July 4, 2017
Today was a nice short ride to hook up again with Philip and Nici.
Cycling Stats & Travel Stats
Start Point: Wild camp, Ancash, Peru
Destination: Ticllos, Ancash, Peru
20.2 km, 13.7 km/h average speed, 36.5 km/h maximum speed, 1:57 time on the bike
141 meters gained, 728 meters elevation descend, 4200 meters maximum elevation
Route Description:
The ride on this day is on a good gravel road. The road is undulating up and down with mostly downhill as you descend over 700 meters. The mostly downhill section is near the end of the mileage. Ticllos has many small stores and 2 hospedejes and no restaurants. We stayed at the Don Bosco church.
Accommodations:
There are two hospedejes in the town. We stayed at the Don Bosco church. They gave us a private room with private bath with hot water and fed us. It is an Italian church and they were so welcoming and hospitable.
What happened…
Andrew writes: Life can be funny sometimes. We had gone to such great lengths yesterday to make sure that we were in a place to teach my English class this morning, and then the darned kid didn’t even show up. Oh well, it just meant that we were able to start cycling earlier and since most of the ride was downhill we reached Ticllos in time for lunch. The Italian imports at the Motto Grosso church kindly put us up for the night and kept us fed, and we had a great time making friends with the volunteers and the local kids too.
Motto Grosso is an organization aimed at getting young Italians involved in missionary work. So everyone at the mission in Ticllos was our age, or younger; except for Padre Andrea who has been the pastor for over 20 years! There is a woodworking school attached to the church and young men in the community are given an opportunity to learn a trade. It turns out there is a similar operation in Chacas, and that explains all of the beautiful woodwork we saw when we passed through this town a few weeks ago. At noon, a bell rang outside, and a number of community members came in to share lunch with us. After they left, we were treated to some extra lasagne. Oh what a treat! Everything was freshly made. Dinner was similar, except it was about two dozen youths that joined us for the hearty meal.
One thing that came up over dinner was when one of the volunteers asked to see pictures of our trip. I have thousands of them, but nothing that resembles any sort of slideshow. I ended up taking an hour or so after dinner putting together about 50 pictures from the last three years to help me tell our story. In many cases, the pictures themselves come with a little anecdote, or life lesson, and it was fun to take a trip down memory lane as I put the show together.
How about you dear reader, do any of our photos from the last few years stand out for you as being memorable?
Amanda writes: The ride today was pretty uneventful. As it was mostly downhill on a remote gravel road it seemed really easy. Arriving in Ticllos early was nice. Nici and Philip were resting in their room so we just chatted with the crew at the church. The room they put us up in was amazing! Nice and clean and a few bunk beds that we weren’t sure who we would be sharing with but it was nice to have a roof over our head. Then as an added bonus it came with a private bathroom with an amazing hot shower. We haven’t had a hot shower like that in quite some time. Solid hot water that you could control the temperature and really good pressure. It was also large enough for us to both shower at the same time. It’s funny I did give a little pause and thought to showering together under God’s roof, but I figure we’re married so he was probably okay with it. In any event it was really nice to have a hot shower. We relaxed and chatted with the locals and the Italians who were in South America to help out for the summer. The family had two kids, one of whom was incredibly curious and ask loads of questions. It was great to meet a child who wasn’t afraid to ask lots of questions.
The aerial view of our ride: