Huaraz, Peru to Ayacucho, Peru (9-10 thru 9-26) 12,922 miles!!!!

 

Andes Mountains!!! Peru has been a country of many challenges!!! Not only has it been physically challenging, but it had been challenging us socially and our sanity was fading away quickly. About the time we were ready to throw in the towel and say, “forget this, lets bus out of here”, things seemed to suddenly change. The hot dry desert scenery got more exciting, friends came into the picture with a new perspective, and the local people somehow became much more friendly and helpful!!! Like they say, traveling is just meeting one challenge after another or solving one problem after another. (This certainly has been the case in Peru, except we call them frustrations here!)Ralph topped out at 16,000´

 

 

 

After a rest day in Huarez, we traveled southeast into Parque Nevado de Ruri.  The most awesome National Park in all of Peru just happened to be closed to vehicles (except 1 combi per day to bring supplies to the local inhabitants that graze sheep there).  So consequently, we had some of the highest snow-capped glacier peaks in all of the Andes (the heart of the Cordillera Blanca) completely to ourselves and a really well maintained gravel road to lead us thru!!!!  We climbed from 10,000′ in Huarez to 16,000′ at the highest pass, had 2 nights camping with spectacular glacier covered peaks looming over us and the bonus of a full moon which made it absolutely spectacular!  We drank what the locals recommend, (coca tea), to combat altitude sickness and keep headaches away.  Pat felt the altitude one day and Ralph took a turn the next day, but we made it slowly up and over with not too much pain.  (This is now the highest we have biked on our trip!)

Awesome views from 16,000´!!!

 

 

 

 

We climbed from one large basin to the next, all of them home to a few sheep and cattle herders that lived in tiny stone huts with thatched roofs that looked like Hobbit houses.  An interesting note about National parks and reserves in Latin America:  The government unfortunately allows grazing of animals and allows people to live in the national park to do so, making it nowhere near the pristine experience that it is in the U.S.  We consequently saw no sign of wildlife!  But around every corner was a new view of yet more stunning jagged, glacier covered peaks.  The mountains here reach upwards of 20,000′, so even at 16,000′  the peaks were still looming  high above us!  The views of distant peaks from these passes was literally breath-taking (in more ways than one) and the scenery was the most beautiful of our entire trip!    This is ironic because the Peruvian countryside to this point had not impressed us much and  our expectations of Peru had been way above what we had seen thus far. 

  

 

not a good way to farm

 

 

 

 

 

After several days in the high country, we dropped hugely, but still rode at 10,000′ to 13,000′ for the next several days and the scenery changed dramatically back to the dry, arid, grossly over-grazed and over-farmed mountainsides.  It is amazing the slopes the Peruvian farmers attempt to graze animals and grow crops on.  Most fields are from 1/10 to 1 acre, are in very poor soil and are on between 15 to 50 degree slopes!  Most fields are tilled by hand with a hoe or shovel, a few by ox-driven single-bottom wooden plows and are also harvested by hand (many people using a knife to cut the grain).  All of these farming practices would be unimaginable to the American farmer, but are very commonplace in Latin America.  This type of farming, along with the logging has taken a huge toll on the land over the centuries.  The only trees remaining on the steep landscape are the few Eucalyptus trees that are planted for lumber.  All this leaves a mostly barren, stark braised landscape which is a major problem which they seem to have not attempted to solve.  We eventually dropped 6500′ on the worst rocky, dirt road on this planet for 30 miles with dust-billowing trucks passing us in the moon dust into Huanuco.   (At this point now, we were the dirtiest we have felt yet on this trip! )         

 

We headed south climbing back up (yes, up) to the Altiplano, where we biked the longest stretch of road in the world above 13,000′.  We were on a high desolate plain that rolled along between 13,000′ to 15,000′, with jagged peaks in the distance, for nearly 100 miles.  This was probably the most boring part of our trip so far!.  We eventually made our way to Ayacucho after passing thru Huancayo, La Esmeralda, and Huanta.

We are learning to solve our frustrations here in Peru one by one, thanks to the following friends we have met along this part of our journey!  First of all we met Edward, from Scotland, who has been traveling by bike for a couple of years.  He was carrying a fresh cup of hot coffee at 7 AM (we may have mentioned it before but you can not find coffee before about 9 AM in Latin America and if you do it is usually served about 20 minutes after ordering it and is luke-warm and a weak excuse for coffee ).  Well, he had a life-saving electric heater that is used to heat water in your hotel room!!  We immediately added one of those to our supply of necessary kitchen items!  Next we met a couple from New Zealand at a hostel in Huancayo, Denise and John, who are helping to build an orphanage for a few of the many homeless children in this country.  They re-assured us that they encounter similar frustrations in their work here with the people (i.e. not much value on education, children with no values and no value placed on a person’s time).  Giving to the poor is very hard work and sometimes they are not grateful for it, but we still know you have made a great difference!  What a great gift you have given these people!!!  We also met a couple from the Denver area (was great to talk about our great state!), a traveler from Bozeman (we love and miss that place too!) and a couple from Germany (wonderful people full of great travel stories and experiences).  Recently, we ran into Anna and Alberto, 2 bikers from Spain that we had met 5 months ago in our travels!  We rode a couple days with them thru the dry, hot canyons leading to Ayachucho.  Their companionship came at a difficult time for us and really helped the days go by with much laughter, buckets of water for showers  and great conversations! 

Again, we say what makes traveling great is not only the wonderful scenery of this world but also the people we have met and the friends we’ve made, they all help make our trip all worthwhile!

 

Until next time – bikin’ on!  (Hope you are too!)

Ralph and Pat

 

 

 

 

Vilcabamba, Ecuador to Huaraz, Peru 8-12-08 to 9-9-08

Sometimes we wonder how many Grand Canyons we have biked in and out of or how many Mt. Everests we have biked to the top of if you add up our total elevations so far on this crazy bike trip!  Here is a map of our route so far in Peru!!!!!  This is some of the toughest biking we`ve ever done!!!

          

border crossing from Ecuador to Peru

 

 

 

The border followed a river, so a bridge was our border crossing.  Not much traffic comes this way, so we had to hunt down the immigration official on a back street to get  our passports stamped. We spent our first night in Peru in a very clean hostal in a very dirty small town!  The next morning, at the edge of town, we pedaled past a flock of very large turkeys that were dancing and fluffing their feathers for us!  It was fitting, because that is how we feel about the people in this area we have been biking through.  The people of southern Ecuador and northern Peru seem quite unfriendly.  They will  usually stand and gape – not stare – gape – at us as we pass, rarely responding to our greetings.  If they do respond, it is usually to holler the word most white travelers despise (us included!)  “GRINGO!”  These local people aren’t hostile, just not openly friendly.  We did have 1 boy chase us down though with a gift of a football-sized papaya!  When we offered to pay him, he said “NO, NO, GRATIS!” then ran off to chase his brother down the road and throw another papaya at his head.  We guessed papayas weren’t in very short supply around here!  What a nice gesture!

 

We took a day off at a super nice hotel in San Ignacio – the Gran Hotel.  It was just $21 U.S. including a full breakfast!   It would have been $100 in the U.S. was just as nice and totally spotless!  It became our quiet refuge, where we could relax, do internet, plan the next leg of our trip, all away from the unnervingly, gaping gazes of the northern Peruvians. 

 

 

 

Reflection in rice fields

 

 

 

We spent the night in Chachapoyas, a cool quiet mountain town, at a hostal with a pretty plant-filled courtyard, then on to 3 ½ more days of dirt roads.  We followed the river-valley, now more open, more arid, and much dustier to Liemabamba, then did a 4000′ climb into the cloud-forest to a damp campsite in the fog.  The next morning we did the longest descent of our trip -  a 9000′ drop on a shelf-type switchbacking dirt road.  It took 3 ½ hours to descend!  The views were spectacular, kind of like dropping into the Grand Canyon, but bigger!  As we got lower, the land turned more arid and by the time we got within 2000′ of the river, it was very hot and dry like the Utah desert.  We crossed the river at Balsas, then started a 7500′, 25 mile ascent back up to the high country!  We camped part way up, and while going for water Ralph ran into 2 Peruvian fellows that were descending the road on their way the opposite direction for a week long trip.  They had no panniers or bob trailers, but instead had all their gear in old frame backpacks on their backs!  Now that’s a tough ride! 

 

the long and winding road we just came up!

typical animals-people on the road

thrashing wheat by hand

 

another way they thrash wheat

 

The next day after what seemed to be endless switchbacks, we topped out and had a commanding view all the way to the river we had crossed the day before 7500′ below us! WOW – WHAT HUGE COUNTRY!!! 

 After a day off in Celendin near the rim, we pedaled to Cajamarca and took a couple days off and spent some time at the Banos del Inca hotsprings (where Pat got a ½ hour massage for $7 U.S., great but still not as good as Joy’s massages!).  The next week we biked south on dusty dirt roads through the backcountry.  In places the dust lies 4” deep and in bikers’ terms is called “moon dust”  The landscape is hot, arid scrub.  The people are very poor here and live in adobe or rammed earth huts, eeking out a living on small plots of poorly producing farmland, where they raise small crops of grain or vegetables and have  very small herds of livestock.  The locals will lead their 2 to 5 milk cows and a handful of sheep out to a dry hillside in the morning, then sit there with them the whole day while they graze, then lead them home at night!  Most of the farm work is done by hand – plowing, planting, harvesting – even separating the kernels from the stalks of grain.  Some of the locals are creative though – they lay the stalks of grain out on the road, let the sparse traffic run over it, then scoop up the kernels after they have  been knocked off the stalks!  No one seems to own cars in northern Peru, getting around either by 3 wheel “chariot-like” motorcycle taxi, Toyota station wagon taxi, on the back of farm trucks or by walking for miles on end. 

31 switchbacks down- 24 switchbacks up!nothing but rocks and gray

 

 

The next day we headed south, dropped into hot lowlands and finally hit some beloved pavement.  We rode through river bottoms full of terraced fields flooded to grow rice, miles and miles of rice fields.  It looked very out of place in the arid landscape.  But since every meal in Peru – breakfast, lunch and dinner – is accompanied by a huge portion of rice, God knows they need to grow lots of rice!  We stayed in lowlands several days, following the Rio Utaubamba, then climbed into a gorgeous, tight, rock canyon with sheer rock faces soaring 2000′ to 3000′ straight up on either side  There were a number of rock overhangs which looked like the road crew had tried to bore a tunnel through the rock, but one side fell away.  It was spectacular!  Between Pedro Ruiz and Chahapoyas, we had to wait at a highway construction roadblock.  They told us we’d have to wait until noon (it was 10 AM at the time!)  Well, noon came and went, so did the afternoon.  Finally at 4:00 they informed us that the road would not be open until 6:30!  It is pitch dark by 7 PM, so there was no way we’d  be able to ride the canyon ahead of us 30 miles to the next town, so we got a ride in a potato truck.  The driver informed us they had been stopping traffic here every day, all day!  (The highway crew never even hinted that this was the case – every single day!)

After a day spent relaxing in the hot tub at the hostal, we headed south toward Peru.  The first day we quickly left the pavement behind and started on what was to be 4 ½ days of steep rough dusty dirt roads.  We climbed into Parque  Podocarpus to a lofty campsite near the summit our first night.  From our campsite we had a commanding view of 2 huge valleys, one of which we descended (3600′!) the next morning, then spent the next several days climbing steeply to a summit, then dropping into a hot dry river valley only to climb and drop again and again.  We crossed into Peru just south of Zumba, Ecuador!

31 switchbacks down- 24 switchbacks up!nothing but rocks and gray

tunnels - tunnels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and more tunnels

the most beautiful waterfall on our trip!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We rode past several large-scale gold mines at 10,000 to 12,000′, then descended once again 31 switchbacks to a river below and then up 24 switchbacks on the opposite side, to a village on a ridge high above, then plunged down even deeper into a gargantuan rock canyon, which we followed for some 50 miles.  (Bet you’re getting exhausted just reading this!  We sure were by this point!)  This canyon intersected another mammoth canyon at the dusty little village of Chuquicara.   We climbed some more through the bowels of this canyon for 30 miles on a rough rocky road, to a junction of 2 canyons, then up a very narrow rock canyon, Canyon del Pato.  It has 35 one lane tunnels along a windy, rocky, dusty dirt road.  It finally opened up into a more broad valley where we climbed gradually back up to 10,000′ past the now buried town of Yungay, where 20,000 people got buried in a 1970 massive landslide created by an earthquake!  As a memorial, a huge rose garden now covers the site.  Roses of every  color are tended by local workers.  It is a beautiful memorial to the lives lost in this tragic event!

 We are currently in Huaraz, a town that is on the west side of the Cordillera Blanca, a mountain range that has 50 peaks over 19,000′ covered in glaciers and that white stuff we miss, called snow!  When we leave here, the real climbing will begin!  There are a number of 16,000′ passes in our path!  So, we are busy eating our Wheaties and preparing ourselves for the mountains that are calling us once again!

Ralph having dessert on the plaza- 19,000´peaks in the background!

 

Oh yeah – Ralph has renamed his 100 lb bike “the anchor” and is wondering just how it will feel to lug it up to 16,000′!

 

Until next time, bikin’ On,

Ralph & Pat