Pucon to Puerto Varas Chile

What we thought would be a day or two in Pucon stretched out into a “week-ish”.  Estaban’s posse (friends who Matt had met up with in Quito, Trujillo, Lima and now here) helped us kill the first few days.  Then we hiked Volcano Villaricca, which was an absolute blast. 

 At the top there was a small glacier beside the smoking cauldron, not at all what we were expecting.  For the trip down, our guides had given us a spare nylon butt protector and a cheap hotseat sled.  Means of descent  turned out to be a ONE KILOMETER slide on your butt– my entire childhood of buttsledding practice  finally coming to fruition! 

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Pampas and Volcans to Pucon Chile

Riding south of Mendoza things were pretty flat and fast.  Because  we were bike touring random “things” always seemed to pop up around the corner.  One day south we saw a lot of cars parked along  a desolate section of Route 40….so we stopped.  Turned out Sunday is greyhound racing day, talk about quick acceleration those things have mad pick up. 

 That night we camped with a family who had a pair of plum trees.  In the morning we each put 10 or so in our jerseys.  Of course, by the afternoon we had forgotten the last 3, sat down some place and had jam running down our backsides.

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Santiago Chile to Mendoza Argentina

After waiting over 2 weeks in Santiago Chile Matt was finally able to free his bike from Peruvian customs and meet up with me.  My $1200 Rohloff hub has been malfunctioning from day one (allegedly they never break) and he had the spare parts to fix it.  Except that once we swapped them out it was still not working….  So I bought a $400 Cannondale from Pedro spent another $300 on upgrading wheels and tires and we were off riding at last.
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Road to (and from) Huaraz Peru

largest adobe pyramids in the Americas. Paint on mud still clear after a few years at the Huaca de la Luna

I eventually left Trujillo Peru and headed south with another Canadian cyclist, Michael Schratter, who is fundraising for the Vancouver charity http://www.ridedonthide.com/However, his narrower tires along with his time and distance needs in order to keep to his tour schedule made it impossible for us to stay together.  So for me it was a left turn-off onto a dirt road along the coast.

Much of the Pacific coast of South America is a desert, stretching from northern Peru through to southern Chile.  It is just sand dunes.   For a cyclist, it is dull to look at and when the wind picks up around lunch time, you spend your afternoon being sandblasted.  After 70km. of this, I had had my fill and was looking forward to the cordilleras negro and blanca which I had heard so much about.
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Trujillo, Peru: Casa de Ciclistas

From Cajamarca, I turned left to avoid the dangerous coastal town of Paijan, and headed over to Cajabamba, and Huamanchuco.  The fields were a little softer and busy with people hand hoeing, entire fields, or if they were more fortunate using an oxen team.  There was a stint above 4000m where of course it rained. 
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Three Days in Peru

First I have added a travel map. If you click on Travels Page you will see where I have been or where I am as of my latest on line update.   Otherwise Peru is, well more real than Colombia or Ecuador.  Not that it is really new news.  I knew that there would be worse sanitation and that the people would be poorer.  But seeing it is different.  Colombia, with Peru and Bolivia is also among the poorest countries in the Americas, but people there were generally well educated.  Now that narco-terrorism is becoming more confined, I think that Colombians will be doing much better in the future.
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more Ecuador photos

Stay calm, this is not going to be a regular thing… probably another week until more photos or another update for that matter. These are all two-weeks old anyhow…
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Jaen, Peru – the Adventure dial is turned up a few notches

So I have now made it to Peru… but it was a very rough road at the beginning .  Ecuador has long been disputing their border with Peru, and to keep the Peruvian “Tuc-tucs” out the road is (or so Tyson warned me) the steepest and roughest that I will likely encounter here in South America.

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