Three things happened this morning.
1) I tried to scrub the dirt off my ankles in the shower, only to realise they are now so tanned that the contrast with my little white feet is so stark that I will only ever be able to wear ankle boots from December onwards! That is unless I embrace the cycle tan and use my paws to imitate a tuxedo puppy!
2) Thanks to my sunglasses, my face now has natural, permanent contouring. Of course some of you might say I'm channeling my best panda look ever, but I say Charlotte Tilbury would be proud. I hear she's added it to her list of 'looks', its called the travelling panda... Coming to the Covent garden store soon!
3) Thanks to alternating between cycling gloves and no cycling gloves, I've managed to create a series of stripey lines on my hands: Finger tips to second knuckles, pale (except index finger that is crispy brown... I've honestly no idea!!); then a dark 2cm stripe across my knuckles; followed by pale rest of fingers until you reach the back of my hand that is starting to turn crispy brown. Seriously who knows how this happened, just that it has, and I'm proud of my new zebra tan, I'm sure every fake tan salon will be imitating it soon... Just you wait!
And this doesn't even take into account the fact that every time Ant sees my back he tells me my shoulder blades are like dark angel wings... Thankfully I can't see them so they don't count!
Time to embrace the cycle tan!!
Monday 29 August 2016
Day 22 - Juli to Copacabana (65km) and our first border crossing Sunday 28th August
What an epic day. We started out with a sharp, half hour climb out of Juli, feeling somewhat breathless (partly due to the altitude, partly due to the smoke from all the farmers setting their fields alight).
Once we hit the 3S we had a beautiful 6km descent followed by about 40km gentle rolling slopes with some sections of road purely flat, but all with the wind on our back and all running alongside the lake (that simply gets more beautiful as you head away from Puno and towards Bolivia).
Just before we took a sharp left hand turn towards the Bolivian border we noticed a small whirling of dust, which was actually the start of a tornado impersonating a dust devil. It was fascinating to watch the small swirls start to reach up to the sky and grow bigger and bigger. Thankfully it was only ever a mini tornado at best, and was never a threat, but what a fantastic phenomenon to observe.
As we turned the corner, I pondered how the tornado had formed and after some analysis of the wind direction on both sections of road, concluded that two equal but opposite vectors were acting along the same plane, separated by a distance d... Perhaps I should have anticipated this, but it took me a "couple" of moments to figure it out! (I like to test my brain every now and then to make sure it's still functioning!). Apologies for the geekery.
Ant was again, in his element, enjoying the spectacular event of nature. I watched with analytical anticipation as it grew in size, secretly hoping it wouldn't get big enough to start lifting cows (and gringos on bikes) but never quite (until now) voicing me fears, as I'd been scared enough of the elements yesterday!
So on we (now painfully slowly) trudged into a strong blustery cross wind, that almost halved our speed. Up and down hills, fighting the wind, we soon decided the only way to combat this was to take it easy and chat to pass the time, rather than grind the pedals hard with little progress.
Soon enough we reached the border.
Now in my mind there would be military, police, guns, fighting, scary figures (probably all the action figure baddies too), lined up opposing us as we fearfully edged closer and closer to our goal (why this image... Who knows! Welcome to my crazy brain!).
In reality it was an exciting and very pleasant experience. On the Peruvian side there were many market stalls (just in case you hadn't quite got all the hats, llama impersonating teddy bears, and gigantic popcorn you needed), money exchangers (who offered Ant a better than market rate... Apparently he knows about these things!), and very happy smiley officials at the immigration office on both sides, intrigued about our travels and keen to wish us well.
Ant now doing his "we're in our second country and its super cool" song and dance (quite a spectacular performance when atop a loaded bike), we continued into Bolivia slightly apprehensive about encountering road blocks. Thankfully for now at least, they had all been dismantled, leaving only the odd mound of Earth, tree stumps, sometimes whole trees, and glass to navigate our way through.
Soon enough we'd made it to the glorious town of Copacabana. Yes it's very touristy, yes very hippie, yes it has a beach with peddalos, yes it has western food... But hey... A bit of luxury never hurt anyone!
Ant found a brilliant hotel "La Cupula" which although not cheap at 44 USD per night, is well worth every penny. A lovely restaurant and beautiful view over the lake.
So here we are for a rest day tomorrow (don't expect a post, I imagine we will be mostly eating, drinking beer, reading, sun bathing and lying down... That's what you're supposed to do on holiday right?!), then we will probably venture for a day trip to the Isla del Sol on Tuesday, before departing for La Paz on Wednesday (hopefully, road blocks permitting, will be there by Thursday night, and we get to take a boat!!).
So now we shall rest our tired legs and go find pasta. Hugs to all xxx
Once we hit the 3S we had a beautiful 6km descent followed by about 40km gentle rolling slopes with some sections of road purely flat, but all with the wind on our back and all running alongside the lake (that simply gets more beautiful as you head away from Puno and towards Bolivia).
Just before we took a sharp left hand turn towards the Bolivian border we noticed a small whirling of dust, which was actually the start of a tornado impersonating a dust devil. It was fascinating to watch the small swirls start to reach up to the sky and grow bigger and bigger. Thankfully it was only ever a mini tornado at best, and was never a threat, but what a fantastic phenomenon to observe.
As we turned the corner, I pondered how the tornado had formed and after some analysis of the wind direction on both sections of road, concluded that two equal but opposite vectors were acting along the same plane, separated by a distance d... Perhaps I should have anticipated this, but it took me a "couple" of moments to figure it out! (I like to test my brain every now and then to make sure it's still functioning!). Apologies for the geekery.
Ant was again, in his element, enjoying the spectacular event of nature. I watched with analytical anticipation as it grew in size, secretly hoping it wouldn't get big enough to start lifting cows (and gringos on bikes) but never quite (until now) voicing me fears, as I'd been scared enough of the elements yesterday!
So on we (now painfully slowly) trudged into a strong blustery cross wind, that almost halved our speed. Up and down hills, fighting the wind, we soon decided the only way to combat this was to take it easy and chat to pass the time, rather than grind the pedals hard with little progress.
Soon enough we reached the border.
Now in my mind there would be military, police, guns, fighting, scary figures (probably all the action figure baddies too), lined up opposing us as we fearfully edged closer and closer to our goal (why this image... Who knows! Welcome to my crazy brain!).
In reality it was an exciting and very pleasant experience. On the Peruvian side there were many market stalls (just in case you hadn't quite got all the hats, llama impersonating teddy bears, and gigantic popcorn you needed), money exchangers (who offered Ant a better than market rate... Apparently he knows about these things!), and very happy smiley officials at the immigration office on both sides, intrigued about our travels and keen to wish us well.
Ant now doing his "we're in our second country and its super cool" song and dance (quite a spectacular performance when atop a loaded bike), we continued into Bolivia slightly apprehensive about encountering road blocks. Thankfully for now at least, they had all been dismantled, leaving only the odd mound of Earth, tree stumps, sometimes whole trees, and glass to navigate our way through.
Soon enough we'd made it to the glorious town of Copacabana. Yes it's very touristy, yes very hippie, yes it has a beach with peddalos, yes it has western food... But hey... A bit of luxury never hurt anyone!
Ant found a brilliant hotel "La Cupula" which although not cheap at 44 USD per night, is well worth every penny. A lovely restaurant and beautiful view over the lake.
So here we are for a rest day tomorrow (don't expect a post, I imagine we will be mostly eating, drinking beer, reading, sun bathing and lying down... That's what you're supposed to do on holiday right?!), then we will probably venture for a day trip to the Isla del Sol on Tuesday, before departing for La Paz on Wednesday (hopefully, road blocks permitting, will be there by Thursday night, and we get to take a boat!!).
So now we shall rest our tired legs and go find pasta. Hugs to all xxx
Day 21 - Puno to Juli (85km) Saturday 27th August
Today was the day that Ant was in his (and the weather God's) element, and I was quaking like a leaf.
I didn't quite get him to write this post but I shall paraphrase his thoughts below (to give you a much more positive take on the day!). It should be noted that he did spend a lot of time saying "hello me Julie", every time we saw the town signposted! So in the words of Ant...
"I remember wanker traffic to start with that thinks its ok to give you no space on the road, whether going in the same direction or over taking head on towards you. Meeting cool cycle tourists going the other way who gave us great info about Bolivian road blocks, the route to Chile and got us super excited about Argentinian wine country.
AND THE MOST EPIC THUNDER STORM EVER!!
4 hours of cycling across a plain with really vivid fork lighting striking the high hills in front of us, behind us, and on each side... Literally surrounded! The most amazing thunderstorm ever, and we didn't even see any rain!
Brilliant, not only due to the spectacular scenes created by nature, but also because it got Emma seriously shifting to get to the next town quickly! Not sure I've ever seen her cycle so fast!
Eventually got to the lovely town square that is Juli, that was atop a small, but leg destructive hill at the end of a day, that had me suffering. Found a comfortable room for only 30 PEN (about £8), with a beautiful lake view (but broken toilet seat!) and most importantly, finally found milk, cereal, yoghurt, water and a massive bag of crisps in a shop!
Bloody great day cycle touring!"
And in the words of Emma: "Can we go home now? I never want to do that again!!".
I didn't quite get him to write this post but I shall paraphrase his thoughts below (to give you a much more positive take on the day!). It should be noted that he did spend a lot of time saying "hello me Julie", every time we saw the town signposted! So in the words of Ant...
"I remember wanker traffic to start with that thinks its ok to give you no space on the road, whether going in the same direction or over taking head on towards you. Meeting cool cycle tourists going the other way who gave us great info about Bolivian road blocks, the route to Chile and got us super excited about Argentinian wine country.
AND THE MOST EPIC THUNDER STORM EVER!!
4 hours of cycling across a plain with really vivid fork lighting striking the high hills in front of us, behind us, and on each side... Literally surrounded! The most amazing thunderstorm ever, and we didn't even see any rain!
Brilliant, not only due to the spectacular scenes created by nature, but also because it got Emma seriously shifting to get to the next town quickly! Not sure I've ever seen her cycle so fast!
Eventually got to the lovely town square that is Juli, that was atop a small, but leg destructive hill at the end of a day, that had me suffering. Found a comfortable room for only 30 PEN (about £8), with a beautiful lake view (but broken toilet seat!) and most importantly, finally found milk, cereal, yoghurt, water and a massive bag of crisps in a shop!
Bloody great day cycle touring!"
And in the words of Emma: "Can we go home now? I never want to do that again!!".
Puno - fluffy beds and kayaking
So we treated ourselves to a lovely lakeside hotel, with crisp clean feather duvets and pillows, a massive breakfast buffet and chilled out for a whole day!
We found a wonderful restaurant "colours" for some less authentic, but amazingly delicious western food and enjoyed having enough WiFi to face time Fran, Mary and bear :)
Our second rest day, was less star fishing in two separate double beds, and more get the guns out and kayak as fast as our little oxygenless hearts could carry us. It was simply stunning. We took a tour with Edgar travel, were picked up from our hotel at 7am, taken along with about 20 other people by boat (with relaxing leather seats) to a peninsula. Looking around we were uncertain we'd got the right boat and transfer, very few people looked willing (or able) to do anything remotely sporty, but our fears were soon relieved when we realised only 6 of us were kayakers, we'd get dropped off before taquille island and kayak the rest of the way, while the others travelled there in style.
That we did, and how absolutely beautiful and peaceful it was to kayak in the middle of lake Titicaca (have to say it carefully as titi means puma and caca if pronounced wrong means poo!!). It was absolutely stunning and despite listening to our tired arms, we made it there in (apparently) record time! Wahoo (competitive us... never!).
The afternoon was much more relaxed, eating traditional Peruvian lunch (that we know to be slightly less authentic and more luxurious than they made out!), and the high point, visiting the floating reed island communities. Fascinating to see how the islands are made and take a jaunt on a reed boat.
Happy but knackered we got back to our feather beds and ordered room service (cheeky!) to fuel up ready for tomorrow's cycle and start of our journey to Bolivia.
(we even watched 2 films on cable in English in bed whilst eating... Pure heaven... What a treat!).
We found a wonderful restaurant "colours" for some less authentic, but amazingly delicious western food and enjoyed having enough WiFi to face time Fran, Mary and bear :)
Our second rest day, was less star fishing in two separate double beds, and more get the guns out and kayak as fast as our little oxygenless hearts could carry us. It was simply stunning. We took a tour with Edgar travel, were picked up from our hotel at 7am, taken along with about 20 other people by boat (with relaxing leather seats) to a peninsula. Looking around we were uncertain we'd got the right boat and transfer, very few people looked willing (or able) to do anything remotely sporty, but our fears were soon relieved when we realised only 6 of us were kayakers, we'd get dropped off before taquille island and kayak the rest of the way, while the others travelled there in style.
That we did, and how absolutely beautiful and peaceful it was to kayak in the middle of lake Titicaca (have to say it carefully as titi means puma and caca if pronounced wrong means poo!!). It was absolutely stunning and despite listening to our tired arms, we made it there in (apparently) record time! Wahoo (competitive us... never!).
The afternoon was much more relaxed, eating traditional Peruvian lunch (that we know to be slightly less authentic and more luxurious than they made out!), and the high point, visiting the floating reed island communities. Fascinating to see how the islands are made and take a jaunt on a reed boat.
Happy but knackered we got back to our feather beds and ordered room service (cheeky!) to fuel up ready for tomorrow's cycle and start of our journey to Bolivia.
(we even watched 2 films on cable in English in bed whilst eating... Pure heaven... What a treat!).
Friday 26 August 2016
Day 20 - Lampa to Puno...Wednesday 24th August (80km)
Today was the day we just got it done. We were both more than ready for a break and good plate of food, so it was head down and pedal hard.
The first 35km from Lampa to Juliaca were pleasant enough... If I'm honest I can't really remember much of the cycle, Ant and I were too busy putting the world to rights. But I know it was flat (we could talk), fast paced and fairly beautiful on a quiet road (with several llamas watching us go passed).
Juliaca is not a town I'd particularly recommend unless you need to take a flight... Industrial and very busy. Jigsawing our bikes through the lunch time heavily polluted traffic, is not particularly pleasant, but as always an hour later that was behind us and we were heads down again for the last flat 25km then up and over the last lump into Puno.
Except it wasn't quite that straightforward (when is it ever!). This time our enemy was a strong head wind whilst we rode in the hard shoulder of the 3S (which was busy here, trucks busses etc).
They were however laying a new road along side so we hopped over the barrier sneakily, and had the joy of a quiet 10km shared only with the gravel trucks. Ant lived this, slaloming all over the newly laid tarmac, I just wanted to get it done. Then the new road ran out so we hopped over the barrier the other side of the 3S onto a dirt track that ran along the other side (slower and more bumpy, but better than the heart pounding moments busses pass you at a lot more than the 80km/h speed limit!).
After what seemed like forever, we were on the final climb and I was suffering. But as always it came and went and we soon descended into Puno... Huraah at last!
and now we sit, in our gorgeous hotel, stunning hot shower, bath tub, feather clean crisp duvets, on two huge double beds (one each tonight I think... Starfish!!).
a well earned supper is about to be demolished (we've already decided to order 3 main courses!) and then we will probably stay flat for 24hours!
we made it... We actually cycled from Cusco to Puno... Yeah baby!!!
(Now bring me my food!)
The first 35km from Lampa to Juliaca were pleasant enough... If I'm honest I can't really remember much of the cycle, Ant and I were too busy putting the world to rights. But I know it was flat (we could talk), fast paced and fairly beautiful on a quiet road (with several llamas watching us go passed).
Juliaca is not a town I'd particularly recommend unless you need to take a flight... Industrial and very busy. Jigsawing our bikes through the lunch time heavily polluted traffic, is not particularly pleasant, but as always an hour later that was behind us and we were heads down again for the last flat 25km then up and over the last lump into Puno.
Except it wasn't quite that straightforward (when is it ever!). This time our enemy was a strong head wind whilst we rode in the hard shoulder of the 3S (which was busy here, trucks busses etc).
They were however laying a new road along side so we hopped over the barrier sneakily, and had the joy of a quiet 10km shared only with the gravel trucks. Ant lived this, slaloming all over the newly laid tarmac, I just wanted to get it done. Then the new road ran out so we hopped over the barrier the other side of the 3S onto a dirt track that ran along the other side (slower and more bumpy, but better than the heart pounding moments busses pass you at a lot more than the 80km/h speed limit!).
After what seemed like forever, we were on the final climb and I was suffering. But as always it came and went and we soon descended into Puno... Huraah at last!
and now we sit, in our gorgeous hotel, stunning hot shower, bath tub, feather clean crisp duvets, on two huge double beds (one each tonight I think... Starfish!!).
a well earned supper is about to be demolished (we've already decided to order 3 main courses!) and then we will probably stay flat for 24hours!
we made it... We actually cycled from Cusco to Puno... Yeah baby!!!
(Now bring me my food!)
Wednesday 24 August 2016
Day 19 - Ayavari to Lampa (76km), Tuesday 23rd August
Finally, I can honestly say that we enjoyed absolutely everything about today, this is what our cycle touring dreams are made of.
Ok so the breakfast place I'd hung all my hopes on didn't actually open at 9am (and was still fully shut at gone 10 when we finally left), but we found very tasty pastries in a local bakers, and were on the road soon enough.
And what a road it was! Fairly quiet, and FLAT! Surrounded by mountains to still provide the amazing beautiful scenery that we've been spoilt with. We had enough energy to chat away all morning (all day in fact!) and came across another cycle tourist from Columbia, travelling from Puno to Lima, great to stop and have a quick chat.
The first 50km were absolute heaven, we travelled at over 20km/h for most of it and even got up as high as 35km/h at one point! Glancing around at the beautiful mountains all around us (we were clearly in a plateau) and really enjoying everything. The scenery, the cycling, the ability to chat, the relative lack of traffic, the llamas who appeared every now and then, the smiles and waves we got from the traffic that passed, the wide margins they gave us when they passed, and the speed that we could easily travel at and actually make progress on the smoothest tarmac ever!
We then turned off the main road for the last 26km towards Lampa. All we knew about this road was that it took us to our destination, climbed high then descended into the town. We had no idea if it would be gravel, tarmacked, well kept, busy etc. Turned out it was even smoother tarmac, newly laid probably, we were pretty much the only people on the road except the odd group of children on bikes riding home from school (and super excited to see us!), many many llamas, the cutest llamas ever (this led to a discussion about which are our favourites, llamas or alpacas, and made us revise our previously formed decision that alpacas win... Not so sure now!), and all of this made for an amazingly tranquil and pleasant first 5km of the climb. We even had enough puff to sing! Then the road turned steeper and limited our vocal ability, but strangely we were both really enjoying the challenge of the climb and ever so grateful for the lack of gravel!
If the climb was peaceful and beautiful, the descent was flowing, fast, but gradual enough to barely touch the breaks and simply sail around the corners. My favourite part was when the mountains opened up to reveal a glorious view of the entire wide valley and it looked like our road simply dropped of the end... Of course it didn't, but it really was spectacular! Then the last few km rolling into town and we had our standard apprehension.
Will there be hotels, will we get hot water, will anywhere be open. Yes yes and yes.
A lovely little hotel with feather duvets (OMG!), a super lovely owner (who's gonna cook us breakfast in the morning!!!!) and hot water.
The town itself is a really cute old colonial centre. It has a glorious church and square and some beautiful paving in the main street. The roof tiles look about 300years old and are an architectural work of art! Everyone seems extremely friendly (even the lady who Ant was about to buy milk from told him not to buy it as you can't drink it without heating it up... Should have seen his sad little face! He thought he was getting choco ball cereal this evening, bless him!). But we do have a tin of condensed milk, could be a new culinary delight.
We found our new favourite beer in the shops, and enjoyed three portions of chicken and chips for supper (accompanied by some nutritional and flavoursome green soup).
What a fantastic day! Literally, the best day ever. Tomorrow, you have a lot to live up to!
Ok so the breakfast place I'd hung all my hopes on didn't actually open at 9am (and was still fully shut at gone 10 when we finally left), but we found very tasty pastries in a local bakers, and were on the road soon enough.
And what a road it was! Fairly quiet, and FLAT! Surrounded by mountains to still provide the amazing beautiful scenery that we've been spoilt with. We had enough energy to chat away all morning (all day in fact!) and came across another cycle tourist from Columbia, travelling from Puno to Lima, great to stop and have a quick chat.
The first 50km were absolute heaven, we travelled at over 20km/h for most of it and even got up as high as 35km/h at one point! Glancing around at the beautiful mountains all around us (we were clearly in a plateau) and really enjoying everything. The scenery, the cycling, the ability to chat, the relative lack of traffic, the llamas who appeared every now and then, the smiles and waves we got from the traffic that passed, the wide margins they gave us when they passed, and the speed that we could easily travel at and actually make progress on the smoothest tarmac ever!
We then turned off the main road for the last 26km towards Lampa. All we knew about this road was that it took us to our destination, climbed high then descended into the town. We had no idea if it would be gravel, tarmacked, well kept, busy etc. Turned out it was even smoother tarmac, newly laid probably, we were pretty much the only people on the road except the odd group of children on bikes riding home from school (and super excited to see us!), many many llamas, the cutest llamas ever (this led to a discussion about which are our favourites, llamas or alpacas, and made us revise our previously formed decision that alpacas win... Not so sure now!), and all of this made for an amazingly tranquil and pleasant first 5km of the climb. We even had enough puff to sing! Then the road turned steeper and limited our vocal ability, but strangely we were both really enjoying the challenge of the climb and ever so grateful for the lack of gravel!
If the climb was peaceful and beautiful, the descent was flowing, fast, but gradual enough to barely touch the breaks and simply sail around the corners. My favourite part was when the mountains opened up to reveal a glorious view of the entire wide valley and it looked like our road simply dropped of the end... Of course it didn't, but it really was spectacular! Then the last few km rolling into town and we had our standard apprehension.
Will there be hotels, will we get hot water, will anywhere be open. Yes yes and yes.
A lovely little hotel with feather duvets (OMG!), a super lovely owner (who's gonna cook us breakfast in the morning!!!!) and hot water.
The town itself is a really cute old colonial centre. It has a glorious church and square and some beautiful paving in the main street. The roof tiles look about 300years old and are an architectural work of art! Everyone seems extremely friendly (even the lady who Ant was about to buy milk from told him not to buy it as you can't drink it without heating it up... Should have seen his sad little face! He thought he was getting choco ball cereal this evening, bless him!). But we do have a tin of condensed milk, could be a new culinary delight.
We found our new favourite beer in the shops, and enjoyed three portions of chicken and chips for supper (accompanied by some nutritional and flavoursome green soup).
What a fantastic day! Literally, the best day ever. Tomorrow, you have a lot to live up to!
Day 18 - Layo to Ayaviri (65km cycling) Monday 22nd August 2016.
Wow what a day, an emotional roller coaster.
We were up early (6.45 for me 7.00 for Ant) and Ant sourced us an AMAZING breakfast of yoghurt, tinned peaches and granola (Absolute heaven) from our hostal owner who also happens to own a shop of many businesses. He and his wife were super happy to have us stay and really excited about our cycling it was so cute and just the motivation we needed after the grueling day yesterday. They asked us if we had a small English coin as a keepsake (note to self, next trip take small denominations of English wedge), but all we had was a five pound note. Realising it would bring them much more happiness than it would us, we went down and gave it to them... They were absolutely stoked and offered to pay us... Obviously we refused, and after some deliberation I told them what it was worth (viente Peruvian soles, the same as our room cost!)... They were so amazingly happy, whole family gathered around the note with intrigue, stroking it and looking at it... seeing how grateful the family were really spurred us on.
Next stop, the other town shops to try and source sweets and lunch goodies... Not so successful on the lunch front, but we soon found ourselves surrounded by all manner of people: old, young, police, security guards; all so excited about our trip and offering advice on routes and congratulating us / shaking our hands. Ant later remarked that he's pretty sure one guy just kept saying "wow" repeatedly.
So we found ourselves stood in the middle of a market town, semi celebrities and somewhat reluctant to get moving...
... But onwards we went, going against the flow of the many people and animals walking to town (we guess to a Monday meet market, sorry piggies!). We freaked out some cows (sorry cows, guess you've never seen a luminous yellow gringo on a bike before), Ant said "holla" to a pig "holla señor cerdo" (this made the two women walking the pig giggle and smile like children), and stopped for several livestock roadblocks that made us smile.
After a while we started to wonder why so many people were keen to give us route advice on our way out of town. One security guard even drew a map in the sand. They were all keen for us to take the road with more climbing, and harder work... No thanks!
So onwards we ploughed, our spirits incredibly high. Thankful that the road out of town was not rippio, but massive huge rocks (well anything from tennis ball to football size) all over the road. Unfortunately this made it almost impossible to stay upright in some places, throwing the bike left and right under you, staying upright became a challenge in itself, both on the abs and on the mind (thankfully despite many near misses, both of the bikes behaved well enough for us to avoid any road rash) . Once out of town with a km or two under our belts the road quickly dampened my spirit... Ok that's an understatement... I was the most angry I've been on this trip, I think I even kicked some of the rocks and told them I hated them at one point... Though this wasn't quite as amusing (to Ant at least and me in hindsight) as the moment I threw my bike down (thus covering the handle bars in mud which I now very much regret!!), then walked about 100m up the road refusing to cycle (perhaps I was channelling Froome). Ant, bless him, probably trying not to laugh and only taking one or two photos (!), whilst also finding the road incredibly mentally sapping, dug deep and found some encouraging lovely words to pick me (and my poor dusty bike) up.
Another km or two and after being passed by several empty busses, we started to debate whether it was sensible to just hop one of them to the high point... We decided that no, we should plod on, we could do it and just accept the challenge. It would only be 3hours of suffering anyway.
We passed the turning everyone told us to take (feeling somewhat happy we'd planned a better route as we watched it snake almost vertical up the mountain) and started enjoying the day, both our heads finally high and determined.
A motorcyclist stopped us, asked us where we were going and directed us the other way. After some conversation, "is there a road over the mountain this way?" "yes", "ok for bikes", "yes probably", we again plodded on. It was only when several busses signalled at us and one stopped and pulled us over, that we thought perhaps the entire town might be right, and their route might be better. The bus driver was saying there was no road ahead, and his adamant nature made us stop and think (we later found out our planned road existed as we saw it join our road out the other side, but it was probably blocked at some point, hence why the motor cyclist might have thought we could get through).
So after going several km out of our way on the wicked road of doom, we turned back. Having worked so hard to lift our spirits, they were now rock bottom. For some reason the quote of the day that's stayed with me came at this moment from Ant... "that's cycle touring Stew, you roll with the punches, it just seems Peru is very good at delivering them!". (Rolling with the punches, taking the downs and waiting for the ups... At this point it felt no ups would ever come our way... How wrong we were...
We reached the junction for the turning and the steep road up the mountain and agreed that if a bus should come our way we flag it down and take it if they will have us. And just then, out of nowhere as we were literally about to set off heads hung low, a blue truck takes our turning. Our thought process went collectively like this: Lets try and flag it down, it probably won't stop, it's stopped, they might just be offering us a tow, too risky on this stuff, we'll not have the strength to hold on and control the bikes, they're getting out, they're really smiley, they're opening the back, it's empty, oh my gosh, they're actually offering us a lift... (cue the 100 strong gospel choir... ) Hallelujah!!
We had no idea how far up the mountain the truck was going, we just held our heads over the top of the parapet that was the back of the truck ( like two alpacas stretching to see some crazy gringos) and hoped they would keep driving as we watched the km ticked away...
We later found out these incredibly kind gents were llama farmers, heading off up the mountain to round their herd up and take them to a show in Puno... So it turned out we were pretending to be llamas for a massive 6km and 300m climbing... At least a third of what we had to do. (cue gospel music again!)
Yes we still had a hideous 3km left but what a special treat gifted to us by such nice folk. Perhaps some karma for bringing such happiness with the £5 gift earlier? Ant in all his thoughtfulness said... "I think that's the main thing we should do on this trip, share the joy and happiness to folk, that you can only bring when you're a crazy adventuring gringo on a bike, we should make that our priority".
The next 3km was tough, horrible, slow and just plain yucky... Yes I might have thrown my bike down a few times and walked up the hill. Both Ant and I were finding we didn't have the power in our legs needed to get over the huge rocks on very steep hair pins, without being too unstable and being thrown off balance. You need speed to stay upright and I for one just had completely empty legs... Nothing there at all. Ant just about gritted his teeth and used his leg guns, to get up the slopes (much harder for him to push his much heavier bike up the mountain, than just to dig deep and find power where there isn't and keep cycling).
So after about an hour, we reached the top, and the highest we've been yet: 4600m. And wow, neither of us are panting uncontrollably, there are no headaches or sad moods... We are acclimatised!! Finally!
Such a different feel to this highpoint. Surprisingly much more life supporting up here than any of the others we've been to. Greener and more vast rolling lumps, less ragged dusty rocks. Ant even spotted (and got amazingly boyishly excited about seeing) four vicuñas just short of the summit (he'd been sad we'd not seen any llama or alpacas yet this week, they seemed to have been replaced with donkeys until today).
As we turned the corner though, just a few meters below the summet, the mountains opened up into the most incredible view. It had everything: a vast wide open valley, revealing our road and the next 40km we were about to take; rolling green hillsides behind us; jagged rocky volcanic peaks in front; then in the distance the snow capped peaks that any child would draw if you ask them to illustrate a mountain. Simply stunning.
Less stunning was our descent. After the initial promise of a better gravel road, it quickly disintegrated into a rainbow road of doom (similar to what we'd been cycling all day, only much worse in places and damn hard to descend on a loaded bike... There's something saping about working hard to descend at only 10km/h!). Why rainbow? Cue Mario Cart... The colour of the mountain rocks kept changing, from grey to purple to red, to even green and yellow at some points, which led to different colour rocks and dust on the road... A Rainbow road (the one thing that kept my head high). Ant not so much, he was resenting having to take this road (the other would have stayed high and joined the tarmacked main road just in time to descend on that), resenting having to lose 400m hight only having to work hard at the bottom to gain it again, and resenting the beautiful view that showed us our roads and exactly how far we had to descend then ascend again (mapping out at least the next 3hours cycling, that could have been avoided on his alternative route). He was not happy and time now for me to cheer him up... "Look its so pretty, it's a rainbow road, we're like Mario Cart"... Nope not working...ok.
I learned I cannot do hair pins on this stuff whether going up or down (a few hairy slippy slidy moments!). Ant learnt that no matter how frustrating it was, the end would come. And it did... Tarmac wahoo!
But before we embarked on gaining our altitude again, we stopped for lunch at aguas caliente (the supposedly beautiful hot mountain springs everyone in Layo had been going on about). They were not beautiful, not the natural rocky springs we had in mind, just a man made swimming pool style resort containing spring water in large concrete circles and squares that people were bathing in.
Fueled from lunch, but both feeling like our bodies had been stretched, torn, shaken and rattled, I started to talk of the taxi rank I might have spotted at the entrance to the springs. We could just get a cab to the nearest town then finish our day with a flat (ish) 40km tarmac cycle to the big town (capital of the district) with almost certain promise of a hotel (trying not to dream too much of hot water, cosy beds and our own bathroom at this point).
We agreed and negotiated a price from a very confused driver, and soon were on our way. At this point it should be noted how lucky we were to stumble across a taxi rank... They are practically non existent on the routes we've been taking... The cycle touring lottery being kind to us again today.
The final 40km was simply amazing, tarmac and very shallow gradients through a valley plateau at around 3900m, with only a strong cross wind to challenge us (that sometimes had the sense to get on our tails and push us along at a whopping 30km/h). The road wasn't too busy, just one or two kamikaze busses and trucks to give us a bottom clenching moment or two, but fairly infrequent traffic so we could just enjoy the ride. And a glance in Ant's mirror and he said, "blue truck behind... Oh wait... It's the llama farmers, with their llamas!". Lots of waving, honking, cheering and smiles.
Then the small child in Ant who loves animal spotting, saw flamingos and got so excited. We stopped to take photos and let his excitement roll.
We managed to outride the three or four impending mountain storms (yes we saw lightening in the distance in several directions) and seemed to slip through the only channel where the rain and dark grey clouds weren't (thanks cycle touring lottery!). Soon enough we'd made it to the town, with only a few spots of rain on our heads and were cycling through the industrial suburbs.
I seemed to find my Spanish, asking security guards where the best hotels were in town, and they excitedly pointed us to the centre exclaiming "good hotels and a festival, a festival".
We followed their instructions and were soon caught up in the busiest most atmospheric street market we've ever tried to push two massive loaded bikes through (its ok though we didn't attract any attention in our luminous yellow jackets!). "gringo holla" "gringa con bicycletta", "holla" "hello" "buenos tardis". The jubilant atmosphere helped us push on through, and I guess about 20minutes later (and only 3 or 4 blocks walked!) we found the central square with not one but 2, not hostals but hotels, to chose from and the most stunningly beautiful cathedral. Covered in dust, we went to the best looking hotel asked for their best double ensuite room (they asked Ant if he was sure... We must have looked a state, because it was only about £20!) and rejoiced as the hot water ran hot and the bed was clean and comfy. Even the toilet worked properly!
Promising to always remember how good it felt to wash ourselves and our clothes in the steaming shower, we ventured out to the local pizza restaurant (ok we knew their pizza would be rubbish, but anything other than rice potatoes and meat at this point please!), drank beer, found an ice cream parlour for hot chocolate, hot milk, ice cream and chocolate mousse to finish off our supper and went for a quick wonder to walk it all off. The streets had turned into a party, many people drinking beer and eating street food, a fun atmosphere... but not as fun as going to sleep!
So that's just what we did, and now its 8.10am and I really should wake Ant up for the 70km day we have ahead... But I like it here so much and the ice cream place said they do omelettes and fried egg sandwiches for breakfast but don't open until 9am... So if I leave it another 10minutes I could probably tempt him to stay for that :-) sneaky!!!
Much love to all, and here's to (all being well) another 2 day's cycling to get to Puno (if we ever get out of bed of course!).
We were up early (6.45 for me 7.00 for Ant) and Ant sourced us an AMAZING breakfast of yoghurt, tinned peaches and granola (Absolute heaven) from our hostal owner who also happens to own a shop of many businesses. He and his wife were super happy to have us stay and really excited about our cycling it was so cute and just the motivation we needed after the grueling day yesterday. They asked us if we had a small English coin as a keepsake (note to self, next trip take small denominations of English wedge), but all we had was a five pound note. Realising it would bring them much more happiness than it would us, we went down and gave it to them... They were absolutely stoked and offered to pay us... Obviously we refused, and after some deliberation I told them what it was worth (viente Peruvian soles, the same as our room cost!)... They were so amazingly happy, whole family gathered around the note with intrigue, stroking it and looking at it... seeing how grateful the family were really spurred us on.
Next stop, the other town shops to try and source sweets and lunch goodies... Not so successful on the lunch front, but we soon found ourselves surrounded by all manner of people: old, young, police, security guards; all so excited about our trip and offering advice on routes and congratulating us / shaking our hands. Ant later remarked that he's pretty sure one guy just kept saying "wow" repeatedly.
So we found ourselves stood in the middle of a market town, semi celebrities and somewhat reluctant to get moving...
... But onwards we went, going against the flow of the many people and animals walking to town (we guess to a Monday meet market, sorry piggies!). We freaked out some cows (sorry cows, guess you've never seen a luminous yellow gringo on a bike before), Ant said "holla" to a pig "holla señor cerdo" (this made the two women walking the pig giggle and smile like children), and stopped for several livestock roadblocks that made us smile.
After a while we started to wonder why so many people were keen to give us route advice on our way out of town. One security guard even drew a map in the sand. They were all keen for us to take the road with more climbing, and harder work... No thanks!
So onwards we ploughed, our spirits incredibly high. Thankful that the road out of town was not rippio, but massive huge rocks (well anything from tennis ball to football size) all over the road. Unfortunately this made it almost impossible to stay upright in some places, throwing the bike left and right under you, staying upright became a challenge in itself, both on the abs and on the mind (thankfully despite many near misses, both of the bikes behaved well enough for us to avoid any road rash) . Once out of town with a km or two under our belts the road quickly dampened my spirit... Ok that's an understatement... I was the most angry I've been on this trip, I think I even kicked some of the rocks and told them I hated them at one point... Though this wasn't quite as amusing (to Ant at least and me in hindsight) as the moment I threw my bike down (thus covering the handle bars in mud which I now very much regret!!), then walked about 100m up the road refusing to cycle (perhaps I was channelling Froome). Ant, bless him, probably trying not to laugh and only taking one or two photos (!), whilst also finding the road incredibly mentally sapping, dug deep and found some encouraging lovely words to pick me (and my poor dusty bike) up.
Another km or two and after being passed by several empty busses, we started to debate whether it was sensible to just hop one of them to the high point... We decided that no, we should plod on, we could do it and just accept the challenge. It would only be 3hours of suffering anyway.
We passed the turning everyone told us to take (feeling somewhat happy we'd planned a better route as we watched it snake almost vertical up the mountain) and started enjoying the day, both our heads finally high and determined.
A motorcyclist stopped us, asked us where we were going and directed us the other way. After some conversation, "is there a road over the mountain this way?" "yes", "ok for bikes", "yes probably", we again plodded on. It was only when several busses signalled at us and one stopped and pulled us over, that we thought perhaps the entire town might be right, and their route might be better. The bus driver was saying there was no road ahead, and his adamant nature made us stop and think (we later found out our planned road existed as we saw it join our road out the other side, but it was probably blocked at some point, hence why the motor cyclist might have thought we could get through).
So after going several km out of our way on the wicked road of doom, we turned back. Having worked so hard to lift our spirits, they were now rock bottom. For some reason the quote of the day that's stayed with me came at this moment from Ant... "that's cycle touring Stew, you roll with the punches, it just seems Peru is very good at delivering them!". (Rolling with the punches, taking the downs and waiting for the ups... At this point it felt no ups would ever come our way... How wrong we were...
We reached the junction for the turning and the steep road up the mountain and agreed that if a bus should come our way we flag it down and take it if they will have us. And just then, out of nowhere as we were literally about to set off heads hung low, a blue truck takes our turning. Our thought process went collectively like this: Lets try and flag it down, it probably won't stop, it's stopped, they might just be offering us a tow, too risky on this stuff, we'll not have the strength to hold on and control the bikes, they're getting out, they're really smiley, they're opening the back, it's empty, oh my gosh, they're actually offering us a lift... (cue the 100 strong gospel choir... ) Hallelujah!!
We had no idea how far up the mountain the truck was going, we just held our heads over the top of the parapet that was the back of the truck ( like two alpacas stretching to see some crazy gringos) and hoped they would keep driving as we watched the km ticked away...
We later found out these incredibly kind gents were llama farmers, heading off up the mountain to round their herd up and take them to a show in Puno... So it turned out we were pretending to be llamas for a massive 6km and 300m climbing... At least a third of what we had to do. (cue gospel music again!)
Yes we still had a hideous 3km left but what a special treat gifted to us by such nice folk. Perhaps some karma for bringing such happiness with the £5 gift earlier? Ant in all his thoughtfulness said... "I think that's the main thing we should do on this trip, share the joy and happiness to folk, that you can only bring when you're a crazy adventuring gringo on a bike, we should make that our priority".
The next 3km was tough, horrible, slow and just plain yucky... Yes I might have thrown my bike down a few times and walked up the hill. Both Ant and I were finding we didn't have the power in our legs needed to get over the huge rocks on very steep hair pins, without being too unstable and being thrown off balance. You need speed to stay upright and I for one just had completely empty legs... Nothing there at all. Ant just about gritted his teeth and used his leg guns, to get up the slopes (much harder for him to push his much heavier bike up the mountain, than just to dig deep and find power where there isn't and keep cycling).
So after about an hour, we reached the top, and the highest we've been yet: 4600m. And wow, neither of us are panting uncontrollably, there are no headaches or sad moods... We are acclimatised!! Finally!
Such a different feel to this highpoint. Surprisingly much more life supporting up here than any of the others we've been to. Greener and more vast rolling lumps, less ragged dusty rocks. Ant even spotted (and got amazingly boyishly excited about seeing) four vicuñas just short of the summit (he'd been sad we'd not seen any llama or alpacas yet this week, they seemed to have been replaced with donkeys until today).
As we turned the corner though, just a few meters below the summet, the mountains opened up into the most incredible view. It had everything: a vast wide open valley, revealing our road and the next 40km we were about to take; rolling green hillsides behind us; jagged rocky volcanic peaks in front; then in the distance the snow capped peaks that any child would draw if you ask them to illustrate a mountain. Simply stunning.
Less stunning was our descent. After the initial promise of a better gravel road, it quickly disintegrated into a rainbow road of doom (similar to what we'd been cycling all day, only much worse in places and damn hard to descend on a loaded bike... There's something saping about working hard to descend at only 10km/h!). Why rainbow? Cue Mario Cart... The colour of the mountain rocks kept changing, from grey to purple to red, to even green and yellow at some points, which led to different colour rocks and dust on the road... A Rainbow road (the one thing that kept my head high). Ant not so much, he was resenting having to take this road (the other would have stayed high and joined the tarmacked main road just in time to descend on that), resenting having to lose 400m hight only having to work hard at the bottom to gain it again, and resenting the beautiful view that showed us our roads and exactly how far we had to descend then ascend again (mapping out at least the next 3hours cycling, that could have been avoided on his alternative route). He was not happy and time now for me to cheer him up... "Look its so pretty, it's a rainbow road, we're like Mario Cart"... Nope not working...ok.
I learned I cannot do hair pins on this stuff whether going up or down (a few hairy slippy slidy moments!). Ant learnt that no matter how frustrating it was, the end would come. And it did... Tarmac wahoo!
But before we embarked on gaining our altitude again, we stopped for lunch at aguas caliente (the supposedly beautiful hot mountain springs everyone in Layo had been going on about). They were not beautiful, not the natural rocky springs we had in mind, just a man made swimming pool style resort containing spring water in large concrete circles and squares that people were bathing in.
Fueled from lunch, but both feeling like our bodies had been stretched, torn, shaken and rattled, I started to talk of the taxi rank I might have spotted at the entrance to the springs. We could just get a cab to the nearest town then finish our day with a flat (ish) 40km tarmac cycle to the big town (capital of the district) with almost certain promise of a hotel (trying not to dream too much of hot water, cosy beds and our own bathroom at this point).
We agreed and negotiated a price from a very confused driver, and soon were on our way. At this point it should be noted how lucky we were to stumble across a taxi rank... They are practically non existent on the routes we've been taking... The cycle touring lottery being kind to us again today.
The final 40km was simply amazing, tarmac and very shallow gradients through a valley plateau at around 3900m, with only a strong cross wind to challenge us (that sometimes had the sense to get on our tails and push us along at a whopping 30km/h). The road wasn't too busy, just one or two kamikaze busses and trucks to give us a bottom clenching moment or two, but fairly infrequent traffic so we could just enjoy the ride. And a glance in Ant's mirror and he said, "blue truck behind... Oh wait... It's the llama farmers, with their llamas!". Lots of waving, honking, cheering and smiles.
Then the small child in Ant who loves animal spotting, saw flamingos and got so excited. We stopped to take photos and let his excitement roll.
We managed to outride the three or four impending mountain storms (yes we saw lightening in the distance in several directions) and seemed to slip through the only channel where the rain and dark grey clouds weren't (thanks cycle touring lottery!). Soon enough we'd made it to the town, with only a few spots of rain on our heads and were cycling through the industrial suburbs.
I seemed to find my Spanish, asking security guards where the best hotels were in town, and they excitedly pointed us to the centre exclaiming "good hotels and a festival, a festival".
We followed their instructions and were soon caught up in the busiest most atmospheric street market we've ever tried to push two massive loaded bikes through (its ok though we didn't attract any attention in our luminous yellow jackets!). "gringo holla" "gringa con bicycletta", "holla" "hello" "buenos tardis". The jubilant atmosphere helped us push on through, and I guess about 20minutes later (and only 3 or 4 blocks walked!) we found the central square with not one but 2, not hostals but hotels, to chose from and the most stunningly beautiful cathedral. Covered in dust, we went to the best looking hotel asked for their best double ensuite room (they asked Ant if he was sure... We must have looked a state, because it was only about £20!) and rejoiced as the hot water ran hot and the bed was clean and comfy. Even the toilet worked properly!
Promising to always remember how good it felt to wash ourselves and our clothes in the steaming shower, we ventured out to the local pizza restaurant (ok we knew their pizza would be rubbish, but anything other than rice potatoes and meat at this point please!), drank beer, found an ice cream parlour for hot chocolate, hot milk, ice cream and chocolate mousse to finish off our supper and went for a quick wonder to walk it all off. The streets had turned into a party, many people drinking beer and eating street food, a fun atmosphere... but not as fun as going to sleep!
So that's just what we did, and now its 8.10am and I really should wake Ant up for the 70km day we have ahead... But I like it here so much and the ice cream place said they do omelettes and fried egg sandwiches for breakfast but don't open until 9am... So if I leave it another 10minutes I could probably tempt him to stay for that :-) sneaky!!!
Much love to all, and here's to (all being well) another 2 day's cycling to get to Puno (if we ever get out of bed of course!).
Day 17 - yanacoa to Layo (Sunday 21st August)
I'm dreaming of the day when I can write an entire post that's super positive about the cycling and logistics, but as soon as we get over one hurdle Peru throws another at us. Today though was pretty awesome, but again super tough.
We woke up feeling super positive and excited about our adventure, ready to tackle any challenges ahead. The first of the challenges was a 20km climb... Our first exposure to the infamous gravel roads and to start off they were fairly well behaved... Bumpy... Yes, harder work than tarmac... Absolutely, but isolated beautiful tracks with only bikes and motor bikes passing us incredibly infrequently. We really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere and like true explorers.
Lots of super friendly (and somewhat bemused) folk asked after us, one even stopped his motorbike to chat to us... Cute.
We stopped for lunch before tackling the downhill (lunch being all we could find in the town before we left this morning... stale bread, crisps and some weird stale stuff that vaguely resembled a caramel donut... With a little bit of imagination anyway! Oh and what we've affectionately named "chodanas" tiny stumpy bananas!!). Now normally I'd be raving about the downhill being pay back for the long hard slog up... But imagine cycling steep downhills on a mix of sand (that makes you skid at the slightest shift in weight), fist sized stones (bump bump clunk rattle), gravel (no feeling left in hands now), and pot holes (eeeeek!!) at 20km/h... Nerve wracking stuff and damn shattering... Especially for one's behind!
And then... After about 4 hours... Wahooooo tarmac... We were flying... Felt like we'd been visited by the red bull angel! But of course that wasn't our road for long, we turned off towards the lake onto what we thought was the worst gravel road in Peru... Bump bump bump and another 5km, then wow, what a sight. A beautiful and huge lake wrapped around the mountain valley... And in the distance what looks like a promising settlement. (we've learnt to be cautious of how villages look from a distance, they often deceive... Mud huts with corrugated iron roofs can look pleasant until you're up close... But as we got closer we got more and more excited, street lamps, even some paved roads, then a beautiful square... By now it was gone 2pm and we were so hopeful we might find more substantial lunch... But the square only yielded two infamous 'Inca cola and sweets' shops and so we U turned and headed up towards the road... Only to be greeted by 2 very smiley chaps, asking where we were from, how far we'd cycled, where we were going and if we were hungry... HUNGRY... ARE WE HECK... They told us to go to the lakeside beach (oh my god this place has a lakeside beach!!!) to the restaurant. Of we scadaddled and found a concrete structure in the water, made to look just like a boat... So quaint and cute and FOOD!! Fried trout fresh from the lake and a ton of rice later we were super happy. And the guys had come and joined us (their wives ran it I think) then took out a massive bag of coca leaves and told us we should drink coca tea to help us up the hill... When in Rome!!!
A lot of pictures later (they were a bit fascinated by us) and we were heading to the next town along... Another 20km along the lakeside path that promised to be beautiful and flat. I'm pleased to say it delivered on both fronts. But when Peru gives you something it also takes something else away... This road wasn't just gravel, sand and mud, but it had fashioned itself into "Ripio" a phenomena that Ant had read about but not yet experienced. This is when heavy traffic causes the lose road matter to form a series of ripples, whose frequency is just enough to stop a cyclist in their tracks... Literally saps away any momentum you have (as far as we could work out this is because when front wheel is driving on, back wheel is in a trench, effectively applying the brakes.
So it really was a day of three parts, each bringing a new tougher challenge. (20km slow gravel up, 20km scary down, 20km ripio from hell).
We had planned to push on passed the town Layo and camp another 20km up the mountain to make tomorrow easier, but when we realised it was a cute, if not incredibly sleepy, place with an open hostel (no hot water but a functioning outdoor loo and cold shower) a lovely owner, streetlights and a few concreted roads... We decided to stop.
Emerging from our room, shivering but clean we ventured down the single street that is the town. After only finding Inca cola shops we'd just about resigned ourselves to a supper of canned fruit, yoghurt and beer, when by chance we asked a lady if there was a restaurant... But of course she said... And pointed us towards a very closed looking hatch... Egged on by her we knocked... And low and behold behind the doors was a cafe.
You never have a choice in small town restaurants, you simply say "I'd like to eat" and they bring stuff. Usually a meat soup with barley or pasta and sometimes vegetables (that even Ant's grown to love), followed by some form of protein with rice and either potatoes or yuca. In the central mountains the protein was always fried strips of meat (beef, chicken or even once to Ant's disgust, canned tuna!) with onions (lomo saltado). At some point nearer Cusco it turned into fried chicken (a personal favourite!). By lakes its fried trout.
Now having already had one fried trout portion today we were both a little nervous when we heard the sizzle of pans... And then it came... A massive slab of houlomi style cheese... yeah baby!
So yes, today was tough, but what an accomplishment... A true adventure.
I'm not looking forward to the 20km gravel climb (probably on ripio) that we start tomorrow with to get back on our old tarmacked friend the 3S... So much so I'm trying to convince Ant that a taxi would be a good plan...but he's currently occupied with reading the history of Peru... The latest installment he tells me is the origin of the strange Mohican otherwise bald dogs we've seen around, that have origins 3000 years old and predate the Incas!! ... No taxi for me then!!
So sleep needed as we brace ourselves for an early start and a huge 95km day tomorrow.
We woke up feeling super positive and excited about our adventure, ready to tackle any challenges ahead. The first of the challenges was a 20km climb... Our first exposure to the infamous gravel roads and to start off they were fairly well behaved... Bumpy... Yes, harder work than tarmac... Absolutely, but isolated beautiful tracks with only bikes and motor bikes passing us incredibly infrequently. We really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere and like true explorers.
Lots of super friendly (and somewhat bemused) folk asked after us, one even stopped his motorbike to chat to us... Cute.
We stopped for lunch before tackling the downhill (lunch being all we could find in the town before we left this morning... stale bread, crisps and some weird stale stuff that vaguely resembled a caramel donut... With a little bit of imagination anyway! Oh and what we've affectionately named "chodanas" tiny stumpy bananas!!). Now normally I'd be raving about the downhill being pay back for the long hard slog up... But imagine cycling steep downhills on a mix of sand (that makes you skid at the slightest shift in weight), fist sized stones (bump bump clunk rattle), gravel (no feeling left in hands now), and pot holes (eeeeek!!) at 20km/h... Nerve wracking stuff and damn shattering... Especially for one's behind!
And then... After about 4 hours... Wahooooo tarmac... We were flying... Felt like we'd been visited by the red bull angel! But of course that wasn't our road for long, we turned off towards the lake onto what we thought was the worst gravel road in Peru... Bump bump bump and another 5km, then wow, what a sight. A beautiful and huge lake wrapped around the mountain valley... And in the distance what looks like a promising settlement. (we've learnt to be cautious of how villages look from a distance, they often deceive... Mud huts with corrugated iron roofs can look pleasant until you're up close... But as we got closer we got more and more excited, street lamps, even some paved roads, then a beautiful square... By now it was gone 2pm and we were so hopeful we might find more substantial lunch... But the square only yielded two infamous 'Inca cola and sweets' shops and so we U turned and headed up towards the road... Only to be greeted by 2 very smiley chaps, asking where we were from, how far we'd cycled, where we were going and if we were hungry... HUNGRY... ARE WE HECK... They told us to go to the lakeside beach (oh my god this place has a lakeside beach!!!) to the restaurant. Of we scadaddled and found a concrete structure in the water, made to look just like a boat... So quaint and cute and FOOD!! Fried trout fresh from the lake and a ton of rice later we were super happy. And the guys had come and joined us (their wives ran it I think) then took out a massive bag of coca leaves and told us we should drink coca tea to help us up the hill... When in Rome!!!
A lot of pictures later (they were a bit fascinated by us) and we were heading to the next town along... Another 20km along the lakeside path that promised to be beautiful and flat. I'm pleased to say it delivered on both fronts. But when Peru gives you something it also takes something else away... This road wasn't just gravel, sand and mud, but it had fashioned itself into "Ripio" a phenomena that Ant had read about but not yet experienced. This is when heavy traffic causes the lose road matter to form a series of ripples, whose frequency is just enough to stop a cyclist in their tracks... Literally saps away any momentum you have (as far as we could work out this is because when front wheel is driving on, back wheel is in a trench, effectively applying the brakes.
So it really was a day of three parts, each bringing a new tougher challenge. (20km slow gravel up, 20km scary down, 20km ripio from hell).
We had planned to push on passed the town Layo and camp another 20km up the mountain to make tomorrow easier, but when we realised it was a cute, if not incredibly sleepy, place with an open hostel (no hot water but a functioning outdoor loo and cold shower) a lovely owner, streetlights and a few concreted roads... We decided to stop.
Emerging from our room, shivering but clean we ventured down the single street that is the town. After only finding Inca cola shops we'd just about resigned ourselves to a supper of canned fruit, yoghurt and beer, when by chance we asked a lady if there was a restaurant... But of course she said... And pointed us towards a very closed looking hatch... Egged on by her we knocked... And low and behold behind the doors was a cafe.
You never have a choice in small town restaurants, you simply say "I'd like to eat" and they bring stuff. Usually a meat soup with barley or pasta and sometimes vegetables (that even Ant's grown to love), followed by some form of protein with rice and either potatoes or yuca. In the central mountains the protein was always fried strips of meat (beef, chicken or even once to Ant's disgust, canned tuna!) with onions (lomo saltado). At some point nearer Cusco it turned into fried chicken (a personal favourite!). By lakes its fried trout.
Now having already had one fried trout portion today we were both a little nervous when we heard the sizzle of pans... And then it came... A massive slab of houlomi style cheese... yeah baby!
So yes, today was tough, but what an accomplishment... A true adventure.
I'm not looking forward to the 20km gravel climb (probably on ripio) that we start tomorrow with to get back on our old tarmacked friend the 3S... So much so I'm trying to convince Ant that a taxi would be a good plan...but he's currently occupied with reading the history of Peru... The latest installment he tells me is the origin of the strange Mohican otherwise bald dogs we've seen around, that have origins 3000 years old and predate the Incas!! ... No taxi for me then!!
So sleep needed as we brace ourselves for an early start and a huge 95km day tomorrow.
Day 16 - camping somewhere near the 3S to Yanacoa (55km). Saturday 20th August.
Today was the day of two fried eggs for breakfast; two punctures; two busses deciding to overtake straight towards us (as Vic knows I'm all for a game of chicken but not of this variety); two bikes not allowed to go into the lunch place (Ant ate his lunch on the street!); two dubious looking blokes looking like they wanted to steal stuff from our bikes; two 6ish year old boys on bikes insisting on racing us (I took one of them on- "vamos Alex vamos" I shouted, and won oh yeah... No mean feat on tired legs and loaded bike!!); two more lakes than it said on the map (Ronsil would not be proud); two times the gradient we were expecting; two towns that look promising on the map actually having no source of food; two open but not open hostals (guarded only by a pig! Literally!); two toilets that don't work; two ladies spending an hour trying to break into someone's (fairly unsecure) room because the key stopped working... Just open the window dudes, its only a padlock!; two tearful episodes from me (sorry Ant); two almost tearful episodes from Ant (glad its not just me!); and two very very exhausted and exasperated cyclists!! Oh Peru, what an adventure you are challenging us with!
OK so there were some amazing views on route and we definitely experienced some more of "true Peru" but man today was tough.
We started out OK, in fact revitalised and strong, especially after finding a brilliant breakfast place of eggs potatoes and rice, but the day took a turn for the worst when we were about to leave and found a massive metal spike in Ant's rear tyre. The breakfast people were friendly and the man was fascinated by our bikes and tools and couldn't wait to offer to help us pump it up (well if you insist!!). On the road again and Ant singing his "on the road" song (Thanks Metallica and "turn the page"!). The traffic on the 3S was less today (Saturday) despite the occasional kamikaze bus which made for slightly nicer cycling. We even managed to keep our heads high (and my cycle strength really high, definitely starting to acclimatise) when we turned off the 3S towards the 4 (yes 4!) lagoonas up the steep 10-12% gradient (which was thankfully tarmaced and not gravel as we'd expected). After about an hour Ant's back tyre played up again, but this time we were very grateful of the excuse to sit down and fix it... The 12% starting to take its toll.
So we reached the 'top' and the plateau around the lakes at around 3700m, which again turned out to be a Peruvian version of plateau, that involved "Box hill" sized ups, followed by "Leith hill" downs that lead us to a conversation about how fast we recon we could get up there if we were transported to the North downs now and who might we beat back at sea level. It was an amazingly beautiful sight, mountains and lakes, but by this point we were shattered and our moods had been slightly shaken by the extremely poor dwellings beside the lake. It's a "tourist route of the 4 lakes" yet the villages besides the lakes are incredibly poor with nothing touristy in sight except the view. So poor that one guy tried to grab my pannier off my bike as I rode passed. Put us (me especially) on edge somewhat. For some silly reason we had envisaged the villages as being lakeside picturesque places with food and views a plenty... And actually if they decided to make something of tourism this place would be epic and probably wealthier for it, but people seem very settled in their farming ways.
Something that seems fairly common here, there is a contentment with the status quo that makes most people amazingly lovely and happy and Peru incredibly relaxed, but this is matched by an apparent lack of drive to change anything or make things better. Perhaps peoples' lives are simply so tough they don't have time to think about anything else, but we were struggling to understand all the opportunities missed, especially as the desire for wealth is there (3 sneaky opportunist and thankfully unthreatening theft attempts so far). In fact they're even blasé about stealing things (thankfully ... Touch wood!)... " I shall walk passed you and if you happen to be distracted I will take something, but if not then I won't bother". Like I say this gives the country an incredibly relaxed and happy feel, but gets us thinking, especially compared to our recent trip to Vietnam where it is all go and everyone's hunting for opportunities and working all hours to further themselves in whatever way possible.
So feeling slightly sad that this beautiful place was so poor, and missing the hills and luxuries of home, we settled for lunch of fried trout and cold pasta, with the locals in a mud floor restaurant, that had absolutely no mod-cons... Except an enormous flat screen TV of course! Guard Ant ate outside watching the bikes and then we were on our way to the next 3lakes. Each one a good hard climb up, then down to the next. Exhausted and ashamedly in need of a little bit of comfort (a store that sold anything other than Inca cola and sweets would have sufficed) we plodded along heads down, hoping that the departmental capital of Yanocoa might yield a clean bed, hot shower, working toilet and fried chicken.
I'm pleased to say that after some failed attempts to find the owners of the 5 hostals in the town, we eventually found one that delivered on two of these things: we had an almost lovely hot shower outside (together for solidarity) perched over a malfunctioning loo, and found a chicken al la brasse restaurant...man they roast chicken damn well over wood fire here!
We even found a store to finish the meal with a can of beer for me, milk carton for Ant, peach yoghurt, and water.
Today was a very tough day, physically not the most challenging, but mentally extremely draining. Perhaps we'd been too spoilt by the luxuries of Cusco and have to settle back into the swing of things, or perhaps we've stumbled across one of the poorest areas of Peru... Possibly a mix of both. Either way we will use our evening to get our heads together, sleep well, and remind ourselves that this is why we are cycling and not hopping a tourist bus from one attraction to the next... We actually get to see the country, as tough as that may be, this is our adventure.
So bring it on!
OK so there were some amazing views on route and we definitely experienced some more of "true Peru" but man today was tough.
We started out OK, in fact revitalised and strong, especially after finding a brilliant breakfast place of eggs potatoes and rice, but the day took a turn for the worst when we were about to leave and found a massive metal spike in Ant's rear tyre. The breakfast people were friendly and the man was fascinated by our bikes and tools and couldn't wait to offer to help us pump it up (well if you insist!!). On the road again and Ant singing his "on the road" song (Thanks Metallica and "turn the page"!). The traffic on the 3S was less today (Saturday) despite the occasional kamikaze bus which made for slightly nicer cycling. We even managed to keep our heads high (and my cycle strength really high, definitely starting to acclimatise) when we turned off the 3S towards the 4 (yes 4!) lagoonas up the steep 10-12% gradient (which was thankfully tarmaced and not gravel as we'd expected). After about an hour Ant's back tyre played up again, but this time we were very grateful of the excuse to sit down and fix it... The 12% starting to take its toll.
So we reached the 'top' and the plateau around the lakes at around 3700m, which again turned out to be a Peruvian version of plateau, that involved "Box hill" sized ups, followed by "Leith hill" downs that lead us to a conversation about how fast we recon we could get up there if we were transported to the North downs now and who might we beat back at sea level. It was an amazingly beautiful sight, mountains and lakes, but by this point we were shattered and our moods had been slightly shaken by the extremely poor dwellings beside the lake. It's a "tourist route of the 4 lakes" yet the villages besides the lakes are incredibly poor with nothing touristy in sight except the view. So poor that one guy tried to grab my pannier off my bike as I rode passed. Put us (me especially) on edge somewhat. For some silly reason we had envisaged the villages as being lakeside picturesque places with food and views a plenty... And actually if they decided to make something of tourism this place would be epic and probably wealthier for it, but people seem very settled in their farming ways.
Something that seems fairly common here, there is a contentment with the status quo that makes most people amazingly lovely and happy and Peru incredibly relaxed, but this is matched by an apparent lack of drive to change anything or make things better. Perhaps peoples' lives are simply so tough they don't have time to think about anything else, but we were struggling to understand all the opportunities missed, especially as the desire for wealth is there (3 sneaky opportunist and thankfully unthreatening theft attempts so far). In fact they're even blasé about stealing things (thankfully ... Touch wood!)... " I shall walk passed you and if you happen to be distracted I will take something, but if not then I won't bother". Like I say this gives the country an incredibly relaxed and happy feel, but gets us thinking, especially compared to our recent trip to Vietnam where it is all go and everyone's hunting for opportunities and working all hours to further themselves in whatever way possible.
So feeling slightly sad that this beautiful place was so poor, and missing the hills and luxuries of home, we settled for lunch of fried trout and cold pasta, with the locals in a mud floor restaurant, that had absolutely no mod-cons... Except an enormous flat screen TV of course! Guard Ant ate outside watching the bikes and then we were on our way to the next 3lakes. Each one a good hard climb up, then down to the next. Exhausted and ashamedly in need of a little bit of comfort (a store that sold anything other than Inca cola and sweets would have sufficed) we plodded along heads down, hoping that the departmental capital of Yanocoa might yield a clean bed, hot shower, working toilet and fried chicken.
I'm pleased to say that after some failed attempts to find the owners of the 5 hostals in the town, we eventually found one that delivered on two of these things: we had an almost lovely hot shower outside (together for solidarity) perched over a malfunctioning loo, and found a chicken al la brasse restaurant...man they roast chicken damn well over wood fire here!
We even found a store to finish the meal with a can of beer for me, milk carton for Ant, peach yoghurt, and water.
Today was a very tough day, physically not the most challenging, but mentally extremely draining. Perhaps we'd been too spoilt by the luxuries of Cusco and have to settle back into the swing of things, or perhaps we've stumbled across one of the poorest areas of Peru... Possibly a mix of both. Either way we will use our evening to get our heads together, sleep well, and remind ourselves that this is why we are cycling and not hopping a tourist bus from one attraction to the next... We actually get to see the country, as tough as that may be, this is our adventure.
So bring it on!
Day 15- Pisak to camping by a river somewhere near the 3S (Friday 19th August)
Man what a day. The luxury of Cusco clearly helped us forget exactly how tough Peruvian cycling is.
Don't get me wrong, the first 30km were epic. Relatively flat cycling along the river valley (of course it was undulating, but nowhere near the 4hour climbs of last week). And man it was beautiful, a lovely quiet road, almost all to ourselves... FINALLY this is what we know and love about cycle touring, being able to cycle alongside each other, admire the beautiful scenery, and have the energy left to chat and while the hours away...
...and then came the 3S, our old friend. The main road, we surmised, would be flat with a gradual tilt up hill, rising 400m over about 80km... We can definitely handle that... A joy. Except we've come to learn that "flat" just means steep 100m ups followed by steep 100m downs. An afternoon of this on a road full of trucks and busses was enough to get even Ant's head down... And enough to have me singing another song... Cue the Vengaboys "Up... And Down... And up... And down... Up... And down... And up and down... And up and down and up............................and down".
After a total of about 45km we were really suffering and definitely ready for lunch. We simply had to stop so turned off into a sleepy little village (that turned out to be only 1km short of the larger town we were actually aiming for!) and got stalked by a very poor man, bless him, I'm sure he was looking to grab whatever he could from our bikes, but it put us a little on edge. Then found a wonderful little lady serving pollo milanese (fried chicken, salad and rice). We ate there (along with the rest of the village), watched a cute barky dog guard our bikes, watch with shock as he let another less barky dog pee all over Alan (cheers guys!), then paid and were on our way.
Feeling much better now and definitely revitalised we churned along the 3S for more of the same ("hello I'm a road and I could follow that lovely flat river valley down there but instead I'm gonna go up this mountain then back down the other side if that's quite alright with you").
Eventually we reached our goal, a larger town where there was promise of hotels / hostels, but the habitable ones were full, leaving us with a decision... Stay in a hostel that's actually just someone's fairly dusty room with limited access to bathroom, or camp. No brainer. We grabbed supplies, (crisps water banana... And what's he carrying... Condensed milk... Heaven what a treat! Tinned items usually too heavy to carry but this will be a very welcome addition to chocobear porridge, very happy Stewie).
We cycled out of town with an hour in hand looking for the perfect camping spot... And he does it again. The most beautiful spot right next to the river, quite a hike down, with the bikes misbehaving as they do when you try to take them down steep rocky banks, but absolutely worth it.
Free flowing river water perfect for a wash, and not too cold either; a wonderful and fairly secluded spot where the water drowns out the sounds of the free flowing traffic on the road above. Some chocobear porridge (we are now grateful for the time we put in this morning sourcing the most reliably packaged cooking ethanol), and several pastries later (ALWAYS BUY PASTRIES!!) we are tucked up in our lovely warm and snug tent.
About an hour after we drifted off we had the usual panic... Is that someone outside... But this time it actually was... A couple of dudes walking along the river, laughing and fishing at 9pm... Cute! Perhaps not quite as secluded as we'd thought, but fair play to them... They must have hiked a long way.
All in all, a very productive day and a wonderful camping spot. Fingers crossed tomorrow will be as fulfilling.
Don't get me wrong, the first 30km were epic. Relatively flat cycling along the river valley (of course it was undulating, but nowhere near the 4hour climbs of last week). And man it was beautiful, a lovely quiet road, almost all to ourselves... FINALLY this is what we know and love about cycle touring, being able to cycle alongside each other, admire the beautiful scenery, and have the energy left to chat and while the hours away...
...and then came the 3S, our old friend. The main road, we surmised, would be flat with a gradual tilt up hill, rising 400m over about 80km... We can definitely handle that... A joy. Except we've come to learn that "flat" just means steep 100m ups followed by steep 100m downs. An afternoon of this on a road full of trucks and busses was enough to get even Ant's head down... And enough to have me singing another song... Cue the Vengaboys "Up... And Down... And up... And down... Up... And down... And up and down... And up and down and up............................and down".
After a total of about 45km we were really suffering and definitely ready for lunch. We simply had to stop so turned off into a sleepy little village (that turned out to be only 1km short of the larger town we were actually aiming for!) and got stalked by a very poor man, bless him, I'm sure he was looking to grab whatever he could from our bikes, but it put us a little on edge. Then found a wonderful little lady serving pollo milanese (fried chicken, salad and rice). We ate there (along with the rest of the village), watched a cute barky dog guard our bikes, watch with shock as he let another less barky dog pee all over Alan (cheers guys!), then paid and were on our way.
Feeling much better now and definitely revitalised we churned along the 3S for more of the same ("hello I'm a road and I could follow that lovely flat river valley down there but instead I'm gonna go up this mountain then back down the other side if that's quite alright with you").
Eventually we reached our goal, a larger town where there was promise of hotels / hostels, but the habitable ones were full, leaving us with a decision... Stay in a hostel that's actually just someone's fairly dusty room with limited access to bathroom, or camp. No brainer. We grabbed supplies, (crisps water banana... And what's he carrying... Condensed milk... Heaven what a treat! Tinned items usually too heavy to carry but this will be a very welcome addition to chocobear porridge, very happy Stewie).
We cycled out of town with an hour in hand looking for the perfect camping spot... And he does it again. The most beautiful spot right next to the river, quite a hike down, with the bikes misbehaving as they do when you try to take them down steep rocky banks, but absolutely worth it.
Free flowing river water perfect for a wash, and not too cold either; a wonderful and fairly secluded spot where the water drowns out the sounds of the free flowing traffic on the road above. Some chocobear porridge (we are now grateful for the time we put in this morning sourcing the most reliably packaged cooking ethanol), and several pastries later (ALWAYS BUY PASTRIES!!) we are tucked up in our lovely warm and snug tent.
About an hour after we drifted off we had the usual panic... Is that someone outside... But this time it actually was... A couple of dudes walking along the river, laughing and fishing at 9pm... Cute! Perhaps not quite as secluded as we'd thought, but fair play to them... They must have hiked a long way.
All in all, a very productive day and a wonderful camping spot. Fingers crossed tomorrow will be as fulfilling.
Day 14 - Cusco to Pisak (35km) Thursday 18th August
We've really enjoyed our 3days here, its felt amazingly luxurious compared to what we've grown accustomed to so we're sad to pack up and go. But onwards and upwards... Again quite literally.
What else but a sharp climb out the city via the ruins we visited yesterday... Steep steep steep... 12% ish and of course it keeps going up and up. But beautiful views over Cusco and later over the next valley, and we know we have a short day today. Soon we reach the top and literally whizz down 20km into Pisak.
I'd like to point out that when we decided to stay in Pisak, we didn't realise it was the hippie capital of the sacred valley... "get your controlled high here.. Oh and we also do yoga!". Lovely cute town though and our hotel had a super sweet courtyard with a grandma teaching her grandkids to weave traditionally. Ant super pleased because they have a hosepipe... To wash the bikes... Im super pleased because they have a hot shower... Yeah baby!
Before we indulge in any of this, we unload the bikes and take the opportunity to cycle up the sacred valley unloaded... Flying... Wee! I'm a bit frustrated on the gravel road, and Ant starts teaching me how to cope with it... "get used to it Stew, there's more of this coming up over the next few days" oh dear... Say good bye to hills and hello gravel road...
So back to tonight, with the bikes and us all squeaky clean and warm, we head to the local square and find lots of people packing up the market. Such effort. Literally breaking down every stall and carrying or tricycling tables, chairs, bags away, precariously but expertly balanced. Then it dawns, this happens in the UK too, its just everything gets loaded into white vans in about half an hour, not the good few hours it took to break this down.
We found a lovely restaurant overlooking the square and ate A LOT including dessert (unusual for us) and a hot milk and hot chocolate!
Fully fueled we enjoyed the stroll back to our home and tucked up ready for the next part of the adventure...
What else but a sharp climb out the city via the ruins we visited yesterday... Steep steep steep... 12% ish and of course it keeps going up and up. But beautiful views over Cusco and later over the next valley, and we know we have a short day today. Soon we reach the top and literally whizz down 20km into Pisak.
I'd like to point out that when we decided to stay in Pisak, we didn't realise it was the hippie capital of the sacred valley... "get your controlled high here.. Oh and we also do yoga!". Lovely cute town though and our hotel had a super sweet courtyard with a grandma teaching her grandkids to weave traditionally. Ant super pleased because they have a hosepipe... To wash the bikes... Im super pleased because they have a hot shower... Yeah baby!
Before we indulge in any of this, we unload the bikes and take the opportunity to cycle up the sacred valley unloaded... Flying... Wee! I'm a bit frustrated on the gravel road, and Ant starts teaching me how to cope with it... "get used to it Stew, there's more of this coming up over the next few days" oh dear... Say good bye to hills and hello gravel road...
So back to tonight, with the bikes and us all squeaky clean and warm, we head to the local square and find lots of people packing up the market. Such effort. Literally breaking down every stall and carrying or tricycling tables, chairs, bags away, precariously but expertly balanced. Then it dawns, this happens in the UK too, its just everything gets loaded into white vans in about half an hour, not the good few hours it took to break this down.
We found a lovely restaurant overlooking the square and ate A LOT including dessert (unusual for us) and a hot milk and hot chocolate!
Fully fueled we enjoyed the stroll back to our home and tucked up ready for the next part of the adventure...
Wednesday 17 August 2016
Cusco we love you, but adios
Cusco is quite simply a beautiful and amazing city... Yes its full of tourists, but it also has some stunning colonial architecture mixed with Inca remains, walls and ruins. Plus the range if food available is incredible! We could have bought Firsty Ferret if we wanted (!) but opted for the locally brewed craft ales instead.
There is so much potential for adventure here, you could easily spend two weeks... but we had to make a very tough decision... Press onwards (and probably upwards) on our own adventure and mark Cusco as a possible future 2 week adventure holiday of its own... We simply can't do everything this trip.
Perhaps we'll regret this later, but we also chose not to see Machu Pichu... It's a huge amount of money and more over logistically difficult to organise (especially at last minute which is the only real way when cycle touring). Plus I want to look more into the protests... It was closed a week ago due to them... I suspect it is becoming too much of a tourist trap, and we're not wholly convinced we want to be part of that.
So tomorrow we leave our wonderful hotel and its creature comforts and beautiful panoramic view if the historic city centre, and cycle up the sacred valley towards Pisac... Then from there we're going to brave the cycle to Puno... Hoping to arrive there in about a week. To be honest I cant wait to get back on the bike!
Adios Amigos, asta leuago
xxxxx
There is so much potential for adventure here, you could easily spend two weeks... but we had to make a very tough decision... Press onwards (and probably upwards) on our own adventure and mark Cusco as a possible future 2 week adventure holiday of its own... We simply can't do everything this trip.
Perhaps we'll regret this later, but we also chose not to see Machu Pichu... It's a huge amount of money and more over logistically difficult to organise (especially at last minute which is the only real way when cycle touring). Plus I want to look more into the protests... It was closed a week ago due to them... I suspect it is becoming too much of a tourist trap, and we're not wholly convinced we want to be part of that.
So tomorrow we leave our wonderful hotel and its creature comforts and beautiful panoramic view if the historic city centre, and cycle up the sacred valley towards Pisac... Then from there we're going to brave the cycle to Puno... Hoping to arrive there in about a week. To be honest I cant wait to get back on the bike!
Adios Amigos, asta leuago
xxxxx
Monday 15 August 2016
Big yellow taxi
After 3 days of challenging cycling and one rest day, we're on a bus to Cusco to give the legs a break. Can't help but notice how green this section of the Andes is... We're so used to the barren dusty landscapes that to see trees of the non cactus variety is rather pleasant. Other than the bag of dubious yellow liquid Ant found down the side of his seat (of which we will never speak of again) this bus is rather comfy... Reclining leather seats, something that almost resembles air conditioning and a TV showing Richard Gear dubbed in the style of a small Spanish mouse.
That being said, I can't quite get my head around being the person on the bus and not the crazy gringita (yes they think I'm a young lady wahooo) cyclist who it's heading towards at full speed around a mountain pass.
Feeling in awe of the 30minutes its taken us to do a 4hour climb, and my legs are thanking me for it... But feeling surprisingly sad watching the scenery whizz by without really beinging at one with it. See on the bike, as well as swearing at the hills and telling your legs to shut up, you get to say hello to people, see the different types of culture from one place to another, have an old lady try to teach you Quecha in a local mountain village, have kids look at you with shock and awe and grab their bikes to join you as far as they think they can get away with, realise that the only thing any shed (restaurant) will serve you is lomo saltado and soup but you love it because it's food, finding yet another closed shop in a sleepy village then finding the owner who is more than happy to open it for you, but no they don't have water - just stale bread and Inca cola, getting to the top of a 4hour climb feeling like you have nothing left, then look up and realise you're on top of the world and you've earned that view, whilst the cars are whizzing by nonchalant to everything, you're almost in tears at the beauty of nature and revived enough to get down the other side and onwards to wherever you'll sleep tonight, whether on a beautiful hill side or in a hotel.
So does it feel strange watching Peru pass us by, not just knowing exactly how far we'll get, but also exactly where we'll be sleeping tonight and that we have more than enough food and water to last the whole day...absolutely. Do I feel sad that we've just passed some beautiful snowy peaks and I haven't earned that view... Definitely. Am I hoping that Jamling and Fat Al are surviving in the luggage compartment and worried about them as if they were my children... Surprisingly so.
Perhaps getting the bus to Puno isn't looking so appealing, either way I cant wait to be back on the bikes exploring.
"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till its gone... "
That being said, I can't quite get my head around being the person on the bus and not the crazy gringita (yes they think I'm a young lady wahooo) cyclist who it's heading towards at full speed around a mountain pass.
Feeling in awe of the 30minutes its taken us to do a 4hour climb, and my legs are thanking me for it... But feeling surprisingly sad watching the scenery whizz by without really beinging at one with it. See on the bike, as well as swearing at the hills and telling your legs to shut up, you get to say hello to people, see the different types of culture from one place to another, have an old lady try to teach you Quecha in a local mountain village, have kids look at you with shock and awe and grab their bikes to join you as far as they think they can get away with, realise that the only thing any shed (restaurant) will serve you is lomo saltado and soup but you love it because it's food, finding yet another closed shop in a sleepy village then finding the owner who is more than happy to open it for you, but no they don't have water - just stale bread and Inca cola, getting to the top of a 4hour climb feeling like you have nothing left, then look up and realise you're on top of the world and you've earned that view, whilst the cars are whizzing by nonchalant to everything, you're almost in tears at the beauty of nature and revived enough to get down the other side and onwards to wherever you'll sleep tonight, whether on a beautiful hill side or in a hotel.
So does it feel strange watching Peru pass us by, not just knowing exactly how far we'll get, but also exactly where we'll be sleeping tonight and that we have more than enough food and water to last the whole day...absolutely. Do I feel sad that we've just passed some beautiful snowy peaks and I haven't earned that view... Definitely. Am I hoping that Jamling and Fat Al are surviving in the luggage compartment and worried about them as if they were my children... Surprisingly so.
Perhaps getting the bus to Puno isn't looking so appealing, either way I cant wait to be back on the bikes exploring.
"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till its gone... "
Day 13 (85km with 1100m ascent) Camping to Abancay... A good place for a Chicken sandwich...
...so much for an easy day!
After last night's beautiful camping today was a super hard day. The third big day in a row and man we were both feeling it. The town we thought was 5km away was actually about 20km but amazingly we found a lovely young lady called Anna, who offered to get her mum to open their cafe to feed us... Yes please! I think I literally breathed in my plate of tuna saltado... And some lovely (though dubious looking) creamy white sweet hot drink. (incidentally the town is called huancarama... Those of you familiar with the Spanish language will know how to pronounce the initial 'Hu' and may find the name rather amusing!).
We left fully fueled up and feeling positive, ready to tackle the day and possibly hop a car for the last 20km uphill to Abancay.
It wasn't long before the positive vibe seemed to hop like a sandfly between Ant and I, with only one of us able to feel it at any one time. The road that should have gifted an initial gradual and pleasant 300m ascent, ended up being a 500m climb from hell (>12%, very tough on tired legs and loaded bikes). And every corner that looked like the top, was obviously just another path to impending doom.
Then finally we summited, ate a few choco bums to keep us going and wrapped up warm ready for the (wait for it... 1600m descent!). Man what a descent that was... Well the first half at least was amazing, whizzing down the mountain, stopping only for cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and dogs (all who think they have right of way on the equivalent of the A34!), oh and of course the speed bumps on entry and exit of every village... But a fast paced and very fun and beautiful descent...
... Until the attack of the killer wind...
About half way down the climb a very strong a gusty whirlwind attacked us around every other hairpin... At times having to pedal down hill, at times having to break hard to get control of the bike. Obviously we were delighted by this... !!
So we got to the bottom of the valley and treated ourselves to a cheese sandwich and a coke at a real live petrol station (good job really as all these things were about to become alien to us)...
...And watched the truck drivers having their Friday mid afternoon beers (?!!) and playing "throw the bottle lid into the crate" with very little success! They excitedly (and wobbly) told us that the other gringo was in the cafe... Guess who... Jan. Great chance to say proper farewell as he takes the road to Puno at this junction.
After some debate as to how we hitch a lift from the seemingly unwilling pick up drivers... We decided to psych ourselves up for the long and arduous climb into the city.
Things I feel I should note:
1) everything about the valley felt much more city, the dress, the dust, the people (rushing around too busy to notice the crazy gringos let alone joke and chat to them)... And no more women in hats
2) when I say we tried to hitch a lift we did this in a typically British way... Standing by our bikes at the petrol station attempting to look tired... Perhaps not the most effective method in hind site!
3) the valley at 1800m is below the sandfly line (trial and error has made us draw an imaginary line at about 2800m above which we are safe from bites. There are two other lines one at 3800m where I start to get grumpy, a slight headache and breathe heavily due to altitude, and one at 4000m where Ant joins in this altitude game).
4) this side of the Andes is incredibly green... Much more so than the coastal side.
So... Fueled by coke and cheese we started to attack the climb, the positive vibe landed on me for the first 6km and I managed to mentally drag Ant, head down and fed up, up the hill into the strong wind and hot sun at a healthy 6km/h. As seems the theme for the day the vibe soon hopped across to Ant who then pulled me along... But with 8km to go the positivity left both of us... Not even a stop at the next petrol station for ice cream could boost us. It was a case of head down and grind... The only way is up... And up... And up. (thanks Coldplay)
3 very angry shouty dogs did an amazing job of helping me cover a few hundred metres very quickly, whilst a glance over my shoulder revealed they'd finally broken Ant who'd got off his bike faced up to the dogs and shouted "you want to fucking scare my wife, do you want some, come on then, fucking come and get it"...the dogs, probably never having seen anything quite like this, backed away nervously with their tails literally between their legs... I'm not sure they were quite as shocked as the onlookers though!
The road seemed to go on and on and on and up and up and up, from beautiful green mountain side to grimey dusty city suburbs that brought Ant down even more and tired me out beyond belief.
Eventually, though hotel touristica came to our rescue with a beautiful (by our new standards) room, a rainfall HOT shower, massive flat screen TV with at least 5 channels showing the olympics, and the BEST food we've had in Peru by far... A mixed grill big enough for 3, cooked and seasoned to perfection and a plate of perfectly crispy and fluffy chips... Literally we were in heaven.
It didn't take much to convince Ant we should stay an extra night and let our bodies recover... So that we did...
We laid down for almost 24hours solid watching olympics, with a brief interlude to see the city and get some supplies... And the most amazing chicken, pork and pancetta sandwich and mango juice.
Our dinner was a plate of those awesome chips ordered to our room... They couldn't quite believe that was all we wanted so gave us some cheese too... OH MY GOD I love them!... Followed by two beers and some chocolate cereal and cold milk we sourced earlier... Literally in heaven.
So bus to Cusco tomorrow... I feel like that will be an adventure in itself.
After last night's beautiful camping today was a super hard day. The third big day in a row and man we were both feeling it. The town we thought was 5km away was actually about 20km but amazingly we found a lovely young lady called Anna, who offered to get her mum to open their cafe to feed us... Yes please! I think I literally breathed in my plate of tuna saltado... And some lovely (though dubious looking) creamy white sweet hot drink. (incidentally the town is called huancarama... Those of you familiar with the Spanish language will know how to pronounce the initial 'Hu' and may find the name rather amusing!).
We left fully fueled up and feeling positive, ready to tackle the day and possibly hop a car for the last 20km uphill to Abancay.
It wasn't long before the positive vibe seemed to hop like a sandfly between Ant and I, with only one of us able to feel it at any one time. The road that should have gifted an initial gradual and pleasant 300m ascent, ended up being a 500m climb from hell (>12%, very tough on tired legs and loaded bikes). And every corner that looked like the top, was obviously just another path to impending doom.
Then finally we summited, ate a few choco bums to keep us going and wrapped up warm ready for the (wait for it... 1600m descent!). Man what a descent that was... Well the first half at least was amazing, whizzing down the mountain, stopping only for cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and dogs (all who think they have right of way on the equivalent of the A34!), oh and of course the speed bumps on entry and exit of every village... But a fast paced and very fun and beautiful descent...
... Until the attack of the killer wind...
About half way down the climb a very strong a gusty whirlwind attacked us around every other hairpin... At times having to pedal down hill, at times having to break hard to get control of the bike. Obviously we were delighted by this... !!
So we got to the bottom of the valley and treated ourselves to a cheese sandwich and a coke at a real live petrol station (good job really as all these things were about to become alien to us)...
...And watched the truck drivers having their Friday mid afternoon beers (?!!) and playing "throw the bottle lid into the crate" with very little success! They excitedly (and wobbly) told us that the other gringo was in the cafe... Guess who... Jan. Great chance to say proper farewell as he takes the road to Puno at this junction.
After some debate as to how we hitch a lift from the seemingly unwilling pick up drivers... We decided to psych ourselves up for the long and arduous climb into the city.
Things I feel I should note:
1) everything about the valley felt much more city, the dress, the dust, the people (rushing around too busy to notice the crazy gringos let alone joke and chat to them)... And no more women in hats
2) when I say we tried to hitch a lift we did this in a typically British way... Standing by our bikes at the petrol station attempting to look tired... Perhaps not the most effective method in hind site!
3) the valley at 1800m is below the sandfly line (trial and error has made us draw an imaginary line at about 2800m above which we are safe from bites. There are two other lines one at 3800m where I start to get grumpy, a slight headache and breathe heavily due to altitude, and one at 4000m where Ant joins in this altitude game).
4) this side of the Andes is incredibly green... Much more so than the coastal side.
So... Fueled by coke and cheese we started to attack the climb, the positive vibe landed on me for the first 6km and I managed to mentally drag Ant, head down and fed up, up the hill into the strong wind and hot sun at a healthy 6km/h. As seems the theme for the day the vibe soon hopped across to Ant who then pulled me along... But with 8km to go the positivity left both of us... Not even a stop at the next petrol station for ice cream could boost us. It was a case of head down and grind... The only way is up... And up... And up. (thanks Coldplay)
3 very angry shouty dogs did an amazing job of helping me cover a few hundred metres very quickly, whilst a glance over my shoulder revealed they'd finally broken Ant who'd got off his bike faced up to the dogs and shouted "you want to fucking scare my wife, do you want some, come on then, fucking come and get it"...the dogs, probably never having seen anything quite like this, backed away nervously with their tails literally between their legs... I'm not sure they were quite as shocked as the onlookers though!
The road seemed to go on and on and on and up and up and up, from beautiful green mountain side to grimey dusty city suburbs that brought Ant down even more and tired me out beyond belief.
Eventually, though hotel touristica came to our rescue with a beautiful (by our new standards) room, a rainfall HOT shower, massive flat screen TV with at least 5 channels showing the olympics, and the BEST food we've had in Peru by far... A mixed grill big enough for 3, cooked and seasoned to perfection and a plate of perfectly crispy and fluffy chips... Literally we were in heaven.
It didn't take much to convince Ant we should stay an extra night and let our bodies recover... So that we did...
We laid down for almost 24hours solid watching olympics, with a brief interlude to see the city and get some supplies... And the most amazing chicken, pork and pancetta sandwich and mango juice.
Our dinner was a plate of those awesome chips ordered to our room... They couldn't quite believe that was all we wanted so gave us some cheese too... OH MY GOD I love them!... Followed by two beers and some chocolate cereal and cold milk we sourced earlier... Literally in heaven.
So bus to Cusco tomorrow... I feel like that will be an adventure in itself.
Day 12... ALWAYS buy pastries
Andahuylas to Camping (1500m climbing, that had promised to only be 1100m, and about 85km... Knackered!) Thursday 11th August.
I tried and failed to convince Ant we needed a rest day, but managed to agree (by stubbornly refusing to get up) that we at least needed a lie in (I will come to regret this later).
A quick hotel (read crappy) breakfast, and enforced (by me... over provisioning Stew... that Ant will come to be thankful for later) visit to the pandanerie to get pastries of 3 varieties: chicken, cheese and apple; and the obligatory bag of stale bread... And along with the crisps and yoghurt we bought yesterday we were armed to tackle the hills.
Unlike yesterday the first 5km were fairly tough... At least for Ant and his "I don't like cities" head, so for once I was the stronger one... On the front and carrying him along... Perhaps also due to the oxygen rich air, back down at just below 3000m (but thankfully still above sandfly territory!).
So we plugged on up and before long had done nearly a fifth of the climb and were ready to make our first major decision... Turn off the main road and visit the touristy "lago" with the opportunity to cycle off the beaten track, but then suffer a gruelling near 2000m ascent on dirt roads... Or keep going on the quiet main road and have another 1000m to do... This was a much mire difficult decision than perhaps it sounds in hindsight... Massive FOMO attack! So much so that we stopped at the turning to deliberate...
... This was one of the beat things we did... A group of Quechan women came out their house to talk to us and offer us drinks... They were so lovely and super cute, but fascinated with our trip (or whatever we communicated was our trip in our pigeon Spanish!). They wanted us to take photos... Of course we obliged...but what a lovely experience. People in the mountains are fascinated by our maps...they love seeing where they are and giggle lots... Given the terrible mapping of Peru I'm not surprised that they've never seen a map before.
Then a pick up pulled up and offered us a lift... Why does this only happen at the start of a day when you're still feeling strong! Ant was tempted though!
So decision made, we carried on up and up and up along the main road.
This was a very similar, but much tougher version of yesterday...partly due to the tired legs and mind, but mostly due to the bloody steep bits of hill!!
Nevertheless we were now both climbing happily, chatting and enjoying the scenery and challenge and feeling pleasantly and surprisingly strong. After a quick first pastry stop to top up our fuel, we continued having done about 10km and 700m climbing... Then we saw the orange bike, that could only mean one thing... We'd caught up with Jan. Another quick stop to say hi and rearrange my saddle position (bum hurts now)... We, all three, set off to tackle the next 10km of the climb... Though Jan and all his GPS and mapping knew better... "Only 19km to go now" he said... WHAT!!! I thought we had 10km... Furious, my head dropped and my fragile mind plummeted into doom. Poor Ant then spent the next 20km trying to lift a tired and angry Stew, almost literally up the hill.
Whilst I plugged along with Ant trying to motivate me, Jan disappeared up into the mountain. We took another pastry stop and were greeted by K9 nimrod... The cutest little shy and scared dog, who just came and sat by us for protection from the scary neighbourhood dogs. As I fed him a few bits of chewy chicken we soon realised he was super hungry... And very skinny. At this point we were thankful that Jemima wasn't with us as we'd have probably watched all our supplies disappear into the depths of the pup! Instead we gave him a little of what we thought we could spare then made our way onwards, and of course, upwards.
After what seemed like an age of plugging our way up the mountain we came to the supposedly flatter section, which of course was steep ups followed by steep downs... Enough to make any fragile mind go crazy... I might have told the mountain that it was unfair to give me downs then make me go up... But in slightly more angry words.
Eventually at around 4pm we reached the top...took a few quick photos, had a bite to eat and wrapped up warm to prepare for the descent...
...but turning the corner we saw the road continue to rise...up and up... And bloody up!
Somehow we gritted our teeth and churned the pedals in the hope that sometime the end would come... And of course it did... Feeling less "on top od the world" and more "right lets get down this bloody thing before dark" we whizzed down the freezing other side of the oversized hill for a good few km and flew passed Jan... Hey Jan... And a few trucks...
Then... We went up... WHAT!! then down then UP!! Then down some more the UP!! Seriously mountain dude you're messing with my mind! I might have told him he was being unfair and that we hadn't bargained for this... Again in slightly more angry words!
At this point Jan (unsurprisingly) chose to leave the angry Stew and calming Ant behind and pedalled off whilst Ant and I had a last bit of chocolate to help us find a home before sunset.
We got to the next tiny mountain dwelling at around 5.20pm with all the promise of a hotel... But no actual hotel... And less friendly people who simply told us that of course there was a hotel, then pointed us in the direction of not a hotel repeatedly. By 5.30, darkness was threatening so we grabbed some water and crisps from the shop and set off to find a camping spot away from people to the safety and beauty of being away from the town.
Amazing Ant strikes again and just when I'd given up hope of finding a camp site on the side of the equivalent of a mountain version of the A34, he found us the most glorious pitch in a green alcove overlooking the mountains... The only catch was it was a very steep 50m climb away from the road...no mean feat with loaded touring bikes. But I managed to heave the bikes up the hill, Ant grabbed the bags and set up the tent and soon we had the most glorious home and the sun had set... Just in the nick of time... We heated some water for a quick wash (using what we later realised was the last of our good fuel), then wrapped up warm and settled down to cook our feast of choco bear porridge (that surprisingly we were really looking forward to!) at 3700m. But little did we know our new fuel had been tampered with and was no longer pure alcohol, but instead had been watered down so much in the shop that it refused to light. So our dinner became pastries (see if there are ever pastries buy them... Always buy the pastries!!), yoghurt, crisps, bananas and the obligatory piece of stale bread.
Feeling almost repeat we tucked up warm in our new and glorious home overlooking the Andes and before long we were asleep.
We woke up the next day to realise just how beautiful our spot was... Absolutely stunning. And very ready for a breakfast... So onwards to the village 5km around the corner in the hope that they might give us breakfast...
I tried and failed to convince Ant we needed a rest day, but managed to agree (by stubbornly refusing to get up) that we at least needed a lie in (I will come to regret this later).
A quick hotel (read crappy) breakfast, and enforced (by me... over provisioning Stew... that Ant will come to be thankful for later) visit to the pandanerie to get pastries of 3 varieties: chicken, cheese and apple; and the obligatory bag of stale bread... And along with the crisps and yoghurt we bought yesterday we were armed to tackle the hills.
Unlike yesterday the first 5km were fairly tough... At least for Ant and his "I don't like cities" head, so for once I was the stronger one... On the front and carrying him along... Perhaps also due to the oxygen rich air, back down at just below 3000m (but thankfully still above sandfly territory!).
So we plugged on up and before long had done nearly a fifth of the climb and were ready to make our first major decision... Turn off the main road and visit the touristy "lago" with the opportunity to cycle off the beaten track, but then suffer a gruelling near 2000m ascent on dirt roads... Or keep going on the quiet main road and have another 1000m to do... This was a much mire difficult decision than perhaps it sounds in hindsight... Massive FOMO attack! So much so that we stopped at the turning to deliberate...
... This was one of the beat things we did... A group of Quechan women came out their house to talk to us and offer us drinks... They were so lovely and super cute, but fascinated with our trip (or whatever we communicated was our trip in our pigeon Spanish!). They wanted us to take photos... Of course we obliged...but what a lovely experience. People in the mountains are fascinated by our maps...they love seeing where they are and giggle lots... Given the terrible mapping of Peru I'm not surprised that they've never seen a map before.
Then a pick up pulled up and offered us a lift... Why does this only happen at the start of a day when you're still feeling strong! Ant was tempted though!
So decision made, we carried on up and up and up along the main road.
This was a very similar, but much tougher version of yesterday...partly due to the tired legs and mind, but mostly due to the bloody steep bits of hill!!
Nevertheless we were now both climbing happily, chatting and enjoying the scenery and challenge and feeling pleasantly and surprisingly strong. After a quick first pastry stop to top up our fuel, we continued having done about 10km and 700m climbing... Then we saw the orange bike, that could only mean one thing... We'd caught up with Jan. Another quick stop to say hi and rearrange my saddle position (bum hurts now)... We, all three, set off to tackle the next 10km of the climb... Though Jan and all his GPS and mapping knew better... "Only 19km to go now" he said... WHAT!!! I thought we had 10km... Furious, my head dropped and my fragile mind plummeted into doom. Poor Ant then spent the next 20km trying to lift a tired and angry Stew, almost literally up the hill.
Whilst I plugged along with Ant trying to motivate me, Jan disappeared up into the mountain. We took another pastry stop and were greeted by K9 nimrod... The cutest little shy and scared dog, who just came and sat by us for protection from the scary neighbourhood dogs. As I fed him a few bits of chewy chicken we soon realised he was super hungry... And very skinny. At this point we were thankful that Jemima wasn't with us as we'd have probably watched all our supplies disappear into the depths of the pup! Instead we gave him a little of what we thought we could spare then made our way onwards, and of course, upwards.
After what seemed like an age of plugging our way up the mountain we came to the supposedly flatter section, which of course was steep ups followed by steep downs... Enough to make any fragile mind go crazy... I might have told the mountain that it was unfair to give me downs then make me go up... But in slightly more angry words.
Eventually at around 4pm we reached the top...took a few quick photos, had a bite to eat and wrapped up warm to prepare for the descent...
...but turning the corner we saw the road continue to rise...up and up... And bloody up!
Somehow we gritted our teeth and churned the pedals in the hope that sometime the end would come... And of course it did... Feeling less "on top od the world" and more "right lets get down this bloody thing before dark" we whizzed down the freezing other side of the oversized hill for a good few km and flew passed Jan... Hey Jan... And a few trucks...
Then... We went up... WHAT!! then down then UP!! Then down some more the UP!! Seriously mountain dude you're messing with my mind! I might have told him he was being unfair and that we hadn't bargained for this... Again in slightly more angry words!
At this point Jan (unsurprisingly) chose to leave the angry Stew and calming Ant behind and pedalled off whilst Ant and I had a last bit of chocolate to help us find a home before sunset.
We got to the next tiny mountain dwelling at around 5.20pm with all the promise of a hotel... But no actual hotel... And less friendly people who simply told us that of course there was a hotel, then pointed us in the direction of not a hotel repeatedly. By 5.30, darkness was threatening so we grabbed some water and crisps from the shop and set off to find a camping spot away from people to the safety and beauty of being away from the town.
Amazing Ant strikes again and just when I'd given up hope of finding a camp site on the side of the equivalent of a mountain version of the A34, he found us the most glorious pitch in a green alcove overlooking the mountains... The only catch was it was a very steep 50m climb away from the road...no mean feat with loaded touring bikes. But I managed to heave the bikes up the hill, Ant grabbed the bags and set up the tent and soon we had the most glorious home and the sun had set... Just in the nick of time... We heated some water for a quick wash (using what we later realised was the last of our good fuel), then wrapped up warm and settled down to cook our feast of choco bear porridge (that surprisingly we were really looking forward to!) at 3700m. But little did we know our new fuel had been tampered with and was no longer pure alcohol, but instead had been watered down so much in the shop that it refused to light. So our dinner became pastries (see if there are ever pastries buy them... Always buy the pastries!!), yoghurt, crisps, bananas and the obligatory piece of stale bread.
Feeling almost repeat we tucked up warm in our new and glorious home overlooking the Andes and before long we were asleep.
We woke up the next day to realise just how beautiful our spot was... Absolutely stunning. And very ready for a breakfast... So onwards to the village 5km around the corner in the hope that they might give us breakfast...
Camping... to be or not to be...
Reasons why after a long day's cycle we sometimes opt for a hotel over a tent and are happy to pay more for for the privilege (listed in order of importance)...
1) Hot water to make us and our kit squeeky clean
2) Nearby restaurant... We may not need petrol but man we need fuel
3) Easy access to breakfast, body repairs over night, fuel gone in morning (doesn't have to be in hotel, just within a km)
4) Charging point for phones / GPS / camera / hair drier (give me a break it's cold in the mountains!)
5) Easy location to stock up supplies and tend to bikes if needed
6) WiFi... More important tonight, Ant needs to make a call, but if you're paying for it, you expect to get it right? It's definitely a luxury, updating blog, backing up photos etc... But as I say if it's advertised...
7) Cable TV... Another selling point on marketing for most hotels... Again a luxury we dont need but if it's advertised...
8) A warm clean bed to rest and recuperate
So why choose to camp then? Primarily because most of the beauty of Peru is found in the mountains. Cities, as you might expect from any developing nation (and many developed nations too), are polluted, noisy, stressful and arduous to get into and out of through suburbs on a bike. Plus sometimes your legs just can't carry you to the next town. And camping is just damn fun!
However, when we decide to live it large and traipse through the suburbs to stay in a nice (read more expensive) hotel, it's an interesting challenge in itself...
1) Hot water... "yes we have hot water pay more for our room"... We emerge shivering..."oh I guess it's broken"
2) Nearby restaurant... "they serve a great lunch tomorrow... "
3) Easy access to breakfast - stale bread, eggs and jam seems the norm...might as well go to the local bakers (oh and NEVER drink the coffee)
4) Charging point for phones / GPS / camera / hair drier "there's one in the corridor, you can leave you iPad there over night"... !!?!!!
5) Easy location to stock up supplies and tend to bikes if needed... Fair
6) WiFi... "yep this is the code..." (hands a very long piece of paper with such a ridiculous combination of letters, lower and upper case symbols and numbers that takes you at least 5minutes to type in)... "hi the WiFi isn't working" ... "oh yeah it runs out at midday"
7) cable tv... "our remote and tv don't seem to be working"... "you only have one cable channel... Playing Peruvian lipsink tv show on repeat... Why would you need more?"... Who could argue with that!
8) A warm clean bed to rest and recuperate... 60% of the time at least!
Don't get me wrong a big part of this trip is living without all the above and I really enjoy that... Plus I can find a cold shower very invigorating...but when you're on your knees after 75km, including an ascent to 4200m, and you believe the marketing, it sort of breaks your heart...
Tomorrow night we shall camp.
CAMPING WE LOVE YOU xxx
1) Hot water to make us and our kit squeeky clean
2) Nearby restaurant... We may not need petrol but man we need fuel
3) Easy access to breakfast, body repairs over night, fuel gone in morning (doesn't have to be in hotel, just within a km)
4) Charging point for phones / GPS / camera / hair drier (give me a break it's cold in the mountains!)
5) Easy location to stock up supplies and tend to bikes if needed
6) WiFi... More important tonight, Ant needs to make a call, but if you're paying for it, you expect to get it right? It's definitely a luxury, updating blog, backing up photos etc... But as I say if it's advertised...
7) Cable TV... Another selling point on marketing for most hotels... Again a luxury we dont need but if it's advertised...
8) A warm clean bed to rest and recuperate
So why choose to camp then? Primarily because most of the beauty of Peru is found in the mountains. Cities, as you might expect from any developing nation (and many developed nations too), are polluted, noisy, stressful and arduous to get into and out of through suburbs on a bike. Plus sometimes your legs just can't carry you to the next town. And camping is just damn fun!
However, when we decide to live it large and traipse through the suburbs to stay in a nice (read more expensive) hotel, it's an interesting challenge in itself...
1) Hot water... "yes we have hot water pay more for our room"... We emerge shivering..."oh I guess it's broken"
2) Nearby restaurant... "they serve a great lunch tomorrow... "
3) Easy access to breakfast - stale bread, eggs and jam seems the norm...might as well go to the local bakers (oh and NEVER drink the coffee)
4) Charging point for phones / GPS / camera / hair drier "there's one in the corridor, you can leave you iPad there over night"... !!?!!!
5) Easy location to stock up supplies and tend to bikes if needed... Fair
6) WiFi... "yep this is the code..." (hands a very long piece of paper with such a ridiculous combination of letters, lower and upper case symbols and numbers that takes you at least 5minutes to type in)... "hi the WiFi isn't working" ... "oh yeah it runs out at midday"
7) cable tv... "our remote and tv don't seem to be working"... "you only have one cable channel... Playing Peruvian lipsink tv show on repeat... Why would you need more?"... Who could argue with that!
8) A warm clean bed to rest and recuperate... 60% of the time at least!
Don't get me wrong a big part of this trip is living without all the above and I really enjoy that... Plus I can find a cold shower very invigorating...but when you're on your knees after 75km, including an ascent to 4200m, and you believe the marketing, it sort of breaks your heart...
Tomorrow night we shall camp.
CAMPING WE LOVE YOU xxx
Day 11 - in the words of the "Carpenters"...
Uripa to Andahuylas (70km 1100m ascent) Wednesday 11th August
Wow what a day... We thought it couldn't get any better when we got a hot shower last night, but it appears it can.
We set out early for a breakfast of kings (apple pastries by the dozen!), so we were on the road fully fueled by 9am. I'd had a day now to mentally prepare for the day ahead and had gone through all sorts of horrible scenarios, so was feeling positive (mind games... It can't possibly be as bad as i think it will be!). With cloud above us to offer some protection from the Sun we quickly found our (very slow paced!) rhythm. At 5-6km/h we knew we had at least 4hours ahead of us to cover the 20km of shear uphill.
The first 5km came and went fairly quickly, we were strong enough to manage conversations and rode side by side on a fairly quiet road. It was super interesting to see the town change to suburban sprawl, then to mud huts, and the road traffic change from tuk tuks and cars; to cows, sheep and people. (this offered more than the pleasant sensation of riding along smooth tarmac passing one car every 10minutes or so... But also allowed us to realise that even at this speed we could beat humans and all manner of slow moving livestock... Excellent our lives are now complete!).
For the first time in a while we came across petrol stations (that I now associate with cornettos) but also discovered that this type of petrol station only serves food for cars :-(
So we plodded and watched the landscape turn from patches of green to cactus trees and dry yellow grassy fields, every so often you'd find one on fire to provide fertiliser (either that or the farmers are very clumsy smokers in these parts!). And once in a while a small village would spring out of nowhere...the first at around 3km was the self proclaimed "home of the trout" celebrated by a statue that I shall name "larger than life man holding giant trout on slab of rock in centre of square"...interesting because as far as I can see there is no water let alone streams for miles... Don't they know they live in a mountain dessert?!! Oh well a very pleasant village with lovely people cheering us along with the standard casual racism we're now accustomed to (hey gringos... Mamma gringos... Gringita... Gringo... Vamos...).
The next village appeared below us as few km later giving us a birds eye plan view of the school and surrounding buildings... Surprisingly modern.
Soon 7km had passed, as had the villages and signs of habitation and it started to feel very deserted and beautiful. Our only company seemed to be the sloping fields and precariously balanced tractors... Ant and I were both in our element absolutely loving the journey and feeling strong after our almost rest day yesterday.
Then at 10km (and over half way up the climb) we approached 3700m and my head went down... A blue fabricated new building appeared out of nowhere, set upon the perfect concrete slab for the remains of our breakfast pastries and lie down... I literally felt like I'd sank into a beautiful feather bed, and it took some encouragement from Ant to get me moving again.
Afraid that my headache, down spirit and shortness of breath were remnants of my passed ailments we took it easy (later realising they were the affects of altitude when Ant was struck with similar sensations at 4100m) and the next 5km went incredibly slowly (though we were still traveling at the same speed when your head drops minutes seem like hours).
Ant was doing his best to convince me not to take a break every 100m or so as he has one eye on the time (we wanted to get back down the other side of this rocky lump before dark), but at 15km and about 3900m I won and we stopped to take photos and have a cereal bar on the promise it would just be a 2minute pit stop... At this point I would like to thank the Italian cyclist who drove passed with his family in a car... Stopped the car... Ran to us and excitedly demanded photos of us, with us... Then chatted enthusiastically about our adventure... He was in awe as he is just a road race cyclist at home... After about 5minutes his wife (probably bored...) Shouted out the window in feisty Italian and he was reluctantly dragged back into the car... And I was reluctantly dragged bag up the mountain.
" Just another two hair pins Stew and it gets flatter" said the cycle touring optimist.
The cycle touring sceptic of course knew better... Just as we hit what we thought was the summit, we realised that the "flatter" section was actually only averagely flat... Steep down followed by steep up... More mentally than physically sapping at this point... And Ant had reached his 4000m altitude limit so neither of us was in a motivational state...
... And then it came... The top of the world... What a view!!! The expanse of mountains for miles and miles and miles, and we'd got to the top of the pass... Wow just wow! Spectacular. That's invigorating enough to fuel the rest of the day's cycling.
Time for a photo or two, then wrap up warm for the 45km descent...
200m into the descent and i started singing in a lack of altitude breathy fashion... After all I was "on top of the world looking down on creation and the only explanation I could find, was the love that I've found ever since you've been around, your love's put me at the top of the world"...
Then whoosh whoosh whoosh down the other side, and feeling the frozen air (stark contrast to the equatorial midday sun you feel when standing still)... Man we felt alive by the time we reached the bottom.
What a day... And then it came... The inevitable suburban sprawl, dust, pollution, traffic and mean 7km trudge uphill to the centre of the city... It was my turn to get on front wheel and drag Ant through this (if there one thing that gets him down its cities)... So we trudged onwards and upwards and after asking some very shocked women for directions to the centre of the city, we found a hotel and the central plaza.
With the promise of hot water (I refer you to my next post for more on this) a yummy dinner (man oh man chicken and steak never tasted so good) and an early bedtime... We were ready to psych ourselves up for a similar (if not slightly harder) day tomorrow...
Wow what a day... We thought it couldn't get any better when we got a hot shower last night, but it appears it can.
We set out early for a breakfast of kings (apple pastries by the dozen!), so we were on the road fully fueled by 9am. I'd had a day now to mentally prepare for the day ahead and had gone through all sorts of horrible scenarios, so was feeling positive (mind games... It can't possibly be as bad as i think it will be!). With cloud above us to offer some protection from the Sun we quickly found our (very slow paced!) rhythm. At 5-6km/h we knew we had at least 4hours ahead of us to cover the 20km of shear uphill.
The first 5km came and went fairly quickly, we were strong enough to manage conversations and rode side by side on a fairly quiet road. It was super interesting to see the town change to suburban sprawl, then to mud huts, and the road traffic change from tuk tuks and cars; to cows, sheep and people. (this offered more than the pleasant sensation of riding along smooth tarmac passing one car every 10minutes or so... But also allowed us to realise that even at this speed we could beat humans and all manner of slow moving livestock... Excellent our lives are now complete!).
For the first time in a while we came across petrol stations (that I now associate with cornettos) but also discovered that this type of petrol station only serves food for cars :-(
So we plodded and watched the landscape turn from patches of green to cactus trees and dry yellow grassy fields, every so often you'd find one on fire to provide fertiliser (either that or the farmers are very clumsy smokers in these parts!). And once in a while a small village would spring out of nowhere...the first at around 3km was the self proclaimed "home of the trout" celebrated by a statue that I shall name "larger than life man holding giant trout on slab of rock in centre of square"...interesting because as far as I can see there is no water let alone streams for miles... Don't they know they live in a mountain dessert?!! Oh well a very pleasant village with lovely people cheering us along with the standard casual racism we're now accustomed to (hey gringos... Mamma gringos... Gringita... Gringo... Vamos...).
The next village appeared below us as few km later giving us a birds eye plan view of the school and surrounding buildings... Surprisingly modern.
Soon 7km had passed, as had the villages and signs of habitation and it started to feel very deserted and beautiful. Our only company seemed to be the sloping fields and precariously balanced tractors... Ant and I were both in our element absolutely loving the journey and feeling strong after our almost rest day yesterday.
Then at 10km (and over half way up the climb) we approached 3700m and my head went down... A blue fabricated new building appeared out of nowhere, set upon the perfect concrete slab for the remains of our breakfast pastries and lie down... I literally felt like I'd sank into a beautiful feather bed, and it took some encouragement from Ant to get me moving again.
Afraid that my headache, down spirit and shortness of breath were remnants of my passed ailments we took it easy (later realising they were the affects of altitude when Ant was struck with similar sensations at 4100m) and the next 5km went incredibly slowly (though we were still traveling at the same speed when your head drops minutes seem like hours).
Ant was doing his best to convince me not to take a break every 100m or so as he has one eye on the time (we wanted to get back down the other side of this rocky lump before dark), but at 15km and about 3900m I won and we stopped to take photos and have a cereal bar on the promise it would just be a 2minute pit stop... At this point I would like to thank the Italian cyclist who drove passed with his family in a car... Stopped the car... Ran to us and excitedly demanded photos of us, with us... Then chatted enthusiastically about our adventure... He was in awe as he is just a road race cyclist at home... After about 5minutes his wife (probably bored...) Shouted out the window in feisty Italian and he was reluctantly dragged back into the car... And I was reluctantly dragged bag up the mountain.
" Just another two hair pins Stew and it gets flatter" said the cycle touring optimist.
The cycle touring sceptic of course knew better... Just as we hit what we thought was the summit, we realised that the "flatter" section was actually only averagely flat... Steep down followed by steep up... More mentally than physically sapping at this point... And Ant had reached his 4000m altitude limit so neither of us was in a motivational state...
... And then it came... The top of the world... What a view!!! The expanse of mountains for miles and miles and miles, and we'd got to the top of the pass... Wow just wow! Spectacular. That's invigorating enough to fuel the rest of the day's cycling.
Time for a photo or two, then wrap up warm for the 45km descent...
200m into the descent and i started singing in a lack of altitude breathy fashion... After all I was "on top of the world looking down on creation and the only explanation I could find, was the love that I've found ever since you've been around, your love's put me at the top of the world"...
Then whoosh whoosh whoosh down the other side, and feeling the frozen air (stark contrast to the equatorial midday sun you feel when standing still)... Man we felt alive by the time we reached the bottom.
What a day... And then it came... The inevitable suburban sprawl, dust, pollution, traffic and mean 7km trudge uphill to the centre of the city... It was my turn to get on front wheel and drag Ant through this (if there one thing that gets him down its cities)... So we trudged onwards and upwards and after asking some very shocked women for directions to the centre of the city, we found a hotel and the central plaza.
With the promise of hot water (I refer you to my next post for more on this) a yummy dinner (man oh man chicken and steak never tasted so good) and an early bedtime... We were ready to psych ourselves up for a similar (if not slightly harder) day tomorrow...
Wednesday 10 August 2016
Uripa and Hotel Chakas ... mmmm hotel
Uripa is town bigger than Chincheros but not better for it. So much development going on, and much more of an urban feel (not the cute vibe of last night, so we're pleased we stayed there for our anniversary). But this does mean it has a luxury (in our eyes at least) hotel that has the most amazing power shower, warm clean bedding, cable (to watch olympics!), WiFi, and a roast chicken shop... We are literally in heaven.
So bring on tomorrow and the mountain climb...
Xx
So bring on tomorrow and the mountain climb...
Xx
Tuesday 9 August 2016
Day 10 Chincheros to Uripa (7km)
Yep, I know... What lazy monsters we are... But we've just had a super lovely and relaxed morning, Ant laid in, I enjoyed breakfast and its nearly midday so we'll just do a tiny bit of cycling to give our (my) legs a rest then hopefully find a hotel in the next town. An almost, but well needed, nearly rest day before the bug climb ahead :-)
Day 9 - Ocras to Chincheros (Monday 8th August, 55km)
Wow what a start to the day, nearly 20km of 4% downhill, absolutely amazing to swirl down from the top to bottom of a mountain. So beautiful and such fun. I guess the next few weeks are going to be about cycling up for a day followed by an hour or two down... Might make it worth it.
Ant is in his element today, loved the down and really fuelled him mentally to tackle the looming uphill slogg.
The beautiful sweeping down was followed by 20km of rolling hills (much more like UK cycling, some ups some downs to give you a rest) and much easier to feel like you're making progress on... Ant and I had smiles on our faces the whole morning (nearly 40km under our belt and it was only 11am!!).
And then we turned left and noticed three things happening... 1) we'd dropped to nearly 2000m which meant we were cycling stronger with the oxygen rich air (imagine what we'd be like at sea level!) 2) we were low enough for the return of the most evil beasty, the sand fly, incentive enough to get back above 3000m and away from the buggers 3) we were cycling up.. And up ... And up... (yes I've had the Coldplay song on repeat not always in my head... Sometimes I've had the energy to sing it... Poor Ant!)
For some reason the start of this ascent hit me hard mentally... I think it was the supreme joy of going at 20+km/h all morning and actually making progress, followed by the return to working incredibly hard for just 5-7km/h and the monotony of being on the bike and churning the wheels, knowing this was your lot for the next 3-4 hours. I was so grateful that the downhill had the opposite effect on Ant... "come on Stewie this is what we pay to get an amazing morning like this morning, if we get to the top of this we have a 40km descent... That's over an hour of pure joy". Cycle touring optimist strikes again! How he did this on his own is just amazing... I couldn't.
We tried (the surprisingly fairly standard practice of) holding onto a truck... They drive slowly passed you and make a clenching fist sign to illustrate you're good to grab on... Although fun for about 100m it's gonna take some getting used to... And unfortunately a bit more arm strength and guts from me. I dropped the truck around the first corner (surprisingly the fear of the truck corner was bigger than the fear of the hill) but I can see how this might be a useful technique once we get to grips with it.
Once we caught up with Jan (who we discovered lasted a whole km on the truck once it dropped us) and had a little rest and bite to eat, I felt much more refreshed and started plugging uphill with a bit more mental strength.
It was also super fun listening to Ant and Jan chat about life and work... Belgian government employees get up to 5 years of paid sabbatical in their working life, 450€ a week during the leave, theory being to avoid burnout and promote enjoyment of the job. Figure they get more from employees in the long run.
So the 15km and 1000m ascent into Chincheros came and went and we found a sort of shopping mall style food court without the shops but with incredibly smiley happy people who made us sign a visitors book(!!?!!). An amazing and much needed lunch menu (less than 10soles (that's like a couple of pounds!) for: soup and stewed chicken, rice and potatoes ... Or fried fish... But don't have the fish(!!?)...and Cool mint tea) and some freshly squeezed pineapple juice from the juice store and we were almost ready to rock and roll and get the next uphill 7km under our belt...
...but it was 3pm and this is a cute town with good looking hotels... The lure of a relaxed evening, warm shower, tv, and comfy bed on our anniversary is simply too much. We bail after not even 500m, say our goodbyes to Jan and cycle back to town to find hotel, that's almost perfect. A cute garden with hose pioe to wash bikes, clean sheets, functioning WiFi, a tv that almost works, our own bathroom with functioning sink and toilet... And a cold shower, despite the promise of agua caliente. I'm ashamed to say my cold shower bravado slipped away a little after the third one in a row, but as Lucy says, the next time we find hit water will be all the sweeter for it :)
After a lovely chill out by me and some route checking by Ant we strolled into town and found a church service in the town square. We went in for about 20min and said a few prayers... Mostly thankful that we are able to do this and asking for the strength to keep going, and praying for everyone at home... This was amazingly uplifting. We then found the most tasty roast chicken and chips shop... The perfect anniversary meal (of course Ant just had chips... A shed load of them... Whilst I munched my way through a quarter of a chicken under the beady eyes of the cutest dog ever).
So not the typical first anniversary celebrations, but enjoyable none the same.
I can't say I'm looking forward to tomorrow's cycling... 26km up to 4200m... But the 40km descent to the next town has to be worth it right??!!
Wish us luck (or just wish for friendly pick up trucks to help us out, or nice lunch stops, or hot water...!!)
Tons of love and hugs to all you warm shower folk at home (I'm not bitter really)
Xxxx
Monday 8 August 2016
Day 8 - Camping to Ocros (55km Sunday 7th August)
If yesterday was what cycle touring dreams are made of, today was more like sleepwalking on an uphill treadmill. Although waking up refreshed to a picturesque mountain scene at >3200m altitude makes you feel alive, the first 5km cycling on an empty stomach straight through the 'we can get breakfast there' town, because it had no breakfast, shops or supplies at all, quickly changes your mood. As hanger strikes and the road starts to go from the gentle rolling ups and downs that brought much relief this morning, to the long and winding >6% ups, we were eventually greeted by the next village... a closed shop and a bunch of VERY inquisitive kids. Things we have learnt over the last few days... 1-Closed shops will usually open for a loco gringo on a bike looking desperate 2- inquisitive kids will always count and be fascinated by the number of gears on your bike, then they will get their friends to check it to be sure... A great way for me to learn to count to 11 in Spanish then be able to say... And look 2 on the front too!). Armed with some stale bread, stale pastries (that taste exactly the same as the stale bread despite their attractive looks), juice but no water (grrr!!) we felt slightly more prepared for the day ahead.
After a small hissy fit from me (because I couldn't find the baño they said was around the corner and got chased by dogs, pigs and chickens trying to find it... Yes this meant I cycled off down the mountain in tears... So grown up!! Poor Jan and Ant didn't quite know what to do when they caught up with me and asked what was wrong "I got chased by chickens"... Ant was trying not to laugh!) we were finally on our way.
As for the rest of the day a very tough stint if ups and downs, with a lunch stop to break it up (lomi saltado of course... Fairly cold too), a very kind family offered to take us and the bikes half way up the 16km 1000m climb in their pick up truck... I think I love them!
Good job they did as even the last 7km were tough to handle, creeping up at 5km/h panting heavily as we rose to 4200m. But what a sight at the top... Even better for having earned it!
And then wrap up warm for the 25km descent at 4-5% gradient... An hour of pure pleasure! And in our minds Ocras will be a town that brings us hotels and restaurants a plenty... Well at least we found the only hostel in town that doesn't require everyone to share the floor and the next-door neighbours bathroom... We had our own room and a functioning shower and toilet... Ice cold water of course! But at least the only restaurant in town is a good one! Ocras... I don't think we'll be coming back... No offence meant, but you're not the dreamy fluffy hotel we had in mind! Though Ant did charm the young ladies of the town with his volley ball skills.
Let's see what tomorrow brings
X
After a small hissy fit from me (because I couldn't find the baño they said was around the corner and got chased by dogs, pigs and chickens trying to find it... Yes this meant I cycled off down the mountain in tears... So grown up!! Poor Jan and Ant didn't quite know what to do when they caught up with me and asked what was wrong "I got chased by chickens"... Ant was trying not to laugh!) we were finally on our way.
As for the rest of the day a very tough stint if ups and downs, with a lunch stop to break it up (lomi saltado of course... Fairly cold too), a very kind family offered to take us and the bikes half way up the 16km 1000m climb in their pick up truck... I think I love them!
Good job they did as even the last 7km were tough to handle, creeping up at 5km/h panting heavily as we rose to 4200m. But what a sight at the top... Even better for having earned it!
And then wrap up warm for the 25km descent at 4-5% gradient... An hour of pure pleasure! And in our minds Ocras will be a town that brings us hotels and restaurants a plenty... Well at least we found the only hostel in town that doesn't require everyone to share the floor and the next-door neighbours bathroom... We had our own room and a functioning shower and toilet... Ice cold water of course! But at least the only restaurant in town is a good one! Ocras... I don't think we'll be coming back... No offence meant, but you're not the dreamy fluffy hotel we had in mind! Though Ant did charm the young ladies of the town with his volley ball skills.
Let's see what tomorrow brings
X
Day 7 - Ayacucho to camping somewhere on a mountain (Saturday 6th August...40km)
Oh man what a 40km that was! We are all totally wiped, but an awesome day's riding and about 1000m ascent. We were treated to some beautiful (and well earned views) and a very cute small traffic shy road, that gifted us roast pork an potatoes at exactly lunch time... AMAZING!
Jan cycled with us today, complete with all his GPS maps and months of planning.
Ant (the Cycle touring optimist as nicknamed by Jan) found us a beautiful camp spot, just as we thought our legs could carry us no more. It even had a shower! (well a very considerately though completely accidentally left on hose pipe to water a field that left a mini waterfall over the rocks by our pitch). One of my redeeming features I'm proud to say, is the way in which I embrace a cold shower... Even washed my hair... Though the farmer (who we thought had vanished) was 'treated?!!' to a view that neither of us gad bargained for!! Ant perhaps sensibly spent less time getting hypothermia in the shower, which meant he was much more competent when it came to cooking our gourmet supper of choco bear porridge. (If you've never tried choco bear porridge, DON'T... It's only redeeming feature is the cute bears on the packet...now that's marketing for you!). We also finally ate the green fruit of doom (aptly named by Ant as a kind(!!?!) lady came running out of her restaurant to give it to us a few days ago... A true Peruvian delicacy... A few kilos of greeny goodness... That Ant had to carry!!) and it was actually more tasty than what choco bear had to offer... Though very sweet.
So bed at 8pm after watching the sun set over the mountains and seeing the stars in all their glory.
A good and well earned day!
Jan cycled with us today, complete with all his GPS maps and months of planning.
Ant (the Cycle touring optimist as nicknamed by Jan) found us a beautiful camp spot, just as we thought our legs could carry us no more. It even had a shower! (well a very considerately though completely accidentally left on hose pipe to water a field that left a mini waterfall over the rocks by our pitch). One of my redeeming features I'm proud to say, is the way in which I embrace a cold shower... Even washed my hair... Though the farmer (who we thought had vanished) was 'treated?!!' to a view that neither of us gad bargained for!! Ant perhaps sensibly spent less time getting hypothermia in the shower, which meant he was much more competent when it came to cooking our gourmet supper of choco bear porridge. (If you've never tried choco bear porridge, DON'T... It's only redeeming feature is the cute bears on the packet...now that's marketing for you!). We also finally ate the green fruit of doom (aptly named by Ant as a kind(!!?!) lady came running out of her restaurant to give it to us a few days ago... A true Peruvian delicacy... A few kilos of greeny goodness... That Ant had to carry!!) and it was actually more tasty than what choco bear had to offer... Though very sweet.
So bed at 8pm after watching the sun set over the mountains and seeing the stars in all their glory.
A good and well earned day!
Ayacucho
If you haven't been there go, if you've been there before go again...
As we cycled the 25km downhill into the town (you didn't think we'd do THAT in a car did you the first well earned downhill!) the outskirts looked like a sprawling developing city... But it's a sprawling developing city with a really cute square and a lovely colonial feel.
It's a good job we met Jan on the way in who wanted to cycle together tomorrow, or we might never have left!
So we'll enjoy the sunset over the mountains from our restaurant balcony, enjoy the almost hot shower, and get psyched up fo the hilly road ahead...
As we cycled the 25km downhill into the town (you didn't think we'd do THAT in a car did you the first well earned downhill!) the outskirts looked like a sprawling developing city... But it's a sprawling developing city with a really cute square and a lovely colonial feel.
It's a good job we met Jan on the way in who wanted to cycle together tomorrow, or we might never have left!
So we'll enjoy the sunset over the mountains from our restaurant balcony, enjoy the almost hot shower, and get psyched up fo the hilly road ahead...
Too much fish will kill you... Friday 5th August
Huyatara to Ayacucho (in a taxi - said very quietly so Ant can't hear)
So Ant thinks this is cheating and perhaps it is... Though my take on it is we are here for an adventure, not a race, and man oh man if you want an adventure try to organise anything in Peru. The only certainty is that nothing is at all certain! After an hour of standing at the bus station waiting for our pre arranged car, realising said car had probably decided to do anything today other than take us to Ayacucho, negotiating another car via several phone calls and price haggling, here we are on the road again at about 10* the speed we are used to!
Big Al is having the ride of his life clinging on to the roof by his ears, whilst Jamling (clearly the boss in this situation) is riding in luxury next to me, looking at me with a little disdain... He keeps whispering under his breath (you know we didn't have to lose our dignity like this on the last trip) I don't think he likes me right now and he's annoyed we've taken his front paw off so he can't even make a run for it... he's hankering back to the good old Canada to Panama days... And yes I do feel somewhat responsible for our current predicament... But I mostly blame the fish!! (shudder... I'm never eating fish again!!)
On that note Ant and I made up a song that I will now share with you... Feel free to sing along...
"I'm just the pieces of the Em I used to be, too many hills are raining down on me, I'm trying to sing a song, but the altitude is strong, and I need the loo...
Too much fish will kill you, just as sure as none at all, it kills the cycle power within you, you breath and scream and ball, your heading for disaster just a victim of the grime, too much fish will kill you, every time!".
(whilst I'm writing I'm also super impressed at Ant's Spanish... He's holding a half hour long conversation with our driver and I'm super proud... He's been working really hard at it... See this journey is preparation in more ways than one... Getting me back to cycling fitness, getting altitude training gradually, and practicing Spanish... I'm starting to feel less guilty!... Well just a bit less...eek!)
Adios amigos, asta luegos
Xxx
(like my cycling my Spanish is much worse than Ant's!!)
So Ant thinks this is cheating and perhaps it is... Though my take on it is we are here for an adventure, not a race, and man oh man if you want an adventure try to organise anything in Peru. The only certainty is that nothing is at all certain! After an hour of standing at the bus station waiting for our pre arranged car, realising said car had probably decided to do anything today other than take us to Ayacucho, negotiating another car via several phone calls and price haggling, here we are on the road again at about 10* the speed we are used to!
Big Al is having the ride of his life clinging on to the roof by his ears, whilst Jamling (clearly the boss in this situation) is riding in luxury next to me, looking at me with a little disdain... He keeps whispering under his breath (you know we didn't have to lose our dignity like this on the last trip) I don't think he likes me right now and he's annoyed we've taken his front paw off so he can't even make a run for it... he's hankering back to the good old Canada to Panama days... And yes I do feel somewhat responsible for our current predicament... But I mostly blame the fish!! (shudder... I'm never eating fish again!!)
On that note Ant and I made up a song that I will now share with you... Feel free to sing along...
"I'm just the pieces of the Em I used to be, too many hills are raining down on me, I'm trying to sing a song, but the altitude is strong, and I need the loo...
Too much fish will kill you, just as sure as none at all, it kills the cycle power within you, you breath and scream and ball, your heading for disaster just a victim of the grime, too much fish will kill you, every time!".
(whilst I'm writing I'm also super impressed at Ant's Spanish... He's holding a half hour long conversation with our driver and I'm super proud... He's been working really hard at it... See this journey is preparation in more ways than one... Getting me back to cycling fitness, getting altitude training gradually, and practicing Spanish... I'm starting to feel less guilty!... Well just a bit less...eek!)
Adios amigos, asta luegos
Xxx
(like my cycling my Spanish is much worse than Ant's!!)
Thursday 4 August 2016
Huyatara and our new friends
Despite our initial sadness that were not going to be able to cycle for a few days, today has quite simply been awesome! And its only 4pm our time!
The day started with a very successful hunt for breakfast (desayuno) which yielded bread, cheese, cookies, pineapple juice and tea de cocoa (apparently this actually leaves traces of cocaine in your body for 2days, but is awesome for altitude... So they say... Will try our hardest not apply for any jobs in the near future!)
Then we wondered around the mountain town and found a viewing point, and two lovely young peruvians (Yeraldine and Inna) who we got chatting to. A few photos later and the four of us had hopped into a car to drive to the inka ruins at the top of a mountain (about 45min away) at Yeraldine's recommendation. What a wonderful spare of the moment trip that took us to such a beautiful place (and inadvertently helped with the altitude training at 3800m!).
So we're now back at the ranch chilling for a bit listening to the dude in the room above us play some awesome acoustic guitar... The best music we've heard so far!
On that note (ha ha!)... Peru is NEVER quiet... Always hustle, bustle, chitter chatter, taxi horns (these play all manner of what can only be described as ice cream van music), music with very loud base that sounds like a party, but is actually just some dude with a ghetto blaster and a poor taste in music... And thus this latest development the nicest of them all...
Emma and Ant Zen out whilst listening to soft guitar.
Hugs to all xxx
The day started with a very successful hunt for breakfast (desayuno) which yielded bread, cheese, cookies, pineapple juice and tea de cocoa (apparently this actually leaves traces of cocaine in your body for 2days, but is awesome for altitude... So they say... Will try our hardest not apply for any jobs in the near future!)
Then we wondered around the mountain town and found a viewing point, and two lovely young peruvians (Yeraldine and Inna) who we got chatting to. A few photos later and the four of us had hopped into a car to drive to the inka ruins at the top of a mountain (about 45min away) at Yeraldine's recommendation. What a wonderful spare of the moment trip that took us to such a beautiful place (and inadvertently helped with the altitude training at 3800m!).
So we're now back at the ranch chilling for a bit listening to the dude in the room above us play some awesome acoustic guitar... The best music we've heard so far!
On that note (ha ha!)... Peru is NEVER quiet... Always hustle, bustle, chitter chatter, taxi horns (these play all manner of what can only be described as ice cream van music), music with very loud base that sounds like a party, but is actually just some dude with a ghetto blaster and a poor taste in music... And thus this latest development the nicest of them all...
Emma and Ant Zen out whilst listening to soft guitar.
Hugs to all xxx
Day 6 - oh day 6 what did you do to us!!! huancano to huyatara (should have been 50km)
Wednesday 3rd August...
Man oh man that was tough. So it seems that when one is on the road to recovery from a tummy bug, one should not get on the road to huyatara... Cycling 25km, equatorial Sun, altitude... That was enough for me! After a long Lunch stop (more chicken, rice and chips obviously!) we realised we'd not be able to realistically do the next 25km and 1000m ascent before dark, so decided to test the idea of Hitch riding...
Turns out this is not as easy as some bloggers have led me to believe! Understandable I suppose, two loco gringos with two massive and loaded bikes not the easiest of cargo...
those willing to help already had a car full of family and bags... Those able to help... (yes pick up truck owners I'm talking to you)... Just waved and beeped to cheer us along!!
In desperation (and I'm still not entirely sure how this worked!) we flagged down a lorry, who told us we were cheeky, but this meant the car behind the lorry (full to the brim with children) were keen to stop and help... But clearly couldn't, which in turn created a mini traffic jam that let me accost a pick up truck and tell him we were going to put our bikes in the back and he was going to drive to huyarara... Surprisingly this worked!
we crammed Jamling, Alan and Ant into the back of the truck, and I hopped into the back seat somehow managing to communicate enough to make the guys chuckle and offer me many oranges whilst teaching me Mexican songs... Ant had a less fun journey, cramping up and clinging on... He seems to get the raw end of these deals!
an adventure none the less... So here we are in Huyatara, fed watered and very happy to have a home for the night.
Or rather for two nights. We've decided to stay here at 2600m to acclimatise a bit more before going higher. Will probably try to tae a bus to Auacucho in a day or two, again prioritising acclimatising over cycling for now... Though there's a cheeky 40km downhill descent into the town that we might take as payback!!
Love and hugs as always
xxxxx
Man oh man that was tough. So it seems that when one is on the road to recovery from a tummy bug, one should not get on the road to huyatara... Cycling 25km, equatorial Sun, altitude... That was enough for me! After a long Lunch stop (more chicken, rice and chips obviously!) we realised we'd not be able to realistically do the next 25km and 1000m ascent before dark, so decided to test the idea of Hitch riding...
Turns out this is not as easy as some bloggers have led me to believe! Understandable I suppose, two loco gringos with two massive and loaded bikes not the easiest of cargo...
those willing to help already had a car full of family and bags... Those able to help... (yes pick up truck owners I'm talking to you)... Just waved and beeped to cheer us along!!
In desperation (and I'm still not entirely sure how this worked!) we flagged down a lorry, who told us we were cheeky, but this meant the car behind the lorry (full to the brim with children) were keen to stop and help... But clearly couldn't, which in turn created a mini traffic jam that let me accost a pick up truck and tell him we were going to put our bikes in the back and he was going to drive to huyarara... Surprisingly this worked!
we crammed Jamling, Alan and Ant into the back of the truck, and I hopped into the back seat somehow managing to communicate enough to make the guys chuckle and offer me many oranges whilst teaching me Mexican songs... Ant had a less fun journey, cramping up and clinging on... He seems to get the raw end of these deals!
an adventure none the less... So here we are in Huyatara, fed watered and very happy to have a home for the night.
Or rather for two nights. We've decided to stay here at 2600m to acclimatise a bit more before going higher. Will probably try to tae a bus to Auacucho in a day or two, again prioritising acclimatising over cycling for now... Though there's a cheeky 40km downhill descent into the town that we might take as payback!!
Love and hugs as always
xxxxx
Tuesday 2 August 2016
Day 5 - Paracas to Tambo Colorado to Huancano (25km cycling) Tuesday 2nd August
Today was the day that we escaped :-)
...and...
1- successfully located a taxi happy and able to fit us and the bikes
2- (Ant) successfully communicated with the taxi agreeing a final location and price
3- survived the taxi ride (very good driver)
4- (Emma) spoke Spanish to the taxi driver and kept calling Ant her wife... Taxi driver looked Ant up and down several times... Confused...
5- (Emma) accidentally dressed in West ham colours to look around the Inca Ruins
6- (Ant) decided Pompei does ruins better (!!!!)
7- (Emma's tummy) survived the 25km ascent into the Andes, fuelled by sweet green tea... Mmm
8- took 3 hours to cycle 25km (There's a reason you don't see Froome drinking green tea on climbs!)
9- arrived in cute town Huancano, greeted by friendly smiley faces that silently said (what are you guys doing you loco gringos!)
10- (Ant) spent about half an hour talking to workmen outside the hotel getting scope on good routes, where we've been, where we're going... That he supports Arsenal... WTF?!!!... that's grounds for annulment right? ... I suppose I'll forgive him as he did carry almost all the bags today and found out about hotels from the dude...
11- finally got into the hotel after the went to the shop to stock up the rooms, and its kinda cool
12- discovered we don't like sand flies... Not at all
13- discovered the only food here is fried chicken and chips
14- but overwhelmingly discovered how amazingly nice and lovely the people of huancano are... The kids just want to play, and ask us questions and giggle, and hide Ants water while he's not looking... Like literally ran into the shop, grabbed his water ran outside hid it by a tree and started giggling... No malice at all... Just a game... Super cute!!
15- (because its a nice number) we found cards and discovered I like to win... At all costs :-)
sleepy time now... Hopefully tomorrow will bring more power to my legs (and less fried chicken!)
adios amigos xxx
...and...
1- successfully located a taxi happy and able to fit us and the bikes
2- (Ant) successfully communicated with the taxi agreeing a final location and price
3- survived the taxi ride (very good driver)
4- (Emma) spoke Spanish to the taxi driver and kept calling Ant her wife... Taxi driver looked Ant up and down several times... Confused...
5- (Emma) accidentally dressed in West ham colours to look around the Inca Ruins
6- (Ant) decided Pompei does ruins better (!!!!)
7- (Emma's tummy) survived the 25km ascent into the Andes, fuelled by sweet green tea... Mmm
8- took 3 hours to cycle 25km (There's a reason you don't see Froome drinking green tea on climbs!)
9- arrived in cute town Huancano, greeted by friendly smiley faces that silently said (what are you guys doing you loco gringos!)
10- (Ant) spent about half an hour talking to workmen outside the hotel getting scope on good routes, where we've been, where we're going... That he supports Arsenal... WTF?!!!... that's grounds for annulment right? ... I suppose I'll forgive him as he did carry almost all the bags today and found out about hotels from the dude...
11- finally got into the hotel after the went to the shop to stock up the rooms, and its kinda cool
12- discovered we don't like sand flies... Not at all
13- discovered the only food here is fried chicken and chips
14- but overwhelmingly discovered how amazingly nice and lovely the people of huancano are... The kids just want to play, and ask us questions and giggle, and hide Ants water while he's not looking... Like literally ran into the shop, grabbed his water ran outside hid it by a tree and started giggling... No malice at all... Just a game... Super cute!!
15- (because its a nice number) we found cards and discovered I like to win... At all costs :-)
sleepy time now... Hopefully tomorrow will bring more power to my legs (and less fried chicken!)
adios amigos xxx
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