Me and all my gear have made it safe and sound to Lima, except for a slightly buckled rear wheel. The journey was quite a test of endurance. I had 2 hours sleep on Saturday night, then the 5 hour drive to London, 4 hour wait in Heathrow, 11 hour flight, 8 hours in Miami. No sleep yet! Then I had 3 hours sound sleep on the 5 hour flight to Lima. I spent about an hour putting the bike together and loading up in the airport. I chose from the S.A. handbook, a hospedaje in an area called Miraflores in Lima, on the flight to Miami. I got some maps in the tourist information centre at the airport, then set off on a 10 mile trip to the hospedaje. The roads in Lima are fun i.e. scary. From observation the most important features of the highway code are to blast your horn for no apparent reason every 5 seconds, drive as close as possible to cyclists, buses to overtake cyclists then immediately slam on the brakes to transfer passengers. Junctions should be just piled into with horn blaring until you can push your way through. Lights are optional in the dark. The Peruvian M.O.T. equivalent, if there is one, probably has only these requirements: That the horn works and is very loud, that tyres must be on the wheels, but no tread required, No lights needed, exhaust emissions must consist of thick black smoke and clinkers.
The hospedaje is in a relatively safe area and is basic but friendly $15/night. I got to the hospedaje at about 9 a.m. and slept until 6 p.m., then I went out on foot to get some food. I had a good nights sleep last night and today I went for a 30 mile cycle trip around the city (it's a big place). I feel triumphant that I'm still alive after that, then I went for a meal in a restaurant where I was hassled by a bloke trying to sell me some pottery, his sales strategy was to put each piece in turn to his ear, then put them to my ear whilst I kept repeating "no gracias, no quiero esta'' and he talked gobldeegook. After a couple of minutes 'he would try someone else on the street, then come back to me after 5 minutes and repeat.
I have just been to a supermarket and now I will go and indulge myself with a bimbo and eat some fanny..............that is bimbo sliced bread and fanny sardines! I've also got some fanny tinned pineapple. Well it had to be done.
Tomorrow I am planning to set off towards La Oroya.
I set off this morning at about 10:00 for the Andes. I cycled for less than half a mile before the cable for the front derailleur snapped, so I fixed it on the pavement. I grabbed onto a few trucks in Lima to get a tow, but outside of Lima it was difficult to grab hold of a truck as they were going too fast. Then I realised that the speed bumps in some of the villages could be used to my advantage as the lorries slowed right down to cross them. The last tow I got was a good one as the lorry was going quite slow, between 10 and 20 mph and I held on for 10 miles up the steepest roads. It is quite a strain on the arms, and as a result I should be able to do up my shoe laces standing upright tomorrow. I did 52 miles today (40 under my own steam). It was bloody hard work because of the gradient and the temperature.
I’m staying is a small town called Chosica. I was apprehensive as I entered the town as it looks as run down as the dangerous areas in Lima, but I had to stop. The main street runs parallel to the Central highway into the Andes, and as I rode down this street I saw a procession of about 100 people walking up the narrow road dressed up and performing some kind of ritual. I had to stop to let them pass, so I thought I might as well take a photo. Then I realised that just behind the front of the procession four people were carrying a coffin! Shit. I just stood there straddling my bike as they all walked around me, showing no obvious signs of offence. I got a room in a hostales for 13 Soles (about 2 pounds 30...this keyboard has no pound symbol). The room has paint peeling off the walls, so I feel quite at home. I have just had a meal and a few beers at a restaurant just across the square from the hostales. These people don’t fuck about, they gave me a big steak with chips and rice, with the hottest chilly sauce I have ever had for 6.50 soles. I will probably get mugged now returning to my hostales, for my earlier behaviour.
The bike ride to the next stop was tough going as the altitude kicked in, only 26 miles done, but the altitude at the end of the day was 4100m. The place I stayed at was called Casapalca, which is a small mining village. It is a disgusting place, rubbish all over the place and smelling of piss. My room was basically a 8 foot by 8 foot garden shed on top of a crappy grocery shop. When I asked where the bathroom was the sour owner showed me a little cupboard in the shop with a rickety door, but that was not the worst of it. There was no water supply into the building so neither worked...Great! There was a broken water main just down the street and slightly down a slope into the valley parallel to the road, and that was it. I just took a piss in the street like everyone else. It was not all bad there though, I had a good meal in a restaurant and talked to the owner and a customer, or tried to. I am getting by with the Spanish, but it has been frustrating and isolating not being able to freely communicate with people. My most frequently used phrases are "No comprendo" and "no entiendo".
I hardly slept at all that night. As soon as I got to my room the soroche (altitude sickness) kicked in. I read about it in the S.A. handbook to confirm the symptoms. dizziness (yes), splitting headache (yes), nausea(yes), insomnia(yes). I also read that soroche is made much worse by drinking alcohol...damn! I had 2 beers which had the effect of 6. The next morning I felt really bad but I could not bear to spend any longer in that shit hole and there was no way I was going to go back down. I packed my stuff and set off with the idea of getting over the next mountain pass at 4800m and then descend to a town called La Oroya at about 3600m. The scenery was great, but I was not able to appreciate it fully as I was almost at the point of passing out all the 20 miles to the top. I saw a heard of llamas and there was snow above approx. 4600m. Going down the other side was amazing - downhill for about 4 hours max speed 40 mph. I had spoken to a bloke at the top who convinced me that it would be better to stop at Jauja which was a bit further on, but it was downhill all the way and Jauja is at 3200m, so better for my soroche. The trouble was after La Oroya, the road flattened out and a headwind developed. I camped in the valley between the river Mantara and the road. It was a nice spot, mostly hidden from the road, with great mountain views. Just after I got the tent up an electrical storm developed, and it rained a bit in the night.
When I woke up the tent was frozen stiff, so I waited until 10 o’clock for it to thaw. I was not cold in the night, in fact I was too hot so I opened the sleeping bag. In the morning it was nice and sunny, like it has been every day, and I was sitting outside on the short coarse grass eating some sardines when I saw something moving on the ground next to me, I had a closer look, SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! a fucking scorpion I jumped up about 6 feet in the air. What with the soroche as well I almost died of fright. I picked it up by the tail........ with a pair of pliers! and put it in a plastic bag until I was ready to photograph it, then squashed it. It took nearly all my effort and about 3 hours to pull the tent down and pack the bike. When I got on the road I was so weak I had to stop and rest for slight up-hills and I would start cursing even if the road flattened out. I was spoilt from the previous days riding. It was 20 miles to Jauja which is a town about the size of Cardigan. The accommodation was a bit better, as my room had a toilet sink and heated shower. I had tried them out when I was being shown the room and they worked. However when I actually needed them they did not. For some reason there was no water in the hotel during the day, oh and the shower was not heated. I spent 2 nights in Jauja to recover. I saw the Sunday market which was mental. There were stalls which were constructed on tricycles, they had canvas roofs and everything. Must have weighed about half a ton with all the food on them. There are a lot of these tricycles about, which have one wheel at the back, 2 in the front on big leaf springs supporting a 3 foot by 4 foot load bed and they are steered by a pivot in the middle of the machine. I will have to have a go on one! I felt pretty good on Monday morning, and I set off with the intention of stopping in the city of Huancayo. The countryside was really nice, I was riding in the Mantaro valley again but here it was highly cultivated with potatoes, barley and maize etc. plus livestock. The fields are worked by hand mostly, I even saw some ploughing being done with oxen. It was refreshing to see this agriculture where people seemed to take pride in their work and surroundings after all the mines and shitty mining towns on the other side of the pass where I would imagine people live a life of drudgery. I got to Huancayo but it was only 1 o’clock, so I decided to try to get to a village called Izcuchaca, which has accommodation recommended by the S.A. handbook. It was difficult navigating on the other side of Huancayo, and I became convinced that I had taken a less direct road. It climbed steeply for miles on end and I could not match any villages with those on my map. It tuned out it was the right road, but I had wasted a lot of time looking at the map and generally feeling sorry for myself. Anyway after 10 miles climbing out of Huancayo, the tarmac turned to dirt and the road went down steeply with fantastic views of a huge valley. It was getting late so I stopped off in a village called Acostambo.
Anyway I’ve run out of time now, so I will continue tomorrow. I’m in Huancavelica (pronounced wank-a-velica) and I’ve Met up with a load of Peruvian mountain bikers. We are going for a ride tomorrow.
I will continue the story from Acostambo. The road was downhill for about 10 miles, but it was so rough that I could not go very fast. After a town called Izcuchaca it was all climbing. I had asked somebody on the main road if there was accommodation in Palca which was 2 miles off the main road, Palca being the only place marked on my map for miles around. They told me there was, but when I got up there and asked several children, they pointed in different directions, looked blankly at me or made some quiet remarks in what must have been the Quechua language (language of the Incas). Eventually I was lead to a large building and gradually crowds of dirty faced children began congregating around me. Some of them went to fetch a man from up some stairs running up the side and around the back of the building. He spoke Spanish but I could not work out what was going on as the building did not look like a hotel. He disappeared up the stairs and I waited for about 10 minutes as the crowd of children reached about 50. They were getting more confident now and asking questions in Spanish pointing and laughing. I decided to go up the staircase and take the bike with me, which was not so easy. I got to the top of the stairs where there were 3 men talking. I worked out that the building was probably the town hall or something to do with the school or both. It seemed that there was no hotel accommodation in Palca but after about 20 minutes they lead me to a room with all the children and dragged in a mattress. I was then led to the office of the big cheese who everyone was very ingratiating towards to pay 20 Soles. I was then taken to a restaurant where I was told I must have fish. I waited in the restaurant talking to some teachers from the local school for about half an hour with about 20 children in the restaurant and another 50 or so outside pressing their faces against the window. I was then shown where the public toilets were (no toilets in the place I was staying) and then went to one of the teachers houses with 10 of the children where he played a tune on a violin. Pretty good too, but the kids just sniggered. The house was a 2 story thing which was open air on one side on the first floor, mud walls and a thatched roof. We went back to the restaurant, but the food was still not ready. I had to wait another half an hour being bombarded by children and teenagers. I must have been the first gringo tourist that they had seen, never mind one that was travelling by bike. The meal was nice, but then I rushed off to my room to escape the attention. I went to bed and then was woken by a man shouting from a P.A. system addressing the village. It was terrible even with ear plugs in as it was so distorted and the windows were rattling. I packed as quickly as I could, Ignored breakfast, went to a shop bought some food and fled!
The ride to Huancavelica was quite short at 26 miles and I got there at about 2:00. There was a cracking bit of downhill riding and I was starting to gain more confidence in the rig, around the corners. I got to Huancavelica and met this mestizo bloke Zack about my age who showed me to a good hotel, then we met up with a load of his mates at 4:00 and we went down to the bike shop where he worked and which was the hangout of the Huancavelica mountain bike club. Their bikes were mostly without front suspension, steel frames and had cheap components. Back home they would be 100 pound bikes. However they were really enthusiastic and this guy Zack had actually built his own frame and made a nice job of it too. One guy had some nice deep rims and some matching purple anodised components that he had bought in Lima while visiting his family and 2 girlfriends. He is married too! I showed them the trick of hopping on the back wheel, which proved to be amazingly popular. I had to repeat this about 50 times until half the population of the town had seen it. The local hospital will probably be inundated with back, head and neck injuries as a result. I went out for some drinks with Zack that evening where I got hassled by a prostitute. Bloody cheap though only 5 soles (less than 1 pound), but I suppose you can't charge much if your breath smells like freshly laid dog shit. The next day I went for a 25 mile bike ride with Zack. He was bloody fast uphill too. The ride was 2 hours of climbing then half an hour descending, but he and his mates could do it in about 1.5 hours. It was great to not have the panniers on. Zack was faster than me in a straight line, on very rough 5 foot wide tracks, but these Peruvians have not mastered the art of high speed sideways action cornering and I overtook him on every corner, then he'd get me on the straight. Excellent fun. Then we came to a single track section where a lot of the track was stepped. He said that it was an old Inca track. Then more arsing about by the bike shop and then some more drinks.
I set off the next day with 2 other members of the bike club who joined me for the first 15 miles of the trip. I was slow but I had an excuse. Then One of the blokes offered to exchange bikes for a while and he shot off. These lads are seriously fit. Then I started to worry as there was no sign of this lad and I had a bike which was held together by cello tape and chewing gum. That gave me an extra incentive to speed up. I caught up, exchanged bikes, and then felt bad for doubting his integrity. They turned back at some village or other. The views became seriously spectacular after that at about 4000m with all sorts of different shapes and colours to the mountains :purples, oranges, greens, black. I saw some strange looking wildlife too. I saw them on some rocky hillside next to the road, they looked a bit like rabbits (similar size) but they had big curled tails like squirrels and hopped like kangaroos. I had hoped to make it over the pass today to descend to a lower altitude to beat the soroche, but darkness was approaching so I headed off the road for about 1/4 mile to a spot beside a stream. As soon as the sun went in it got pretty cold (probably -5 C). I was glad not to be suffering much from soroche, I just had a mild headache if I moved suddenly and my heart was racing a bit, but I got a good nights sleep.
The tent was frozen solid in the morning with ice on the inside of the tent as well. I had been slightly cold in the night, but nothing serious. I waited until 10:30 for the tent to thaw and then dry. After a few miles I saw an Indian woman with her heard of sheep and her dog. Her dog saw me and came sprinting towards me from about 1/4 mile away. So far I have been having trouble with dogs, but have been able to outrun them because I have been going downhill or they have not been too keen. This dog was big, so I thought big dog...big rock to smash it over the head with, so I picked up a 7 inch diameter rock and put it on the front rack and continued cycling. The dog got to me and I lifted it above my head and it knew the score and legged it back to where it had come from. Today I crossed the highest driveable pass in the world 5059 m, then as you might imagine a huge descent for almost the whole day. Again I had some major problems with dogs. I was going downhill at about 10 mph when I heard the deep barking of an angry dog, then it was joined by 5 others, all about labrador size, this was bad! I sprinted away and got up to about 20 mph but they caught right up with me so I started kicking out with my right foot and I managed to belt one in the face, which then hit the ground tripping up 2 others behind him, then a couple of the others gave up, but one dog chased me for a total of 1 mile. To be honest this thing with the dogs is pretty exciting, but I must not get bitten, as rabies is endemic here. I have decided to take a 3 foot long stick as a weapon which I have loosely strapped on top of the front panniers. I had to take it out once the day before yesterday, but the dogs heart was not in it. That day I did not want to stay in a small town in case of a repeat of the Palca scenario, but I did not want to camp so I continued for an hour in the dark to the town of Lircay (not advised in the S. A. handbook but no problems). Lircay was at the bottom of what must have been a 2500m canyon. Next day ther was more nice riding and I was feeling full of energy because of the relatively low altitude at the start of the day. Once out of the canyon and over the next mountain I came to the most amazing downhill riding ever, there must have 30 or so hair pin bends and with amazing mountain scenery it was just complete sensory overload. I camped that night and the next day got to Ayacucho, again was treated to stupid descents. I have met up with another cycle tourist in Ayacucho. He is also called John and is a Spaniard of about my age from the Pyrenees. He started in Quito and is heading towards Argentina. We have agreed to ride together to Abancay. We were meant to set off today but I was struck down with food poisoning or something yesterday; hardly slept in the night with stomach cramps, one minute hot, the next cold and a nasty headache and nausea. I did not leave my room yesterday nor did I eat anything. I tried watching some TV, they had some kind of Spanish MTV derivative, which just span me out and made me feel sick with all that weird graphics, so I just sat there in a daze or slept.
Today I am better but still tired. I have spoken some more with Spanish John and he has been speaking to a Spanish photographer who lives here and she said that the Sendero Luminoso Terrorists have been active on the road to Abancay in the last week. This group was highly active in the 80's and early 90's where apparently Ayacucho was in the centre of it all with constant warfare between this group and the military. Spanish John should have been to a meeting with a policeman in the anti terrorist department to find out whether we should divert our route to the coast to Pisca and then to Abancay. When I was doing my washing this morning on the roof of the hotel I heard gunshots and what sounded like bombs and short blasts of machine gun fire coming from the direction of the road towards Abancay. And just a few seconds ago there were 3 gunshots close by, but nobody in this Internet shop seems too concerned.
In general Peru is a top place for a bike ride, it has the most spectacular scenery of any country I have been to. Surprisingly the roads are not all that steep, I rarely go lower than middle 3rd gear, and the climate is fantastic. Almost every day has clear blue skies with no rain, with temperatures ranging between 0 and 25 C during the day depending on altitude and it's really fresh (not Lima). Now that I have got over that soroche things are much better.
I have made it to Cuzco more or less unscathed. One month into the trip now and 860 miles on the clock, so I think I deserve a few days off. I arrived at 4 o'clock on Saturday, and spent most of yesterday in my hotel room in a horizontal position, and the rest of the time in restaurants and looking around the massive market which is next to my hotel. Today I sorted out an organised 4 day tour with a tour company, which will go to Machu Pichu via the Inca trail. I spent about 3 hours doing that and talking to some other Gringos. One girl from Holland had been on a 2 day tour and she thought it was shit and a waste of money. She was telling me this in one of the tour company offices and the rep was just smiling and looking sheepish. A bloke from London and his girlfriend had been on a four day hike to Machu Pichu and they thought it was O.K. but it had been wet. It does seem to be an amazingly expensive excursion at US$195 (for Peru) as my typical daily living expenses have been about 5 UK pounds or US$8. I think it is going to be a bit tourist monkey-like. It is amazing how many Gringos/as are in Cuzco, as I have only seen a handful during the rest of my travels. Most of them are dressed in squeaky clean hiking clothing and seem equipped for a major expedition but have in fact just stepped off an air conditioned bus. It is almost obligatory for Gringos to grow a full beard. I think it is probably thought of as some kind of status symbol of how hardcore you are, where the size of beard indicates how long you have been travelling. I was travelling with a Spanish bloke for 3 days after Ayacucho and his beard was invariably host to various particles of food, slimy snot and probably some insect life. It is also amazing how tall most Europeans are compared with the locals.
I had to cut a new hole in my belt yesterday. I have lost about 4 inches off my waist, so I think the six pack which has been hiding under the modesty padding might be visible on my return. The tour will start on Friday at 7:30 where I will be picked up from my hotel and taken by bus up to a place called Km104 (that is 104 km from Cuzco) where the hike will begin. I think the group size is about 10 people. Apparently people are not allowed on the Inca trail unless they are part of an organised group, otherwise I would have gone alone. The trail is only 33km long and I can't believe it is going to take 4 days to complete, especially since porters carry most of the equipment. I only have to carry clothes, insect repellent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag. All meals are provided. It sounds easier than staying in Cuzco in a hotel. I think it has to be done though, as I am here. I have 3 days to kill now before the trip, so I am going to try and hire a motor cross bike and give it a good thrashing. Also One of the guys in my tour company is into mountain biking, and he has given me some maps and 2 routes.
I have been to a pretty good bike shop here in Cuzco, they have components up to Shimano XT grade. There are quite a few people here into MTB racing. There was a race yesterday, but I was too tired. Anyway when I arrived at the shop I witnessed my first crash in S.A. A colectivo taxi minibus thing crashed into a tiny little car and hurled it onto the crowded pavement, where it seemed it crushed at least one person, I don't think anybody was killed. I did not go right up to the scene as most people did, eager to see some gore, as I had just eaten. I am sure it will not be the first road accident I will see here as the towns and cities are chaos. The roads in rural areas are lined with little monuments about 1 foot tall. Sometimes a metal cross but mostly a little painted concrete house thing with a pitched roof and some dead flowers. I think most are caused by the buses whose drivers are probably failed professional rally drivers on a suicide mission. By contrast lorries go amazingly slowly up hills and the same speed down them
The bike ride from Ayacucho was tough at first because I had not shaken off my stomach troubles, which meant that I could not eat very much and so had little energy. I only managed 26 miles on the first day, it was a horrible road out of Auacucho; loads of trucks, very rough road and clouds of chocking dust. I can't remember the name of the place we stayed at the first night, it was a village after Tambillo. A lad of about 20 years took us to a place in the village where we could camp. I was told it was a post office. It was dark by the time the tents were pitched, and by then a crowd of about 30 had gathered. The lad who had shown us the site wanted a go on my bike so I said he could if I could have a go on his. His bike was a cheap full suspension MTB, so I thought the locals would find some back hops entertaining, which they did, but it was more entertaining when on the fourth hop the back wheel collapsed. They were all pissing themselves laughing, but I was worried the mood might change. I spent half an hour straitening the wheel out by physically bending the rim, which on an any normal bike would be extremely difficult, but in this case, although the bike was new, I think the rims had been made of used coke cans. I got it reasonably straight and gave him 20 soles, which he seemed pretty happy with.
The next morning we had breakfast at a restaurant which consisted of a little corrugated iron hut 10 foot by 10 foot. I lent my bike against it at first and the bike almost tore the side out of the shed. The kitchen doubled as a mechanics workshop and yes the food was disgusting. I had a bit of steak which did not look right at all with some horrible rice. Later that day I was riding through a village where a market was going on. I rode past a steer at speed and it took fright and started sprinting alongside me. I noticed that a rope was trailing along beside it. I put on the brakes and then a horrible thing happened. The rope went taught as the slack was taken up and half a ton of beef was taken off its feet as its arse end swung around almost hitting me. It landed feet up in a ditch and was motionless. Broken neck I thought. Again there were crowds of laughing people except for the owner who told me it was worth $100. Luckily with a bit of pushing and shoving it was back on its feet and I got the fuck out of there. There was a big downhill to the next stop at Ocros. The next day there was downhill in the morning for 1 hour: all dirt. Fantastic, but I nearly became a RTA statistic around a hairpin bend when I was doing about 20 MPH on the wrong side of the track and a truck came around the corner. He was going slow enough to stop before I got to him. I almost crashed into him and then skidded to a halt a couple of feet away from a precipice. I carried straight on to try and subdue the shock. The next stop was in Uripa which is about the size of Cardigan. I had a day off the next day, but Jonny boy from Spain carried on as he is in the habit of going for days and days on end without a rest day. Fuck that, it's 3 days on 1 day off for me. He had been on the road for 50 days, starting in Quito in Ecuador. He spoke quite good English. He was riding a hybrid bike with aluminium racks and had had quite a few problems with 10 or so spokes snapping in his rear wheel, and both his racks had broken and been repaired. It's no good fucking about when it comes to roads as rough as these, you need a mountain bike with downhill competition rims. My rear wheel is fine, but I have a lightweight XC rim on the front which is not as round as it once was.
I did a good mileage to Talavera (60 miles): 4 hours climbing, then the rest descending all on dirt. But disaster struck after 40 miles. first I had a blow-out on the rear tyre as a result of not paying attention to the boulders on the track. That was O.K. I fixed that, but a mile further on I tried to pedal, but it was locked solid. Damn, the lower right rear rack mount on the bike frame had snapped off and the lower part of the rack had mashed into the rear sprockets. Luckily I was going downhill and I freewheeled to a garage. The mechanic looked at it, asked me to take the bags off, and than went to weld it back on. He was a complete monkey with hardly any idea how to weld and he would have welded the rack directly onto the sprockets if given half the chance. He did not have an angle grinder to clean the weld area or even a file. Luckily I had one, so I did the preparation work and then held the mounting in place as he tacked it on. The fucking twat managed to damage the thread on the mounting so that when I tried to put the bolt back in it seized and sheared off. On top of that, he had not earthed the frame properly and somehow a high electrical current had passed through the cable operating the rear gear shifter; it melted. Fuck it. The bike was now in a worse state than before, so I decided to zip tie the rack in place and carry on with no rear gears to Talevera, the road to which was luckily all downhill. The only hostal in the town was a shit hole down some dodgy back alley. The teenage lad at reception was a slimy little bastard, who informed me that he had 5 girlfriends. I think what he meant was that there were 5 prostitutes operating from the hostal. There were sound effects to back this up. The room had loads of mosquitoes on the bed covering and on the ceiling, so I spent a while killing as many as I could before they bit me. The bed covering also had some thriving mould of some kind growing on it. There was worse to come. I started work fixing the bike and realised that the twat mechanic who’d done the welding had managed to pass a current through the rear derailleur and so ruining a very important irreplaceable spring. Result 1 scrap rear derailleur. Luckily I had a spare. I managed to get the remaining bit of bolt out of the rack mounting and get a new bolt in, but the threads are damaged. The next day was uneventful and I stopped in Kishuara and stayed in the cheapest accommodation so far :6 soles (about 1 pound). I was pleased that I managed to hold a conversation in Spanish with the owner for about half an hour, and then another half hour conversation in a restaurant with 2 female school teachers. The owner of the hostal was building a restaurant out of mud bricks, whose use is widespread in Peru. He said it would take 3 days and cost 2000 soles (about 350 pounds) for materials and labour.
The next day was the last stretch to the city of Abancay. The front tyre broke today. The road down to Abancay was one switchback after another. I saw an aerial photograph of it today in one of the travel agencies. It is just a zigzag of 40 or so points, where the length between points is roughly the same. I had another rest day in Abancay. From Abancay to here the road is 99% good tarmac road which makes a nice change. I managed 72 miles from Abancay to Limatambo, and 60 miles from there to here. The road to Limatambo had one of those massive descents again but with the smooth surface I topped out at 45mph.
Continuing from the last report, I did manage to persuade a tour company to hire me a motor cross bike. The owner wanted to hire me a 400cc bike, but when I asked him what levers did what he got suspicious and wanted to see me ride up the road before letting me take it out. He was obviously not too impressed as when I came back he told me I was taking a 250. I don't think I did too badly as I had not ridden a motorbike for 10 years before I had been given a go on one in Huancavelica. That little test ride was quite nerve wracking as it was on a very busy street and I was being closely scrutinised. My heart rate was well up and my legs all wobbly when I came back.
I headed off uphill on good tarmac road to a town called Pisac which is 25km North East of Cusco. I was cautious to begin with, but soon started revving the bollocks off it overtaking cars and buses. I passed an impressive Inca monument called Sacsayhuaman (yes it is pronounced sexy woman) which has the largest of the Inca stonework. I think some of the stones are estimated to weigh over 300 tons and yet they fit together without gaps or mortar. The road was mostly downhill thereafter to Pisac which is in the Urabamba valley. This river flows past Machu Pichu and on into the Amazon river. I was very cautious going downhill around the corners (only as fast as the cars). When I got to Pisac I intended to head for Paucartambo which is 81km East of Pisac because the guy who hired me the bike recommended that I should not go there as it too rough, narrow and too many tight corners for a beginner. However I made the mistake of asking a local for directions and not double checking on my map, so I ended up following the river upstream along a dirt track which was rough but flat and lacking tight corners. I got about 20km to San Salvador before confirming my mistake. It was just as well that I had a bit of practise on a loose surface but otherwise easy road. I went back the way I came to Pisac, and then crossed the river and continued up a winding tarmac road out of the valley. I started pushing the bike much harder around the corners as it somehow feels safer when going uphill. I made a mental note of an open manhole in the middle of the carriageway on the opposite side of the road! I found the correct turnoff onto the dirt track which was one vehicle width with and carved into a cliff face in parts. I soon got into it and started sliding the back end of the bike around the corners. I basically went over a pass and then down into some other valley for a way before turning back half way to Paucartambo because I was half way through the time I had for the ride. I had a few sketchy moments on some corners as you might imagine, when I would momentarily get the clutch confused with the rear brake, or forget to ease off the throttle. Its just that it has two wheels, a handlebar and you have to balance it yourself; like a mountain bike and it's easy to forget that it is not, in the heat of the moment. I got back to the tarmac road to Pisac and by now I was really cooking it around the corners and yes I forgot all about the open manhole. It was just there suddenly when I was doing about 50. I got around it and thought to myself "fuck that was lucky" and then promptly slammed into an 8 inch step in the road, which was the result of a slight landslide. It would not have been a problem If I had been prepared but I was sitting on the saddle, not standing as I should have been. The front suspension took it O.K. but when the back wheel hit the lip it just bottomed out and then uncompressed violently sending the back end of the bike about 2 feet in the air. My rucksack ended up on top of my head and I went a few feet down the road on the front wheel, before managing to get things back under control for the next corner. I got to Pisac and then followed the Urubamba downstream along a dirt track recommended by the owner of the bike. This track was much more uneven and loose surfaced, but did not have tight corners. There were some nice jumps too. I turned back after a few miles and went back to Cusco. I had been out now for nearly 6 hours and had got a good feel for the bike so I was absolutely hammering it past huge lines of traffic and sliding it slightly around the tarmac corners. It seemed amazingly fast even though it is only a 250 and engines have about 35% less power at this altitude. I can barely imagine what the big engined road bikes are like to ride at low altitude. I was knackered the next day, my arms were so weak I had to have 3 attempts at opening a bottle of water. I had another day off before the trip to Machu Picchu.
I got up at 5:00 on Friday so that I would have time to pack and have some breakfast. I walked half a mile to the restaurant where I was planning to eat but it was not yet open, as was the case with every restaurant, so I had to make do with 2 horrible beef burgers, where the beef was about 1mm thick with a 5mm coating of disgusting slimy fatty batter. I was amazed that the bus came to pick me up at exactly the right time, as very little goes to plan in Peru. What followed was a little more normal. The bus just went around and around the same streets picking various people up stopping for 10 minutes and then dropping them off, picking them up...... Then we stopped for about 1 hour in a square, where crowds of street vendors tried to sell the gringo tourist monkeys hats, food, water, bottle holders, hiking sticks, ponchos etc. The group had 14 members, which consisted the following subgroups: 2 English girls Zoe and Rebeca who were graduates and had been working for 2 years; 1 17 year old girl from Chester who had been staying with a Peruvian family in Cusco for 6 months supposedly working as some kind of nurse, and the daughter (Alli) of similar age, of this family; 4 English lads and 4 girls who seemed squeaky clean, sickeningly well spoken and behaved. All were in their gap year before university except one who had just finished; 1 girl whose name was Charity, but she insisted that everybody call her Calidad which is apparently the Spanish equivalent of her name. You can probably guess where she is from; and me. During this long wait Charity sat down in the street with her legs crossed, eyes closed with palms facing upwards, much to the amusement of the rest of the group. The street vendors did not bother with her. I suppose they thought she must have been in the care of somebody else on the bus. The delay was caused by a problem in getting tickets for the Inca trail, which had arisen due to a restriction imposed on the tour companies, by some government body, to limit the number of people on the trail at any one time to about 500. That number sounds bad doesn't it? We got going at about 10:00. At Urubamba town we stopped to have food in an overpriced restaurant where I was charged 11 Soles for a meal called the Americano which turned out to be 2 fried eggs on a plate. Nothing else. I talked with Charity who turned out to be not such a twat as I first thought, but quite interesting company. She is 27 lives in San Francisco, had started some kind of holistic therapy clinic when she was 21 and is now doing Women’s studies at university where she is specifically interested in the effect the media has on women. She also claims to be an artist and showed me two cards which had prints of her paintings that she is selling in the U.S.A. They seemed technically good. Both stylised images of overweight female figures with large breasts...much like herself. Later on the bus trip we stopped at a town and one blokes of the group of 8 got off the bus to buy a tourist monkey hiking stick with a colourfully knitted handle, some porters got on the bus and took his place, so he sat next to me for the rest of the bus journey to Ollantaytambo. He was called John and was the eldest of the group. They had been in a place called Santo Domingo for 4 months building a school and working in an orphanage. Santa Domingo is a small town close to Quito, Ecuador. During the conversation he mentioned that they had been accompanied by missionaries to some place or other, so I asked him (possibly with disapproving overtones) what he thought of them. It turned out that his group were missionaries. Despite this I continued to get along well with him and his group. It sounded like they had had quite an exciting time in Ecuador. Two of them had been mugged twice with the threat of being chopped up with machetes. Several had had their backpacks and back pockets slashed open. Just after they had arrived in Santo Domingo, they had been mugged, and then the owner of the house they were staying in heard rumour that the muggers were going to come to the house and finish them all off because they did not like missionaries. So they had to employ an armed guard for a while. Apparently some missionaries had been murdered there several years ago.
The last few miles in the bus were on a dirt track, then we hit the trail at about 12:00. There was 5 hours walking this day and one large Inca settlement seen. There was one girl Sarah (who had been living in Cusco) who was struggling and we soon got to hear why. She had food allergies, was host to some intestinal parasites Typhoid and suspected Malaria, but despite this she was going to do the trail so that she could be in Machu Picchu on her birthday. As a result she could only eat and drink in very small quantities: toast, yogurt, water and her tablets. This girl did not fail once at eating times to tell us, in her animated and bubbly way, all about her illnesses. She was meant to be working as a nursing assistant but had caught all these diseases early on during a trip to some jungle area, so was not allowed to work. The first day was easy for everybody else, and our guide Jose spoke good English and was passionate in his group talks. I talked with him as we were walking and it turns out that he used to be in a band which came to Cardiff, Swansea and much of Europe. After a bit of digging I realised that he was a communist and probably a supporter of the Sendero Luminoso although he did not say this directly. He did not like missionaries. The next day was a lot tougher as it rained persistently, was cold and we had a very steep climb up uneven steps to a pass at 4300m. To keep warm, I was almost jogging up the steps, but then I would have to wait for up to an hour for the rest of the group to catch up which was very cold. I was impressed by the porters (11 in our group) who had massive bundles on their backs which weighed around 30 kgs. Some even had big gas cylinders, stoves and pots and pans strapped to their backs. They were skinny and typically about 5' 6". These guys would run everywhere. They would be the clear up the camp after we had left, then overtake us and have food ready, when we next stopped. Tough bastards. Zoe and Rebeca had not bought ponchos and had their sleeping bags strapped on outside their day pack rucksacks. Their sleeping bags were soaked. I did consider lending them my sleeping bag. I'm a nice bloke but not that nice, but me and the other John tried to cheer them up by suggesting they should try and persuade 2 tall blokes with dry warm sleeping bags to lie either side of them and huddle together in their tent. Fuck off you bastards were the unspoken words of the moment. Sarah had a particularly tough day and was pucking up at one point. Up the steep hills the guide and the medic tied a rope around her and pulled her along. She got to the camp looking like a drowned rat.
The third day of the hike was small ups and downs, through jungle and was not so wet, we saw a few more Inca sites. The fourth day we got up at 3:15 and left camp by 4:00 a.m. Nasty! (3 hours sleep for me). This was in order to reach a point which overlooked Machu Picchu from where a fantastic sunrise could be seen. We went at a cracking pace for an hour or so, but it was too cloudy to see the sunrise. The first view of Machu Picchu from about 3 miles away did not seem that impressive, but up close it is amazing. The guide was just taking us around too fast for my liking. The detail, sculptural qualities as well as the scale of the place is overwhelming. It is fascinating how natural outcrops of rock have been used as foundations and walls and ceilings of various temples, with very high quality stone block work to complete. Some of the natural outcrops have been shaped to some extent with steps, niches and platforms. There are a few caves in amongst the buildings which I found by myself, which had quite tight entrances and sculpted interiors. We were taken around the site for about 1.5 hours by the guide and then left to our own devices until 4:30 when the train left from Aguas Calientes, which is at the bottom of the valley, a few thousand feet below Machu Picchu. A group of 7 of us climbed up the mountain which overlooks Machu Picchu and has a temple at the top. It was a 30minutee climb for me. This was the most scary part of the hike. It was almost technical mountaineering, with steps at about 80 degrees steepness and paths 2 feet wide with horrible drops and slippery rock. It was worse coming down. I was horrified that some man had brought his 10 year old daughter up there. I feel sure that there must be numerous fatalities on that mountain each year. There was a good view at the top and I got bitten on the arse by a half inch long flying ant. After that I went around Machu Pichu site by myself for 2 hours in a state of elation. It is the most beautiful place I have ever been.
I had low expectations of the Macchu Pichu excursion, but it has been a highlight of the trip. I thought it would be a cheesy tacky tourist experience but it is such an amazing place that even hoards of day trippers could not tarnish it for me. I jogged down to Aguas Calientes and had a big pizza in the restaurant where our group had gathered. The guide Jose was drunk by now. I was given a train ticket with the name Klaus Klosderbass or something on it and told to memorise the name, speak Welsh to the guards and say I did not have my passport with me. Jose finally revealed that he thought we were a rude group and he had not enjoyed our company at meal times. When I asked him specifically what we had done to be rude he could come up with nothing better than saying that we did not pass the sugar, but I think that the main problem he had was that he did not like missionaries, and capitalists. The train journey back to Cusco was good. I had an interesting discussion with John about his Christian faith, Philosophy, science and mathematics. The train had to traverse switchbacks on the descent to Cusco, so it would stop somebody would jump out and switch a junction, than the train would go backwards for a way and so on. Me, John, Rebeca and Zoe met up for a drink in an Irish bar later on.
Today and yesterday I have been resting in preparation for tomorrow when I plan to start cycling again. I hope to reach Tinta tomorrow. I am planning to go around the North Eastern shore of lake Titicaca. I will have to stop now as my stomach cramps have reached an urgent level of intensity.
I have surprised myself how quickly I have travelled from Cusco to La Paz. It took 3 days to get to Puno, then I had 2 days off before spending 3.5 days getting to La Paz. It took about 1 month to get to Cusco and as the crow flies the distances between Lima-Cusco and Cusco-La Paz are much the same. However the distance to Cusco was about 850 miles and from Cusco to La Paz 500 miles. The roads on the first leg were a different kettle of fish altogether: fucked roads from Huancayo to Abancay. The road to Puno actually went in a straight line and it had tarmac on it. The road around L. Titty was very rough but relatively level. It was so rough that I broke a rear spoke, tore open the rear tyre, broke the saddle rail and broke the other rear rack mount on the bike frame. I am glad I went this way as there were no other tourists and the views and atmosphere were fantastic. On the last day I did 97 miles. Also on this last day I saw the most disgusting site of the trip. It involved a dead dog, which is nothing unusual (I see several every day), this one was particularly decomposed with many of its ribs and backbone showing through the haze of flies. Not only was the dog serving as a meal for a load of maggots but another dog was chowing down on it as well. I thought about taking a photo.
La Paz is a mad place and in an amazing location. I went for a bike ride yesterday with an Israeli called Zeev and a tour guide starting at La Cumbre 4800m and descending into La Paz. We used full suspension bikes and it was a fantastic trail. I am planning to ride up the same pass with touring bike and then down to Coroico. It is a 3000m decent on dirt roads!
