Beginning in Lima, we wandered the Cordillera Blanca of northern Peru, stopping along the way at two seldom visited but important ancient pre-Inca sites. From the high Andes we dropped down into the Amazon basin to the end of the road at Yurimaguas. There we took local river boats down Rio Huallaga, Rio Maranon and Rio Amazonas to Manaus, where we traveled north out of the Amazon basin…
Our narrow tandem tires cut into the dust and bounce and slide from one auto-tire slickened rock to another. We hope to avoid the shattered and sharpened hidden ones, capable of ruining our day, and one of our tires. We have one spare, and wonder if we should not have brought two. A few times a particularly viscous rock (by the second day I was attributing evil intent to certain rocks) would throw the front wheel toward the abyss, necessitating a dual bail out.
Sleeping in airports is all part of the experience these days if, like us, you go for the cheap ticket, no matter what. But lots of people get stuck for reasons of weather or airline screw-ups, so if you travel much, your day will come. Don’t worry. Just go with the flow and enjoy the experience. You’ll be surprised how comfortable you can get on your own little corner of carpet. We both slept for a few hours. We almost didn’t wake up in time for our required 5am check in time.
There have been a very few times in my life when time seemed to slow, if not stand still, and this was one. I could see the car headed for us broad side, in slow motion, too late to brake, to late for our acceleration to help. Neither the driver or us even considered involving the police: He because he was Brazilian and has known all his life to distrust them, and we because we had been warned not to involve police in anything, not even an injury accident.
We finally had a great day on the bike, from Boa Vista to Bom Fin on the border with Guyana. I’d always thought all of Amazonian Brazil was jungle, or rather cut down jungle, second growth, but the north is wet savannah, much like the Gulf Country of Queensland, Australia. We saw more birds in one day of 130 kilometers here than we have seen in the entire trip so far, all but one or two new to our “life list.” There were stops every 30 to 40 kilometers with roadhouses, also much like Australia but closer, where we got much needed cold drinks to add to our load of water. It is very hot and humid here just north of the Equator, and we were soaking wet most of the time. Our final stop was nearly an hour so we could cool down to a reasonable level before going on.
The Amazon River here is deep enough to accommodate ocean going ships, and they crowd the port along with the upriver barcos (many sizes and configurations) that we traveled on. We’re not exactly sure of the source of all this economic activity in the mid-Amazon, but it is no longer virgin rainforest; rather, it’s small farms and second growth timber. There is oil exploration, but it is not visible from the river
Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm and Amazon Animal Orphanage, a short boat ride from Iquitos, where founder Gudrun Sperrer gave us a personal tour. Pupating caterpillars just aren’t as photogenic as a sleepy sloth. The sad story is that there is even a need for this place, a place where Peruvian children finally learn that big blue butterflies don’t come from little blue butterflies; shockingly, the metamorphosis of butterflies isn’t taught in school so Sperrer hosts field trips.
Passengers are an afterthought on these life-lines to Iquitos and many small villages along the Amazon’s banks. You buy space, bring a hammock to hang crossways above the deck, vying politely for some personal space. The hammock is where you sleep, and sit during the day. We became very familiar with our hammocks over the 48, mas o menos, hours it took to Iquitos. We also met and “talked” to our close (very) neighbors and crew. One family was returning to Iquitos with a new baby, either four weeks old, or four months, we couldn’t discern,
It was quite a ride over the final ridge of the Andes, steep and increasingly verdant, filled with village roadside life. We knew the heat would come, and it has. We are resisting air conditioning, even though is is sometimes available, hoping to quickly adapt to the heat. We have kept the days short, trying to be done by early afternoon, when heat stress begins to take a heavy toll. The andes end abruptly at Tarapoto, Peru but are immediately replaced by the Andes foothills, steep and lovely.
In the village of Pongo, I ordered a common soup in Peru, Caldo de Gallina. Usually it is chicken noodle soup with a leg or thigh, sometimes an egg stirred in while cooking. Not this time. I got the real deal. I turned over the chicken back and found it filled with chicken innards. Now, I grew up on a farm, and we ate the heart, gizzard and liver of the chickens we slaughtered, but let the rest of it go to the hogs. After closer inspection I discovered a complete egg, shell and all, just ready to be laid. That was cool. I ate it,
After Cajamarca we succeeded in topping out the Andes’ first high ridge on a rocky, dusty road at 3765 meters. Claire began coughing at the most excellent bicycle resort, (an earlier post) and I at first thought it was the thick fine dust we’d been subjected to over the pass. It wasn’t dust. By the time we reached Celendin, Claire was as ill as I’ve ever seen her, coughing violently and choking. I was very concerned, and mentally planning how to store or abandon Zippy and get us back to Lima. She did improve over the next two days, but certainly not enough to consider cycling. We took a bus to Chachapoyas, and stayed for a week, where I got my current lung infection. Bummer.
A group of photos taken during our trip through Peru. Food, bull fights, llamas and alpacas, people and some beautiful scenery…
We arrived in Celendin during a big fiesta week, on the day of the bullfight. We made our way to the still-under-construction bullfight ring. After careful consideration of the rickety contraption, that would soon hold, we hoped, a few thousand people, we selected seats (rough cut boards) on the second level fronting the ring. Our strategy, should the thing start rocking, would be to jump into the ring, and take our chances with the bulls. This was not to be. Lack of language had led us to think the event was free to all, and seating was open. No. Just at the end of this video, we were unceremoniously escorted from our seats. Apparently a family group buys a whole section, and we were trespassing. Oh well, we were able to see a couple of bloody bull deaths later on local cable TV in our (no water, but cable TV) room. That was close enough.
It’s all part of being travelers. Sometimes things don’t turn out as expected. The day began beautifully; a 300 meter climb, on pista (pavement) for a change. Sunny, lazy dogs, Zippy behaving, and a change of landscape over the top. Our legs felt good. It was to be a short day, 40k to a village just big enough to have accommodation and food. We found the food, but wasted an hour looking for the hospedaje, and failed to find it, after being pointed to all corners of the village.
We went to an agricultural fair in the Peruvian Andes and were surprised at just how much it was like our own county fairs. There was even a cuy (guinea pig) queen, lots of farm animals, food and even a limited but very popular equestrian jumping competition.
We had cuy for lunch. A little greasy and not much meat, but not bad tasting. Claire shot some video. Many photos coming.
PS. We love Cajamarca; brightly painted, clean, good food and music, friendly people who don’t seem to look at us a tourists. Maybe it’s because Gringoes don’t come here. More Andes tomorrow.
Photos from Peru by Bob Rogers
This llama waited patiently for his “seat” to open up on the bus, had some help getting seated and settled in for the ride.
We bussed to catch up, after a long story dead end in the We could understand a few concepts of his sermon: Music of Satan, Movies and marijuana. He appeared be genuine, coming close to tears at one point. The bus seemed to be less than half with him, some clapping and singing hymns he led. He wasn’t Catholic, and that may have accounted for the lack of enthusiasm on the part of many. Evangelicals are making big strides in South America, and Catholics aren’t too happy.
As usual when bush camping, I eased in and out of sleep throughout the night, keeping time with the changing positions of stars and Milky Way. It cooled through the night and we snuggled off and on, spoke quietly about the stars, and the shadows on the canyon walls cast by the odd passing vehicle, watching for a cessation of movement or change in motor sound.
We rode and walked a complete spiral around the neighborhood before we finally found the legendary Casa de Ciclistas in Trujillo. “Mi casa es su casa.” Lucho’s wife, Aricela warmly snuggled up to me on the couch though I was grimy and tired from travel. Bob connected with Alan, another tandem captain to talk tech and other cyclists came and went through the chaos.
Claire’s video of our ride through Canyon del Pato and the Rio Santos:
Canyon del Pato is Hell on a tandem, pretty much two days of Hell. It was the best way north in the Andes from Huaraz without backtracking to a road lined with illegal coca plantations and bandits; not our favorite type of cultural interaction.
By Bob and Claire Rogers We leave Huaraz northbound eventually to Cajamarca, in hopefully less than two weeks, probably our next usable Internet. We hope to catch a large agricultural fair there. The route will stay high in the Andes, …
by Bob and Claire Rogers It sounded like a parade, a particularly raucous parade. It seemed to be on the same alley as hospedaje Nana, in Huaraz. We love a parade. This parade, this band, was very special, from Jardin …
I was very very sick with bronchitis in the room below where this band and dancers performed constantly. Imagine being unable to breathe, coughing, sweating and freezing, not eating, and having to listen to this from dawn until after midnight.
httpv://youtu.be/l0ExMLY9zB8> After the first days along the Pan American highway, we turned inland and began climbing the foothills, and started getting sick. first Claire had a cold at Barranco, along the coast where we took a couple of days off, …
The traffic in mid-town Lima seems a bit better than most large Asian cities, but still a challenge. Claire claims I get a little macho in city traffic, and she might be right. It does take a bit of aggression to get anywhere, always with a bail-out in mind; she doesn’t always see that from the back seat. She’s the brave one, and I listen when she says “enough.”
So, will this be the tour that starts in a monsoon and finishes in a hurricane? Claire here, so far all I’ve forgotten is my hairbrush, but I`ve decided that for now I don’t need it. Bob put the bike back together in record time. We arrived around 9:00 and he was done by noon. We slept the rest of the day, had cold showers and went out for dinner (burger and fries). Today we took a shakedown ride and everything works. Zippy appears to have an especially romantic appeal here.
We were fortunate to have uphill headwinds on the downhill side of the Tien Shen mountains in Western China, or it could have been a problem. Our loaded tandem, including us, weighs around 400 pounds. That weight puts such pressure on standard brakes and brake pads that we risk an exploded tire from overheated rims, not a good thing at speed down a steep mountain.
When the nearest bicycle shop is hundreds, even thousands of miles away, we have to be prepared to fix most problems. I carry up to a kilo of tools and spare parts to fix most of the mechanical failures we might encounter after travel on bad roads, and dirt tracks.
In the third world/developing world, your flat might just occur in an exposed location, putting you in potential danger, or at the least surrounded by a vociferous curious crowd throwing questions at you in a language you don’t understand. A little pantomime and wide a wide smile usually takes care of this, but it plays hell with the concentration. You don’t want flats.
When we travel on our tandem in difficult places, like Tibet, and SE Asia, keeping the bike clean is the last thing I’m thinking about at the end of a hard day: food, a place to get horizontal and sleep are first priority, maybe changing money, buying food for the next day, trying to understand your host, the market vendors; all this before sunset since it’s often cold then, or sometimes not the best time for a gringo to be wandering the streets. So this is often when the derailleuer looks like after 3 or 4 thousand miles.
You find the darndest things when you remove a bottom bracket from the frame sometimes. This is what we brought home from Tibet and Southeast Asia. No matter how much grease you use, eventually dirt and grit find their way into your frame. We’ve brought home teaspoons of soil from Australia, Asia twice, and I’m sure we’ll bring some back from South America. If we could just stick to nice paved roads we wouldn’t have this problem, and not so much fun either.
As you can see this hub had some major abuse on our last adventure, in particular pushing for twenty kilometers while lost for two days on an old branch of the Hoh Chi Minh trail in Laos. At least it didn’t run over a bombie and blow us all up; these part would have been really scattered then. After cleaning, I forgot to take a photo, the parts were clean and smooth again, ready for another go at some more mountains, this time the Andes, and probably a bunch of bad dirt roads. That’s why I paid big bucks ($150 or so a long time ago) for a great hub (not a sponsor, we have no sponsors) The hub body has over 18,000 miles on it, and we are on the second set of paws and springs. Not a bad deal.
I am beginning to dismantle Zippy, world touring tandem, in preparation for our next self supported tour, this time South America. Before each tour, I completely dismantle Zippy for three reasons: to find our which parts need replacing so I can order them and fix the worn parts, catch any impending failures of frame, rims or drive-train, and to re-familiarize myself with every part. Since many of the places we tour are hundreds of miles from a proper bike shop, I have to be able to fix pretty much anything. Anyone who owns a tandem will tell you tandems need more attention than single bikes; I might have to rebuild the hub somewhere in the high Andes, or the middle of the Amazon basin, while being munched on by ants and mosquitoes and critters we’ve never seen before.
