident. I continued following the SUV until we hit a stop light. I noticed they didn't really seem like they intended to pull over. After the light, we drove as normal and next thing I knew, the SUV was passing another car. My insurance worries drove off into the distance with a dented bumper and I made my way to IESE. The good news is that I just scratched my knees a bit and basically broke the front of my moto but apart from that, this accident has a happy ending (remind you of anyone?). Hopefully that will be my one and only accident story while in Barcelona.