June 30, 2017
We woke up to snow on the ground and Nici with a fever, so Andrew and I headed out leaving both Nici and Philip behind.
Cycling Stats & Travel Stats
Start Point: Wild camp, Ancash, Peru
Destination: Pachapaqui, Ancash, Peru
41.2 km, 13.5 km/h average speed, 61.1 km/h maximum speed, 2:59 time on the bike
504 meters gained, 1216 meters elevation descend, 4858 meters maximum elevation
Route Description:
The day starts on the same gravel road and you immediately begin a climb for about 12 km. The road is in good condition and rideable. There is one section of landslide which you need to unload your bike and carefully climb over. The advantage of the land slide is there are no cars on the route until the junction. It didn’t look like they were going to try and fix the slide anytime soon. The climb is challenging because on 3 different occasions you think you’re at the top, but then you see more climbing around the corner. At the junction of the PE3N you turn right. Starting at this junction the road is paved and downhill through some switchbacks. After the switchbacks its mostly downhill right until you reach the town. There are no stores until you reach the town. There are two restaurants on the highway.
Accommodations:
There are two advertised hospejedes on the highway but both were closed. We found a hospedeje down in the town centre. It was 15 soles per person in a large room with 10 beds. There were no other guests so we had the place to ourself. We were able to do laundry and hang it to dry. The hospedeje also has a store right there that sells the usual junky food and vegetables and eggs.
What happened…
Andrew writes: It snowed last night…like…a lot. Every hour or so one of us would vigorously shake the tent of any snow. Amanda did a pretty good job of cleaning it off in the middle of the night on one of her bathroom breaks. We awoke to a winter wonderland. It made for poor views of the surrounding glaciers, but there’s something special about the way mountains look with a fresh layer of white stuff on them. Nici had started to have a fever at some point in the night, and she was hovering around 38C this morning, so we decided to push on towards our next stop and wait for the Aussies to catch up tomorrow. Get well soon Nici!
Some days we build up an idea in our head of what to expect, and today I underestimated the ride. It just made it seem longer, and harder than it really was. There was a pretty massive rockslide I had to navigate past, with little room for error. Scary stuff. I was a bit ahead of Amanda at the time, and I probably should have waited for her and then we could’ve tag-teamed our bikes across. Oh well, I’m still alive. The electric motors (Add-E) came in handy today though as the climb wasn’t particularly difficult, just never-ending. Both Amanda and I were able to get to the top of the climb in time for lunch, on a single battery…about 15km. After lunch it was all downhill to the “hamlet” of Pachapaqui. I say hamlet, because it was a bit bigger than a village, but not quite town-sized. I kept getting the feeling that the old woman at the hospedaje/store was ripping me off, but then I was reminded that these country Peruvians aren’t too good at maths to begin with, and for them to remember not one, but two prices for every item (local price and gringo price) is expecting a lot of them. Maybe there’s some benefit to having price tags on items after all.
Amanda writes: As we fell asleep the night before we could hear the snow falling. Well you can’t really hear snow falling, but you can just hear or sense the quite blanket that covers the atmosphere. I felt like a kid on Christmas eve; I love the snow. Maybe I took an extra bathroom break or two during the night so I could see it snow more. The snow wasn’t expected but so beautiful and I would take the snow 10 times over to rain. Rain soaks you to the bone and snow just brushes off. After our sleep we woke up and as Andrew said unfortunately Nici wasn’t feeling well so they didn’t come with us. Again I was left feeling it must be so hard to be sick so often. After we enjoyed some coffee with Philip and another American cyclist who was passing by, we headed out. Russ Miller from Idaho was visiting Peru on vacation for a few weeks. It was great to meet someone with so much energy.
Today’s ride was just so incredibly beautiful I actually felt emotional. I feel a bit silly even typing it but it was just so incredible. Some days I can’t believe how lucky I am to not only be experiencing this adventure, but to have someone to share it with. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes Andrew’s patience wavers as I stop to take pictures and just enjoy it; but overall it’s awesome. I’d rather be battling endless climbs in the snow than to be sitting at a desk again. The mountains towards the end of the day were so huge and if possible even more breathtaking than what we saw last week. They were just so big and steep and abrupt and … I can’t think of all the right words to describe them. We were so lucky to be able to see them as the clouds parted for us and showed us their glory with snow giving them extra texture.
The aerial view of our ride: