Canada to Patagonia on a Bike

Dear dear dear Perú,

To be honest, I didn’t know much about you and didn’t know what to expect from you. I only knew about Machu Picchu and your Inca past.

But wow, how you’ve impressed me!

So I wanna say “gracias”. Gracias for showing me your beautiful culture, land and people. You have always approached me with a mix of shyness and curiosity, but thankfully the curiosity always won.

I know Arjo from my first year in university in Delft. We both started our bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design Engineering. Both coming from rather rural parts of the Netherlands, trying to figure out how this new student life was supposed to be done in a new and big city. Although from completely different parts of the country, he from The West and I from The South, we clicked because of our down-to-earth mentality.

In the morning I say goodbye to Jesús. We’ve had a great run together. What is it? Five or six weeks together? Crazy. During our time together he has been thinking about doing a carpentry course back in Europe. A few days ago he booked his flight ticket back home from Bolivia. He has been looking forward to spend some more time in Bolivia before he returns home and that’s why he decides to take the better traveled asphalt roads to the border with Bolivia. Leaving me behind in the dust and on the unpaved roads.

I’m almost a month in Peru now, at this point I’m still sharing the route with the Swiss’ Dea and Gaetan and the Spanish Jesús. Absolutely loved our last weeks together over gravel, down deep valleys and over stunning high-altitude plateaus. But I also would’ve liked to stay a bit longer in Caraz. I have the feeling that after almost one and a half year on the road I need to recharge my batteries faster and longer than before.

I’ve been in Peru now for a couple of weeks and I have to say that it’s rising quick on my list of “Countries that I like”. The people are super friendly, hospitable and curious. A nice mix. Many times we hear people say “welcome to Peru”, cars honk at us, people invite us in for a coffee or a place to stay the night. Moreover the landscapes here are stunning, majestic mountains towering over our heads, thousand-meter deep canyons seem to swallow you up, glacier-topped Andes peaks around every corner of the numerous switchbacks. Which brings me to my last reason why I like Peru: gentle gradients. Peruvians sure know how to build roads and especially bicycle-friendly roads. Although they probably did not have cyclists in the back of their minds when constructing these roads (instead most probably heavily loaded mining trucks). Roads are not crazy steep because of the many switchbacks that they’ve introduced here. It makes for stunning scenes.

I crossed into Peru yesterday with my Swiss cycling friends Dea and Gaetan. Our first impression was really good: the border guy gave us six instead of three months for our visa, people are waving and honking and throwing thumbs up everywhere and when asking for a place to sleep we immediately got offered three options. We chose the school.