July 19, 2017
After a chilly night we woke up with the yankees to head out for another day of riding
Cycling Stats
Start Point: Laguna by mine pass, Peru
Destination: Paquin, Peru
35.9 km, 9.9 km/h average speed, 30.8 km/h maximum speed, 4:11 time on the bike
763 meters gained, 1710 meters elevation descend, 4608 meters maximum elevation
Route Description:
You start the day on the same shitty gravel road and it is a long descent. You pass through many towns and two hot springs. Only the town of Picoy had stores open. After Picoy it is a hard 8.5 km climb to Paquin and when you turn left to head toward Paquin it is very steep at the beginning. In Paquin there are no accommodations. It is an incredibly steep climb out of the town of Paquin and we wild camped just on the outskirts of town.
Accommodations:
There are no accommodations in the towns that you pass through that we could see. We wild camped just above Paquin.
What happened…
Andrew writes: This was another one of those days that had a lot of potential to be awesome, except the road conditions and general crappiness of the route presented some challenges. We spent all day either going downhill, or on flat. The downhill part was just rough. The road conditions in these parts leave A LOT to be desired. I want to swoop and soar down switchbacks, not pick my way gingerly down for fear of being tossed off a cliff, or busting something on my bike/body. When we reached the bottom, we followed the river for the rest of the day until we reached Paquin. We passed by some hot springs, and some small villages, but there wasn’t really anywhere to eat or re-supply with the things we would need for the next few days as we expected the route to become even more remote and challenging. When we finally arrived in Paquin, we were able to get a few sundry items, and Tara even found some fruit and veg, but there was no bread to be had. Bread is one of our go-to staples, next to coffee. Ugh. I guess we’ll have to fill up on cookies instead.
That cycle up and out of Paqiun was really steep and difficult, and seemed to foreshadow what was to come for the next two days.
Amanda writes: It was really great to be riding downhill. As Andrew said it wasn’t perfect as the road conditions were lousy, but it was still nice to be going down. We rolled through some communities with a bit of apprehension based on other blogs. There was a town we were coming through that other cyclists had been hassled by the locals. They had been asked for passports and were thought to be ‘bad guys’ wanting to steal animals or kids. We first experienced this outside Cajamarca many months ago but fortunately this time, nothing materialized. The landscape today included some nice waterfalls, rivers and hot springs. Sometimes I’m amazed that I’m not keen on the hot springs. In Canada I was all over them. They can feel so great on the muscles but my gringo roots come through when I see the less than clean environment surrounding most of the springs. I mean don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a bit a grunge after a couple of years on the road, but I also know that my skin can be sensitive and I really don’t want a shitty rash.
So we passed by the hot springs and ended the day with a super hard climb into and out of Paquin. Just to get two blocks out of the town I had to push my bike and really struggled to push it by myself. It was so steep I can’t remember the last time we had roads this steep. By the time we found a camp spot I was completely spent. A nice bonus in spite of the steep climb was sharing another dinner with Tara and Aidan. Good peeps those two.
The aerial view of our ride: