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Finally saying goodbye to our friends in the cuartel, we took off on a cool, cloudy Monday morning. For a time we luxuriated in the downhill, paved exit from the city. The pavement actually went on for nearly fifty kilometers! However, about half way to Huanta (the next big town, to which the paved road extended), the cheap poorly fitting aluminum hook bolted on to replace the snapped off one in Ayacucho, failed disastrously. That is to say that upon hitting a small bump (a bridge) at the in the midst of a sharp turn at the bottom of a hill, the hook came off, and the other hook just slipped off the back of the rack. Unfortunately the faulty pannier was on the inside of the turn, so rather than flying off and away from the bike, it flew off and under the front wheel. Upon later analysis we found that somehow in the process the bottom hook (attached to a short bungie) of the other front pannier somehow came off the rack and caught a spoke. This caused most of the damage as neither the spoke nor the bungie broke and the front wheel was brought to a very quick halt, further aided by something catching the bottom of the front fender, pulling it onto the tire, where it quickly was pulled upwards, crumpled, and jamed between the fork and the tire. Again, no flat (zero and counting since switching to 'real’ touring tires in Calama, Chile).
Daniel’s trajectory was much more simple. He went essentially chest first onto the pavement and slid for a while, managing to take most of the blow on the typical hands and knees, while avoiding any face or helmet contact. The one remaining cycling glove (the other being lost in Lasana, Chile) saved one hand to some extent, the cheap polypro glove on the other hand was tattered, along with the palm below it.
We took an hour or two break and cleaned everything out with the help of the stream below the bridge at fault, along with some iodine from the medical kit. A little reconstructive surgery was also performed on the defective hook with vice grips. Then we continued on to Huanta, followed by a rainbow (I’m sure someone was protecting us). In Huanta the rainbow disappeared though, and the police said we couldn’t stay with them, and there were no bomberos. We found ourselves in an outrageously expensive hostal (almost $5 total). Dinner and breakfast were also more expensive than we were used to.
The next day we headed out of town (after lashing yesterday’s defective hook to the rack), the road becoming dirt again as we left. In a mid-morning break Daniel found his pair of cycling shorts, which had been hung on the broken front fender, bungied to the back, seemed to be missing. A quick ride about half way back to Huanta didn’t reveal them.
We continued to descend to another river valley; it became outlandishly hot. A series of short steep climbs and descently brought us around a bend in the river, to another river. Rio Mantaro, the river we would be following almost all the way to Huancayo.
Arriving in Mayocc, on the river banks, we found a comisaria (policia) where the officers were somewhat more welcoming than those in Huanta. With a room and a few matresses we settled down to tend to a few things. I swapped out one of my cogs (my largest), which was so hopelessly warn, that it didn’t really make climbing easier, because it just skipped all he time. I also did a very minor truing on my wheel after yesterday’s pannier hook event. Toby, meanwhile, went for a little non-bicycle adventure in a car headed to Huanta to search for my shorts, and our recently received tube of precious gingermint toothpaste (apparently forgotten in the hostal). While he was gone I found the toothpaste (in entirely the wrong pannier), and talked for a while to a family that apparently also put up viajeros for free, and mocked us for “sleeping with the police.” They also gifted us a huge bag of avocadoes.
Toby found none of the lost objects, but did have some interesting conversations in Huanta with people excited to find a gringo who actually did speak some Spanish. For this trick they gave him several little treats for, mostly in the form of sweet gum, but also directions to a good restaurant with normal prices, and help locating a return car for Mayocc. The whole trip cost about a $1.50 and Toby learned that while the cars had shocks, the roads involved were no more fun at four or five times the speed we ride.
The next day we made a late start for a town called Anco we were promised was no more than a day’s ride. However, we generally ride less than “one day’s ride” in a day. Furthermore we stopped once to epoxy Toby’s rack back together (which was suddenly found to be snapped at one of the attachment points). And again for Daniel to just start carrying the food pannier on his handle bars (one of its hooks having snapped off, same position as the one before Ayacucho, but on the other side). We didn’t make it to Anco.
We did, however, make it to Carlos. Carlos was a civil engineer we found on the side of the road in a very small town having a beer. He invited us to share it and chatted for a while. He was there studying where to put in a new road going up the side of the river valley to some mine or other. While talking to him I managed to drill a few holes in my pannier (with the awl on my knife) and make a much more effective tie on than had been used on the other pannier (before Ayacucho). We were then ready to push on to Anco, but we never did. Carlos invited us into his hospedaje room for the night, saying it was all ready paid, but he would be leaving. He then took us out to dinner, which was cuy dorado (literally, goldened guinea pig, goldened meaning fried). We were told the slab of fat, fried in oil, which we were being served had zero cholesterol.
It became a somewhat long night. The bus to take Carlos home never arrived (it was labor day). We all slept in his room nonetheless. More cuy for breakfast, and a late start the next day got us to Anco at about lunch time (and we made good use of that). Well fed, and with a few more vegetables we continued on until we found ourselves climbing up a road with cliffs on both sides and the sun setting. Cliffs are famously hard to camp on, but at the back of a side canyon (feeding into that which we were skirting along) we found a flat spot elevated somewhat from the road to camp in.
Perhaps somewhat overwhelmed with staying with people the next day was rather low key. We stopped in a small town restaurant for an all right lunch and in an abandoned house for dinner and sleeping.
The next morning we discovered that we had camped about 500 meters from a rather large town without realizing it at all. There was a large military base in this town, which we think might have had something to do with the dam a little further up the road. Dam Tablachaca was one of the most securely guarded dams I have ever seen. The most securely guarded actually, but I haven’t seen many dams. Toby has, however, and commented that the security was perhaps similar to that of the large and controversial dams in the southwestern US. Check out the photos. The “Prohibido tomar fotos” (“Taking photos is prohibited”) sign was on the road next to the dam, followed by a high fence with razor wire on the top, and a few manned guard stations. To my shock and surprise, Dam Tablachaca does not have a wikipedia page; maybe I should make one, but I haven’t gotten around to it. A few things I know about it: it is a hydroelectric site, and after its contstruction it was found that an ancient landslide was gradually starting to move again on one of the banks it was attacked to (opposite the road), and a massive, expensive, but apparently successful project was enacted to stop it. We rode on.
Again, we found lunch along the way. (Eating out is much cheaper than buying things like raisins and peanuts and eating those along the way, and far more satisfying. It is perhaps slightly more expensive than just eating bread along the way, but much more nutritious, and again, satisfying.)
After lunch we were told that Izcuchaca was perhaps an hour’s ride away. Izcuchaca. Oh Izcuchaca, the golden land where the pavement starts!! For once, the estimate was not massively less than the time we managed it in. In fact, in about 45 minutes we rolled off our last rocks and onto brand new tarmac… or was it was pure gold? I can’t seem to recall which.
We were stopped at a police checkpoint to chat, and they gave us a few bags of bread (actually they bought them for us, from the women who hung out in the shade of their car, to sell bread to cars the police stopped). We carried on in luxury for a few kilometers, then found ourselves a quite little spot near the river to sleep.
The next day we had a bit of climbing to reach Huancayo, but nothing could dim our joy on this smooth, beautiful road. Some stands in the shoulder of the road with caldo (broth, or soup) provided lunch.
We reached Huancayo early in the afternoon and quickly found Carlos’ house (to which we had a standing invitation).
We were greeted at the door by Carlos’ very sweet mother, Bilma. We were shown in and quickly took advantage of the shower. Carlos then took us out in his original Volkswagon Beetle (they’re everywhere here and I don’t recall having seen a single 'new’ one).
We went around town with his wife, their seven year old daughter, Luna, and her new parrot. We managed to get the shot of us with his Beetle which ended up looking rather like a album cover shot for a music group (although we had no such intention at the time). We also paddled a very small boat around a very small lake with Luna.
The next day Carlos advised us to move in with his friend Silvia instead because his mother was somewhat ill. We moved to Silvia’s huge house a few blocks away where the luxury of a wringer washer and the hot sierra sun allowed us to wash and dry all of our clothes in the course of a couple hours.
It became a long and somewhat wild week and a half in Huancayo. Our first project involved stocking up on nuts and bolts to keep the ladies together. The next was to replace their utterly destroyed front racks with something sturdier. We made a friend in a bolts shop and got a good sized handful of nuts bolts and washers for free. The search for a machine threaded bolt, however, took us all the way to the other side of town, and there we ran into a wonderful welder. Metal work shops can be found all over town but often the demand for the kind of work outpaces the supply of skilled metal workers. So in many cases, anyone with the equipment will open up a shop, sometimes lacking skill (as was the case where I had a replacement pannier hook attached in Ayacucho, which subsequently fell off, leaving me on the pavement). The welder in the work yard we found, on the other hand, was called Picasso by his fellows, and after a brief look at our front racks understood exactly how they were attached, where the support force was provided and how to make replacements out of steel. We paid a visit to the raw steel shop a few blocks away where we got some unnecessarily thick steel barring and ribbon with which to construct new racks. We made mine first following the design of the original except for the elimination of one unnecessary bar. The construction involved an oxy-acetylene torch, an anvil, some large hammers and pliars, an arc-welder, a drill press, and, of course, a hack saw. While we worked on mine Toby contemplated a simpler/improved design, which upon later weighing proved to have saved him some 400 grams (compared with my rack). Both new racks weighed nearly four times what the aluminum ones had.
A little standard bike maintenance (including a new cassette for Matilda) and a couple visits to the dentist (several $10 fillings without anesthetic between the two of us) ate up a few more days. Then Silvia’s insistence that we stay for Mother’s day kept us around a little longer.
Mother’s day included a pachamanca, a huge feast traditional to the region. Preparations were started by Silvia’s neighbor, Victor, and his brother before we woke up. The oven (a brick lined hole in the ground) was dug out. Then a fire was built over which rocks were heated for some four or five hours. In this time Toby (and Victor’s daughter, Yina) prepared something a little like tamales (called humitas).
These were made with freshly ground corn, sugar, a little cinnamon, and some raisins. This was all mixed together and then packed by the spoonful inside corn husks.
When the rocks were ready these went into the hole (after a sack of potatoes, and a huge pot of marinating meat). The pictures show everything that went into the hole (the rocks went back in too, of course). Everything was covered with a thick layer of dirt and Toby was titled the padrino (god father) of the pachamanca with the placing of a flower.
We escaped during the cooking process to call our own mother and send our love and gratitude.
After some two hours of roasting in its hole, we uncovered our feast and with a few singed fingers pulled everything back out. We ate next door at Victor’s and once everyone was stuffed a few beers were went around, some music was put on, everyone danced (and we tried).
The next day I finally got around to replacing the failing hooks on my front panniers with oversized, bolted on steel ones. Somehow we managed to delay one more day (more nuts and bolts, more pannier hooks) which gave us a chance to call our mother again (on her birthday!) We also learned to make papas a la huancallina (essentially Huancayo potatoes, but more literally “potatoes by the woman from Huancayo) from Ana (a woman from Huancayo, also a neighbor of Silvia’s). Essentially it was boiled potatoes with a blended cheese, milk, and hot pepper sauce. Let us know if you want the real recipe.
We left late the next day, saying goodbye to Silvia’s neighbor’s and Bilma (Carlos’ very sweet and kind mother) who sent us off with a big bag of mandarines and apples and many kind words.
Hola Tobias y Daniel, como estan?, por el mapa de ruta veo que han llegado muy lejos y que han conocido mucha gente y muchos lugares hermosos, sigan con fuerza vuestro camino y que Dios los acompañe siempre. Un fuerte abrazo y cariños.
Andrea, Antofagasta-Chile