Peru IV: Solo Again in Rainy Peru

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.

In Ecuador I absolutely hated the unpaved roads of the TEMBR (The Ecuador Mountain Bike Route), but in Peru I kind of learned to appreciate the tranquility, the peace, the small villages with welcoming people and the unpaved roads rather than the busy, ugly highways. It’s also good to mention that the unpaved roads in Peru are just a lot more enjoyable than the ones in Ecuador, where the people love to throw some cobblestones down the top of a mountain and declare it “a road”.

Anyway, I will continue following most of the Peru Great Divide towards Huancayo, where I will meet my friend Arjo that will share my journey south for a month.

After saying goodbye to Jesús and hopping on my bike I notice that for the first part of the day my thoughts are a bit cluttered. Too many mixed feelings. I’ve been cycling together with Dea, Gaetan and Jesús for almost two months and being back solo on the bike is both exciting but also I need to get used to being alone again.

Moreover, me and Arjo have been in the process of buying him a bike in a bike shop in Lima and this morning I have had contact with the bike shop owner about which bike he wants and the payment. The thing is, I just took a turn onto an unpaved road going up into the mountains and my cell signal has been going from 4G to H+. It won’t be long until cell service is over. I manage to receive and forward the payment link to Arjo just before my signal cuts off. I guess that’s it. I will check tomorrow, or whenever I’m back into an area with cell service, if everything went okay.

I have a self made lunch next to a cobbling river with a beautiful view into the valley. When I’m back on the bike it doesn’t take long before the valley turns dark, I already hear the rumbling in the distance. The sky turns pitch dark and I see flashes and hear thunder everywhere around me. First hail hits me followed by rain. My shoes get wet making my feet ice cold. I climb up to my highest point this trip: 4.961m. Every kilometer I have to stop to take a breath. It’s misty at the top and I put on some dry and warm clothes for the descent. Wearing my ski-pants (best purchase ever) I first pass some ugly mining areas, and then fly down back to more pleasant temperatures. I end the day in some thermal baths, which is an absolute salvation for my in the meantime frozen toes. It’s here where I meet three bikepackers (meaning: people traveling on mountain bikes and with a lighter setup). We spend the night together cooking dinner and setting up camp next to the baños termales.

I’ve got two options today: to take it easy and set up camp before the massive pass of today, or to make it a long day and get up and over the pass. I’m awake early by zipping tents and whispering voices. Me and the three bikepackers (two German, one from the US) have breakfast together and are ready to roll at about the same time. Good, let’s share the road a bit. The first part is a descent and it’s absolutely crazy to see how these light mountain bikes with thick tires get down the unpaved roads so much faster than I do. Compared to them I’m a little truck. We do some groceries in a village and then start the first climb of today up until the last village of today. I really have to push hard to keep up with the bikepackers. When we enter the village there is a typical Peruvian band playing music and people in the streets are drinking beer (it’s 09:30AM). I love Peru, always and everywhere there will be some kind of celebration somewhere. There is a lady selling trucha frita (fried trout with rice) and we decide that it won’t be a bad idea to carb-up a little bit more before the rest of the climbing today.

After our second breakfast we continue climbing up. Some parts are crazy steep and with the weight that I’m carrying I have to dig deep into my red zones. Way deeper than the bikepackers: I have to let them go. Also I think that trying to keep up with them in the first part of today wrecked me already a bit. My competitive mindset wants to keep up with these guys but I have no chance. I completely wreck myself. I cycle through a beautiful high-altitude valley and see the mist coming in to the right of me. Soon later I’m cycling in the mist and the cold. And to make things even worse it starts raining. Exhausted I make it to the top, but there are parts where I have to stop every 250 meter to catch a breath.

Luckily I get treated to vistas on beautiful mountains with every color of the rainbow and on flocks of llamas that have to move aside to let me pass. It doesn’t take long before the mist catches me again and in the descent I don’t see shit. Which gives my mind no distraction but to focus on the pain in my toes and fingers from the cold: great. This is it, I need better gear to protect myself from rain and cold. Luckily Arjo is coming soon and he will bring me rain pants, good gloves and shoe covers to make the suffering hopefully a bit less.

Wet, cold to the bone and exhausted I make it down to a village called Vichaycocha and I already promised myself in the downhill that I will be seeking a hotel room with a hot shower tonight. Shakily I ask a lady if she has a room. It takes her forever to come back with the key and to make matters worse she tells me that there is only a cold shower. Entertained, the three bikepackers look at my misery. Probably having reached the village already an hour ago, have slipped into dry clothes already, probably didn’t suffer as much as I did and are comfortably sipping a beer. Dammit. I take a cold shower, electrocute myself by thinking that I could make the shower hot by fiddling with some wires, slip into dry clothes and crawl underneath the woolen sheets of my bed for the night.

Also here there is a festivity going on with lots of loud music. It looks like a small-scale fiesta but little did I know that the band that’s playing music right underneath the window of my room will continue playing until 5 in the morning!

Initially I can fall asleep, but I find myself wide awake from 02:00 to 04:00.

This morning I take a different route than the three bikepackers, which is better so that I can decide my own pace and not let my competitive mindset take the overhand again. I like to be alone for a bit again. I cycle past an archaeological site and the funny thing is that the foundations from stapled stones are still the same as the little rural houses that I see in the mountains these days. When it starts to rain heavily I’m lucky enough to spot a cave where I can seek dry shelter.

I circle around a lake and at the end of the day I come across the three bikepackers again, both different routes have come together again and so do we.

They’re looking for a camp spot. Perfect! We find a nice place overlooking a laguna in the distance, at 4600m, we filter water from another little laguna closer by and when it starts raining and the sun has set we all cook in our tents.

It’s pretty crazy, but this is the first time I had to cook in my tent. To be honest I haven’t had a lot of rain on my way from Canada to Ecuador, but now the rain season has really started and I’ve had rain almost every day in Peru.

It’s actually a pretty cozy feeling to cook in my tent. With the rain softly tickling on the canvas and nothing to do but to stir in my pot.

It has been raining a lot last night, but I’ve slept well nonetheless. I wake up by enthusiastic voices. The clouds have disappeared and we find ourselves amidst high-altitude Andes lagunas and mountains with freshly packed snow on their tops. Soon later also the sun rises over the mountains and we couldn’t be happier. I more and more get to understand why the old civilizations used to worship the sun.

We let the tents dry and pack up. A beautiful day follows on unpaved roads circling along more lagunas. We find a place for lunch in Yantac and whilst we’re having lunch the sky turns darker outside. We look up, we look at our maps. “Okay guys, it’s 14 kilometers slightly downhill to the next town for the night. It will not take long before it will start to rain. Let’s make a run for it?” Let’s do it.

Two kilometers in it starts raining softly and it gradually gets harder.

Another day, another soaked and cold arrival. We end in a village with the great name of Marcapomacocha.

I still have 30 sol (€7.50) in my wallet, but there is nowhere an ATM to be found. Luckily I’ve arranged with Dea and Gaetan to meet them the day after tomorrow (they are coming back from Lima, where they had to fix some broken spokes) and they will bring 400 soles for me.

However this means I cannot spend so much money in the next few days. The boys check into a hotel and I try to find a place to set up my tent in this big village. I try asking the municipality and some schools but nothing seems to work out. Then Miles, the American bikepacker, comes outside and tells me I can just roll out my sleeping bag in his room. Awesome. The boys go out for dinner and I make a spaghetti on my stove in the room. Sad life.

Due to the rain and the unpaved roads my drive-train squeaks like hell in the morning. I find a house in construction that has a water hose lying around to spray off most of the sand. I take off before the other boys do, because they will catch me later anyway. The road is gradual and beautiful. My chain keeps getting stuck due to the sand so I make a small stop at an irrigation channel to give my chain a proper wash. When the boys catch me I’m sipping on a hot coffee from my thermos bottle enjoying the views. We finish the last part of this gradual climb to the top at 4.900m together. After that a lovely descent follows all the way to the village of Chicla of which the last half on asphalt. We really enjoy the asphalt, overtake each other and scream like kids. In Chicla I say goodbye to the bikepackers.

We’ve been leapfrogging each other constantly for the past days but now we are really saying goodbye as they will take a right turn to enjoy some days in Lima and I will continue south.

In Chicla I shelter for the rain and have a poor man’s lunch of bread and cheese. It keeps raining so I decide not to go further and find a place to sleep here.

The municipality tells me I can sleep in one of the stalls of the second floor of the indoor market. It’s perfect, it’s secure, dry and quiet. I find a broom to sweep the place a bit cleaner, set up my tent and start making my dinner. To protect me from some light coming from outside I roll down the shutter of the empty market stall to lock myself in for the night.

What follows is a very funny morning. With my last money I buy some breakfast. In the meantime I try to get contact with Dea and Gaetan that supposedly should be in a village 10 kilometer further. But I don’t get a hold of them. I’m waiting for hours when finally I get a text “Sorry, we overslept“. They won’t start cycling today but I do want to. They give me their location. Like I said, it’s only 10 kilometer but what separates us is a super busy, narrow highway that leads all traffic towards Lima. I decide to leave the bike in Chicla and hitchhike up and down. My first ride is on the passenger seat of a big truck. I meat Dea and Gaetan, we chat, catch up and importantly I get the 400 soles that I need so much.

The lift that I get back to Chicla is with a man and a lady. We chat and immediately have a good connection. The man’s name is Pedro and the lady is his secretary or something. He is from Huancayo and seems to be retired already. I tell my story, which they absolutely love. When I get out of the car and thank them for the ride he tries to give me a note of 100 soles. I friendly decline the money and tell him that “if he wants to help me, maybe he can help me by finding a place to stay in Huancayo?“. He tells me that I can stay in his place. Great!

I find my bike still next to the stall of the breakfast lady and start cycling. It’s a game of cat and mouse today with the rain, but for now I seem to win by seeking the right shelter at the right time.

During a coffee-from-thermos break I see two oldies working their fields above me. I’m in good spirits and shout towards them if they want some coffee. They want to. The problem is that they’re just a ridge above me. I climb up some rocks to stretch my arm as far as I can to give my thermos to them, but just before he can grab it the rock beneath me crumbles and I fall a few meters down. New wounds on my skin. Good, because I always say: “if you have scabs on your skin it means that you’re playing outside sufficiently, that you living life“. Anyway, no coffee for the oldies unfortunately.

I seek shelter from the rain, thunder and lightning under a bridge for over an hour, before I make it to a little settlement called Yuracmayo. The town itself is a bit abandoned, but luckily I find someone that opens her shop for me to buy food.

It’s funny here in Peru: any regular house can be a shop, many times you can’t tell from the outside, you just have to ask around and the people will point to the house that has some canned goods, bread, Inca Cola and candy stored inside.

There’s a big hydroelectric dam just outside of town and the office is at the end of the village. I ask the workmen If they have a dry place for me to sleep and they point me towards a vacant office where I can put up my tent.

I try to embed a new tactic to get pedaling earlier in the morning to dodge the rain in the afternoon. The rain and thunder always seems to come around 2PM to 4PM. So today I’m on the bike at 8AM, still not super early but hey, at least an hour earlier than normal. It’s a process, people!

A beautiful day follows with colorful lagoons, white snow tops and a valley that is scattered with rocks. Today I’ll have to conquer two passes, one of 4900+m and one of 4700+m. Completely exhausted it’s still 8 kilometers to a village called Tanta when, again, I get surprised by a sudden all-hell-breaks-loose storm with hail and thunder.

Luckily I just pass an abandoned house with an intact roof that I can seek shelter in. The crazy thing is that these storms blow over so quickly. Half an hour it’s dark and stormy outside, but then when the storm has passed it’s all blue skies and cute white puffy clouds again.

In Tanta I get to put my tent in the rangers station of the National Park that is on the menu for tomorrow with the beautiful name of Reserva Paisajistica Nor Yauyos-Cochas. I have money again so I treat myself to a nice dinner meal in one of these super old houses where they serve a meal for 7 soles (€1.75).

The next morning my middle chain ring has absolutely no idea what’s happening to him!? It has been unused for the last weeks as I’ve only been climbing on my smallest chain ring and descending on my biggest. But today it’s his day to shine. Rolling hills next to a big lake and subsequently a river makes the morning a lovely cruising one without too much effort needed. The river is crystal clear and suddenly disappears somewhere for 4 kilometers. The spot where it disappears and reappears are indicated with signs and I make a small hike to check it out. It’s funny to see this river just disappear down into the rocky ground. Bizarre.

Later the river suddenly becomes a bit wider and branches off into all kinds of small waterfalls. Beautiful. This valley is an oasis of tranquility. I see horses down below me in the valley, nibbling from greener than green grass. What a beautiful day, what a beautiful surrounding. I’m totally ready to pitch my tent somewhere in this delta. In a little village I do some groceries and they fill up my water bottles in the little shop, but when I step back outside 20 minutes later, much to my disappointment, the clouds have turned pitch black once again and the first rain drops are leaving little dark spots on the pavement.

Dammit! My good camping mood changes immediately.

I decide to wait out the rain in the little shop and help the lady putting her stuff inside. I talk to some village people that visit the shop, one of them a friendly dentist. The rain won’t stop. I make a little sprint to the municipality to ask if I can pitch my tent under the roofed football field. She tells me it is possible but it will cost me 10 soles. Hmm, normally I don’t (have to) pay for that. The lady of the little shop tells me that she also rents beds for 20 soles. I’d rather do that than. The bed is upstairs in something that looks like a shack, the stairs creak terribly and the door is 1.50 meter high, I can feel every spring in the mattress and there is no shower. But I don’t mind, I’m warm under many woolen sheets.

I’m chilling in bed when suddenly the lady knocks the door. “The dentist came back for you, he wants to talk to you”. I put on my shoes and endure the agonies of the creaking stairs again when going down. The dentist tells me that he has a spare bed as well and a hot (!!!) shower. I look at the lady, “you don’t mind?“. She says it’s okay.

My first hot shower since Huaraz feels like heaven.

Yesterday I forgot to put the eggs I bought in my noodle soup. With little hope of a good outcome, I put them in my bag: I’m still on gravel and today turns out to be very bumpy. But apparently I’ve bought the most ghetto/hardcore eggs throughout Peru, because after bumping up and down for 13 kilometers on the worst gravel road I had in weeks I check my food bag and they’ve miraculously survived.

After these first kilometers downhill I turn left into a new valley and from here on it will only be uphill for the rest of today. I won’t make it up and over the pass today so I’ll have to camp somewhere before the top. I cycle through a beautiful cañon, with beautifully organically eroded mountain walls rising high into the sky left and right from me. Beautiful tunnels lead me through the narrowest of the sections. I have lunch in a town and order one lunch more for to-go, so I don’t have to cook tonight.

The climbing goes very well, my legs feel good. After 35 kilometers of going up I once again get caught in a hail storm. Like always, the hail starts off easy. I decide to pedal on. I rather have hail than rain: the hail bounces off your clothes which doesn’t make you so wet. But when the hail gets heavier I decide to seek shelter in one of these irrigation pipes that run below the road. I fold myself up and still have a good view on the valley next to me. I see the hail size turn from grains to marbles! It’s crazy! Lightning strikes right next to me, because there are only milliseconds between thunder and lightning.

Within minutes the landscape turns into a winter wonderland. After 40 minutes it calms down again, the hail and rain has stopped and the storm has blown over. I get out of my little shelter to check the damage. A 10 centimeter layer of ice marbles has covered everything. The road is icy and muddy but slipping and sliding I manage to make it to the top. Luckily the other side of the top has been hit less by the ice-marble shower and I can safely make it to something that looks like a little abandoned mining village. There is a school and some old houses, I shout but nobody answers, it’s hard to believe that anybody lives here, everything is so incredible neglected. However two dogs, one on a leash, tell a different story. Why would there be a dog on a leash if there is nobody living here?

The whole setting gives me the chills, such a post-apocalyptic setting. The doors of the little houses are locked but I can watch through the windows to see mattresses and old work equipment, helmets and so on. One building is not locked and seems empty, some kind of communal building. I decide to take up residence here for the night. Not much later I see a guy walking around the area. So there are people here after all?! I make contact, he tells me it’s okay the sleep here, but I don’t get the best vibe from the guy.

In the night the wind blows through the smashed windows and some posters on the wall make sounds. It’s hard to fall asleep but luckily my tired body helps out in the end.

I get woken up by an old guy, chewing on coca leaves, suddenly standing next to my tent inside the abandoned building. He scares the shit out of me. Within milliseconds my body and mind are fully on. “Yes, I was sleeping here“. He leaves. I quickly pack up.

Today the elevation profile shows me one big downhill to Huancayo. Therefore I automatically think that I can keep my legs still and just swoosh down those 85 kilometers to Huancayo, but of course that’s not the case. Every little uphill hurts and demotivates, I don’t really feel like cycling today. I’m clearly ready for some rest days.

I come across pink flamingos that are chilling in a lagoon at 4.600m. I reach Huancayo where I immediately call my friend Arjo to tell him I’ve arrived in the city that in a few days from now we will be meeting and to wish him a good flight.

I meet with Pedro, the guy that I met a few days ago, and he gives me the keys to the apartment that I can stay in for a couple of days.

Super nice of him and how nice to have my own place for a bit!

The next day Pedro invites me to have breakfast at his secretary’s mother’s house. A traditional breakfast with potatoes, steamed beans and cheese. After that he takes me on a trip to his car. He loves to drive. Destination? Not important. I have no clue where we’re going but I don’t mind that much. We talk a bit and I’m just super relaxed. We drive the whole day and sometimes I just doze off a bit. Eventually we stop at a little stall on the side of the road to buy some kind of cactus drink that apparently should heal all sorts of diseases. After that we turn around to drive back to the city.

The following days I chill, clean my bike and clothes and patiently wait until my friend arrives to the city.

Next up: A crazy adventure with my friend Arjo filled with bad luck & Murphy’s Law.