Into Peru

The last month or so dragged us out of  Bolivia, onto the tourist trail of Peru, back into the mountains and at last to the coast of Peru, and Lima.

On leaving La Paz we headed first towards Lake Titicaca and navigated our way to the Peruvian border where we had a little trouble leaving the country. The border guard accused us of overstaying our visa for 8 days, I in turn accused him of having limited maths skills, he in turn handed me a calendar. 10 minutes of counting later and I found that we had overstayed our visa for precisely 8 days and ended up scrounging every last coin we could find in order to pay for our exit stamp.

We finally arrived in Peru, greeted with waves and whistles and screams of GRINGO that would continue unabated in a headache inducing manner for the following weeks. While Chileans and Argentinians were generally uninterested by us and Bolivians were generally bemused by us, Peruvians seem to be very, very amused by us. For the duration of the trip many young men have offered great support to Anna in the encouraging form of whistling. Now that I am apparently whistle worthy, I somehow find it a little less encouraging. In Peru people either look you in the face and smilingly triple the price of whatever you want to buy, or, they give it to you for free and give you a hug. I can't get my head around it. We have met the friendliest and most generous people and also most unbearably annoying people in the past two weeks alone.


Our first stop in Peru after navigating our way around Lake Titicaca was of course Cusco, the ancient Inca capital and one of the most visited cities in South America. Standing in the central plaza looking up at the old Spanish cathedral neatly wedged between KFC and Paddy's Pub the imagination needs to work hard to even imagine a time before facebook, let alone any Inca civilization. We spent a day and a half not being able to afford anything and then left.

The sacred valley of the Incas was our next stop, taking in the cheap (er) ruins that surround the old capital. We spent four days dividing our time between cycling, hiking and exploring the ruins, trying to avoid the hoards of tourists that stampede through each village at certain times every day. Despite never bothering with writing, the wheel or metallurgy the Incas did absolutely master the art of building things in remote and beautiful locations.

After our loop through the valley was at an end it was time to get back on track in the right direction. We chose the most exhaustingly spectacular route onwards, cycling up the spine of the Andes. This involved six consecutive passes, seemingly unending climbs and descents that rose 60kms up and 60kms down, every one bringing an ear popping 2500 metres change in a altitude. I had aspirations to do each in a day, an idea that was quickly discarded as we found ourselves peddling through darkness on the first day after 8 hours in the saddle, weeping a little more after every false summit.

Anna has had a throat infection for the last few months that has been diagnosed by three separate doctors as three separate things with six separate antibiotics provided as the solution. Breathing is absurdly hard anyway on these climbs and so, it was decided after a couple that Anna would take a bus to Lima to see a fourth and hopefully more successful doctor.

45 micro climates, three thousand heckles and two raw cheeks later I was approaching the 6^th and final climb and was feeling ready for a descent that didn't ultimately turn excruciatingly upwards. As I climbed ever slower towards the peak, the light rain turned into snow and by the time I reached the summit I was in a full on blizzard.
Snow is lovely when you are inside. When you are outside, at 4800 metres, on a bicycle, life gets a bit sweary. On the descent my hands became entirely unresponsive and I instead adopted the feet to ground braking technique, one that is relatively useless. It was over an hour of icy misery before I reached a tiny town where a friendly lady took pity on me, covered me with blankets and let me shiver myself back to life in her spare room whilst consuming litres upon litres of tea.

Outrunning the storm

The following day I had thawed satisfactorily and was ready to be able to breathe properly again as the road hurtled downwards for over 150 kms, descending 4500metres to the Pacific ocean. It was a dribblingly exhilarating section, heading downwards at something close to the land speed record.

Two more days and here we are in the Capital, and I can practically see the end of the trip on the horizon, just three more months and few thousand kilometers to go...