Current Location: San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
Distance Cycled to Date: 17,654 km
Average Price Paid for a Bottle of Argentinian Wine: $3 Canadian
Our 'rest' day in Salta seemed to be anything but restful, as we got our rims trued, found a laundrymat to remove the dogfood smell from our socks (though it sure didn't take long for that smell to return!), wrote a blog, put up a photo album, bought groceries, searched for an adaptor so that we could use their crazy electrical outlets in this country, and then had to pick up our bikes and laundry. It might not actually sound like much, but it kept us going from breakfast until after 11 pm, when we finally could sit down and eat some supper. (We're getting into the crazy Argentinian custom of eating supper at what should be way past bedtime. We don't know how they are able to do it here).
We left Salta and headed towards Cafayate, the wine capital of northern Argentina. We were excited to get there and bike through the vineyards, and were suprised at the amazing canyon scenery along the way. As we rode along the river we found ourselves surrounded by red rock walls and spectacular rock formations. As tour buses would pass us with cameras pressed against the windows, we would remind each other just how great it is to be travelling by bicycle and getting to enjoy it all. And then, we'd continue pedaling uphill with our hundred pound bikes...
Cafayate ended up being quite the touristy little town, full of hotels and restaurants and artisan shops. We found ourselves the backyard of a hostel to camp in, and decided to splurge and enjoy a good steak dinner. And wow - was it ever delicious. I don't think we can even describe just how tender, juicy and succulent that steak was, and how it was just so perfectly paired with the 2006 Malbec Reserve. No, we won't be able to give that meal justice at all. But it was fantastic. In hindsight, we should have taken the next day off to explore a vineyard and try to repeat the success of that night´s meal, but instead we got up early and started off again, hoping for another long day of cycling along smooth highways.
It turns out that not every highway in Argentina is great pavement. In fact, as we made our way in the general direction of Córdoba, you would be hard pressed to call the highway pavement in places. But we bounced along, making slightly slower progress than planned. And then after having lunch at a great gas station in Amaicha del Valle (picnic tables, water fountain, and wifi? Yep!) we started a slow, long climb. We had thought once we left Bolivia we were out of the mountains for awhile, but turns out they still have ranges other than the Andes down here. Up up up we went, hoping to camp at the summit but failing to make it there before dark. It was looking a bit dicey as far as campspots go, but before it got too dark and too cold, a nice flat spot opened up, with a path leading down to it from the highway. We were in full view of the road, but for some reason being in Argentina just makes us feel safe.
The next day the poor pavement continued as we made our way up to the summit at over 3000 metres, and then rather than turning into something smooth, it disappeared and turned into gravel! Not what we had hoped for from this downhill. But we just kept going, Bolvian style, bouncing down the washboard, until finally at the town of Tafí del Valle the pavement returned. We decided to stop in the town to use the internet, and then found a campground, a supermarket... and decided to call it a day.
From Tafí, the downhill we had been hoping for really started, and we flew from 2000 metres down to 400, where a nice smooth shoulder started for the rest of the way to Tucumán, where we now find ourselves. We've got another Casa de Ciclistas, and a city where we found our first Tenedor Libre, or all-you-can-eat meat buffet. We visited last night after patiently waiting for it to open at 8:30, and then started as soon as they said go. We ate a ton of deep-fried somethings, and turkey, and chicken, and sausage, and cheese and olives, waiting and waiting for the grilled meat to be ready. And we kept eating and eating, drinking our Coke and eating some more until finally at 10 the grill still wasn't ready and we could hardly walk. It was a disappointing night in that we didn't get any steak, but for under $4 Canadian, you couldn't really complain too much. Next time we'll practise some restraint, and hopefully, just maybe, enjoy some more of that Argentinian steak.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
A Last (kinda bitter) Taste of Bolivia and A First (pretty sweet) Taste of Argentina
Current Location: Salta, Argentina
Distance Cycled to Date: 17,231 km
Photos Taken to Date: 12,611
Countries Visited to Date: 13
Days Since Leaving Home: 355
Did you see our current location just up there? Salta, Argentina. Argentina. That's in the subtitle to our website, the name of our blog, and on every card we hand out. Canada to Argentina by bicycle. And now we're here. Kind of crazy. We're in Argentina. Just wanted to point that out. You know, pat ourselves on the back a little bit. We're in Argentina.
We left off being kinda sick in Uyuni, back in Bolivia. It wasn't the greatest, but it gave us the opportunity to meet 3 other American touring cyclists who rolled into town a day after us. It was good to have some English-speaking company, and they also timed their arrival perfectly, as I had just learned that I had a broken spoke and was searching for a chain-whip in order to fix it. They had just the tool I needed, and within 15 minutes of them getting into town I was all set to ride again. We've had a pretty good amount of 'coincidences' like that, that continually let us keep riding without issue.
After 3 days in Uyuni, we started south, on what we had heard was a pretty poor road. I don't think we have enough of a vocabulary to explain just how bad it was. We're both pretty positive guys, and having a good sense of humour had let us get through this trip while enjoying every day. Well, we finally got to the point where we had a few days we didn't enjoy, no matter how we tried to look at it. The washboard, the sand, the impossibly steep grades - it all added up to two quite disgusted Canadian cyclists. As one other British cyclist wrote in his blog (which we read only after we had finished the route), 'journey's don't get any harder than this'. That just about sums it up.
But as we got within a few kilometres of Tupiza the landscape started to change, and we did enjoy the canyons and rock formations as we bounced along the washboard. We enjoyed a much-needed rest day in Tupiza, where our hotel room carried cable tv, and we got to see a couple episodes of Arrested Development on an Argentinian channel. Not only did that improve our moods considerably, but it also raised our opinions of Argentina considerably. They have pavement, cheap steak and wine, drinkable tap water - and - they watch Arrested Development? This may just be the ideal country for us. We decided we would make it there in just one more day of riding.
It was a long, tiring, and difficult day of riding, but we got to the border town of Villazon just after the sun set. Unfortunetly arriving so late on a Sunday all the money-changers were closed, so we entered Argentina without a peso, and hoped dearly to find an ATM and finally eat our first Argentinian steak. We rode around La Quiaca in the dark, amazed at everything. We had only crossed a river, but this was the biggest change for us in a border crossing since leaving San Diego 10 months ago. We found an ATM, found ourselves a steak covered in fried eggs with a second plate of fries (perfect!), and slept in a comfortable bed made for a normal size person. We made it to Argentina.
The happy welcome was short-lived however, as the next few days would involve riding along the very Bolivian-mimicking altiplano, with incredible winds that seemed determined to send us back to Bolivia. We would have none of that though, and fought on, and finally downhill, against the raging storm. At times it felt like a sandblaster was being shot towards us, and I was sure when I looked down at my uncovered legs that the combination of wind and sand would have worn the skin right off. I guess the storm wasn't quite as strong as my imagination however, and my skin remained. It was more than a little dangerous to bike through though, as the gusts would send us out into traffic, and we'd fight to get back to the narrow white line. We did outlive the storm, and when the wind finally died down after a few days, we had some lovely sunshine and a great single-lane paved road leading us from Jujuy to Salta.
We had planned to stay at our second Casa de Ciclistas here in Salta, and after receiving an email with directions from Ramon, the host of this casa, we found the place perfectly. And now we're enjoying being in civilization. Shopping malls, fast food, cafes and clothing stores - we are constantly craning our necks around in amazement, asking each other where are we? We're in Argentina, and we're loving it.
And now that we're out of Bolivia, we have our Bolivian photo album ready to go. Check out that amazing Salar, and those brutal roads. And that's Bolivia for you. At times it left us shaking our heads in wonder, and at other times just shaking our heads in disgust. We're glad we went there, but we're also very glad to be out of there right now. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labour.
Distance Cycled to Date: 17,231 km
Photos Taken to Date: 12,611
Countries Visited to Date: 13
Days Since Leaving Home: 355
Did you see our current location just up there? Salta, Argentina. Argentina. That's in the subtitle to our website, the name of our blog, and on every card we hand out. Canada to Argentina by bicycle. And now we're here. Kind of crazy. We're in Argentina. Just wanted to point that out. You know, pat ourselves on the back a little bit. We're in Argentina.
We left off being kinda sick in Uyuni, back in Bolivia. It wasn't the greatest, but it gave us the opportunity to meet 3 other American touring cyclists who rolled into town a day after us. It was good to have some English-speaking company, and they also timed their arrival perfectly, as I had just learned that I had a broken spoke and was searching for a chain-whip in order to fix it. They had just the tool I needed, and within 15 minutes of them getting into town I was all set to ride again. We've had a pretty good amount of 'coincidences' like that, that continually let us keep riding without issue.
After 3 days in Uyuni, we started south, on what we had heard was a pretty poor road. I don't think we have enough of a vocabulary to explain just how bad it was. We're both pretty positive guys, and having a good sense of humour had let us get through this trip while enjoying every day. Well, we finally got to the point where we had a few days we didn't enjoy, no matter how we tried to look at it. The washboard, the sand, the impossibly steep grades - it all added up to two quite disgusted Canadian cyclists. As one other British cyclist wrote in his blog (which we read only after we had finished the route), 'journey's don't get any harder than this'. That just about sums it up.
But as we got within a few kilometres of Tupiza the landscape started to change, and we did enjoy the canyons and rock formations as we bounced along the washboard. We enjoyed a much-needed rest day in Tupiza, where our hotel room carried cable tv, and we got to see a couple episodes of Arrested Development on an Argentinian channel. Not only did that improve our moods considerably, but it also raised our opinions of Argentina considerably. They have pavement, cheap steak and wine, drinkable tap water - and - they watch Arrested Development? This may just be the ideal country for us. We decided we would make it there in just one more day of riding.
It was a long, tiring, and difficult day of riding, but we got to the border town of Villazon just after the sun set. Unfortunetly arriving so late on a Sunday all the money-changers were closed, so we entered Argentina without a peso, and hoped dearly to find an ATM and finally eat our first Argentinian steak. We rode around La Quiaca in the dark, amazed at everything. We had only crossed a river, but this was the biggest change for us in a border crossing since leaving San Diego 10 months ago. We found an ATM, found ourselves a steak covered in fried eggs with a second plate of fries (perfect!), and slept in a comfortable bed made for a normal size person. We made it to Argentina.
The happy welcome was short-lived however, as the next few days would involve riding along the very Bolivian-mimicking altiplano, with incredible winds that seemed determined to send us back to Bolivia. We would have none of that though, and fought on, and finally downhill, against the raging storm. At times it felt like a sandblaster was being shot towards us, and I was sure when I looked down at my uncovered legs that the combination of wind and sand would have worn the skin right off. I guess the storm wasn't quite as strong as my imagination however, and my skin remained. It was more than a little dangerous to bike through though, as the gusts would send us out into traffic, and we'd fight to get back to the narrow white line. We did outlive the storm, and when the wind finally died down after a few days, we had some lovely sunshine and a great single-lane paved road leading us from Jujuy to Salta.
We had planned to stay at our second Casa de Ciclistas here in Salta, and after receiving an email with directions from Ramon, the host of this casa, we found the place perfectly. And now we're enjoying being in civilization. Shopping malls, fast food, cafes and clothing stores - we are constantly craning our necks around in amazement, asking each other where are we? We're in Argentina, and we're loving it.
And now that we're out of Bolivia, we have our Bolivian photo album ready to go. Check out that amazing Salar, and those brutal roads. And that's Bolivia for you. At times it left us shaking our heads in wonder, and at other times just shaking our heads in disgust. We're glad we went there, but we're also very glad to be out of there right now. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labour.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Salar de Uyuni - Pure Awesomeness
Current Location: Tupiza, Bolivia
Distance Cycled to Date: 16,752 km
Kilometres left until we reach Argentina: 85
Amount of Salt contained on the Salt Flat: 10 billion tons
The Salar is awesome. We just thought we'd start out with that. Before coming to Bolivia, we had read lots about how terrible the roads are and how difficult the cycling is. Some cyclists skip it completely, heading from Peru straight into Chile - however, we wanted to see the salt flats. That was really the only reason we came to Bolivia. And so we were very excited to be leaving Salinas and heading out to something we had been looking forward to since leaving home.
We realize lots of you already know all about the Salar de Uyuni, but for those of you who might not - it's basically 12,000 square km of flat, hard salt. It was once a giant lake, thousands of years ago - and from the edges, it still looks like a giant lake. The salt crystals form all kinds of different designs on the surface, some hexagons and pentagons like a soccer ball, and sometimes just bumps like a frozen pond. We don't really know any of the science behind any of this... but it's pretty sweet. Picture a wide open frozen lake, so big you can't see the edges. And the ice isn't slippery. That's what it was like. When we get our photo album of Bolivia up, you'll get a chance to see just how awesome it is. We have some sweet photos... you just have to wait to see them. But it will be worth the wait - for now you'll just have to use our inadequite words to imagine it.
We left Salinas with our water bottles filled with Tampico citrus punch, due to the unavailability of bottled water, and started towards the nearest 'ramp' to get onto the Salar. The edges of the Salar are pretty soft, wet salty stuff, so you need to find an established ramp to get onto the hard stuff. We found one about 20 km from Salinas, and biked towards the blinding white Salar. Even with the ramp, we still ended up biking through a whole lot of wet salt slush, which we're pretty sure wasn't too good for our bikes, but after a kilometre or so, we were onto the salt. We looked around, and didn't really know where to go. It was flat and wide open, as far as you could see. Luckily the Danish cyclist we met the day before, Martin, had a GPS with the island in the middle of the Salar programmed in, so we turned the direction his GPS told us to, and started biking.
We biked and biked, stopping a few times to take pictures, and once to talk to a group of Dutch tourists who we thought could be walking across the Salar, but turns out were being picked up by a couple jeeps any minute. So we kept riding, and it seemed like we made hardly any progress at all - miles went by without the landscape progressing, and finally, after hours went by riding along the featurless salar, we arrived at Isla Incahuasi, the cacti studded island with a restaurant, and a refuge for cyclists to sleep in. The three of us had a great dinner of steak sandwiches and llama burgers while all the other tourists had to leave the island and head back to the 'mainland', and then had a great sleep in the roomy refuge with great views of the sun sinking into the salar. Yep, being a cyclists certainly has its advantages.
The next day we seperated from Martin, with us heading to Uyuni and some supposedly great pizza, and him heading down towards Chile over a different route. So we started east, finding a well marked trail that we hoped would lead us to Uyuni. We stopped after just 35 km when we spotted some dislodged slabs of salt that we thought could work well as seats while we ate lunch. Some had already been pulled up, and we arranged them into a nice bench to sit on while we ate our peanut butter sandwiches. As we were eating and looking around at all the brick-like slabs, we thought to ourselves - we could build a fort out of this stuff! And so, we did. And it was awesome. The entire salar is one flat, featureless landscape except for one or two hotels that have been built near the edges, out of salt. And now, there is also one fort, 35 km east of the Isla Incahuasi. It started small, with us making a circle of bricks, and then building up. It was like building a snow fort out of hard chunks of snow, except that it was pretty warm during the day, and nothing would melt. It kept getting bigger and bigger, and we worked out how to get a roof on top of it. It sort of became a salt igloo, but a very solid, and well built one. We are pretty much first-rate engineers when it comes to salt construction.
After finishing in only 3 hours, we decided after putting in so much effort, we might as well sleep in it as well. So we built a little 'yard' for it, and redesigned our chairs outside, and it became quite the homely little place. It was probably the most fun we've had on this entire trip.
That night we pulled out our sleeping bags and thermarests inside, and while the temperature plunged far below zero once again outside, inside we were kept nice and warm. Hardly even below zero in there! The next morning we left a note and some sheets of paper to create a mini-logbook inside, and put them in a ziplock bag, along with our website and email address. So hopefully, maybe someday, we'll hear from somebody else who spent a night in the igloo. It might even be sooner than we expected, because the next morning as we were reaching the edge of the Salar, a tour group in a jeep stopped beside us, and asked if it was us that built the igloo. They stopped to take pictures, and thought it was fantastic. We couldn't have been happier.
We ate lunch in Colchani, just off the salt flats, where we found out every tourist group heading out to the Salar stops. We could hardly get any of our sandwiches down, as we were constantly approached by people asking us about our trip. It was another celebrity moment for us, that was actually pretty fun. We gave out a lot of cards with our website, and hopefully it can work out to a few more site visits, and a few more donations as well.
Minuteman Pizza in Uyuni was a place we had heard of while we were still in the US, from other cyclist's blogs. It was supposed to be some of the best pizza in South America, so we were anxious to give it a try. Turns out to be true - it was excellent. The first night off the Salar, we went in and ate 2 large pizzas, and polished off 3 litres of Coke that night as well. It's fun having a cylist's appetite. We planned to take a rest day and get up a blog the next day, but when a strong wind and dust storm hit town, the electricity was out all day long. We discovered that we use electricity for pretty much everything we like to do on a rest day - that is eat at restaurants, and use the internet - so it was a pretty poor day. And then the next day Jeff got sick, so we stayed one more day. And then the next day I was sick, so we stayed one more. We had difficulty deciding what route we would take from Uyuni - but finally, we decided to head down to Tupiza and straight to Argentina. It was the most direct route, and to be completely honest, we both were quite anxious to get to Argentina. We've likely built it up in our minds to be far better than a country ever could be - but we're tired of constantly being sick, searching for half-decent food, and dealing with these kinds of roads. So - after a couple surprise rest days, we found the road heading south.
The Salar was awesome - the days that followed it weren't. So, rather than taint this entry with that negativety, we'll have to save that for the next entry. Soon we'll catch up to where we are. And speaking of catching up - we finally have our Southern Peru album ready to go. If you don't remember, we spent a few weeks travelling around with our parents, hence the many non-cycling photos. But they're still pretty sweet, so we thought we'd share them. Enjoy.
Distance Cycled to Date: 16,752 km
Kilometres left until we reach Argentina: 85
Amount of Salt contained on the Salt Flat: 10 billion tons
The Salar is awesome. We just thought we'd start out with that. Before coming to Bolivia, we had read lots about how terrible the roads are and how difficult the cycling is. Some cyclists skip it completely, heading from Peru straight into Chile - however, we wanted to see the salt flats. That was really the only reason we came to Bolivia. And so we were very excited to be leaving Salinas and heading out to something we had been looking forward to since leaving home.
We realize lots of you already know all about the Salar de Uyuni, but for those of you who might not - it's basically 12,000 square km of flat, hard salt. It was once a giant lake, thousands of years ago - and from the edges, it still looks like a giant lake. The salt crystals form all kinds of different designs on the surface, some hexagons and pentagons like a soccer ball, and sometimes just bumps like a frozen pond. We don't really know any of the science behind any of this... but it's pretty sweet. Picture a wide open frozen lake, so big you can't see the edges. And the ice isn't slippery. That's what it was like. When we get our photo album of Bolivia up, you'll get a chance to see just how awesome it is. We have some sweet photos... you just have to wait to see them. But it will be worth the wait - for now you'll just have to use our inadequite words to imagine it.
We left Salinas with our water bottles filled with Tampico citrus punch, due to the unavailability of bottled water, and started towards the nearest 'ramp' to get onto the Salar. The edges of the Salar are pretty soft, wet salty stuff, so you need to find an established ramp to get onto the hard stuff. We found one about 20 km from Salinas, and biked towards the blinding white Salar. Even with the ramp, we still ended up biking through a whole lot of wet salt slush, which we're pretty sure wasn't too good for our bikes, but after a kilometre or so, we were onto the salt. We looked around, and didn't really know where to go. It was flat and wide open, as far as you could see. Luckily the Danish cyclist we met the day before, Martin, had a GPS with the island in the middle of the Salar programmed in, so we turned the direction his GPS told us to, and started biking.
We biked and biked, stopping a few times to take pictures, and once to talk to a group of Dutch tourists who we thought could be walking across the Salar, but turns out were being picked up by a couple jeeps any minute. So we kept riding, and it seemed like we made hardly any progress at all - miles went by without the landscape progressing, and finally, after hours went by riding along the featurless salar, we arrived at Isla Incahuasi, the cacti studded island with a restaurant, and a refuge for cyclists to sleep in. The three of us had a great dinner of steak sandwiches and llama burgers while all the other tourists had to leave the island and head back to the 'mainland', and then had a great sleep in the roomy refuge with great views of the sun sinking into the salar. Yep, being a cyclists certainly has its advantages.
The next day we seperated from Martin, with us heading to Uyuni and some supposedly great pizza, and him heading down towards Chile over a different route. So we started east, finding a well marked trail that we hoped would lead us to Uyuni. We stopped after just 35 km when we spotted some dislodged slabs of salt that we thought could work well as seats while we ate lunch. Some had already been pulled up, and we arranged them into a nice bench to sit on while we ate our peanut butter sandwiches. As we were eating and looking around at all the brick-like slabs, we thought to ourselves - we could build a fort out of this stuff! And so, we did. And it was awesome. The entire salar is one flat, featureless landscape except for one or two hotels that have been built near the edges, out of salt. And now, there is also one fort, 35 km east of the Isla Incahuasi. It started small, with us making a circle of bricks, and then building up. It was like building a snow fort out of hard chunks of snow, except that it was pretty warm during the day, and nothing would melt. It kept getting bigger and bigger, and we worked out how to get a roof on top of it. It sort of became a salt igloo, but a very solid, and well built one. We are pretty much first-rate engineers when it comes to salt construction.
After finishing in only 3 hours, we decided after putting in so much effort, we might as well sleep in it as well. So we built a little 'yard' for it, and redesigned our chairs outside, and it became quite the homely little place. It was probably the most fun we've had on this entire trip.
That night we pulled out our sleeping bags and thermarests inside, and while the temperature plunged far below zero once again outside, inside we were kept nice and warm. Hardly even below zero in there! The next morning we left a note and some sheets of paper to create a mini-logbook inside, and put them in a ziplock bag, along with our website and email address. So hopefully, maybe someday, we'll hear from somebody else who spent a night in the igloo. It might even be sooner than we expected, because the next morning as we were reaching the edge of the Salar, a tour group in a jeep stopped beside us, and asked if it was us that built the igloo. They stopped to take pictures, and thought it was fantastic. We couldn't have been happier.
We ate lunch in Colchani, just off the salt flats, where we found out every tourist group heading out to the Salar stops. We could hardly get any of our sandwiches down, as we were constantly approached by people asking us about our trip. It was another celebrity moment for us, that was actually pretty fun. We gave out a lot of cards with our website, and hopefully it can work out to a few more site visits, and a few more donations as well.
Minuteman Pizza in Uyuni was a place we had heard of while we were still in the US, from other cyclist's blogs. It was supposed to be some of the best pizza in South America, so we were anxious to give it a try. Turns out to be true - it was excellent. The first night off the Salar, we went in and ate 2 large pizzas, and polished off 3 litres of Coke that night as well. It's fun having a cylist's appetite. We planned to take a rest day and get up a blog the next day, but when a strong wind and dust storm hit town, the electricity was out all day long. We discovered that we use electricity for pretty much everything we like to do on a rest day - that is eat at restaurants, and use the internet - so it was a pretty poor day. And then the next day Jeff got sick, so we stayed one more day. And then the next day I was sick, so we stayed one more. We had difficulty deciding what route we would take from Uyuni - but finally, we decided to head down to Tupiza and straight to Argentina. It was the most direct route, and to be completely honest, we both were quite anxious to get to Argentina. We've likely built it up in our minds to be far better than a country ever could be - but we're tired of constantly being sick, searching for half-decent food, and dealing with these kinds of roads. So - after a couple surprise rest days, we found the road heading south.
The Salar was awesome - the days that followed it weren't. So, rather than taint this entry with that negativety, we'll have to save that for the next entry. Soon we'll catch up to where we are. And speaking of catching up - we finally have our Southern Peru album ready to go. If you don't remember, we spent a few weeks travelling around with our parents, hence the many non-cycling photos. But they're still pretty sweet, so we thought we'd share them. Enjoy.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
A First Taste of Bolivia
Current Location: Uyuni, Bolivia
Distance Cycled to Date: 16,538 km
Flat Tires to Date: 58 (Keenan - 32, Jeff - 26)
Coldest night while camping to date: -15 C
It's been awhile since we entered Bolivia, and in the past couple weeks we've done some pretty sweet things and seen some pretty cool stuff - probably too much to even fit into one blog entry, so we'll fill you in until we got to the Salar de Uyuni, a few days ago.
It was a beautiful ride out of Copacabana, up and down a few hills, along Lake Titicaca (which is, did you know, the highest navigable lake in the world?). Every piece of literature about Lake Titicaca mentions that it's the highest navigable lake in the world. Do you know what that means? We don't exactly - we even looked it up online, but found a pretty poor defintion - but we did find out that we sure do like saying it. Navigable. Navigable. Try saying it out loud - it's pretty fun. We entertained ourselves for hours while biking by saying both 'navigable' and 'Titicaca'. Pretty good times.
That afternoon we both started to feel a little off, so after reaching Huatajata, and the only cheap hotel that we knew of between Copacabana and La Paz, we decided to call it a night. After seeing some traditional reed boats used on the lake and eating a fresh trout supper, we went to bed around our usual time of 8. But, it wasn't a great night, as something I ate started to fight back, and I spent most of the night in the bathroom outside. Not fun at all. And the next morning, I still didn't have the energy do anything other than move between my bed and the bathroom, and so we decided to stay one more day. On the plus side, it let me recover, and gave us a chance to meet two more British cyclists that happened to stay at the hotel the next night, heading north. But the bad side to it was that it left us pretty much out of money. We had changed over all our excess Peruvian soles at the Bolivian border, but after two unexpected hotel nights, it left us with 10 Bolivianos, or about $1.30 to get us the 90 km or so to La Paz.
So, leaving the next morning we ate a few of the granola bars that our parents had brought for us in Cuzco, and set out in the freezing weather. The sky was cloud-covered, our first poor weather day in a long time, which meant that the temperature hovered around 4 degrees most of the day. Add in a little wind, and an uphill to 4100 metres, and it meant that our fingers and toes would be alternate between numbness and shooting pain all day long. We stopped around lunchtime at a roadside restaurant, and worked out a deal to get 2 cups of coffee and 2 pieces of bread for 3 Bolivianos. Not bad at all, though not quite as filling a lunch as a cyclist really should have.
We fought the crazy traffic through El Alto, the sprawling suburb perched 500 metres above La Paz, and then sped past the 'No Ciclistas' sign on the freeway, downhill into the city. Snow and sleet started to fall as we crested the rim of the canyon, and that familiar feeling in our fingers and toes remained. We stayed for two days in La Paz in a youth hostel in the city centre, and enjoyed some good hamburgers, pastries, and the company of backpackers from all over the world. Then, we rode back past another 'No Ciclistas' sign onto the freeway, and started the slow ascent back up to El Alto, and onto the rest of Bolivia.
The first 360 km or so out of La Paz were paved, so we planned to keep up a good pace, and get through the pavement in 3 days. And so - we did just that. The first few kilometres through El Alto were some of the craziest city traffic we've biked in - our heartrate was kept at a maximum as we wove our way around collectivos, biking in whatever lane of the 4 lanes of traffic that we wanted. we were constantly being cut off, and cutting off in turn - and all in all, it was actually pretty fun. But it finally died down and turned into a paved highway with a narrow shoulder, and so we put in our ipods and just biked along the relatively boring, flat-ish landscape for 3 straight days. (Ok, so we stopped to sleep in there too. But it all was pretty much the same). The possible highlight of those 3 days were that we biked along Lake Poopo, and into the town of Poopo itself. They just have great lake names here! Sure, we're closing in on our mid-20s, but we sure think Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo are pretty funny. That was more entertainment for us.
After the town of Challapata our pavement ended and the road split, and our photocopied map that we picked up in Copacabana became increasingly useless. We stopped to ask a lot of people which was the road to Huari, or Quillacas, or Llica - whichever town they might know. Even the police weren't entirely sure, which made us question a bit just what kind of road we were planning on taking. We made it to Huari (on what actually was a paved road - how did the police not know where that road was?), and then had some difficulty finding the next road. They don't seem to use road signs here, so every time the road splits in a Y you kind of wonder which way to go. So it became a guessing game, and luckily we did pretty well. Finally one of our choices led us to a field, where the road became little more than a set of tire tracks through sand, so we thought our streak of correct choices was over - but then a truck came by, and when we asked him which way it was to Quillacas, he told us straight ahead, and in fact, he was going there as well. So we set off on the sand tracks, and the trail quickly became a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' game. Do you want option a) bone-rattling washboard, or option b) thick sand that feels like riding along a beach? Or of course, there was always option c) just go overland, dodging clumps of grass through the fields. Sometimes it worked the best, or sometimes not at all. You just never know! It was a fun little game, where sometimes Jeff and I would be hundreds of metres apart on different trails, racing each other, hoping to find the best route.
We spent a night in a hotel in the village of Quillacas, where this time we were warned before taking the room that there was no bathroom, no water, no shower. 'Is there a public bathroom in the town?' we asked. 'No,' was the reply, 'but you can pee...' and he ended the sentence with a wave of the hand down the street. Well, just so long as neither of us had to go bano bano, as we've come to calling number 2, we would be fine. We walked around the town in the evening looking for some supplies, and we were told that the next morning at 8 am, the president would be in town. The President of Bolivia. It seemed hard to believe, but they were setting up a stage, and it seemed to be the word on the street. We thought it would be pretty cool to meet El Presidente himself, so after a poor night's sleep in a bed made for a hobbit, we got up, packed up, and made our way to the town plaza. But by 8:30, there was still no sign of the president, hardly any people in the plaza either, and the fact that we hadn't gone 'bano bano' yet was starting to urge us to get moving out of town. So we decided to give up on Evo showing himself (that's the president), and we got on our bikes and got moving, and found a nice mound of dirt outside of town.
And just as we started biking away, we saw a helicopter flying towards the town - the first helicopter we've seen in South America. So what do you know - the president really was showing up. But we had places to go, and it was uphill to go back to town, so we kept going, making good time on a much-improved road. Until that is, we came to a bridge under construction, crossing a pretty wide river. With a lot of snow and ice in it. We looked around and took quite some time discussing all our options - the riverbed looked too rocky to ride across with our narrow tires, so we decided that was out. Our best choice would be to wait for a truck to come and get him to ferry us across, but after waiting nearly half an hour with no traffic coming our way, we decided we'd have to take off our shoes and socks and walk (or run) our bikes across the freezing river. I thought it was kind of funny. (Jeff on the other hand didn't really think so). So, I volunteered to go first, and after tying my shoes to my bike and stuffing my two pairs of socks in my handlebar bag (it was still freezing cold out), I started across. Through the snow. Across the sharp rocks with the nearly frozen water running over my ankles. And then onto the thin ice, with my bare feet breaking through, the ice cutting me on the way, and the heavy bicycle sliding around on the ice, before finally breaking through and having to cut through the ice as I pushed it, trying to gain traction under the running water on the rocks.
It wasn't fun. I got a little over halfway across and the pain in my feet was so intense I wanted to stop and cry. But, that didn't really seem like a worthwhile plan at all, so I just kept going. And then - of course - a pickup truck came, heading the opposite direction as us. And as he drove across the river he rolled down his window and asked if the water was hot. I wasn't really in any state of mind to start joking with anybody, so I just told him that I was almost across, but if it would be possible to take my brother across the river, that would be very nice. He looked over at Jeff on the other bank, and said 'of course!', and then proceeded to drive across, help Jeff load his bike in the truck, and drive back across the river - all while I continued to fight my way through the ice and snow.
We got to the bank around the same time, and then I spent a half hour or so trying to warm up my feet and regain the ability to move my toes, but without too much success. Jeff then finally agreed, 'yeah, that was actually pretty funny'. I tried to laugh...
The rest of the next two days we spent playing Choose Your Own Adventure, and alternating between fantastic new gravel, and terrible old washboard. After a night of camping where the temperature reached -15 and I sincerely questioned the -12 rating that somebody gave our sleeping bags, we made it to Salinas, where we planned to stock up on supplies and spend the night before heading out for 3 days on the Salar de uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. We reached the town early, and began a thorough search of all the tiny stores in the town for baked goods, yoghurt, and water. We found some stale-ish cakes and a lot of mini-bags of yoghurt drinks, but we found out, much to our surprise, that they don't sell bottles of water in the town.
We did however come across another touring cyclist, Martin, from Denmark. He had left La Paz the same day as us, and had been just a little behind us for a week. People kept telling him that there were two cyclists just ahead of him, so he kept pushing and finally caught up to us. So we all spent the night at the same hotel, and planned to head out to the island in the middle of the Salar together the next day. Unfortunetly, none of us had water besides the 2 litres that Jeff and I still had from a few days before, so we stocked up on Tampico Citrus Punch, and Martin bought a few bottles of Coke, and we all hoped that we'd have enough liquids to get us across the salt flats to Uyuni where we could re-stock. And so we went to bed with possibly enough food, definitely not enough water, and a lot of excitement about reaching the Salar, a place we'd been excited to cycle across since long before leaving home.
We decided the Salar is worth it's own blog entry - and we don't want to bore you by making this too long. So, you'll have to wait just a few days to find out just what this Salar is all about, and just how much fun it was biking across drinking nothing but citrus punch!
Also, we finally got on our horse and updated our Central Peru photo albums. We took a ton of pictures there, some pretty sweet ones even, so we put them up in two different albums. Check out Central Peru I and Central Peru II here.
Distance Cycled to Date: 16,538 km
Flat Tires to Date: 58 (Keenan - 32, Jeff - 26)
Coldest night while camping to date: -15 C
It's been awhile since we entered Bolivia, and in the past couple weeks we've done some pretty sweet things and seen some pretty cool stuff - probably too much to even fit into one blog entry, so we'll fill you in until we got to the Salar de Uyuni, a few days ago.
It was a beautiful ride out of Copacabana, up and down a few hills, along Lake Titicaca (which is, did you know, the highest navigable lake in the world?). Every piece of literature about Lake Titicaca mentions that it's the highest navigable lake in the world. Do you know what that means? We don't exactly - we even looked it up online, but found a pretty poor defintion - but we did find out that we sure do like saying it. Navigable. Navigable. Try saying it out loud - it's pretty fun. We entertained ourselves for hours while biking by saying both 'navigable' and 'Titicaca'. Pretty good times.
That afternoon we both started to feel a little off, so after reaching Huatajata, and the only cheap hotel that we knew of between Copacabana and La Paz, we decided to call it a night. After seeing some traditional reed boats used on the lake and eating a fresh trout supper, we went to bed around our usual time of 8. But, it wasn't a great night, as something I ate started to fight back, and I spent most of the night in the bathroom outside. Not fun at all. And the next morning, I still didn't have the energy do anything other than move between my bed and the bathroom, and so we decided to stay one more day. On the plus side, it let me recover, and gave us a chance to meet two more British cyclists that happened to stay at the hotel the next night, heading north. But the bad side to it was that it left us pretty much out of money. We had changed over all our excess Peruvian soles at the Bolivian border, but after two unexpected hotel nights, it left us with 10 Bolivianos, or about $1.30 to get us the 90 km or so to La Paz.
So, leaving the next morning we ate a few of the granola bars that our parents had brought for us in Cuzco, and set out in the freezing weather. The sky was cloud-covered, our first poor weather day in a long time, which meant that the temperature hovered around 4 degrees most of the day. Add in a little wind, and an uphill to 4100 metres, and it meant that our fingers and toes would be alternate between numbness and shooting pain all day long. We stopped around lunchtime at a roadside restaurant, and worked out a deal to get 2 cups of coffee and 2 pieces of bread for 3 Bolivianos. Not bad at all, though not quite as filling a lunch as a cyclist really should have.
We fought the crazy traffic through El Alto, the sprawling suburb perched 500 metres above La Paz, and then sped past the 'No Ciclistas' sign on the freeway, downhill into the city. Snow and sleet started to fall as we crested the rim of the canyon, and that familiar feeling in our fingers and toes remained. We stayed for two days in La Paz in a youth hostel in the city centre, and enjoyed some good hamburgers, pastries, and the company of backpackers from all over the world. Then, we rode back past another 'No Ciclistas' sign onto the freeway, and started the slow ascent back up to El Alto, and onto the rest of Bolivia.
The first 360 km or so out of La Paz were paved, so we planned to keep up a good pace, and get through the pavement in 3 days. And so - we did just that. The first few kilometres through El Alto were some of the craziest city traffic we've biked in - our heartrate was kept at a maximum as we wove our way around collectivos, biking in whatever lane of the 4 lanes of traffic that we wanted. we were constantly being cut off, and cutting off in turn - and all in all, it was actually pretty fun. But it finally died down and turned into a paved highway with a narrow shoulder, and so we put in our ipods and just biked along the relatively boring, flat-ish landscape for 3 straight days. (Ok, so we stopped to sleep in there too. But it all was pretty much the same). The possible highlight of those 3 days were that we biked along Lake Poopo, and into the town of Poopo itself. They just have great lake names here! Sure, we're closing in on our mid-20s, but we sure think Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo are pretty funny. That was more entertainment for us.
After the town of Challapata our pavement ended and the road split, and our photocopied map that we picked up in Copacabana became increasingly useless. We stopped to ask a lot of people which was the road to Huari, or Quillacas, or Llica - whichever town they might know. Even the police weren't entirely sure, which made us question a bit just what kind of road we were planning on taking. We made it to Huari (on what actually was a paved road - how did the police not know where that road was?), and then had some difficulty finding the next road. They don't seem to use road signs here, so every time the road splits in a Y you kind of wonder which way to go. So it became a guessing game, and luckily we did pretty well. Finally one of our choices led us to a field, where the road became little more than a set of tire tracks through sand, so we thought our streak of correct choices was over - but then a truck came by, and when we asked him which way it was to Quillacas, he told us straight ahead, and in fact, he was going there as well. So we set off on the sand tracks, and the trail quickly became a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' game. Do you want option a) bone-rattling washboard, or option b) thick sand that feels like riding along a beach? Or of course, there was always option c) just go overland, dodging clumps of grass through the fields. Sometimes it worked the best, or sometimes not at all. You just never know! It was a fun little game, where sometimes Jeff and I would be hundreds of metres apart on different trails, racing each other, hoping to find the best route.
We spent a night in a hotel in the village of Quillacas, where this time we were warned before taking the room that there was no bathroom, no water, no shower. 'Is there a public bathroom in the town?' we asked. 'No,' was the reply, 'but you can pee...' and he ended the sentence with a wave of the hand down the street. Well, just so long as neither of us had to go bano bano, as we've come to calling number 2, we would be fine. We walked around the town in the evening looking for some supplies, and we were told that the next morning at 8 am, the president would be in town. The President of Bolivia. It seemed hard to believe, but they were setting up a stage, and it seemed to be the word on the street. We thought it would be pretty cool to meet El Presidente himself, so after a poor night's sleep in a bed made for a hobbit, we got up, packed up, and made our way to the town plaza. But by 8:30, there was still no sign of the president, hardly any people in the plaza either, and the fact that we hadn't gone 'bano bano' yet was starting to urge us to get moving out of town. So we decided to give up on Evo showing himself (that's the president), and we got on our bikes and got moving, and found a nice mound of dirt outside of town.
And just as we started biking away, we saw a helicopter flying towards the town - the first helicopter we've seen in South America. So what do you know - the president really was showing up. But we had places to go, and it was uphill to go back to town, so we kept going, making good time on a much-improved road. Until that is, we came to a bridge under construction, crossing a pretty wide river. With a lot of snow and ice in it. We looked around and took quite some time discussing all our options - the riverbed looked too rocky to ride across with our narrow tires, so we decided that was out. Our best choice would be to wait for a truck to come and get him to ferry us across, but after waiting nearly half an hour with no traffic coming our way, we decided we'd have to take off our shoes and socks and walk (or run) our bikes across the freezing river. I thought it was kind of funny. (Jeff on the other hand didn't really think so). So, I volunteered to go first, and after tying my shoes to my bike and stuffing my two pairs of socks in my handlebar bag (it was still freezing cold out), I started across. Through the snow. Across the sharp rocks with the nearly frozen water running over my ankles. And then onto the thin ice, with my bare feet breaking through, the ice cutting me on the way, and the heavy bicycle sliding around on the ice, before finally breaking through and having to cut through the ice as I pushed it, trying to gain traction under the running water on the rocks.
It wasn't fun. I got a little over halfway across and the pain in my feet was so intense I wanted to stop and cry. But, that didn't really seem like a worthwhile plan at all, so I just kept going. And then - of course - a pickup truck came, heading the opposite direction as us. And as he drove across the river he rolled down his window and asked if the water was hot. I wasn't really in any state of mind to start joking with anybody, so I just told him that I was almost across, but if it would be possible to take my brother across the river, that would be very nice. He looked over at Jeff on the other bank, and said 'of course!', and then proceeded to drive across, help Jeff load his bike in the truck, and drive back across the river - all while I continued to fight my way through the ice and snow.
We got to the bank around the same time, and then I spent a half hour or so trying to warm up my feet and regain the ability to move my toes, but without too much success. Jeff then finally agreed, 'yeah, that was actually pretty funny'. I tried to laugh...
The rest of the next two days we spent playing Choose Your Own Adventure, and alternating between fantastic new gravel, and terrible old washboard. After a night of camping where the temperature reached -15 and I sincerely questioned the -12 rating that somebody gave our sleeping bags, we made it to Salinas, where we planned to stock up on supplies and spend the night before heading out for 3 days on the Salar de uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. We reached the town early, and began a thorough search of all the tiny stores in the town for baked goods, yoghurt, and water. We found some stale-ish cakes and a lot of mini-bags of yoghurt drinks, but we found out, much to our surprise, that they don't sell bottles of water in the town.
We did however come across another touring cyclist, Martin, from Denmark. He had left La Paz the same day as us, and had been just a little behind us for a week. People kept telling him that there were two cyclists just ahead of him, so he kept pushing and finally caught up to us. So we all spent the night at the same hotel, and planned to head out to the island in the middle of the Salar together the next day. Unfortunetly, none of us had water besides the 2 litres that Jeff and I still had from a few days before, so we stocked up on Tampico Citrus Punch, and Martin bought a few bottles of Coke, and we all hoped that we'd have enough liquids to get us across the salt flats to Uyuni where we could re-stock. And so we went to bed with possibly enough food, definitely not enough water, and a lot of excitement about reaching the Salar, a place we'd been excited to cycle across since long before leaving home.
We decided the Salar is worth it's own blog entry - and we don't want to bore you by making this too long. So, you'll have to wait just a few days to find out just what this Salar is all about, and just how much fun it was biking across drinking nothing but citrus punch!
Also, we finally got on our horse and updated our Central Peru photo albums. We took a ton of pictures there, some pretty sweet ones even, so we put them up in two different albums. Check out Central Peru I and Central Peru II here.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Overall Rating of Peru - 'Best of Trip Finalist'
Current Location: Copacabana, Bolivia
Distance Cycled to Date: 15,694 km
Number of different hotels stayed in in Peru: 33
Average cost of hotel room in Peru: C$4.41 pp
Distance cycled in Peru: 3,115 km
Days spent in Peru: 95 (We took a lot of days off...)
Fine for overstaying our visa in Peru: $30
After more than 3 months, we finally left Peru yesterday. It was both sad, and exciting, as we left a country that continually tried us, but we loved nonetheless. Peru was a country full of warm, welcoming people, who with every village we would pass through or farm we would pass by would call out and wave, giving us smiles and more attention than we've ever received. Children would run along beside us, (and sometimes old men as well), calling out greetings and encouragement. The scenery was everchanging and always fascinating, from the flat, empty deserts of the north, to mountains that dwarf any we've cycled in yet. With every corner the scenery would change, from the freezing cold mountain passes to the hot, dry valleys lined with cacti. We climbed and climbed, we experienced far worse roads that we knew existed, and in the end, we loved every day of it.
As we pass from Peru to Bolivia, we go from one country steeped in poverty to another. One thing we won't be able to forget is how face-to-face with poverty we come, every day. Every day we cycle wearing two pairs of gloves, and various layers made by top of the line western brands, all designed to keep us warm and active. And we wear these layers as we pass children wearing nothing more than hand-me-down sweaters, their feet hardly covered by homemade sandals, made from recycled tires, and hands that already are scarred with frostbite. We manage to start cycling every morning after letting our tent defrost, or wait for the sun to start shining before leaving our hotel - and every morning the fields are full of Peruvians, leading their oxen by hand to till their tiny plot of land, or cutting their wheat by hand, carrying it on their backs.
We've biked nearly 16,000 km, and some days we question what it is that keeps us going. But cycling through the areas we are, we can see just how easy our life is compared with so many others. We ride a bike for fun, and at the end of this adventure, we'll be returning to our warm houses in Canada, a wardrobe full of clothes we'll never need to wear, and almost anything we could ask for. We ride our bikes, while these people work from sunrise to sunset, returning to their mud-brick huts at the end of the every day.
And yet, here in Peru we've seen more smiling faces than anywhere. Old men and women, their backs permanently stooped from carrying so much weight on it every day of their lives always come and shake our hands, and welcome us to their villages. We are met with dignity, and self-respect everywhere we go. As we've moved further south, the fundraising that we've taken on with this ride is something that we think about daily. It's nearly impossible not to connect the mountainous farming region in the Dominican Republic and the mountainous farming regions that we continually pass through. And to know that we have the ability to make a difference in these peoples lives, in people living in these circumstances is something that is both intimidating, and exciting.
We're very happy to report that ride for HOPE has now raised $23,300 for the project of rebuilding irrigation systems and community greenhouses in the Dominican Republic. We are nearly halfway towards our goal of $50,000, and that is something to be excited about! Thank you - it's your support, and your dollars, that are going towards making a real and tangible difference in peoples lives. Thank you to everybody to has already donated - and we know there are a lot of you. If you haven't - when will be a better time than now? Visit our project page on our website to find out more information, and the donate page to learn how you can make a difference right now. And for all of you who are out there telling your friends, your co-workers and your family - keep it up. Your support likely means more than you'll ever know.
For us, tomorrow we'll begin our adventure in Bolivia, heading first to La Paz, and then further south. We really don't know what to expect, as this is the country that we know the least about. Every map we look at is different, towns have ceased to exist, and the roads are supposed to be the worst on the continent. And so, naturally we're quite excited about what's around the corner.
You've raised $23,300! Almost half way there! Keep it up! We'll keep on cycling, and let you know how Bolivia looks as soon as we can.
Distance Cycled to Date: 15,694 km
Number of different hotels stayed in in Peru: 33
Average cost of hotel room in Peru: C$4.41 pp
Distance cycled in Peru: 3,115 km
Days spent in Peru: 95 (We took a lot of days off...)
Fine for overstaying our visa in Peru: $30
After more than 3 months, we finally left Peru yesterday. It was both sad, and exciting, as we left a country that continually tried us, but we loved nonetheless. Peru was a country full of warm, welcoming people, who with every village we would pass through or farm we would pass by would call out and wave, giving us smiles and more attention than we've ever received. Children would run along beside us, (and sometimes old men as well), calling out greetings and encouragement. The scenery was everchanging and always fascinating, from the flat, empty deserts of the north, to mountains that dwarf any we've cycled in yet. With every corner the scenery would change, from the freezing cold mountain passes to the hot, dry valleys lined with cacti. We climbed and climbed, we experienced far worse roads that we knew existed, and in the end, we loved every day of it.
As we pass from Peru to Bolivia, we go from one country steeped in poverty to another. One thing we won't be able to forget is how face-to-face with poverty we come, every day. Every day we cycle wearing two pairs of gloves, and various layers made by top of the line western brands, all designed to keep us warm and active. And we wear these layers as we pass children wearing nothing more than hand-me-down sweaters, their feet hardly covered by homemade sandals, made from recycled tires, and hands that already are scarred with frostbite. We manage to start cycling every morning after letting our tent defrost, or wait for the sun to start shining before leaving our hotel - and every morning the fields are full of Peruvians, leading their oxen by hand to till their tiny plot of land, or cutting their wheat by hand, carrying it on their backs.
We've biked nearly 16,000 km, and some days we question what it is that keeps us going. But cycling through the areas we are, we can see just how easy our life is compared with so many others. We ride a bike for fun, and at the end of this adventure, we'll be returning to our warm houses in Canada, a wardrobe full of clothes we'll never need to wear, and almost anything we could ask for. We ride our bikes, while these people work from sunrise to sunset, returning to their mud-brick huts at the end of the every day.
And yet, here in Peru we've seen more smiling faces than anywhere. Old men and women, their backs permanently stooped from carrying so much weight on it every day of their lives always come and shake our hands, and welcome us to their villages. We are met with dignity, and self-respect everywhere we go. As we've moved further south, the fundraising that we've taken on with this ride is something that we think about daily. It's nearly impossible not to connect the mountainous farming region in the Dominican Republic and the mountainous farming regions that we continually pass through. And to know that we have the ability to make a difference in these peoples lives, in people living in these circumstances is something that is both intimidating, and exciting.
We're very happy to report that ride for HOPE has now raised $23,300 for the project of rebuilding irrigation systems and community greenhouses in the Dominican Republic. We are nearly halfway towards our goal of $50,000, and that is something to be excited about! Thank you - it's your support, and your dollars, that are going towards making a real and tangible difference in peoples lives. Thank you to everybody to has already donated - and we know there are a lot of you. If you haven't - when will be a better time than now? Visit our project page on our website to find out more information, and the donate page to learn how you can make a difference right now. And for all of you who are out there telling your friends, your co-workers and your family - keep it up. Your support likely means more than you'll ever know.
For us, tomorrow we'll begin our adventure in Bolivia, heading first to La Paz, and then further south. We really don't know what to expect, as this is the country that we know the least about. Every map we look at is different, towns have ceased to exist, and the roads are supposed to be the worst on the continent. And so, naturally we're quite excited about what's around the corner.
You've raised $23,300! Almost half way there! Keep it up! We'll keep on cycling, and let you know how Bolivia looks as soon as we can.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Peruvian Political Problems Part II; and, our Triumphant Entry into Cuzco
Current Location: Cuzco, Peru
Distance Cycled to Date: 15,152km
Number of Days since we left home: 319
We spent the night in a hotel in Andahuaylas, the four of us re-united, but all uncertain how and if we would be able to leave the city the next day due to the strikes and roadblocks. We had 6 days until we needed to be in Cuzco, and we knew it would be at least 5 full cycling days, and we hoped to still be able to take a rest day in Abancay, since Jeff and I had biked 6 straight days over 4 different 4000 metre passes. We didn't have much choice other than to keep cycling, as a bicycle seemed to be the best bet at getting through the roadblocks. And so we packed our bags, and started out, searching for the gravel road that would lead us to Abancay, and the paved highway to Cuzco.
We slowly started the nearly 2000 metre climb out of Andahuaylas, passing numerous small villages and people working their tiny plots of land that seem to surround the road as it heads up to dizzying heights. Like the days coming into Andahuaylas, leaving town we were bombarded with warnings of the roadblocks. We couldn't pass, we were told, time and time again. But we had to just keep biking, and so we always responded with smiles and waves, and hoped that our charm could get us through any difficult situations. We thought we might have some trouble when a motorcycle passed us, and then 10 minutes later came back from the opposite direction, and stopped to tell us that we couldn't pass ahead. If even a motorcycle couldn't get through, we might have some trouble. As we kept going and came around a corner, we saw another truckload of people, with men stretched out across the road, blocking the entire thing. I didn't know what to say, or what to expect as we rode up to them - but as it turned out, we were greeted again with our usual 'gringo', and they parted to let us through. Phew.
As we kept biking, truckloads and truckloads of men and women with Peruvian flags would come down the road, heading the opposite direction as us, and everytime somebody from the truck would call out in Spanish that we couldn't pass, then somebody that they will kill us ahead, and then finally in English somebody would call out "Hello! My name is!". They never would finish the sentence with their name - just 'my name is!'. It seems the English program in rural Peru still has a few steps to go. But anyway - the combination of death threats and friendly smiles was confusing for us, and we weren't exactly sure what we should be feeling... but we just kept going.
Even though Sarah had had a few days off to try to recover from some sort of stomach bug, it hadn't quite been enough, as she wasn't feeling very well from the start of the day. It continued to get worse, and even though she tried to just keep going at a very slow pace, it was clear that she was suffering. And so, after only 30 km, we called it a day when we found an amazing campsite with views of jagged peaks and fertile valleys in nearly all directions. We were close to the top of the pass, but still had close to 120 km to do the next day to get to Abancay, 100 of which was on gravel - and included a whole lot of trip climb, and of course the possibility that we wouldn't make it through the next set of roadblocks. However, everybody was up for the challange, and so after a nice long sleep from sunset to sunrise, we got up and packed quickly, not even waiting for the frost to melt off our tents, and set off to see how close we could get to reaching our goal.
The scenery continued to impress us, and even though we were biking at high altitude, up a mountain on a poor road, it was still a great time. Sarah was feeling better, and we were making good time. We reached the top of the pass and started the descent without a single death threat. It was looking like a good day. But then, after just a little bit of bone-rattling downhill, we came up to a long line of vehicles. We passed them all, and saw a group of people sitting around on top of boulders scattered all over the road. Traffic from both sides was completely backed up, but we were able to walk our bikes through the maze, and made it through without anybody minding. In fact, they all just laughed at us. So we kept going, and just an hour or two later came to our next sizeable blockage, which was still under construction. About 15 men with shovels and pickaxes were in the process of building a wall of dirt and rocks about 5 feet high, completely blocking the road, with a rock wall on one side of the road, and a sheer cliff on the other. We slowed down, and they all stared at us. Then somebody made some kind of joke, they all started laughing, and then one or two men with shovels helped to clear a little path over the wall that we could push our bikes up. We were all smiles, and so were they - and we made it through the entire 'paro' stretch without any incident whatsoever. In fact, everybody that we met continued to be just as friendly as everybody else that we've met in Peru.
We finally got off the gravel and joined the pavement 18 km outside of Abancay, and were relieved to know this would be the last gravel we would ride on in Peru. Finally. But - this didn't mean that the day would end easily, because we still had 18 km of uphill, and the sun was nearly setting already. But we really wanted to make it to Abancay that day, and so we pushed, and pushed. Laura and Sarah were both dead tired (and even Jeff and I were ready for the day to end), but we just kept going, up the paved highway, as the sun dipped lower and lower, and then disappeared. On we went in the dark, for the first time ever on this trip. We reached the outskirts of the city, but when you're biking in the dark after a 120 km day, it seems to take forever to reach the centre of a city we realized. We finally made it, and checked into the first hotel that we looked at. It was time for pizza, and then a very long, very solid sleep.
We took a rest day the next day in Abancay, and didn't leave our hotel room until we went out for supper. Then we came back and went to bed again. It was a pretty solid rest day. And then, we had 3 days left to get to Cuzco. We had just two more 4000 metre passes, but on pavement - easy peasy, of course. We cycled every day just as we planned, first to Curahuasi, then Limatambo. It was a strange feeling, the closer and closer we got to Cuzco. It was a city we had dreamed of visiting long before we left Canada - the Inca capital, the gateway to Machu Picchu, and a milestone at over 15,000 km. And now to add to it, our family was coming to meet us there - but, Laura and Sarah would be going back home. It was a mixture of emotion, both excitement and sadness, but we did our best to enjoy every minute of the ride until we arrived. It was still beautiful scenery, and the four of us continued to grow closer and closer. June 25th, we rode into Cuzco, right on schedule. It was a triumphant entry. It felt pretty darn good.
We took the next day to relax and celebrate. Jeff and I had ridden over 15,000 km from Canada, and Laura and Sarah had ridden over 1000 km of the toughest section. It was more than impressive - from leaving Huaraz on homemade equipment and never ridden any sort of distance on a bicycle, they were stellar, right from the start. They biked 7 different 4000 metre passes on terrible gravel, found 13 different chicken feet in their soups, and did it all without any complaints. We loved every minute of biking with them, and every mintue we weren't biking as well. We didn't really anticipate how much biking with them would change our trip - but we know now how difficult it will be to go back to biking without them. We consider ourselves lucky to have had them along for this trip.
When our family arrived, our vacation began. We left our bikes with the manager of the cheap hotel we had been staying in, and moved into a very nice hotel. We had 3 weeks of spending time with our family, and seeing a few sights we had missed while biking. We took buses, and felt pretty car-sick every time. (We're just not used to travelling that fast anymore. It's crazy how fast vehicles move!). We got to see the Nazca Lines, the Colca Canyon, go sand-boarding on giant dunes in Huacachina, and eat a lot of very, very good meals. It was great to see our parents and sister again after so long, and it was great to have our Aunt Louise along to show off Peru. Yesterday they all left, back to Canada, and we find ourselves all alone again, after so long. It's a strange feeling right now, but we're anxious to get back on our bicycles and start getting some more miles under us. Spending all our time with Laura and Sarah, and now our family, has given us new motivation to keep going hard and reach the end of Argentina.
So tomorrow we'll get back on the bikes, and make our way to Lake Titicaca, and the Bolivian border. Starting tomorrow we've officially overstayed our visa for Peru, so hopefully we can exit the country without any problems. One more week, and we should be in Bolivia. We're excited.
Distance Cycled to Date: 15,152km
Number of Days since we left home: 319
We spent the night in a hotel in Andahuaylas, the four of us re-united, but all uncertain how and if we would be able to leave the city the next day due to the strikes and roadblocks. We had 6 days until we needed to be in Cuzco, and we knew it would be at least 5 full cycling days, and we hoped to still be able to take a rest day in Abancay, since Jeff and I had biked 6 straight days over 4 different 4000 metre passes. We didn't have much choice other than to keep cycling, as a bicycle seemed to be the best bet at getting through the roadblocks. And so we packed our bags, and started out, searching for the gravel road that would lead us to Abancay, and the paved highway to Cuzco.
We slowly started the nearly 2000 metre climb out of Andahuaylas, passing numerous small villages and people working their tiny plots of land that seem to surround the road as it heads up to dizzying heights. Like the days coming into Andahuaylas, leaving town we were bombarded with warnings of the roadblocks. We couldn't pass, we were told, time and time again. But we had to just keep biking, and so we always responded with smiles and waves, and hoped that our charm could get us through any difficult situations. We thought we might have some trouble when a motorcycle passed us, and then 10 minutes later came back from the opposite direction, and stopped to tell us that we couldn't pass ahead. If even a motorcycle couldn't get through, we might have some trouble. As we kept going and came around a corner, we saw another truckload of people, with men stretched out across the road, blocking the entire thing. I didn't know what to say, or what to expect as we rode up to them - but as it turned out, we were greeted again with our usual 'gringo', and they parted to let us through. Phew.
As we kept biking, truckloads and truckloads of men and women with Peruvian flags would come down the road, heading the opposite direction as us, and everytime somebody from the truck would call out in Spanish that we couldn't pass, then somebody that they will kill us ahead, and then finally in English somebody would call out "Hello! My name is!". They never would finish the sentence with their name - just 'my name is!'. It seems the English program in rural Peru still has a few steps to go. But anyway - the combination of death threats and friendly smiles was confusing for us, and we weren't exactly sure what we should be feeling... but we just kept going.
Even though Sarah had had a few days off to try to recover from some sort of stomach bug, it hadn't quite been enough, as she wasn't feeling very well from the start of the day. It continued to get worse, and even though she tried to just keep going at a very slow pace, it was clear that she was suffering. And so, after only 30 km, we called it a day when we found an amazing campsite with views of jagged peaks and fertile valleys in nearly all directions. We were close to the top of the pass, but still had close to 120 km to do the next day to get to Abancay, 100 of which was on gravel - and included a whole lot of trip climb, and of course the possibility that we wouldn't make it through the next set of roadblocks. However, everybody was up for the challange, and so after a nice long sleep from sunset to sunrise, we got up and packed quickly, not even waiting for the frost to melt off our tents, and set off to see how close we could get to reaching our goal.
The scenery continued to impress us, and even though we were biking at high altitude, up a mountain on a poor road, it was still a great time. Sarah was feeling better, and we were making good time. We reached the top of the pass and started the descent without a single death threat. It was looking like a good day. But then, after just a little bit of bone-rattling downhill, we came up to a long line of vehicles. We passed them all, and saw a group of people sitting around on top of boulders scattered all over the road. Traffic from both sides was completely backed up, but we were able to walk our bikes through the maze, and made it through without anybody minding. In fact, they all just laughed at us. So we kept going, and just an hour or two later came to our next sizeable blockage, which was still under construction. About 15 men with shovels and pickaxes were in the process of building a wall of dirt and rocks about 5 feet high, completely blocking the road, with a rock wall on one side of the road, and a sheer cliff on the other. We slowed down, and they all stared at us. Then somebody made some kind of joke, they all started laughing, and then one or two men with shovels helped to clear a little path over the wall that we could push our bikes up. We were all smiles, and so were they - and we made it through the entire 'paro' stretch without any incident whatsoever. In fact, everybody that we met continued to be just as friendly as everybody else that we've met in Peru.
We finally got off the gravel and joined the pavement 18 km outside of Abancay, and were relieved to know this would be the last gravel we would ride on in Peru. Finally. But - this didn't mean that the day would end easily, because we still had 18 km of uphill, and the sun was nearly setting already. But we really wanted to make it to Abancay that day, and so we pushed, and pushed. Laura and Sarah were both dead tired (and even Jeff and I were ready for the day to end), but we just kept going, up the paved highway, as the sun dipped lower and lower, and then disappeared. On we went in the dark, for the first time ever on this trip. We reached the outskirts of the city, but when you're biking in the dark after a 120 km day, it seems to take forever to reach the centre of a city we realized. We finally made it, and checked into the first hotel that we looked at. It was time for pizza, and then a very long, very solid sleep.
We took a rest day the next day in Abancay, and didn't leave our hotel room until we went out for supper. Then we came back and went to bed again. It was a pretty solid rest day. And then, we had 3 days left to get to Cuzco. We had just two more 4000 metre passes, but on pavement - easy peasy, of course. We cycled every day just as we planned, first to Curahuasi, then Limatambo. It was a strange feeling, the closer and closer we got to Cuzco. It was a city we had dreamed of visiting long before we left Canada - the Inca capital, the gateway to Machu Picchu, and a milestone at over 15,000 km. And now to add to it, our family was coming to meet us there - but, Laura and Sarah would be going back home. It was a mixture of emotion, both excitement and sadness, but we did our best to enjoy every minute of the ride until we arrived. It was still beautiful scenery, and the four of us continued to grow closer and closer. June 25th, we rode into Cuzco, right on schedule. It was a triumphant entry. It felt pretty darn good.
We took the next day to relax and celebrate. Jeff and I had ridden over 15,000 km from Canada, and Laura and Sarah had ridden over 1000 km of the toughest section. It was more than impressive - from leaving Huaraz on homemade equipment and never ridden any sort of distance on a bicycle, they were stellar, right from the start. They biked 7 different 4000 metre passes on terrible gravel, found 13 different chicken feet in their soups, and did it all without any complaints. We loved every minute of biking with them, and every mintue we weren't biking as well. We didn't really anticipate how much biking with them would change our trip - but we know now how difficult it will be to go back to biking without them. We consider ourselves lucky to have had them along for this trip.
When our family arrived, our vacation began. We left our bikes with the manager of the cheap hotel we had been staying in, and moved into a very nice hotel. We had 3 weeks of spending time with our family, and seeing a few sights we had missed while biking. We took buses, and felt pretty car-sick every time. (We're just not used to travelling that fast anymore. It's crazy how fast vehicles move!). We got to see the Nazca Lines, the Colca Canyon, go sand-boarding on giant dunes in Huacachina, and eat a lot of very, very good meals. It was great to see our parents and sister again after so long, and it was great to have our Aunt Louise along to show off Peru. Yesterday they all left, back to Canada, and we find ourselves all alone again, after so long. It's a strange feeling right now, but we're anxious to get back on our bicycles and start getting some more miles under us. Spending all our time with Laura and Sarah, and now our family, has given us new motivation to keep going hard and reach the end of Argentina.
So tomorrow we'll get back on the bikes, and make our way to Lake Titicaca, and the Bolivian border. Starting tomorrow we've officially overstayed our visa for Peru, so hopefully we can exit the country without any problems. One more week, and we should be in Bolivia. We're excited.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Peruvian Political Problems Part I: Ayacucho to Andahuaylas
Current Location: Cuzco, Peru
Distance Cycled to Date: 15,152km
Number of Days in Peru to Date: 88
Number of Days Allowed on our Peruvian Tourist Visa: 90
Number of Pictures Taken in Peru to Date: 3807
It's been a month since we last posted a blog entry. Some people might attribute this to laziness on our part, and those people are pretty much dead-on. A whole lot has happened in the last month, though those with astute Peruvian geography will notice that we haven't actually made it too far since our last entry from Ayacucho. The reason for this is that we've spent the last 3 weeks spending time with our parents, younger sister, and our aunt who came from Canada to see us. So the laziness really could be explained by our desire to spend as much quality time with our family as we could. Or, you could just call us lazy, I suppose.
Since we actually do have some good stories from biking that we should have shared weeks and weeks ago, we're going to take you back in time to leaving Ayacucho, and pretend that this is a current entry. So - it's now the middle of June, Sarah and Laura are staying to rest in Ayacucho for 2 days before taking a bus to Andahuaylas to meet us - our last planned seperation, to give them a chance to recover from some stomach bugs and sore muscles. Meanwhile, Jeff and I hit the road, ready to tackle a few more 4000 metre passes, which being divided by 2000 metre river valleys would be one of the toughest sections yet.
Now we have to back the narrative up just a little bit again, and cover a little bit of background. Being touring cyclists we find ourselves fairly isolated from any sort of media, or world news. We are completely out of the loop. The best example of this is probably that we only found out a couple of weeks ago who won the Stanley Cup. That's right - two Canadian guys in their early 20s, and we didn't even know who made the playoffs in the NHL this year. We don't know anything going on in the world. We did find out, however, that there have been a few political problems in Peru going on while we've been cycling. It's fairly complex, and despite having been in Peru for 3 months now, we still don't really understand all of the issues at hand. But while we were in the Huancayo area, we heard that there were massive political protests happening in the Amazon, and in one confrontation 22 police officers were killed, and at least that many protestors as well. It was a pretty big deal here in Peru, and the kind of situation where nobody won. It seemed however to be confined to the jungle areas, far from us, and so we didn't worry about our own personal safety at all.
And so, having forgotten about any current political problems in Peru (and still no knowledge of Pittsburgh's victory back home) we set out climbing and climbing on the dusty, rough gravel road out of Ayacucho. We climbed and climbed, camped, and the next day climbed some more before descending into the village of Ocros which had a basic hostal to stay the night in. We took a look at the place, which consisted of a single room with 4 rickety beds. We'd gotten pretty used to this sort of rustic accomodation, and didn't think too much of the fact that there was no bathroom attached to the room. Often we've had to go downstairs or even to anouthouse to do our business, and thought that would be no different. But after asking for the bathroom and following the senora's directions, we found ourselves going down a trail towards the river. There was no buildling. We searched. We've come across the same thing at a few restaurants, where the bathroom was 'just across the highway, down into the ditch'. But this was the first time in a hotel where we were forced to fend for ourselves, right in the town.
It's hard to even keep straight the days, as every day was either a 2000 metre climb, or a 2000 metre descent, both of which were exhausting and difficult on the rough roads. But on the day before we were to reach Andahuaylas, a small SUV coming towards us stopped to talk to us. It was an Australian man who stopped to see how up to date we were on the current situation in the city we were heading to. Of course, our answer was not at all. It turned out that he had been stuck in the city for the past 5 days, which was under a 'paro', or stoppage. All highways in and out of the city had been blocked off, and all businesses in the city were to be on strike. It was in support of what had happened in the Amazon, as well as a few of their own issues. The Austalian had managed to escape he told us, in the middle of the night, despite having rocks and sticks thrown at his vehicle.
And so, it seemed our plan to meet Laura and Sarah in Andahuaylas might have a wrinkle in it. This was the first we had heard of the 'paro', but it was far from the last. Soon after, it seemed half of the people who we would pass would call out 'no, you can't pass! Everything is closed.', which worried us a little. The other half would smile and wave and call out 'gringo!', which comforted us again. Arriving in Uripa, the last town we were supposedly able to reach before the roadblocks would begin, we tried to find an internet cafe to email the girls, and hopefully hear something from them. After finding one internet cafe with no internet due to the situation in Andahuaylas, we finally found one with still-open broadband. We found a few emails from Laura and Sarah, first telling us the bus wasn't running, then that they could get as far as Uripa, and then finally that they found a company that was sending in a nightbus that would be able to make it all the way. And so, we went to bed wondering where it would be that we actually would find each other again. We looked at a map to find any alternate routes that would miss Andahuaylas, but every road through the area entered the city. The only possibility would be for them to take a bus all the way down to the coast, then change buses and go all the way back inland to Abancay, which would be a couple days of riding the bus. It seems whoever picked Andahuaylas as the city to shut down did some thinking beforehand. Well done.
Leaving Uripa, we were warned many times that the road was closed. And every time we would call out, 'si! gracis!' with a smile on our faces. We had just one more 4000 metre pass to summit before the downhill into our now-forbidden city. The frequency of the warnings picked up, as the traffic died down. In fact, traffic ceased to exist. We took it as a sign that maybe all these people were in fact right about the roadblocks, but we just kept biking, with no other real option. We finally reached the top of the pass after enjoying the slow biking and beautiful scenery without ever seeing a single vehicle. We ate a couple dry buns, (now a staple), and started the downhill, a little anxious and a bit nervous about what would come next. It wouldn't be very long at all before we'd fly around a corner and come across a rock field- small boulders and big rocks, scattered all over the road. We dodged them, kept going, and soon enough reached another one. And then a little bit further down was a tree, cut down across the road. Then more rocks, and more trees. After all our practice dodging sheep and cows moving down the road, we were very adept at weaving around the motionless rocks. A couple trees forced us to get off and carry our bikes (but after carrying our loaded bikes up countless hotel staircases, we've become pretty accustomed to this as well). We were a little nervous about the villagers around, that they might not like us foreigners ignoring their roadblocks - but nobody seemed to really mind - everybody would just tell us that the road is closed, and warn us that further ahead we couldn't pass. But it was always further ahead that the trouble would be, so we just kept pushing on. With every scattering of boulders and every tree across the road, we became less and less sure that we'd be greeted by Laura and Sarah when we reached the city.
Just a few kilometres before the city the warnings started to really increase, with one lady yelling intently for us to stop, and when I looked back at her, she slid her finger across her neck, warning us that we might be killed further ahead. And as we kept pedaling, with slightly more than a touch of concern, we came around a corner and saw a semi-truck with the back loaded up with young men, and Peruvian flags flying. We slowed down to be biking side by side, expecting at any minute a gun to be pulled on us - but instead, it was the typical 'gringo!' with grins on their faces. We finally exhaled after passing the group, and we entered the city limits of Andahuaylas just as the sun set. There was glass smashed all over the roads and rocks still everywhere, but the city seemed to be moving at a normal pace, and not a single person questioned us once we got there. We found an open internet cafe and checked to find out the status of the girls, expecting the worst. And there was an email from them - they had checked into a hotel, in Andahuaylas, just around the corner from us.
We're still not exactly sure how their bus reached the city except that it found a different, longer but more open route- but however they arrived, we were very, very relieved to see them. Now the problem just became leaving the next day, as we were (again) told that we couldn't get through the highway on the other side of the city. The word 'kill' was definitely used a few times, and we started to question if we could make it to Cuzco by our deadline, imposed by Laura and Sarah's flight home, and the arrival of our family.
Stay tuned to find out what happens next to the cycling quartet. Will we make it out of the city? Will we reach Cuzco in time for the girls to see Machu Picchu, and Jeff and I to meet our parents? Part II is coming soon...
Distance Cycled to Date: 15,152km
Number of Days in Peru to Date: 88
Number of Days Allowed on our Peruvian Tourist Visa: 90
Number of Pictures Taken in Peru to Date: 3807
It's been a month since we last posted a blog entry. Some people might attribute this to laziness on our part, and those people are pretty much dead-on. A whole lot has happened in the last month, though those with astute Peruvian geography will notice that we haven't actually made it too far since our last entry from Ayacucho. The reason for this is that we've spent the last 3 weeks spending time with our parents, younger sister, and our aunt who came from Canada to see us. So the laziness really could be explained by our desire to spend as much quality time with our family as we could. Or, you could just call us lazy, I suppose.
Since we actually do have some good stories from biking that we should have shared weeks and weeks ago, we're going to take you back in time to leaving Ayacucho, and pretend that this is a current entry. So - it's now the middle of June, Sarah and Laura are staying to rest in Ayacucho for 2 days before taking a bus to Andahuaylas to meet us - our last planned seperation, to give them a chance to recover from some stomach bugs and sore muscles. Meanwhile, Jeff and I hit the road, ready to tackle a few more 4000 metre passes, which being divided by 2000 metre river valleys would be one of the toughest sections yet.
Now we have to back the narrative up just a little bit again, and cover a little bit of background. Being touring cyclists we find ourselves fairly isolated from any sort of media, or world news. We are completely out of the loop. The best example of this is probably that we only found out a couple of weeks ago who won the Stanley Cup. That's right - two Canadian guys in their early 20s, and we didn't even know who made the playoffs in the NHL this year. We don't know anything going on in the world. We did find out, however, that there have been a few political problems in Peru going on while we've been cycling. It's fairly complex, and despite having been in Peru for 3 months now, we still don't really understand all of the issues at hand. But while we were in the Huancayo area, we heard that there were massive political protests happening in the Amazon, and in one confrontation 22 police officers were killed, and at least that many protestors as well. It was a pretty big deal here in Peru, and the kind of situation where nobody won. It seemed however to be confined to the jungle areas, far from us, and so we didn't worry about our own personal safety at all.
And so, having forgotten about any current political problems in Peru (and still no knowledge of Pittsburgh's victory back home) we set out climbing and climbing on the dusty, rough gravel road out of Ayacucho. We climbed and climbed, camped, and the next day climbed some more before descending into the village of Ocros which had a basic hostal to stay the night in. We took a look at the place, which consisted of a single room with 4 rickety beds. We'd gotten pretty used to this sort of rustic accomodation, and didn't think too much of the fact that there was no bathroom attached to the room. Often we've had to go downstairs or even to anouthouse to do our business, and thought that would be no different. But after asking for the bathroom and following the senora's directions, we found ourselves going down a trail towards the river. There was no buildling. We searched. We've come across the same thing at a few restaurants, where the bathroom was 'just across the highway, down into the ditch'. But this was the first time in a hotel where we were forced to fend for ourselves, right in the town.
It's hard to even keep straight the days, as every day was either a 2000 metre climb, or a 2000 metre descent, both of which were exhausting and difficult on the rough roads. But on the day before we were to reach Andahuaylas, a small SUV coming towards us stopped to talk to us. It was an Australian man who stopped to see how up to date we were on the current situation in the city we were heading to. Of course, our answer was not at all. It turned out that he had been stuck in the city for the past 5 days, which was under a 'paro', or stoppage. All highways in and out of the city had been blocked off, and all businesses in the city were to be on strike. It was in support of what had happened in the Amazon, as well as a few of their own issues. The Austalian had managed to escape he told us, in the middle of the night, despite having rocks and sticks thrown at his vehicle.
And so, it seemed our plan to meet Laura and Sarah in Andahuaylas might have a wrinkle in it. This was the first we had heard of the 'paro', but it was far from the last. Soon after, it seemed half of the people who we would pass would call out 'no, you can't pass! Everything is closed.', which worried us a little. The other half would smile and wave and call out 'gringo!', which comforted us again. Arriving in Uripa, the last town we were supposedly able to reach before the roadblocks would begin, we tried to find an internet cafe to email the girls, and hopefully hear something from them. After finding one internet cafe with no internet due to the situation in Andahuaylas, we finally found one with still-open broadband. We found a few emails from Laura and Sarah, first telling us the bus wasn't running, then that they could get as far as Uripa, and then finally that they found a company that was sending in a nightbus that would be able to make it all the way. And so, we went to bed wondering where it would be that we actually would find each other again. We looked at a map to find any alternate routes that would miss Andahuaylas, but every road through the area entered the city. The only possibility would be for them to take a bus all the way down to the coast, then change buses and go all the way back inland to Abancay, which would be a couple days of riding the bus. It seems whoever picked Andahuaylas as the city to shut down did some thinking beforehand. Well done.
Leaving Uripa, we were warned many times that the road was closed. And every time we would call out, 'si! gracis!' with a smile on our faces. We had just one more 4000 metre pass to summit before the downhill into our now-forbidden city. The frequency of the warnings picked up, as the traffic died down. In fact, traffic ceased to exist. We took it as a sign that maybe all these people were in fact right about the roadblocks, but we just kept biking, with no other real option. We finally reached the top of the pass after enjoying the slow biking and beautiful scenery without ever seeing a single vehicle. We ate a couple dry buns, (now a staple), and started the downhill, a little anxious and a bit nervous about what would come next. It wouldn't be very long at all before we'd fly around a corner and come across a rock field- small boulders and big rocks, scattered all over the road. We dodged them, kept going, and soon enough reached another one. And then a little bit further down was a tree, cut down across the road. Then more rocks, and more trees. After all our practice dodging sheep and cows moving down the road, we were very adept at weaving around the motionless rocks. A couple trees forced us to get off and carry our bikes (but after carrying our loaded bikes up countless hotel staircases, we've become pretty accustomed to this as well). We were a little nervous about the villagers around, that they might not like us foreigners ignoring their roadblocks - but nobody seemed to really mind - everybody would just tell us that the road is closed, and warn us that further ahead we couldn't pass. But it was always further ahead that the trouble would be, so we just kept pushing on. With every scattering of boulders and every tree across the road, we became less and less sure that we'd be greeted by Laura and Sarah when we reached the city.
Just a few kilometres before the city the warnings started to really increase, with one lady yelling intently for us to stop, and when I looked back at her, she slid her finger across her neck, warning us that we might be killed further ahead. And as we kept pedaling, with slightly more than a touch of concern, we came around a corner and saw a semi-truck with the back loaded up with young men, and Peruvian flags flying. We slowed down to be biking side by side, expecting at any minute a gun to be pulled on us - but instead, it was the typical 'gringo!' with grins on their faces. We finally exhaled after passing the group, and we entered the city limits of Andahuaylas just as the sun set. There was glass smashed all over the roads and rocks still everywhere, but the city seemed to be moving at a normal pace, and not a single person questioned us once we got there. We found an open internet cafe and checked to find out the status of the girls, expecting the worst. And there was an email from them - they had checked into a hotel, in Andahuaylas, just around the corner from us.
We're still not exactly sure how their bus reached the city except that it found a different, longer but more open route- but however they arrived, we were very, very relieved to see them. Now the problem just became leaving the next day, as we were (again) told that we couldn't get through the highway on the other side of the city. The word 'kill' was definitely used a few times, and we started to question if we could make it to Cuzco by our deadline, imposed by Laura and Sarah's flight home, and the arrival of our family.
Stay tuned to find out what happens next to the cycling quartet. Will we make it out of the city? Will we reach Cuzco in time for the girls to see Machu Picchu, and Jeff and I to meet our parents? Part II is coming soon...
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