Caraz – Laguna Llanganuco- Yanama – Chacas – Shilla – Huaraz – West Entrance Pastoruri – Pastoruri Glacier – Pachapaqui – Ticllos – Cajamarquilla – Baños termales Palpas – Cajatambo – Pacomayo – Oyon

14 days   |   648 kilometers   |   14.580 meters elevation gain

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. But the Swiss only have a year to complete their trip from North Colombia to South Argentina, are still fresh and want to keep going. At this point I still think the company is more valuable than fully recharged batteries, so after two rest days we saddle up the aluminium horses again and set out for the road.

Me and Jesús were camping in a backyard in Caraz and Dea and Gaetan were in a hotel. They text us that they will already start cycling while we are still packing up our stuff. Which I think is strange since we’ve always waited for each other before. The first cracks between our group of four are getting visible.

Together we’ve decided to take a small detour and make a loop through the beautiful Huascaran National Park.

As soon me and Jesús leave the tarmac and hop onto a gravel road. Two giants of snow-covered domes loom right in front of us: Huascaran Norte and Sur, both just below seven thousand meters. Jaw-dropping numbers for us Europeans. We meet Dea and Gaetan in a little village where we have lunch. After lunch we make it to the entrance of the park. We’ve read online that after four o’clock the rangers have gone home and you can enter the park without paying. Outdated information as it appears because we still meet the fanatic rangers and have to pay. We only pay for one day although we need minimum three days to make it through the park. In the meantime we get eaten alive by sand flies so we rapidly get going again. Soon two vertical black rock walls loom on either side that seem to reach the sky.

We decide to stop at a recreational area near two glacial lakes. There is a little restaurant but the people all have gone home already. The fire for the outdoor stove is still smoldering though, and so we have a large pot of boiling water in no time. A warm cup of tea is no abundance as the sun sets and the temperature is rapidly dropping. The stars unfold above us.

We wake up at 5AM since we don’t want to get caught with expired tickets for the park. We pass the glacial lakes and shoot up a road with hairpins as far as the eye can see. Around every corner we are presented with a view on yet another glacier. We climb to 4715m, the highest point I’ve ever reached on a bike. (However it will turn out that this record will be broken again and again for the coming months.) We make pictures and start the descent. Meandering around glacial lakes we swirl down the mountain pass. It’s incredibly beautiful here.

We get less far than we’ve anticipated today but we find a good camping spot in the wild, near a little laguna.

In the evening, after our traditional spaghetti meal, we are gathered in our camping chairs and enjoying a good conversation when suddenly we see some men walking through the woods with large flashlights a few hundred meters away. It’s a strange situation from the start. There is no road there, no village. It’s pitch black so we can clearly see the three flashlights shining from left to right. In the meantime our conversation dies, Gaetan turns his chair around so we all can follow those three flashlights with pounding hearts. They are getting closer to us now, maybe 100 meters away. What are these guys looking for? Us? I don’t have to explain you that everything is scarier in the dark. At one point they stop and we can see two flashlights pointing in the same direction. BANG!! A gun shot echoes loudly through the valley.

We almost fall off of our chairs. What. The. Fuck. Adrenaline rushes through our bodies quickly. We discuss whispering: what the hell do we do? Who are these gun-carrying men, but above all what do they want? We decide to turn our headlamps on to let them know that there’s people here to decrease the risk of getting shot in the case that they’re shooting at random. We all react differently: Gaetan starts packing his things and wants to leave as quickly as possible. Jesús and I are still carefully watching. The men continue walking through the forest, this time away from us. Half an hour later they appeared to have found a walking path towards the main road that runs close to our camp spot. When they’re at hearing distance we decide that it’s better to make contact now. If we don’t know what’s going on there is no way that we are ever catching any sleep tonight. We shout a “Hello!” to them, followed by a “What are you doing?” and I decide to throw in a “we are scared!” to break the ice. It works. They softly laugh and respond “We were looking for our cow!”. And that’s it, that’s the conversation. But for us it’s enough. The men drive off on motors. We just stand there, in the dark, in the cold talking about what just happened. This is how we think it all broke down: a cow broke its leg and so these farmers went back into the village to find a gun to relieve the animal of its suffering. They came back to the forest after dark, found the cow and shot it.

The tension slowly slips away from us. I’m still shaking but I don’t know if it’s from the cold or the adrenaline.

Everyone slept well despite the scare yesterday. We descend through a terribly beautiful valley. Piglets eat grass along the road. Kids in small villages call after us for some candy. Our only fellow road users are women in those beautiful costumes and high white hats who hiss their donkeys forth. A winding road swirling down through green and yellow hills. People speak Quechua here (yes, that’s where the name for the Decathlon house brand originates from).

After lunch Team Europe splits up. It had been coming for a while. For me the Swiss are a bit too rushed. For Jesús it’s different, he simply can’t keep up with the pace. After Dea and Gaetan proposed to do another 1400m elevation gain after lunch it’s time for Jesús to announce that he will not be able to do that and that he will split off. Which puts me in the position to choose between the two groups. I choose to stay behind with Jesús because I’d rather enjoy a bit more and embrace more of a carpe diem attitude: let’s see what comes our way. In good consultation and without bitterness we say goodbye to each other. We will definitely see each other again but for now we will split ways.

We climb to the village of Chacas, where we ask around to stay the night somewhere. The police, the municipality, the church. But nobody really seems to be able to help us out. We see no other way than to camp right in the middle of the village in the central park. We shower in the public toilet by alternately holding a garden hose over each others head. We laugh: what a life we are living.

We wake up in the epicentre of the village. People are walking around our tents towards their work or school. People wake up early here, around 5am and I notice that my rhythm has shifted along with Peru.

Before we set off on the bikes some school kids bring us cake for the road.

Today will be a tough day because we have to climb 1500m to an altitude of 4738m, where the highest tunnel in the world (for convenience sake, let’s ignore China for the moment) awaits us to bring us to the other side of the mountain. The road is fantastic, walls of glaciers, the tremendous noise of falling ice, lagoons, bare rocky mountains. We make it to the top unscathed, not too chilly and not sick of altitude. After the tunnel the views do not diminish. A great wall of switchbacks awaits us. Still surrounded by those giant white mountains left and right. We descend into what seems to be a magical valley, the sunlight casts a spotlight through the clouds and makes the rock face look like diamond. We get to descend on pavement, ten times faster than on gravel, what a joy!

I descend rapidly but my head seems to be full of haze, my mind cloudy, everything goes on the automatic pilot, I’m physically here, but mentally absent. Everything flashes past me: women in those beautiful traditional costumes chase a herd of sheep across the road, piglets, dogs, donkeys, horses and cows. Small villages where time has stood still, earth houses, bridges over the winding river through this green valley.

We soon end up in the village of Shilla where we eat ice cream and where we hear the good news of the presence of another Don Bosco church in town. In the past these Italian well-doers have proven to be excellent places to camp and this time is not different. We are quickly assigned a lawn where we can pitch our tents and are invited for dinner. We eat together with the youth who live here and are educated to become carpenters.

In the morning when I’m packing up my stuff suddenly my bed liner is gone. I swear I’ve put it on my little camping chair. I suspect the dog so I ask the people from the parish where the dog normally drags his (lost &) found stuff to. When suddenly somebody approaches me and tells me he’s seen an old lady wandering around my stuff. They quickly come to the conclusion that probably Maria, an old confused lady from the village, has stolen my bed liner. They will try to find her. In the mean time me and Jesús do some chores for the community, we bring wood for the stove and help carry stuff around. My liner gets found, apparently Maria was washing it somewhere in a dirty ditch so it’s soaking wet, but I’m glad I have it back. We have lunch with the local oldies, beautiful worn out people with colorful clothes and hats, but few teeth.

It’s a boring, busy road to Huaraz and Jesús doesn’t feel well.

In Huaraz we arranged to stay with a Couchsurfing address. Her name is Rocio and she is super friendly. We have a room with a bed to our disposal and we can use Rocio’s kitchen and washing machine.

It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed somewhere for a week or longer. I feel like I need it. Huaraz is the base-camp for backpacking tourists to do all kinds of hikes in the beautiful surroundings. Not me, I eat, drink, read and take it easy.

We meet Dea and Gaetan on their last night in Huaraz and we celebrate Dea’s birthday properly with pizza and pisco sour (famous Peruvian cocktail). Another great evening with great friends.

I throw away some shorts and t-shirts and buy a ski pants and an extra sleeping mat to keep me warmer in the tent. It’s exemplary: I’ll probably stay in the mountains in Peru and Bolivia will also be mostly on high altitude.

After chilling in Huaraz for a week I slowly feel like I’m ready to hit the road again. Jesús too. Although he’s been having the shits lately, so we postpone one last day. We will embark on another famous gravel route which is called the Peru Great Divide and runs from Huaraz to Cusco on unpaved roads through the cordilleras of the Andes. It’s supposed to be brutal but beautiful. Let’s do it!

A very nasty road takes us out of Huaraz: I’m cut off a few times by rude drivers on the road. When we take a turn onto gravel and into ‘our’ valley we see a very dark cloud hanging exactly where we need to go. Thunder rumbles in the distance. We count how many seconds there are between flash and thunder and calculate (3 seconds = 1km) that the storm is right above the entrance of the park at about 12km. We’re betting on it and hope the storm blows by as soon as we get closer. But of course this is not the case. End result, first day on the Peru Divide: hail, storm and completely wet to the bone. I can not move my cold fingers and have to use the palm of my hand to shift gears.

At 4.200m we reach the entrance of the park where we find a little shelter out of the wind for our tents. I try to quickly change into dry clothes, which turns out to be really hard if your fingers don’t work along. I sleep with plastic bags around my feet because my toes are still not willing to get warm.

It works like a charm because I have sweaty feet when I wake up. Jacko used to call this technique: Ghetto Gore-Tex.

Fortunately it is already quite warm quite early in the morning. Beautiful snow-capped mountain peaks await us. The start is still doable, but the end of the 20km on bad gravel and a headwind is a real struggle. We arrive completely wrecked and energy-depleted at the Pastoruri glacier at 2pm. Hungry! We brought sandwiches with tomato, avocado, cheese and olive oil for lunch before we walk the 4km loop to the glacier. We’re hitting 5000m and I don’t know if I’ve ever reached that high in my life. I’m suffering from the altitude, I feel like a wet towel and have to yawn every minute. We touch the ice of the glacier and walk back to the visitor center. It’s 4pm, it’s deserted here, what do we do? We decide to stay the night here. We find a small empty office where we can enter through a broken window to set up camp. It’s a bit of a hassle because it’s a really small window at chest-height which makes it a yoga exercise everytime we have to go in and outside. But it gives us shelter for the wind and some walls for insulation. Necessity knows no law at these circumstances: we’re at 4,840m altitude and it is freaking cold.

Turns out it was a good choice to take shelter at this space for the night: when I brush my teeth outside it starts to snow.

It is still incredibly cold when we wake up. I didn’t sleep very well, but it’s normal at these altitudes. We’re awake early but it takes some time before we set off: the weather is grey and it’s very windy. Not very inviting.

We set off anyway and soon we drive past blue glaciers, valleys full of alpacas that watch us anxiously pass by. The bare, rocky blue-gray mountains, the white of the eternal snow and the yellow-green of the arid tundra grass create a beautiful color palette. We come across a bunch of guys who are cutting up a cow on the spot. They tell us to come talk. The head of the cow lies around in the grass casually, we see the stomach being cut open and tens of kilos of grass falling out. They are enjoying a beer and are in good spirits.

It is ice and ice cold and we have to wear all our layers to keep us warm. After three days of gravel we finally get back on asphalt and we zoom down to a town with the catchy name of Patchapaqui. I start talking to a lady and 10 minutes later we are pitching our tent in the construction site of her new house.

We leave the village the next morning and get to enjoy some more descending on asphalt.

We reach Laguna Conococha, which turns out to be a kind of intersection of busy highways and prices are suddenly a lot higher here. For lunch we have Pachamanca which is the sacred food of the Incas that is cooked underground: sheep, pig, beans and potatoes. After lunch we aim for Ticllos, we take a beautiful gravel road and are treated one last time to the white peaks of the Huascaran Parque. The sun is shining, there are no cars, the silence is overwhelming, the gradients pleasant, the views astounding. What a pleasure to cycle here.

After we reach the top we get unpleasantly surprised to a very bumpy descend. We survive, but most importantly: our bikes survive.

We knock on the door of the parish of Don Bosco in Ticllos. Just like last time, we are immediately offered loncha: bread and coffee. We ask if we can pitch a tent somewhere which, again, is no problem. When pointing to the lawn, the Italian lady says, are you sure you don’t want a bed? We also have some beds you can sleep in”. “Oh! Well… Uhm… Yes, that would actually be nice too!” we answer in modesty.

We couldn’t be happier: a warm bed and dinner. We even get a glass of homemade grappa after dinner. Apparently we’ve arrived to a cyclists’ heaven!

Just like last time, we linger far too long at Don Bosco. It feels like a big family here, a warm nest that’s hard to leave. An Italian/Peruvian mix of people and everyone does their part. We help make Papa Rellenas for the whole village (or so it seems). We peel potatoes, cook them, mash them, form the papa rellenas with stuffing inside and finally frie them. We grab lunch and then go cycling.

Besides us, there are only donkeys and cows that share the road. I chase two donkeys a long way down a path, and only after a few kilometers they find a side road to let me pass. We arrive in Cajamarquilla where we’re allowed to sleep in the town hall.

A terribly beautiful day follows. We descend 2400m (!!!) along a majestic valley.

We pass extinct villages that consist of earth walls. Most houses have already collapsed. We start in the cold between the bare rocks and above the tree line and end in the heat between cacti. Then we cross the river that has carved out this valley over billions of years and on the other side of the river we start climbing back up.

We end up at some baños termales that we’ve found on the internet. Hot water comes out of the ground here and for a little bit over one euro, we get to fill a room with hot water to plunge our cold and tired bodies in with a beer in our hands. So good! We are also allowed to pitch our tents in their garden. The man tells me that the tiny village nearby lets a different family run the hot baths every two years to divide the income equally.

Yesterday we embarked already on something that was described as a “monster climb”, going from 1400m to 4800m, which we will divide into several days. Today is day two and merely climbing. Fortunately, the roads are kind to us and with enough stops we can reach Cajatambo when it’s only 3 pm. We chill out on the square and then ask permission to the priest to set up our tents in the garden of the church. Permission granted.

We wake up and start searching for breakfast. Our only option is a street cart where and old lady is selling “caldo de cabeza“, aka cow’s head soup. In my cup floats one of the cow’s eyeballs and I immediately regret it when I ask the lady if I’m supposed to eat the eyeball too. Of course she starts nodding frantically and pulls a face telling me its the most delicious part of the soup. Damnit. Jesús looks at me in excitement when I put the eyeball in my mouth. I go all in and start chewing on it. Luckily it’s not as bad as it looks.

We start climbing again. An incredible road with hairpins that are 4 kilometers separated between one another. We are close to the top when dark clouds turn up and it starts raining. We find a water outlet that runs underneath the road big enough for us to take shelter. After a little dry period it starts raining another time and we find an abandoned and rusty excavator on the side of the road where we can shelter. When it’s almost dry again we look at the map: it’s 8 kilometer downhill to the place where we think we can set up camp. The weather still looks threatening. We make a run for it. I see a wild fox running off into the wide fields. We make it to what we think is an abandoned school in the middle of freaking nowhere at 4.300m. As soon as we arrive all hell breaks loose: thunder, lightning and excessive rain.

We break into one of the buildings with the thought that we will tidy up everything again tomorrow. It’s just a necessity to have a roof and four walls around us tonight. We cook with rainwater that we collect in pans outside.

It’s unbelievable, but it seems like the school is actually functioning! As we are sitting there, outside in the morning sun, eating our oatmeal when suddenly a teacher shows up. She acts as if it’s the most normal thing in the world that there are two cycling tourists having their breakfast here. When she is away for a bit, we quickly go back into the building that we broke into to remove all our stuff and neatly secure and close everything up again.

The fact that this school functions is quite extraordinary, it is literally in the middle of nowhere. Soon the kids of the school start showing up, they’re a handful and mostly from the same family. They come walking 1 hour from their remote houses, with blistering red cheeks from the ferocious sun and the cold. Their shoes broken from walking. I’m sad but also happy at the same time, because it is great that even the kids in these remote areas get some kind of education. A flock of alpacas come grazing around the school. Time to leave this place.

We climb to an area full of mines, it’s sad to see these beautiful mountains quite literally being demolished. It starts to hail at the top, once again it’s ice cold. The descent is truly spectacular. First along bare mountains and then into a narrow valley right next to a swirling river.

Much to my delight, the road becomes paved at one point and with a tail wind it doesn’t take long before we reach the medium sized city of Oyon where we will take a rest day.

DON’T MISS A WORD

Be the first to know! Receive an email whenever a new blog post is uploaded.

8 Replies to “Peru III: Gunshots in the Night & Eyeball Soup”

  1. Wat een prachtig ( lang) verhaal weer Marijn en wat een belachelijk mooie foto’s
    Je moet daarvoor wel de hoogte en de vreselijke kou in maar dat is het helemaal waard
    En dan word je ook nog verwend met een heerlijke soepje met een ‘ogenschijnlijke’ lekkere verrassing
    Wat een avontuur !!
    Xxxxxxxxxxxx

  2. Geweldig, wat een reis Marijn! Prachtig om op deze manier een beetje mee te kunnen reizen. Zit ook zelf graag op de (trekking)fiets, voornamelijk in west-Europa. Hoorde van je reis via je vader Bert. Goede vriend van mijn broer Theo. Geniet van je biertje. Safe Travels! Erik van Hal

    1. Ha Erik, wat super leuk om te horen!! Blij dat ik de Van Halletjes nog een beetje op de hoogte kan houden. Ik neem aan dat je veel van mijn verhalen veel herkenning oproepen als je zelf ook veel op de fiets gereisd hebt. Dankjewel voor het biertje!!!!

  3. Wat is het toch een prachtig, prachtig, prachtig land en wederom een geweldig verhaal. Trouwens, pisco sour brings back memories.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *