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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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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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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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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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.
Iberian Tour 2011
