The route from Salta climbs back to drier terrain following the south-trending line of yellow squares (towns) to Mendoza which is due east of Aconcagua…….……then south to Bariloche which is on the lake just to the north and east of Puerto Montt.Closeup of Bariloche. The Seven Lakes route follows mountain valleys south of San Martín.
Since the last post from Salta I’ve covered 1800 miles to the town of Angostura, about 30 miles north of Bariloche. It took just over three weeks. The cities of Jujuy and Salta are at the extent of a green, dry-tropics climate that is part of the Paraná River basin which drains into the Atlantic at Buenos Aires. To the south of Salta the route took me once again onto desert-dry terrain that climbs onto a lower version of the Altiplano, never exceeding about 8000 feet and averaging more like 4000 or 5000 feet. Over these vast deserts there are counterparts to all of our North American deserts from the Mexico and Arizona Sonora, to California Mojave, to Utah’s Colorado Plateau, to Nevada’s Great Basin, to Wyoming stepps. The distances between towns could be over a hundred miles and twice I was caught short on water over roads that maybe I saw a car per hour. I’ve ridden straight days since Salta, several were over 90 miles with one at 120 miles. A few that covered 30 or 40 miles sufficed for rest days. Winds have been variable with some very good tail wind, but also head winds and one day of horrendous side winds that blew the bike around on a shoulderless stretch with heavier than usual traffic. There was road construction in a couple of places and stretches of dirt road that, all told, added up to over a hundred miles. I was following Ruta 40, an Argentine highway with a sort of Route 66 or Lincoln Highway reputation that spans much of the country’s north-south expanse. There are certainly not the grades of Peru on Ruta 40 but it’s hilly just the same, although in a manner that keeps it more interesting than difficult. It was all very beautiful.
Utah landscapes!Vineyards near Cafayate. Very much a desert environment but with irrigation it is good for growing grapes.Wine country.These mileage markers are for Ruta 40 and are counting down to somewhere in Tierra del Fuego. I’ve followed them so far to about 2000 km.
Enzo, Martin, Guevara, and Lali of Maxi Bici Bikes in Mendoza. These guys gave me a new chain and a bunch of accessories all free gratis. Stop in if you’re ever in Mendoza! http://Maxibici.com
Jersey from the folks at Maxi Bici- I finally look like a cyclist.Ruta 40 essentially ends at this Rio but a mile down stream. I had to push the bike to the ford here, crossed, and found a road continuing up the other side.Canyon with little or no road that had to be crossed.Culvert bridge used by construction crews on a much larger river in the next valley.Could be a spring scene in the Rockies. Nearing the small town of El Sosneado.
I had intended on a layover in Mendoza which is about the half-way point between Salta and Bariloche. I wanted to climb Aconcagua, South America’s high point at 22,900 feet and Mendoza is about 100 miles away, the nearest big city and a take-off point to the mountain. Plans were foiled when I discovered it would cost me around $1500. The permit alone is $729. Gear rental, buses and mules to transport everything to base camp add another $700 or $800. I went to about 20,000 feet on the mountain in the 1990s but got weathered off and always wanted to get back to it. Back then, a permit was about $80. I had skipped the mule rental then, but started out with a pack weighing 105 lbs- something I don’t want to repeat at this point in my life- but a mule and driver would be over $300 now. I was disappointed because it was the one mountain I could realistically do by myself. There are no major glaciers to get to the summit by the easiest route which is essentially a hiking trail. I had a good head start on acclimation with all the time spent on the Altiplano. The effort to cover ground quickly from Salta was in part to enable extra time for Aconcagua. I was disappointed but for that kind of money it just wasn’t worth it. You’re not required to hire a guide, like in Ecuador, but Argentina is not blind to the fact that the highest point in the Western Hemisphere is a true commodity with plenty of demand in the 21st century. Argentina has, of course, many other great summits but none that I had much familiarity with and none made as simple as Aconcagua. Part of the price I guess.
Mendoza has an almost mythical reputation for fine wine, good climate and enjoyable atmosphere. I arrived early the day I got there but ended up in a less than desirable hostel. That afternoon I got all the bad news on Aconcagua, and decided to head out the next day. I found the city fairly chaotic and after all the hype was actually glad to put it behind me. Bit of sour grapes, perhaps. They’ve got the wine part of it right though- in Argentina in general you can buy a Malbec or Cabernet for $3 a bottle that is better than anything out of California for $15 or $20. They (the locals at least) say that Argentina is now making the world’s best Cabernets. And wine is everywhere; a large grocery store will have thousands of bottles lining aisles. Street corner markets will have hundreds. Leaving Argentina could take some adjustment.
The goat’s head! Probably the worst thorn there is for bike tires and we have it also in the western U.S. I managed to pick up 20 or so of them wheeling the bike to a camp. I got all but two out before they punctured a tube. Remarkably, those are the only flats since the brutal roads in Bolivia.Wet, muddy, miserable camp just before Mendoza.Tamarisk. I haven’t seen it in the monocultures found on the Colorado Plateau, but it’s definitely here.The Rio Grande of Argentina. Here, it’s confined to this gorge and moving swiftly. Up stream, where it’s in a wide valley, it’s a good hundred yards across in places.
Many miles of dirt roads over lava beds lined with sandstone cliffs. Tough roads but incredible.Ruta CuarentaThis is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory, a network of cosmic ray detectors the size of Rhode Island near Malarque, Argentina. Cosmic rays are high energy protons believed to have originated from supernovae and possibly echos from the Big Bang. Those that penetrate to the Earth’s surface are very high energy, some nearing 10²º eVs (electron volts). By comparison, CERN’s new LHC (the thing that discovered the Higgs Boson) is achieving energies around 10¹² eVs, more than a million times less than these particles. Nobody’s figured out how to do anything with them yet. They’re popular with grant writers and at cocktail parties.
Some rainy days followed but soon I was again on high desert and somewhat able to plan days around wind cycles. For the most part that meant getting going as early in the morning as possible, in relative calm, and then either going for a big mileage day in afternoon tailwind or shutting down for the day having at least gotten some mileage. But tail winds are like a drug and when you get it, and then don’t, your life becomes miserable. You can really do a number on yourself trying to force long mileages on days when it’s just not meant to be. Basing what supplies you pack on hopes of tailwind is a dangerous gamble and I got burned with it on one occasion trying to get to San Juan, a major city just before Mendoza. I pulled into the city out of food and water and pretty hammered.
The “glaciers” in these desert peaks are sand dunes.Lots of friendly Argentines.
Vineyards closer to the Andes south of Mendoza.
Tarantulas are common, but this one was big enough that I had to get a photo.I skidded it to safety off the highway but found it ready to fight and not used to being pushed around.
I ran short on water again south of Chos Malal when a well meaning couple stopped and offered some. I was getting down to my last as afternoon heat was settling in and though they only had a few swallows to give, it was good and cold. We talked for a bit and exchanged contact information. They said the next town, Las Lejas was only 15 kilometers away (less than 10 miles). I asked about the mileage at least a couple of times to confirm it and then drank the rest of what I had confident I was close to a town. It turned out, however, that La Lejas was more like 45 km (25+miles) and against a head wind that had picked up. The real irony though was that I passed up a water source a couple of miles later at this roadside stand selling drinks out in the middle of nowhere. I was mad at the misinformation but even madder at myself for not hedging my bets. I ended up camping on a muddy stream 6 miles from Las Lejas that I was lucky to find. I never could get the water clear enough for the UV purifier to work properly and had to drink it murky. That’s been more than a week ago and no ill effects yet.
Muddy water camp- actually a very nice spot.While changing out this tire I bought in Salta I noticed the eponymous model name. Specialized needs to come up with a “Route 66” model.I was able to fill up on good, clear water once in a while.
Zapala is the next good sized town encountered but then it’s another 100+ miles to Junín de los Andes over the last desert stretch before entering forested mountains. I was much better prepared beginning that leg and was rolling at daybreak to get a head start on wind for the longest part. I didn’t quite make Junín, but crossed the Rio Collon Cura, a beautiful, clear running river, reminiscent of Idaho’s Payette where it leaves the mountains prior to its confluence with the Snake. I’ll do another plant segment, but mention now that as elevation, latitude and climate go through similar zones to that of the western U.S., many of the same familiar weeds are seen. Here at the Payette’s counterpart I found good old star thistle, a nasty little Idaho knapweed to be avoided if you’re wearing anything but cowboy boots.
Star thistle! Centaurea solstitialis, a North American invasive found in Idaho and now seen in an Argentine latitude and elevation counterpart.Rio Collon Cura. Fly fishing is popular here.Argentinians recreate unlike any of the counties to the north but the RVs haven’t quite evolved to the behemoths found on North American highways. Looks more like something from 1960s U.S.A. You see a few ATVs, boats and mountain bikes as well, something virtually unheard of in Peru or Bolivia.This guy jumped out of the iPad case when I pulled it out first thing in the morning.View looking into Junín’s valley where real greenery is seen for the first time since Salta.San Martín de los Andes at the foot of Lago Lácar.Pine, Cedar and Juniper were introduced here in great numbers and long enough ago that they look endemic.Lago Lacár looking away from San Martín.Good camp in South American beech trees, Nothofagus, the only endemic large trees here that I know of.
A desert akin to Wyoming stepps is left behind when Ruta 40 enters mountains near San Martín de los Andes, and follows a route called The Seven Lakes to Angostura and Bariloche. San Martín is a ski town with commensurate prices and I didn’t stay long. The Seven Lakes route travels Alp-like mountains and the area from there to Bariloche is National Park through glaciated valleys and lakes. It rained for most of it and the iPad battery was dead so I took no pictures but there are plenty to be found on Google Earth. The resemblance to the Alps attracted German settlers as early as the 1880s and there are tales that many Nazis fled to Bariloche and surrounding areas after WWII. There is even a myth of Hitler living here with Eva Braun. It’s true an SS Captain, Eric Priebke, was a director in the school system after the war but that may be the extent of it.
Ruso and Vale at the Hostel La Angostura put up with me for a couple of days while I did repairs and put the blog together.
I’ll end with a link to a song from a new album by Nathan Walker; scroll down a bit for a short article and video of his song Bobby.
The route goes from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca and La Paz, then to the big white patch (Uyuni and the world’s largest salt flat) and then to Salta.
Note on maps: I copy these off of Google Earth but they may not be the best quality. On a touch screen you can zoom in for better resolution but I’m not sure how well they work otherwise. I’ll try and evolve a better system as time goes.
Weather in Cuzco was generally rainy and cool. With a late start the day I left I only made about 30 miles for the day and pitched the tent in the rain near some roadside Inca ruins. Over the next two days the road gradually climbed to over 13,000 feet from Cuzco’s 11,200 feet, a minor grade in comparison with the previous weeks. Near the high point at Abra la Raya, 17,000+ foot peaks to the north were visible that were free of glaciers, accessible from the road and hike-able. I saw them from the bus in 2007 and remember wishing for independent travel to check them out. Having it now, I decided to take a day and climb one.
Once again, hiking legs are different from cycling legs and it was a long haul to get up there. 17,000 is still out of my acclimation zone. Great day though. A couple of afternoon thunder storms needed to be waited out and they left the peaks in a shroud of graupel. As I got higher into a cirque below the objective peaks I got fooled as to which was the highest and ended up on one about 500 feet lower than I could have gone. A beautiful sumit none-the-less. Not a hint of a trail or any tracks to the top, but there was a summit cairn.
Gradual climb up beautiful valleys out of Cuzco. Traffic was lite, shoulder good.
Beginning of the hike.
The peak to the right is the highest of the group, but I went to the left.Teton-esque gendarmes near the summit.Summit.Higher summit with twin glaciers of Nevado Chimboya just visible to left.~18,500 foot Nevado Chimboya from Abra la Raya.Another great camp.Juli, Peru. These kids were all smiles and took an interest in the anomaly that was having lunch in the town square. Their names were, collectively (two missing from picture!) David, Jose, Roger, Nelly, Ruz, Ines, Nayeli, Yeny, Camila, Laura, Jhino, Meliton, Jhon.Andres Collatupa Chagra was part of the crowd and I’m sure could have told me many things about Juli.
Continuing to Puno I stopped at the Hotel Europa where Laurel and I had stayed in 2007. We were there for a few days while we explored islands on Titicaca but when we left for good I managed to leave my passport in the room. Gregorio, the hotel owner, tracked me several blocks to the bus station, and as I boarded the bus, returned it to me. There was no time for anything but “thanks a lot”. Well, I found Gregorio still there after ten years and he remembered me. I gave him a long overdue twenty bucks reward that should have been more like a hundred.
Puno and Lake Titicaca.Gregorio!
After Puno roads narrowed but traffic remained fairly lite. At the Bolivian border I got hit with a load of beauracracy as Bolivia now requires a visa for USA visitors and charges $160. It took two days to get through it all. Minutia, like getting visa photos and requiring payment in US cash (with bills in perfect condition), made for many trips back and forth to the Peru side. There are two entities of Bolivian gov’t at the border; military and migration. Oddly enough, the military folks were observing it all and actually went to bat for me against what migration was putting me through. When one US $20 bill had a small tear in it they were saying it was ridiculous to go back to Peru just to get another one. Unfortunately, migration usually trumped but the military guys always made sure I skipped standing in line again each time I came back. The last straw was a requirement that I had to have hotel reservations lined up during my stay for which the military folks simply called bullshit- I didn’t get the conversation word-for-word but the gist was “this guy’s on a bicycle and many Bolivian distances between towns & hotels cannot be covered realistically in one day.” The guards won that one for me.
Military buddies.
I have to add as well that after all the warnings about Latin American police and military corruption- things like having drugs planted on you and then coercing a bribe to go free or people posing as police and then robbing you- I have found none of it. I can’t judge what goes on in their internal affairs, but I have found both police and military in Latin America helpfull and friendly throughout. In another volume I’ll recall some tales.
Both Chile and Argentina recently were also charging a $160 fee to US tourists, as well as the US charging a similar reciprocity fee. Where the number 160 came from is anybody’s guess, but a recent visit by Obama to Argentina resulted in a waiver of fees from both sides. Chile soon followed suit but Bolivia has held out. I can’t say I blame them, they are South America’s poorest nation and tourism isn’t as prosperous as in neighboring countries. They are landlocked, the result of a war with Chile in the late 1800s over mining claims for extracting sodium nitrate. Sodium nitrate, or saltpeter, was used for making gun powder and explosives. Bird guano, found on the coasts, also had a sizable market back then for fertilizer. Peru and Bolivia allied against Chile in what became “The War of the Pacific” but Chile had greater financial backing from the mining interests and ended up winning the Bolivian port of Antofagasta and Peru’s port of Arica. In recent times, Chile has been generous to Bolivia with port fees and duties but Bolivia is still landlocked and it requires an ascent of 13,000 feet to reach its western border from the port of Arica. They also lost territory to Paraguay in the Chaco war which took place in the 1930s.
On the up side, Bolivia has realized natural gas potential in recent years and has income today from providing northern Argentina with natural gas and propane. Argentina also hires Bolivian labor which, for better or worse, channels money to the country. They’re also South America’s largest grower of coca, but much of it is for domestic use and legal. It should be pointed out that coca leaves made into tea has less of a narcotic effect than caffeine or even sugar. This is how the natives use it today and how they’ve used it for centuries. Cocaine is the result of many intricate distillations of coca leaves. Some of Bolivia’s coca, though, does make it into black markets for cocaine.
The few times I’ve asked permission to get a photo of locals it has been denied, but these ladies, who were out in the middle of nowhere, wanted to know all about my travels and were quite knowledgable about where I’d been. The woman on the right is making a joke that she’s not yet ready to be in a picture. A bay of Titicaca is in the background.A short cut crossing what was essentially a stream of sewage that allowed skipping downtown La Paz.Rainy, windy camp.Bolivian friends.This “Teton mural” was the wall of somebody’s flower shop in Oruro and should be recognizable to most folks from the USA.Altiplano in Bolivia
Entering Bolivia started out as continuation around Lake Titicaca but then climbed over low hills to La Paz. A city of 2 million people, I avoided going into La Paz proper but had a hard time navigating roads that would avoid it. Many were dirt or cobblestone and involved crossing streams, one of which was pretty much sewage. The roads emanate radially from the center La Paz and I was coming out almost in the opposite direction from coming in, so it wasn’t very far jumping across, but it took the better part of a day.
Cordillera Real near La Paz. 21,121 foot Illimani is to the right.
Agricultural land at 12,000 feet surrounds La Paz to the west and south, but gives way to a barren network a badlands and playa as Oruro is approached. Soon the playa flats become the pure salt of the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. Bolivia is trying to develope the town of Uyuni for tourism with an airport, hotels, restaurants and tours. I didn’t see any North Americans but there were a few Europeans in Uyuni.
Here, and below, some outstanding road cut stratigraphy in Bolivia near Uyuni. It was about a 1/2 mile long. I’d like to know more about ages and how many years are spanned.
Another great camp near the tilted strata.
The highway to Uyuni from Oruro was newly paved, had a wide shoulder and very little traffic. Both maps and people I talked to indicated paved road continued from Uyuni to the town of Tupiza near the Argentine border. Such was not the case. In Uyuni, I found Wi-Fi and spent some time on Google Earth where I can zoom in on highways and see if there’s a white stripe- a sure indicator of pavement. However, even without the stripe, a road still might be paved if the satellite image predates paving. That’s happened a couple of times. In this case, though, the 120 miles to Tupiza was going to be mostly dirt. It turns out they are in the process of paving it and had maybe 20 miles total completed and another 10 or so where it had been “rolled smooth” just prior to paving. The rest was either washboard, rock, or deep sand requiring getting off the bike and pushing. There was maybe ten miles of the latter. My rear tire was fairly warn and a little smaller than what I usually try to find- a “23c” width as opposed to a “25c”. I found a very good quality Specialized 25c in Bogotá that I got an unprecedented 2000 miles out of and no flats till the tire was essentially warn out. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen a 25c tire since then. The 23c meant a few flats and then many more from Latin American patch kits that just don’t hold up that well. Bumpy roads and high pressure seems to shorten the life of the patches and you end up putting a patch on top of a patch, and so on, till there are four or five patches covering one leak. I’ve tried switching glue to what the the automotive shops use, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Regardless, I was on a loaded road bike treading into the domain of mountain bikes.
Looking towards the Salar de Uyuni. The real salt starts a few miles beyond what you can see.Start of the road to Tupiza.Near the salt flats. Notice the water line from what was undoubtedly a Pleistocene lake contemporary with Utah’s Lake Bonneville.Short but welcome sections of paved road. It wasn’t open to traffic yet, but nobody stopped me from riding the bike on it.The road generally follows a defunct rail line and with the amount of construction debris from the new highway’s culverts and bridges- tiewire, rebar, lengths of wood of all sizes- I was tempted to try and adapt the bike to run on the narrow-gauge rail line. I would have attached bracing from the bike to the opposing rail and skidded rebar over it in lieu of a third wheel. Rebar extended vertically from the bike frame, as well as stapleing over the opposing rail, would have held it on the track. Just wasn’t sure about the time required to do it- might have starved to death working kinks out. Had it worked though it would have saved a lot of difficult dirt road.Sandy sections. It’s late in the day and windy and cold.
Mining town of Atocha.
Once again, the flat tires, the wind, dust, hills, rough road, were all offset by incredible country and great camps. It took four days (three nights) and I had just enough food with an addition of apples and candy bars from generous Bolivians passing by towards the end. The route follows a rail line and water was available at small communities associated with the railroad. Also, there is a mining town, Atocha, at about the halfway point that offered some resupply.
The last leg into Tupiza was a long descent down a washboard road that had many crossings of a small stream. Tupiza itself is a sizable town of 25,000 situated in a verdant valley lined with red rock foothills and cliffs. It’s a sort of Bolivian version of Moab and has a similar climate. They’re working on the tourism. I laid over there two nights and did a thorough cleaning of the bike. That involves many syringe fulls of raw gas injected into the oil journals of the hubs as well as pouring gasoline down the seat tube to rinse sand out of the bottom bracket. The derailleurs are cleaned with a toothbrush and gas. New oil is added the same way. It’s akin to an “oil change” that I do every couple of months or after prolonged riding in sand or rain.
Few shots of Tupiza.
South of Tupiza and the last leg to the Argentine border.
Crossing into Argentina required no lines and was free. They did run my bags through an outdoor x-ray scan, but that was it. It was Sunday and there wasn’t much open but I found an ATM (Cajera) and then a small grocery store with enough supplies for a dinner and breakfast. Then I rode out into a very remote corner of Argentina, more sparsely populated than just across the border in Bolivia. Far more llama husbandry here, and in Bolivia as well, than in Peru. Had some tailwind, but riding the Altiplano winds come from all directions. Mornings usually start calm and morning frost gives way to wearing a tee shirt and shorts by mid morning. By early afternoon, however, the winds would pick up and it seemed about 50/50 that I’d get a tailwind. By late afternoon I’d be bundled up for winter again and looking for a sheltered spot to camp. One day was especially bad where there was dust from a ten mile stretch of construction.
Camp in Argentina after a tough day of wind.Trichocereus terscheckii, or Argentine Saguaro, in the Humanuaca Valley on the way to Jujuy and Salta. These grow much faster than Arizona Saguaros and are consequently being planted in people’s yards in North American desert climates.
Major milestone. The Tropic of Cancer was crossed near Mazatlan, Mexico. The remaining distance to Tierra Del Fuego will be comparable to going from Mazatlan to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, which seems incredibly far except that I’m more than 3/4 of the way there relative to Logan, Utah.
Jujuy.
I had a choice of more dirt road heading over a 17,500 foot pass or a drop from the 12,000 foot Altiplano to the towns of Jujuy and Salta, which are at 4000 feet, followed then by a climb again to a somewhat lower Altiplano. I took the latter and I’m in Salta now. It’s verdantly green and very modern though the no-shouldered, busy autopista from Jujuy to Salta was as dangerous as anything I’d seen since Mexico. There was a back road over a pass that connected the two, but I let a guy at a bike shop talk me out of it. The tuktuks and motor cycles of cities in Peru and Bolivia are SUVs and buses in Argentina. I had dinner last night in a crowded plein air restaurant in the main plaza that could have been downtown Paris. I ended up having a long conversation with an Irish couple, Frank and Vivian, sitting at the next table.
Gondola in Salta leading to a peak overlooking the city.Few photos of Salta.
Tomorrow I start for Mendoza and will hopefully be there in a couple of weeks. There appears to be more Utah-like terrain ahead, this time at a lower elevation that I hope isn’t too hot. Salta’s been a refreshing rest from the windswept Altiplano, but I’ll be glad to get back to desert quiet. I’ve logged several 100+ mile days since Cuzco and should get a few more in the next leg if the winds treat me right. It’s starting to go very fast now.
The terrain from Huaraz to Cuzco was wildly complex so I’ve added more maps than usual. The straight line distance is about 450 miles but the odometer logged nearly 1000 miles. The first leg is from Huaraz to Huánuco.Then Huánuco to Junín.Junín to Huancayo through La Oroya. Ore from area mines is smelted in La Oroya giving the town the distinction of being on “top ten” lists of world polluters. The town has a huge smokestack, adjacent to Rio Mantaro, that I should have photographed.Huancayo to Ayacucho along 3S.Ayacucho to Abancay.Winding road climbing out of Abancay.Last leg to Cusco.
After an extended rest in Huaraz it took a couple of days to get back to full strength again. The route continued uphill to a pass at 15,493 feet, Yanashalla, on the second day, at the top of which 18,000 foot peaks were near by. Got snow overnight at a camp near the top. Then it was down to 10,000, up to 13,000 and way down to 6,200 feet and the town of Huánuco. The downhill stretch to Huánuco started out with fast, easy grades winding through small villages. Waving people, chasing dogs and steep drop offs would have made for good headcam footage. The pavement was punctuated with dirt stretches but soon deteriorated into dirt punctuated with chuckholed pavement and had to be taken slow. It was hard on the bike and gear regardless, but a good test for the fork repair, which held up.
Beautiful camp on rising plain above Huaraz.Looking towards Yerupajá, a spectacular peak with a climbing reputation in the Cordillara Huayhuash. Unfortunately I never saw it out of the clouds.The lower end of this valley marks the extent of glaciation where the flat-bottomed valley drops into the V-shaped canyon.Town of Pachapaqui. The highway climbs to the glaciated valley tucked behind and right of the foreground mountain.Bull fighting rings replace soccer fields in many of the mountain towns. This is Pachapaqui as well.Climbing to 15,500 foot Yanashalla.Snowy morning.
Somewhere after the town of La Union I caught up to a couple cycling from Berlin, Germany- actually East Germany which was the USSR when they were growing up. They had cycled across Europe to Lisbon, Portugal and then flew to New York. They pedaled to San Francisco then down the west coast to Baja’s tip and ferried to mainland Mexico. They zig-zagged through Mexico, took a side trip to Cuba, and then took the sail boat to Colombia that enabled cycling the part of Colombia I had skipped. They’ve been on the road for 17 months and plan to go to Ushuaia, and on to Australia. We ended up traveling together for several days and it was good to have company. You’d think we would be learning alternative approaches to the world of long distance cycling from eachother, and though there were a few things, it was amazing how similar we were. We were pretty much in lockstep from the beginning.
Ina and Mirko were on mountain bikes and consequently traveled a little slower than me. They estimated that they would have a hard time making the tip of S. America before Austral winter and decided to take a bus over the last torturous and time consuming passes from Huancayo to Cuzco, so we parted. I may catch up to them again in Argentina.
Ina and Mirko. Check out MINA.RTWBLOG.DE.Small campground south of Huánuco that Ina spotted late in the day when campsites in a narrow canyon weren’t looking probable.Campground host- more friends in Peru.One of countless small towns.
Beginning a long descent.
Huánuco’s main square was a surprize. The city has nearly tripled in size since 2007 to nearly 200,000 people, and is a confusing mix of old and new.
Camping in quenuals.This is Michael and Domenique (Mirko center). From France, they’re retired and have traveled the world by bicycle for five years. They store their bikes and fly home for two months a year to spend time with kids and grandkids. They don’t go too fast but they’ve been everywhere.
On my own again, I resumed the enormous grades that would eventually lead to Cuzco. There were a total of nine high points between Huaraz and Cuzco, all over 13,000 feet, most over 14,000, and the one, Yanashalla, at 15,500. The lowest point was about 6500 and the longest uphill about 8000 feet. As difficult as it sounds it was incredibly beautiful and actually enjoyable. Traffic was lite having stretches with less than a car every 1/2 hour, much of which was on manicured roads. Peruvian grades are not in general as steep as elsewhere in Latin America, perhaps to lessen brake loss fatalities. I seem to be inured to the uphills and keep getting stronger; the main differences are with altitude. At over 14,000 feet muscles simply don’t work as well but a couple of hours drop to 7000 feet makes climbing again feel like you’re on steroids- professional sports training camps would do well to locate high in the Andes.
I tried to time camps to be at higher elevations where people, bugs and cactus thinned out. There were some beautiful camps. Lower down I would encounter a species of no-see-um that made fixing a flat a challenge and camping resigned to the tent. After, there were days of incessant scratching. Over about 12,000 feet bugs pretty much disappeared.
Ina after a chilly and rainy night.Rio Mantaro downstream from La Oroya. The highway follows this river for over 100 miles. No boaters whatsoever, which wouldn’t be the case if it were in the U.S.Heavey trucks cross this deteriorating bridge.This is debris from a highway tunnel being excavated several thousand feet up. Had to stop and watch some world class trundling.Flat Fauna. Skunks have been common in Peru.Cactus!Yucca at nearly 14,000 feet. More on this in another plant segment.This is Kamran Ali. He was coming from Ushuaia and heading for N. America. He’s from Pakistan but works as a software engineer in Germany. He was unsure about being able to get a visa for the US. Check him out at Kamranonbike.com.Alpacas are the bucolic stereotype you see on Peruvian postcards but today you see far more cows and sheep in the highlands.This ranchero had a spring, pictured below, that enabled a beautiful camp at 14,000 feet.
Took an evening hike to the top of this little peak.View from the top looking at the highway and camp in the meadow.
Bricks made of mud, straw and gravel go into many of the houses.Jonathon, Bery, Amelia and Valentino. I stopped here to eat and learned that Bery was a biologist working in Abancay but helped out with the family business on weekends. She knows plant and bird taxonomy and has emailed loads of info for IDing plants.Salcantay, 20,551 feet, is the high point of the Cordillara Vilcabamba. The range is described as “deeply incised”, and Salcantay is Peru’s second highest mountain in prominence and twelfth highest overall. There’s always a little sense of anguish at having to bypass one beautiful peak after another without being able climb.
The people of Peru have been very friendly and prices here are very cheap. Food in general has been wonderful and I can get a breakfast of eggs, rice, potatoes (Peru is where the potato comes from), veggies and quinoa in a stir fry with a choice of meat, all for less than $3. Yuca, a sort of stringy potato, is common and very good as well. I’ve never felt unsafe really anywhere in South America, and Peru has been as welcoming as anywhere. You get stories of bandits disguised as policeman or gang violence or kidnappings and though these things happen they’re isolated. It’s not unlike a traveler to the U.S. wondering the likelihood of being involved in a random shooting; for the vast majority of the country it would be highly improbable. People are just going about their lives and Latin American culture is not far out of step with the US and Canada.
Getting to Cuzco was a major milestone. It has put me into territory I’ve been to before, having visited Machu Picchu in 2007. I’ll be on roads into Bolivia that I’m familiar with, at least from the perspective of a bus. I remember the confinement of bus travel and looking at the sparsely populated, high Bolivian landscapes and thinking how nice traveling in the van would be, camping whenever and wherever. I wouldn’t have guessed that ten years later I’d be here by bicycle. The terrain from here should both straighten out and flatten out, with direction of travel for once actually tending towards the destination. In Bolivia I’ll be crossing the Altiplano, which is high, over 12,000 feet, but stays high without the drops. There’s a favorable probability I’ll get tailwind. We’ll see.
From Tumbes the route follows the coast to Piura.Piura to Chiclayo is 140 miles of desolate desert.Kept near the coast here in intermittent ag land and sand.North of Chimbote, Hwy 123 is a dirt road that cuts over to the Santa River and on to the state of Ancash and city of Huaraz to the west of the high peaks.
After Tumbes, Peru, ten miles of highway leads to the ocean and a scenic, winding 100 mile stretch of xeric but beautiful landscape. Got a bit of tailwind. As you turn inland again the scenes could be in Uinta Basin badlands, complete with myriad dirt roads taking off to well pads for oil drilling. Traffic light, camping easy. Spur roads that were mostly grown over with dry grass took off to well pads long in disuse. The first night out was as peaceful as anything I’d seen since Sonora. No bugs, not terribly hot, clear skies, dying wind in the evening, and best of all, desert-quiet.
Reaching the ocean.Well pad camp.All this was at one time extensively explored for oil. There are only a handful of wells pumping today though. The grassy flats are old well pads.
After a sublime night on the desert it all changed. The tail wind became a head wind and over the course of two more days vegetation disappeared altogether and was replaced by blowing sand. Some tough days of deafening, demoralizing headwind followed by nights of sandstorm that permeated the gear, food, clothing, bike. Ironically though, as far as grinding out continent, the straight roads made for making better time than in Ecuador or Colombia. At the camps, I chose not to pitch the tent, for fear it would be destroyed, and had to sleep out in it. One night was especially grim. I had planned on two long days for the 140 mile trek from Piura to Chiclayo (Lambayeque, actually), but ended up taking two nights and three long days with the headwind encountered. Fortunately, I brought extra water- over three gallons- and had enough to get by. On the upside there was coastal cloud cover and it wasn’t terribly hot- nights were even cold.
Getting ready for three days on the desert south of Piura.Jorge and Lua. They ran a cafe in Piura that served very good, home cooked food that I happened onto by accident. Inside there was a poster of themselves, children and grand children on their 65th anniversary. I told them my parents made it to 68 years but weren’t in as good of shape as them.
Beyond Chiclayo the wind continued until I turned inland south of Trujillo. A mostly smooth dirt road led to the Rio Santa and a hundred mile canyon topping out at the Callejón de Hauylas, the valley below the mountains of the Cordillera Blanca. Once on the Rio Santa, the road is one-lane paved but with such course aggregate in the asphalt that much of the preceding dirt road was smoother. The traffic dwindled to a car every ten minutes or so and the peaks and ridges on either side of the canyon rose many thousands of feet above- Cordillera Blanca to the east, Cordillera Negra to the west. Rock fall in the gorge can be dangerous particularly when afternoon winds pick, often strong enough to dislodge smaller pebbles. Riding the canyon on a rainy day wouldn’t be advisable.
Blowing sand. That horizontal thing sticking out the back is a car antenna I used for some of the dogs. I’ve been chased by hundreds of them since crossing into Mexico but generally they run harmlessly along side. The Peruvian dogs, however, seem bigger and more threatening and I’ve been bitten twice, though they’ve yet to really break the skin. One dog globbed on to a pannier and made me drag him ten yards before I stopped and he ran off. Just raising the antenna in the air as they approach is usually all it takes to ward them off.
Sandy camp.I could usually find a piece of garbage to make a wind screen for the stove.Another sandy camp. The pingo-like sand mounds give some wind protection.
Lambayeque. Motorcycle drawn tuktuks out number cars in northern Peru.
These guys are working with wheel barrows and shovels to stem what’s essentially a sand tide.I don’t know what he did but he’s sure getting punished for it.Camp in his little arroyo was fairly wind protected but such places were few.
Blew hard all night here but not as much drifting sand.Mauro from Germany and Emilie from Quebec. They were coming from Ushuaia, Argentina and headed to Alaska. We swapped stories for 45 minutes out in the middle of nowhere.A great camp along the Rio Santa. Finally out of the wind.
Rice paddies and corn from an extensive irrigation system fed by the Rio Santa and Cordillara Blanca glaciers.Lots of signs along the Rio Santa for archeology stuff. I hiked around a little at one place and found some pot sherds.
Irrigation diversionDid some fun 4th class scrambling on these granite slabs.Getting into the inner gorge of the Rio Santa. Thirty five tunnels over about 50 miles.
The inner gorge is called Canyon Del Pato or Duck Canyon.
Huallanca, a hydroelectric town….…..with electricity generated here. Upstream 11 km and over 300 meters vertically, water from the Rio Santa is diverted into a sloping tunnel that acts as an enormous penstock to drive turbines. It generates electricity as a dam would but without water impoundment. A good portion of northern Peru gets power from here.
After several days riding, Canyon Del Pato widens into a valley and a string of towns. Huaraz is furthest upstream and is where I am now. The peaks of the Cordillera Blanca loom over the valley like a breaking wave. The highest is Peru’s high point, Huascaran, at 22,200 feet. The glaciers of this range are being particularly affected by climate change but you sure wouldn’t know it to look up at them. The summits are encased in Alaska-like ice caps.
Huaraz is a crossroads for South American climbing and everywhere there are shops and restaurants with climbing themes and dozens of guide services. The coffee shops are loaded with Americans and Europeans. Peru has attempted to require guides for its major summits the way Ecuador has, but policies have met with a bit more civil disobedience here from locals and foreigners alike. Much of the climbing is guided regardless and I imagine it’s a sort of golden age for picking a career as a guide. On the flip side, the real adventures of original exploration are essentially over and, aside from things like winged suit flying, guiding tourists may be all that’s left.
I had it in mind to give Huascaran a try but knew I needed to find a partner. Huascaran’s glaciers are far more involved than something like Chimborazo and it’s customary to have at least a couple of people on a rope when climbing through crevasses. When I got here, though, I learned that climbing had pretty well shut down on all the higher peaks for the season which usually ends in August. I learned as well that in late July an avalanche on Huascaran had killed several people and there evidently hasn’t been much activity on the mountain since then. I wasn’t too disappointed by the shutdown; hanging out in coffee shops, resting and eating seemed to be a far more attractive alternative.
Summit of Huascaran. One of the few times it had been out of the clouds.
Huaraz
In Huaraz I needed also to look for tires and tubes for the bike as well as to order a new touch screen glass for the iPad. The iPad is in combination with a fold up keyboard that offers good protection, but it’s seen some tough duty. I’ve rolled over on it at night in the tiny tent a couple of times as well as trapping pieces of debris against the glass when folding it up. It became a spider web of cracks, amazingly it still worked, but needed to be fixed. There are several instructional videos on making the repair, which looked doable, but ordering a new glass wasn’t easy. Anything coming from outside of Peru takes several weeks to deliver (which I suppose precludes offers of care packages, but I sure appreciate the thought). I found this out only after ordering and paying for one already. I figured I could spend some time in the mountains waiting for delivery, but not for three weeks. After long hours on the Internet I found one in Lima but paying for it and arranging delivery required multiple telephone conversations that the folks at the hotel I’m staying, Soledad (www.lodgingsoledad) thankfully took care of. It took some doing, but the iPad’s like new again. I bought a second insulite sleeping pad and cut part of it up for a protective case, put together with duct tape.
Anibal, Liria and Francisco Romero at the Soledad B&B were a great help in getting the glass for the computer.Old iPad screen
Finding bike parts hasn’t been simple either and the Colombian highways that were loaded with “Olympic trainees” has dwindled to few if any cyclists in Peru, bike shops following suit. In Colombia I never felt quite up to par as these guys would go flying passed me all decked out in cycling outfits and I’d be putting along, in shorts, Tevas, a dirty tee shirt and no helmet. I’m missing those guys now. But, after searching a while in Huaraz, I at least found a tire to carry as a spare. I may not get another chance at a full bike shop until Mendoza, Argentina, a couple of thousand miles away.
From here I’ll take backroads to Cusco over what looks to be beautiful but difficult terrain. Wi-Fi may be in short supply for a couple of weeks so I may be out of touch. Now that the austral spring equinox has past, I’m looking forward to longer days that will increase both from seasonal change as well as direction of travel to higher latitudes. I left Logan just after northern spring equinox and the “twelve-and-half-hour day” has followed me to here. There have been quite a few times I had energy for more miles but got stopped by darkness.
I’ve been a week in Hauraz and I’ll be glad to get moving again.
Well, I’ve made it to Peru after longer than intended travel through Ecuador. Not only does the mountainous terrain there make for low mileage days but the zig-zagging roads make progress towards the southern tip of the continent just about grind to a halt. The lack of progress really went unnoticed though, because it’s all very beautiful and continually interesting. The time slips away and overall seems to pass more quickly now then when I started out over five months ago. Several days were spent hiking two volcanos near Quito as acclimation for climbing Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest point at 20,400 feet, then more days for a failed attempt on the mountain itself. On top of everything I’ve lost days to illnesses for which I have no explanation except mild food poisoning. Chicken is a Latin American mainstay- they eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner- and in Ecuador it will come with a meal whether you specifically order it or not. Biting into it and finding the meat not thru-cooked always leaves you wondering what the next week will bring.
From the hostel in Fuch’s Plaza in Quito I found a nearby outdoor shop that rented gear and functioned as what appeared to be a brokerage for guide services. Three or four years ago the Ecuadorian gov’t declared that its main summits can only be climbed with a guide. At the surface, the reasoning is safety related- the volcanos are subject to rockfall and avalanches for which there have been a few fatalities over the years- but I doubt they overlooked revenues and job creation. At the outdoor shop I tried to get a feel for what the policies were and how strict the enforcement. The owner at this particular shop was of course eager to sign me up and didn’t seem to care what kind of shape I was in. I told him I needed to acclimate first and his response was that he could provide a guide for that too. I said I’d get back to him.
I needed at some point to replace the camp stove I had lost way back in Mazatlán and the shop at Fuch’s plaza had a few. They were mostly butane canister type and though light weight and easy to use, required fuel canisters that are not readily available. I was looking to purchase another MSR Whisperlite, like the one I lost, or one that burned kerosine or diesel. The Whisperlite burned white gas, but ordinary gasoline would do in a pinch, and they can be jetted for diesel. Well, it turned out he had one stove there that would burn gasoline- it was a primus. Swedish-invented primuses are wonderful stoves, last indefinitely and can burn ordinary gasoline. They’re what I grew up with- my dad bought me a Svea (primus being the type, Svea the brand variation) in the early 1970’s that I used for many years. Aside from the fact that they stink (from an olfactory point of view) and are cumbersome to use, they’re heavy. The model he had for sale, similar to what we would have called an Optimus, was especially heavy because of the case it came with. These stoves are almost completely obsolete now in the U.S. and I’ve picked Sveas up at garage sales and thrift stores for just a few dollars in recent years. A couple occupy basement shelves at home where I’m wondering if Smithsonian might one day be interested in them. Even Whisperlites are becoming hard to find from retailers as the world seems to want the convenience of canisters. Well, this dinosaur was going for an obscene $100 but I went for the bird in hand. In retrospect I would have done better to order what I really wanted on the Internet (eBay) and waiting for delivery in a place conducive to hanging out for a few days……like Fuch’s Plaza. After paying $114 with tax I left with that sinking feeling of having been suckered.
The next day, without knowing what I was going to do about the “guide question”, I set out to climb Pichincha, a 15,700 foot peak near Quito. To get to it involved riding the bike first over a 12,000 foot pass, then dropping 1500 feet to the town of Lloa (‘yo-a) and then up dirt roads to as far as I could reasonably take the bike. A 4×4 track leads to a hut at over 14,000 feet, but I locked the bike to a fence post at about 12,000 feet. The majority of my gear was left at the hotel at Fuch’s Plaza, so I as traveling light.
LloaPichincha
Pichincha erupted as recently as 2002 covering the town of Lloa in ash. Technically it has since been illegal to go to it’s top or into the crator, but warning signs were obviously being ignored. I had a beautiful hike over blocky pinnacles and surprisingly solid rock to the summit. Views to the west were a sea of clouds over the Pacific. To the east it was just the opposite, the high peaks of Cotopaxi and Cayambe hidden in clouds but surrounded by xeric plains of rain shadow. It was a long day, the most exciting of it finding my way back to the hotel through five or so miles of Quito’s labyrinth of streets after dark.
Warning sign at PichinchaPichincha’s calderaSummitLooking south to the Ilinizas, Cotopaxi to the left.
The next peak in the acclimation process was Iliniza which lay to the south. I left the Quito hostel and took the main highway for 30 miles to a turn off on an outlandishly bumpy cobblestone road that I had to walk the bike for much of. After 5 miles I found a good camp site close to the foot of Iliniza. Iliniza is on Ecuador’s list of “major peaks” and therefore required a guide, so I was keeping a low profile and camped out of sight in some pines. I got a 4 am start to hike Iliniza Norte, the lower of the volcano’s twin summits at just under 17,000 feet. I hiked the remaining road to a trail head and then on to just short of a permanently occupied refugio at about 15,000 feet. Nearing the hut shortly after day break, I noticed a trail leading to the right that appeared to be a bypass and, in a game of cat-and-mouse with the park people, took it. This turned out to be the main path the the north summit and I had a beautiful hike to it, all to myself. Way towards the bottom on the descent I encountered someone who appeared official and asked where I’d been but I just shrugged and told him I’d been a couple of kilometers up the trail.
Iliniza Norte is to the right in the notch in the trees, and Iliniza Sur left. Sur gets the brunt of the weather and is more difficult to climb.Iliniza NorteIliniza has a thousand or so foot slope of loose sand making for a little extra acclimation excersize.Looking towards the summit.Twin summitTopCooking on the new stove- life’s good!
I spent another night in the secluded campsite and bounced back down the cobblestone the next morning. After a long day of relentless grades on the main highway to the south I threw down that evening, just at dark, on a less-than-ideal camp that overlooked some houses. Kids were playing games in a lighted, dirt street below but they could see me up there when I walked around and soon were all staring up at me. I tried to just ignore it and only wanted to get some sleep. Well, soon the father and mother, led by about ten children, climbed up the hill in the dark to see what I was about. After a minute or so of broken conversation, and seeing the bike a gear strewn about, the mother was insisting that I come down and stay with them! I explained I was “muy cansado” (very tired) and just wanted to get some sleep. The father understood perfectly and they thankfully left me alone. End of story, except for the next morning when one of the children, Anderson Caiza, brought me a two-litre bottle of water and helped hold the bike while I packed it.
Anderson
In one of the towns I passed I noticed a leather/saddlery shop that had a bolt of vinyl coated nylon visible near the entrance. This is the stuff climber’s haul bags and river bags are made of- really tough, waterproof material. The orange bag that I lay on top of the panniers was worn out to begin with (actually it was a bag that belonged to my dad) and was now pretty much a few tatters encasing a plastic garbage bag. I had these guys sew me up a new one, using the old bag as a pattern. It worked well enough, the price was right, $15, but one small problem in that the drawstring wouldn’t cinch the end closed on the much stiffer material. Oh well, I’d think about it and make modifications later. I moved on to the town of Ambato and the turnoff to go to Chimborazo. Dropping into town (Ambato is in an uncircumventable hole- it’s all the way down and all the way back up again) I noticed another sewing shop with more nylon-reinforced vinyl. The lady there made a flap for the bag to close it up and now I have a very good, waterproof sack for the sleeping bag and clothing. I also bought a yard or so more material that I’ll at some point replace the already deteriorating denim pannier I made back in Mexico.
New bag at the saddlery shop.Round II and an added flap.New (antient) stove. The orange fuel bottle I scored for 50 cents, but discovered it had a small hole (manufacturing defect). One of my cleverer solutions ever was to make the hole into a pour spout using a presta valve from an innertube, for which I keep several multi-patched spares. Gaskets came from the cut up tube and I did it all while sitting in camp- no awkward explanations at ferreterias (hardware stores) required. Too bad it still leaked afterwards- my pillow got the worst of it- and I threw the damned thing away. I found a plastic coke bottle works just as well and pours OK.
Leaving Ambato, I started up grades towards the refugios on Chimborazo. In two more days I went from 8000 feet to nearly 16,000 feet on the bike and was in an alpine world of sparse vegetation, rock, vicuñas and snow flurries. The lower refugio, Carrel Hut, had a good restaurant for reasonable prices and is where guided trips up the mountain are organized. One of the guides there first quoted me a price to climb Chimbo of $280, consistent with what I was told at the sports shop in Quito, but then upped it to $380 later that afternoon. I said I’d think about it, but then lost a day to being sick, probably from eating my own 3-day old leftovers from chicken that may have been tainted to begin with. Two days later I felt better and, though not 100%, took a walk in thick fog up to the next hut, Whymper, at 16,400 feet. I felt OK at Whymper, walked a little more and ended up pounding out hands-in-your-pockets trail to about 18,500 feet and near to where glacier travel begins. Seeing this much of the mountain and the remaining snow slog, the $380 didn’t seem worth it for what was essentially boot/ ice ax/ crampon rental.
Vicuña.Vicuñas with Chimbo in back.Cycling at nearly 16,000 feet.Camp near the Carrel Hut
Returning to Carrel, the guide then quoted me $200, but I needed to confirm it with the manager of the huts when he arrived later that morning. For $200 I was again considering it, but when the manager arrived he upped it back to $280 and expressed displeasure that I went as far as I did up the mountain. I had had enough at that point and packed up to go.
One aside about Chimborazo is that relative to the center of the Earth, it’s the world’s highest mountain due to the equatorial bulge caused by centripetal forces of the spinning planet. It’s a contrived sort of statistic, but a draw for people wanting to climb it and one can see an impetus for commodification- if they can make a buck off it, they will. I should mention also that the oblate geometry also makes the mouth of the Mississippi River “higher” than its headwaters. As an excersize to the reader (many of whom I know can answer it), tell me why the Mississippi doesn’t flow the other way!
Photo showing routes on Chimborazo. I was on the “red line” to just below the last switchbacks before the long ridge to the summit.Chimborazo.Another puzzle: This is a textbook “angular unconformity” near Chimborazo. How did the upper group become folded (curved) while the lower stayed straight?Disposing of the meat that was making me sick was easy.
So, it was back down to about 10,000 feet and the city of Riobamba where I needed to attend to another important bicycle repair that came to my attention just before getting to Chimborazo. It seems the front forks became loose and began vibrating when I put the brakes on. Usually this means the headset bearings need tightening or replacing. On closer inspection I could see that the braze (weld) where the steering tube attaches to the fork crown had failed- the cobblestone road at Iliniza was the last straw. It really couldn’t come completely apart because the bolt & nut stem attaching the front brake locked the two pieces together. I couldn’t otherwise see any signs of cracking or deformation. It had to be repaired though, regardless. I was trying to imagine the best way to do it and finding some used forks was one option. If I were at home it would have been simple; re-braze the joint. Here, I needed to find both someone with an oxy-acetylene torch and the necessary skill to make the braze. Either that or somebody with an oxy-acetylene torch willing to let me do the braze for a price.
The fork crown- steering tube braze is probably about the trickiest joint in frame building. Among a few possibilities, brass brazing rod is the weld material generally used and I figured- hoped- it was common here along with the accompanying flux that allows the molten metal to flow. It all works similar joining copper plumbing fittings, but far less straightforward or user friendly. Temperatures are critical. The steel is “Colombus SL” (actually SLX- the latest and greatest circa 1980) and is an Italian chromium-molybdenum steel comparable to American 4140. If the steel gets too hot though it becomes brittle and is subject to cracking. In making a braze, molten brass travels to where the steel is the hottest and controlling it in the fork crown is especially tricky because of differences in the thickness of the steel- it’s easy make thin places hot, difficult to make thick places hotter than the thin places and woe is thee should a thin place get too hot.
After knocking on a few more-or-less unfriendly doors, I found a mechanic’s shop that was willing to “rent” his torch, and also had on hand a stick of brass rod and flux. After removing the forks from the bike and taking the brake stem out, the steering tube and crown could be pulled apart for cleaning. I could then inspect the joint and realized that I had only “tacked” the two together and never came back to fully braze it. Well, the “tack” lasted 35 years! The re-braze was a challenge; a little kid tripped over the torch hoses and knocked the forks down while I was brazing, and then the acetylene ran out. I told the owner I was out of gas and he said he’d be back in five minutes with more. As a little background and at the risk of boring everyone with all this technical stuff, Ecuadorian oxy-acetylene outfits use an oxygen bottle just like ours. The acetylene, however; comes from these ungainly tanks that look a little like potbelly stoves. I didn’t get a picture of one but if I again get the opportunity, I will. How he was going to exchange this massive tank with another in “cinco minutos” was beyond me, but I was hopeful. Sure enough, in five minutes he returned, not with another tank, but with what appeared to be a small plastic bag containing some rocks. He unbolted a swinging door low down on the tank, threw some rocks in, sealed it up, and voilà, I had gas again. I didn’t waste his time asking stupid questions, but did do some research when I got to a hotel later that night. Acetylene gas was traditionally made by heating calcium carbonate (limestone) in a kiln to make calcium carbide which can then be reacted with water to make acetylene gas in a ridiculously simple stoichiometry. In the past it was used to light everything from gas street lamps to coal miner’s carbide headlamps- cavers still use them today. (They went out of style in coal mines when it was discovered the lamps could ignite methane gas). How safe these welding tanks are I have no idea, but it’s how they do it in Ecuador.
Brazing the fork crown.Nestor, the shop owner is on the right.Finished and installed.
With the forks brazed I reassembled the bike, but with no fine tuning adjustments, and went in search of a hotel. It was by then after dark and it took a while to find one. The next morning I took it all apart again and did some hand filing to get the headset race to seat properly and then hit it with spray paint. Between working on that and another round of illness, I spent three nights at the hotel. In that time, amazingly, I got to know the girl working the front desk a little and by the last day she had proposed marriage, and was willing to pay a price for it. She was a music student trying to get into a university in the U.S. and wanted citizenship. I answered by holding my wrists up in the manner of when being handcuffed.
I left Riobamba still not feeing 100% and got less than 10 uphill miles to Cajabamba, and checked into another hotel. Next day I felt pretty normal again and did another day of uphill and then descended, finally, onto the Pacific side and into all those clouds I had been getting glimpses of ever since the rainshadows of Colombia. That first afternoon the fog was thick enough that I quit early when I saw a public lands-type sign indicating a side road to a waterfall. A two kilometer descent down a dirt road led to San Rafael Cascada and a beautiful, if out of the way, camp. The next day’s descent spit me out onto coastal plains and jungle. I had dropped from 12,500 feet to about 800 feet in less than 40 miles.
A few images of Cajabamba, a typical mountain town of Ecuador. I think the Native people are Quichuan, but there are really several native lineages in the “Sierra” that I’d like to learn more about.
Watch where you walk at night. This is sidewalk but these hazards are in the streets as well where cars (and bikes!) can hit them.
Quenual trees, or paper bark trees. A species of Polylepsis, they grow at elevations as high as 17,000 feet making them the world’s highest growing trees.These Quenuals are at about 12,500 feet.San Rafael Falls
After egressing the mountains there was nothing ahead but straight, flat, windless terrain that might be considered boring but here it was a welcome relief. I did back-to-back 90 mile days, had an easy border crossing into Peru (the place was practically vacated), and now I’m in Tumbes, Peru only a few miles from the coast. In a few days time I’ve gone from treeless páramo, to jungle, to desert scrub and now, almost without warning, the terrain is becoming pure desert. I’m anticipating Atacama-like desert sand within the next few days. Tomorrow I’ll have about a 10 mile ride to the coast proper, and am looking forward to a hundred or so miles of highway right on the ocean.
Back in jungle, not my favorite.Drying cocoa (as opposed to coca) grown in Ecuador’s coastal region.Plowing a field in Ecuador the old fashioned way.Bernardo and Rodolfo put up with me for a couple of days at the hotel in Tumbes while I worked on the blog.
The first 25 miles south of Cali follow the flat and easy bottom land of the Cauca Valley to its southern terminus at Santander. After that the terrain becomes mountainous. The city of Popayán lies at over 5000 feet, only 2000 above Cali, but a merciless 50 miles of up and down to get there. This was only the beginning. Getting to Quito would see me going from low points of 3 and 4000 ft, descending once to nearly a 1000 feet, up to as high as 10,500 feet a total of 6 times before reaching Quito, Ecuador. The pitiless hills would drop to arid, desert climate, with prickly pear and pitaya cactus, then climb, over sometimes two-day rides, to genuinely cold and rainy summits in páramo habitat.
The highway to Popayán from Santander is lined with houses and small farms built long ago in a manner that could not have foreseen the modern world’s overwhelming amount of truck, automobile and motorcycle traffic. The noise I can see locals getting used to, but living with the terrible air along the crowded highway would not be enviable. On the bike, pollution from immediate traffic has been a problem off and on since leaving the U.S. where our emission standards really make a positive difference. Many of the motorcycle riders here, which at least equal the number of cars, wear respirators. It’s not always that bad, but I’m considering getting a respirator to have when it is. La Linea (see previous post) was the worst.
Motorcycle transportation throughout Latin America is popular and the methods of hauling stuff hilarious. They’re typically not big bikes, in the 125cc-175cc range, and what we would have called “enduros” way back when. I could never have the camera ready when the time was right, but some of the funnier ones have been: A family of four- mom, dad, juvenile and infant all loaded on; grandson giving grandmother a ride with grandmother riding sidesaddle and not looking especially happy about things; rider with passenger reaching his arms behind and toating a wheel barrow filled with cargo and going a good 30 mph; rider with passenger carrying a load of PVC pipe in 15 foot lengths over their shoulders; young couple with a medium sized dog squeezed between them; motorcycles pulling pickup-sized trailers, one I remember loaded to about eight feet high; good motorcycle towing broken down motorcycle; one motorcycle cop off his bike so he could push-start a second motorcycle cop (only in Guatemala).
At the town of Tunia, nearing Popayán, I encountered more protests, this time a group called Asoinca had blocked traffic. Cars, motorcycles and trucks were lined up for a couple of miles. This was more of a one-day affair and cops appeared to be there more as a perfunctory presence. People were all smiles. They weren’t letting bicycles through, however; so I was stuck for over an hour until I finally reconnoitered a way passed. I had lunch on some shady roadside grass and while I was eating a nearby property owner came over and introduced himself. He turned out to be a limnologist from Naples, Italy. He spoke enough English that we could communicate pretty well but I never got the whole story of how he ended up in this out-of-the-way corner of Colombia doing some sort of independent work with fresh-water fish. He was shaking his head at the protesters saying that this was more of a social gathering of middle-upper-class leftists who might be called drugstore revolutionaries by an Americano.
Colombiano protestsLimnologist Alessandro Della Porta, right, with friends Fredy (red shirt) and Miguel.Alessandro’s facilities.
I found a way through the protesters and subsequent line of cars and trucks coming the other way. I got several miles of traffic-free travel till another major road intersected. I made it to Popayán and scrambled for Wi-Fi to send in some answers to an email interview for an article about the trip for my hometown newspaper in Logan, Utah. That took till after dark and I ended up in a somewhat spendy, but very nice, hotel in Popayán.
After Popayán a long grade and descent took me to the 1000 foot low point. Two days climb from there got me to Pasto, named after an indigenous culture, and a picturesque city at 8300 feet. Pasto lies at the foot of the active volcano, Volcán Galeras, which erupted as recently as 1993 and killed six scientists who were descending into the crater to collect gas samples. From Pasto, continued grade leads over a 10,000 foot pass then down again to about 4000 feet, then up to Ipiales and the border with Ecuador. From Ecuador’s border town of Tulcán you climb to 10,500 feet, then down to about 5000, then up to 7300 and the town of Ibarra. From Ibarra, where I spent two days in a decent $10-a-night hotel recouping, you continue a climb to 10,000 again, then back down to about 6,000, then up to the final 9,400 at Quito. If your having a hard time following all this, don’t worry, so am I- the innumerable hills have become a blur and there’s more to come. They’ve been unbelievably long and my knees could use one more gear to down-shift into. To endure them you fall into a sort of meditation where your putting the minimum effort possible to just keep the bike in motion while trying to let your mind wander to where ever it can to pass the time. I write the blog, practice Spanish, plan what I need in the next town, get mad at the last bus that cut it way closer than he had to. It’s all about patience, but though time may pass slowly, it’s not boring. Going through the vegetation transitions is always interesting and with hills comes views. In the clear skies here, which contrast remarkably with the smokey skies of Mexico and thick, sea level air of Central America, the views are incredible. Getting to the top of anything is always satisfying.
Rosio Inboquingo was the museum curator for a Mastadon excavation and indigenous cultures archeology near San Gabriel, Ecuador. She gave me an hour long 1-on-1 tour.Highway I just descended is way above.The road is just visible on the profile after exiting the tunnel pictured below.
Descending to Pasto, Colombia
A good portion of the grades go through FARC territory. This bridge was heavily guarded, complete with sandbag bunkers. I took pictures looking into the slot beneath the bridge, but the guards made it clear not to photograph anything else.Marina. Somewhere on one of these grades she had a fruit stand set up for which I got a few things. She refused payment! I told her I’d post her picture on the Internet but she had no knowledge of how to see it.
After dropping to the tunnel and beyond, you climb to, and follow, the dark plateau in the upper middle of the photo.Side road to a farm.
Camping in pines at the pass above Tulcán. Another scorching day at the equator.
The valley low points are classic examples of rain shadow. Mist rolls in like a breaking wave from the Pacific but stops at the brink of falling into the valleys, leaving a desert-dry climate.Ibarra and 19,000 foot Mt Cayembe.
I stopped in the town of Otavala, 20 miles beyond Ibarra, looking for a grocery store. They had a Saturday bazar going that filled the streets for several blocks in all directions. Of the many that sold clothing, I noticed for the first time since leaving the US “pile” jackets that are worn by climbers and folks in colder climates. I bought a jacket, pile pants and longjohns at DI prices.
Jonathan, Andres and Lino. Jonathan, lower photo, left, is originally from Prince Edward Island. He has a leather working business (JJLeathersmith.com) in Otavalo and had a booth at the Bazar. He gave me a place to park the bike while I went in search of cold-weather clothing. Andres (and Lino!) are Ecuadorian.I shared a camp (but not the tent!) with this Andean version of a black widow. Very colorful. The camp is just a couple of miles north of the Equator.
Huge mothLast grades to Quito….….and pulling into the City. It was Sunday and the middle lanes were closed to traffic and loaded with bikes, peds and dog walkers. Cotapoxi is at upper left.
I’m in Quito now for a couple of days tracking down bike parts (never simple) and a stove for the one I lost with the pannier in Mazatlán. The luxury of a stove I didn’t miss in tropical jungle habitat where hot food just wasn’t attractive, but I’ll now be at higher elevations for a good part of the next few months and it would be nice to heat water for morning coffee and cooking dinner. Jonathan, from Otavalo, directed me to Quito’s yuppie enclave, Foch’s Plaza, where those types of things are sold along with having a Champs Elysees of coffee shops and restaurants. I’m enjoying the place, but parting with a bunch of money in the process. I have a backlog of flower photos that I’ll put out in another plant segment at some point.
For all the coffee lovers I’ll leave you with info from Fernando Mendivil (and Alfredo Islas) of Los Alamos Cafe (“The Poplars”) for some of what goes into processing coffee beans. These guys are totally committed to the world of COFFEE and brew it as well as I’ve seen the entire trip. If you get to Navojoa, Mexico (Sonora) stop in!
WET PROCESS In the wet process, the fruit covering the seeds/beans is removed before they are dried. Coffee processed by the wet method is called wet processed or washed coffee. The wet method requires the use of specific equipment and substantial quantities of water.
The coffee cherries are sorted by immersion in water. Bad or unripe fruit will float and the good ripe fruit will sink. The skin of the cherry and some of the pulp is removed by pressing the fruit by machine in water through a screen. The bean will still have a significant amount of the pulp clinging to it that needs to be removed. This is done either by the classic ferment-and-wash method or a newer procedure variously called machine-assisted wet processing, aquapulping or mechanical demucilaging:
In the ferment-and-wash method of wet processing, the remainder of the pulp is removed by breaking down the cellulose by fermenting the beans with microbes and then washing them with large amounts of water. Fermentation can be done with extra water or, in “Dry Fermentation”, in the fruit’s own juices only.
The fermentation process has to be carefully monitored to ensure that the coffee doesn’t acquire undesirable, sour flavors. For most coffees, mucilage removal through fermentation takes between 24 and 36 hours, depending on the temperature, thickness of the mucilage layer, and concentration of the enzymes. The end of the fermentation is assessed by feel, as the parchment surrounding the beans loses its slimy texture and acquires a rougher “pebbly” feel. When the fermentation is complete, the coffee is thoroughly washed with clean water in tanks or in special washing machines.[4]
In machine-assisted wet processing, fermentation is not used to separate the bean from the remainder of the pulp; rather, this is done through mechanical scrubbing. This process can cut down on water use and pollution since ferment and wash water stinks. In addition, removing mucilage by machine is easier and more predictable than removing it by fermenting and washing. However, by eliminating the fermentation step and prematurely separating fruit and bean, mechanical demucilaging can remove an important tool that mill operators have of influencing coffee flavor. Furthermore, the ecological criticism of the ferment-and-wash method increasingly has become moot, since a combination of low-water equipment plus settling tanks allows conscientious mill operators to carry out fermentation with limited pollution.
Any wet processing of coffee produces coffee wastewater which can be a pollutant. Ecologically sensitive farms reprocess the wastewater along with the shell and mucilage as compost to be used in soil fertilization programs. The amount of water used in processing can vary, but most often is used in a 1 to 1 ratio.
After the pulp has been removed what is left is the bean surrounded by two additional layers, the silver skin and the parchment. The beans must be dried to a water content of about 10% before they are stable. Coffee beans can be dried in the sun or by machine but in most cases it is dried in the sun to 12-13% moisture and brought down to 10% by machine. Drying entirely by machine is normally only done where space is at a premium or the humidity is too high for the beans to dry before mildewing.
When dried in the sun coffee is most often spread out in rows on large patios where it needs to be raked every six hours to promote even drying and prevent the growth of mildew. Some coffee is dried on large raised tables where the coffee is turned by hand. Drying coffee this way has the advantage of allowing air to circulate better around the beans promoting more even drying but increases cost and labor significantly.
After the drying process (in the sun or through machines), the parchment skin or pergamino is thoroughly dry and crumbly, and easily removed in the hulling process. Coffee occasionally is sold and shipped in parchment or en pergamino, but most often a machine called a huller is used to crunch off the parchment skin before the beans are shipped.
I flew from Panama City to Bogotá, Colombia. The Darién Gap, a distance of about 70 miles, is the stretch from the terminating highway below Panama to the nearest north-south running highway in Colombia.The route went from Bogotá west to Ibagué and curved gradually south to Calí.
I finally left the Casino/Hotel in San Isidro with legs that were yet walking-stiff but pedaling was OK. Flat terrain led to Panama City, uneventful but not boring. From Panama City I had a couple of choices for getting to South America proper. A paved road leads east and south out the Isthmus for over a hundred miles before it ends at what’s called the Darién Gap. From there a 70 mile expanse of jungle must be crossed to reach the nearest Colombian road. To travel the Americas strictly terrestrially, one would have to cross the Darién Gap. No permanent roads exist there and to this day it’s a smuggling route (one of many) for cocaine et al headed to the U.S. It’s also territory controlled at least in part by the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Columbia), a group of guerrilla revolutionaries that have been fighting the established government in Colombia since the early 1960s. More about them below, but the upshot is that the Darién is a dangerous place. Routes through it wax and wane with ever consuming jungle growth but vehicles have been known to make it through. A Sweedish kid in his twenties tried to walk through it in 2013 and, they think, he was thought by the FARC to be a spy of some kind and they executed him. His remains were found in 2015. They say Panamanians will hire out a squad of armed guards to escort the more intrepid thru. I crossed the Darién off the list.
This photo and the two above were taken at a Messianic compound that I pulled into to fix a flat and ended up spending the night. Above is a gathering that started in the middle of the night and was still going on when I left in the morning.
The next option was taking a sailboat from Colon (the east side of the Canal and on the Caribbean) to Colombia’s Cartegena. It takes about a week, visits tropical islands, and could have been a great respite from pedaling. I’m realizing though that time is getting short if I want to make southern Argentina before about March, 2017, the end of the Austral summer. There are several summits along the way I’d like to get to as well. That corner of the world is inhospitable enough in the summer and, as the only continental land mass in those latitudes, South America’s slim profile gets hammered by circumpolar wind. Wind is a way of life there and cycling can be really tough if it’s direction is anything but at your back. All I can say is that people do it, but I don’t want to get caught there in the winter.
Flying from Panama City to Bogotá or Medellín was the third option and the cheapest as well. According to my friend Jóse, who I met traveling north in Costa Rica, flying to Medellín cost about $100. The sailboat was more like $500 or $600 from what I found on the Internet. Both Bogotá and Medellín are well south of Cartegena, cutting off more than a third of Columbia, saving additional time. If I ever feel guilty about not cycling that part, I’ll come back with some friends and have a holiday cycling what I’m sure is a beautiful part of Columbia.
Anyway, I chose to fly and rode straight to the airport once I got to Panama City naively thinking I’d just get the $100 ticket right there. The lady at the terminal, however, quoted me $750, but I could fly that night! She said to try the Internet, so I went to a spendy airport hotel to mull things over. Surfing the net I finally found a round trip fare for $225 that left for Bogotá the next afternoon. My seat will be vacant for the return flight at the end of August. I was also able to book a hotel and, as a wonder of the modern computer world, there was a guy holding a sign up with my name on it when I got there- a first for me- for a complimentary ride to the Hotel Bogotá. $30-a-night w/ breakfast. The Panama airport hotel was $125 per night and breakfast was $16. And Colombian coffee is unbelievable. More below on that as well.
Colombia was not immune to the post WWII problems that seemed to plague Latin America. The troubles are rooted in the 1920s and 30s when, once again, communism was becoming popular in poorer countries around the world, particularly those with a wealthy, elite minority relying on labor. Colombia’s disfunctionality with the United States, though, goes back to Teddy Roosevelt and the building of the Panama Canal. Panama was then part of Colombia and treaties with the United States had been in place since the 1840s for use of land transportation across the Isthmus. Sans canal, it was still easier for ships to swap goods there than to go around Cape Horn. U.S. presence was allowed essentially in exchange for protection from piracy and revolutionaries. The U.S. readily deployed military there. When the California gold rush began in 1849 the U.S. was allowed to build and operate a railroad. This all jibed well with Monroe Doctrine.
From as early as the Conquistadores a canal was envisioned, but in the 1880s France’s Ferdinand de Lesseps, the prime developer of the Suez Canal, got investment money together and began the Panama project. The plan failed for a number of reasons but the most important were i) they attempted to dig down to sea level over the canal’s length- same as Suez, but far too ambitious here- and ii) Panama’s wet season took the lives of some 22,000 workers over 8 years due mainly to yellow fever and Malaria. The causes of each were not then proven to be from mosquitos. By 1889 the project was bankrupt and officially became a scandal. The French courts handed out several convictions of fund misappropriation that included Lesseps and even Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, but neither spent time in jail.
A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL, PANAMA. (A palindrome!) Looking towards the Atlantic and the Culebra Cut which crosses the continental divide and required removal of the vast majority of the canal’s overburden.Looking towards the Paciic. The Miraflores Locks are to the left.The Centennial Bridge, one of two crossing the Canal.Last leg to the Panama airport and impending rain.Cooincedental odometer reading at the airport hotel in Panama. 5001 miles from Logan, Utah.
In 1894 the French tried to renew the project pretty much for enabling the sale of a viable concern. By 1903 the U.S. Senate agreed to a greatly reduced purchase price but it depended on a new Colombian treaty as to who did what with the finished product. Any potential agreements were never ratified by the Colombian government, but, very typical of Teddy Roosevelt, when the U.S. got wind of Panamanian rebels seeking independence, Roosevelt (president at the time) gave them the United States’ full support. A coup succeeded with the help of U.S. war ships preventing the Colombian army from putting down the rebellion. It amounted to “gunboat diplomacy” and was an act of war against Colombia. Naturally, the new Panamanian government cooperated well with the U.S. After-the-fact reparations were made to Colombia in 1921 with a payment of $25,000,000. Colombia in return recognized Panama’s sovereignty.
In 1904 the U.S. began work but wisely chose a design that included a system of locks that raised the ships about 50 feet to a man made lake. This design involved far less digging. Malaria and yellow fever were then understood to be from mosquitos and measures were taken to prevent the heavy losses the French encountered. There were, none-the-less, 5,600 out of 75,000 workers that died from disease and accidents. The canal was finished in 1914.
A roadside cafe where I got breakfast and was pleasantly surprised when some folks who had already come and gone paid for it!
I spent two nights in Bogotá and a full day chasing bike parts (more tires and brakes) and having the bottom bracket race tightened slightly. None of it was simple but Bogotá leads Latin America (and possibly the world) in bike path travel so getting around was not bad for a city of 8 million people.
Bogotá bike path.You see occasional mobile bicycle repair stations.
Charting a route through Colombia was done with consideration of what might be described as a low level civil war that’s been going on with more or less the original protagonists, and their descendants, since 1964. It has roots before that to 1949 when a liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Gaitán, was assassinated igniting a nine year war, The Violencia, between liberals and conservatives.Much of it was fought in rural areas and between towns with respective leanings. The conservative led government kept much of it out of the press and consequently there are many details lost to history. They think 200 to 300 thousand lives were taken and over 2 million displaced. Mixed up in the fighting was the PCC (Partida Comunista Colombiana). They were a Marxist guerrilla group that formed shortly after the Colombian government’s violent repression of a 1928 strike protesting conditions and wages for fruit workers. This made, at times, for a 3-sided war loaded with terror and atrocity.
In 1958 liberals and conservatives came to an agreement and the war boiled down to a fight against the PCC. The PCC of course supported union activities and one of the landmark events segueing into The Violencia was the Colombian government’s repression of the above mentioned fruit worker’s strike. It occurred near Santa Marta on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast. The number killed varies wildly, but they were protesting working conditions for the U.S. owned American Fruit Company which is today’s Chiquita Brands International. The company has a long history of human rights abuses, a notably poor track record for environmental practices, and has been in Federal Court in the 21st century for illegally funding Colombian paramilitaries. More on Chiquita here. One of several Colombian novels that chronicle the massacre at Santa Marta is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez.
The PCC by 1960 was splitting into factions that either pursued legal channels of resistance or those wanting to continue fighting. Out of this was born the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in 1964. They’ve carried on the 50 year low level civil war that I’m now navigating. They control large areas of rural Colombia for which the Colombian military effectivly doesn’t tread. A 2016 estimate of the FARC held areas is found here. On the plus side a peace agreement has been underway in Cuba for some months and was recently signed. It still needs a referendum vote. On the negative side, it’s said that many, as with the split with the PCC 50 years ago, will continue fighting. A good article on what rural Colombia is now facing is here. It’s all further complicated by paramilitary groups, closely allied to and often overlapping with Colombian military, and then of coarse the drug cartels. The cartels ally themselves to both the paramilitaries and the FARC as needed and they get all the cooperation money can buy. Being middlemen between coca growers and the cartels is one way the FARC sustain themselves, which amounts to a tax. Another way is kidnapping/ransom which was especially popular in the 1990s but waned in the 21st century as the FARC has tried to gain legitimacy as a recognized army and not a terrorist group. It still goes on today to some extent and a lone North American on a bicycle would be an easy target. (Of course, in my case they’d be disappointed to find a dearth of people willing to pay much of a ransom).
No modern history of Colombia would be complete without mention of Pablo Escobar for whom probably more Hollywood movies have been made than Wyatt Earp and Custer combined. I’ve probably bored you with enough history for now, but just google Escobar to find out more of candidate assassinations, Plata o Plomo diplomacy and the horrible world associated with drug trafficking.
The flight to Bogotá lifted me to almost 9,000 feet elevation from sea level. Not surprisingly the city has a never ending spring-like climate. Immediately leaving the city on the bike I gained a low pass to about 9,500 feet and then descended over the next 70 miles to 1000 feet spending a short lived elevation bank account. Bogotá is a thriving city that’s friendly, as big cities go, but the valley I descended into was not. A couple of restaurants wouldn’t serve me and everywhere it appeared I was viewed with suspicion. When you don’t speak the language fluently there has to be a certain amount of effort by both parties if you want to communicate. These guys were just stonewalling me. Whether it’s connected to revolutionaries, paramilitaries or just the zeitgeist I haven’t found out. I did pass two people walking down the highway, one with bandelerros over his shoulders, the other with an assault rifle. They were both in civilian clothing.
A camp southwest of Bogotá. I heard machine gun fire that night across a canyon below the camp. It wasn’t like people were fighting, more like somebody working on his weapon and testing it out every 15 minutes or so for an hour.Part of the long descent from Bogotá.Beginning La Linea near Ibagué.
I got food where I could and began the climb to Ibagué (“music city” and home to a conservatory) where the road enters the mountains and areas where coffee is grown. Here, people were altogether more friendly. The highway climbs to a 10,000 foot pass over what’s called La Linea.
Coffee!
Two beans to a hull. A member of the bedstraw family, Rubeaceae, the fruits have a sweet mucilage membrane, the removal of which is part of the science and alchemy of making the best coffee. Coffee making is approaching the sophistication of wine making. Help me out Fernando from Novajoa!Hauling coffee beans. The trees above are bananas which are grown here as well.
The coffee plants are the fine, horizontal rows.Lunch stop and a more friendly populace.Sharing the road.Sorting beans by hand. Gladys, Yeni are on the left. Not sure who’s who on the rest but they’re Jetson, Jemes, Jhom, Gonzalo, Luis and Carlos.These guys were laughing (mostly at me) and seemed to be having a good time. Judging from their coffee I’ll guess that the best beans never leave the country.House and farm on a very steep slope.
Seeing the coffee growing first hand gives one an appreciation for what goes into it. Paying a little extra for Fair Trade supported brands is the least we can do. And I don’t doubt that the demand for cocaine from a world of cocaine addicts is substantial, but the coffee addicts have to outnumber the cocaine addicts 1000-to-1. If they got more $ for coffee they could abandon coca altogether! The $billions put into the War on Drugs would more than cover it.
The climb over La Linea took two days. I got caught by near darkness trying to find a camp on the steep mountain road where few if any places to pitch a tent existed. La Linea is two-lane and has a steady stream of semi and bus traffic going 24-7 on a highway that the U.S. wouldn’t even allow heavy trucks on. It’s a main artery for transportation between the elongated valleys having the cities of Medellín and Calí on one side of the mountain, and Bogotá on the other. They have, however, been working on a new highway that’s nothing short of an engineering marvel. It’s been many years in the works, and will be many more, but there are a number of tunnels, some accessible from the present highway. With permission from a couple of workers, who really could have cared less, I slept in one. Later, some cyclists I met in Calí (Jonathon and Gustavo, pictured below), noted wryly that the tunnel finally got used by someone.
Hotel La Linea. A bit drippy but I found a fairly dry spot.
Summit of La Linea. It’s maybe 45 F and misty rain falling.3 & 4-needle pines along La Linea.
The 6000 foot descent down the other side was steep enough to be slow and scary as well as putting considerable wear on the new brakes. Flatter terrain led 150 or so miles to Calí where I am now staying three days at the Ruta Sur Hostel. Jonathan and Gustovo led me here and it has been a great place to rest and work on the blog.
Another flat tire fix turning into a place to stay. Jose, Jairo and Jose’s wife Maria, below, ran a restaurant a ways out from any towns and had a place I could pitch the tent. Two meals and the tent site were about $10.
Walter and Claudia were from Calí and had traveled by Motorcycle to Patagonia. Walter donated $5 to the cause.Jonathan and Gustavo rode passed me on their bikes coming into Calí and then took me to a coffee shop. Jonathan is an expat from the UK teaching English in Calí. On Colombian history, I’m expecting plenty of “peer review” from each, as well as from Jonathan’s students.These behemoths weren’t common but you’d see them. This one’s 5 cars long. They don’t travel that fast, but the last trailer might move side-to-side 2 or 3 feet and will swat whatever gets in the way.
Life at the Ruta Sur in Calí. From the top, Heather, Renny and Eva. Heather is a dietician from the UK and traveling the world; Renny is a musician and on a shorter vacation from Montreal; Eva Lopez managed the hostel. Eva made everybody feel very welcome and is an amazing force of positive energy and a tireless worker. The world could definitely use more Eva’s. Tough place to leave.
Today I head for Ecuador and may be to the border in a few days.
Well, I’m still in Costa Rica. It’s turning out to be a hard place to leave and for two reasons; i) there’s a lot to see and do here and ii) the roads to get to any of it are unbelievably hilly and winding. I’ve tried to plot as linear a route through it as possible, but regardless have put in double the miles required to cross El Salvador, a country of similar size. A day’s ride encounters continuous Sisyphean up/down hills with one section having the high point of the Pan American highway for North America at just under 11,000 ft. This pass is considered the main highway, and the shortest route thru, but can be detoured by a coastal route which I would have taken had I realized its height. Having done it, I’m glad I did- it was incredible.
I forgot to mention in the last post that not far into Costa Rica I passed the first fellow cross-country bike traveler I’ve seen yet, he headed north. We stopped and talked. His name was Jóse (joe-see) and he’s Brazillian. He had traveled from Ushuaia, the southern tip of Argentina and where I’m theoretically headed. Jóse’s heading for Alaska. I managed to lose his contact information before I could get it into the computer so, Jóse, if you log onto cyclingagain.com send me a note with your info. If you go through Logan, Utah I’ll line you up with 20 different people you can stay with.
Jose
Guatamala leads the world in having the greatest number of endemic species, that is, species that occur only in Guatamala. Costa Rica though, leads the world in overall biodiversity having 4% of the Earth’s species while having only 0.03% of the land mass. Much of the rainforest is still unexplored and new species are discovered routinely. Being an object of world wide study as well as having a thriving tourist industry has kept the country’s natural habitat well insulated from extractive industries. About 25% of the country is protected as parks and preserves. Any logging of wild habitat has been essentially eliminated in the 21st century.
Several people recommended Bosque Nuboso Monteverde National Park but to get there meant not only hills but also retracing the route to get back to the main highway. I settled instead for a route around Lake Arenal followed by a tertiary highway that clipped a corner of the cloud forest habitat of Monteverde between the towns of Fortuna to San Ramone. From there main highways took me to San Jose, Costa Rica’s capitol.
Andre Brousseau kept me well entertained in the town of Neuevo Arenal on Lake Arenal. He’s from Quebec and has lived in Vancouver, BC, but has recently set up shop in Costa Rica as a realtor. He had a few insights into the myriad computer issues I’ve had.Andre’s real estate company.Hitchhiker
Lake Arenal is actually a reservoir who’s impoundment has been expanded over the years, with its present size completed in 1979. Built mostly for hydroelectricity potential, it supplied Costa Rica with 70% of its power in 1979. Growth in consumption has reduced that percentage to around 15% today. While in the Lake Arenal area I spent an evening and morning hiking around Volcán Arenal in rainforest habitat that leads into lava flows higher on the volcano’s flanks. Arenal began a slow, depositional eruption in 1968 and continued poring debris 4000 feet down its west side till December, 2010. Climbing it is illegal but locals have been to the summit since it stopped erupting, although at the risk of breathing toxic gasses. A national park is on the volcano’s west side but I ended up paying a pricey $8 fee to hike in a privately owned system of trails that abut the park and are more accessible to a bicycle traveler. I saw rainbow-billed toucans, a scarlet-rumped tanager, a glimpse of a spider monkey, crested guans, chachalacas. There are several species of chachalacas, but one that’s been with me since Sonora has a call as penetrating as a sandhill crane but with distinct notes that defy description. Maybe like a rooster trying to mimic the catcalls of a shrike- you’d just have to hear one. I first heard them when I was sick north of Mazatlán where they added a bit of bizarreness to a delerious night in the gravel pit.
There was a building at the trailhead where the fees were collected by a guy who was well versed in the natural sciences of the area, Walter Stellar. He spent quite a bit of time with me explaining birds and plants. Evidently ecotourism has evolved in Costa Rica to the point where younger folks go to school for a couple of years for accreditation as a tour guide. They’re given a solid background in binomial taxonomy for plants, birds and mammals and learn some of the science behind adaptations. They’ll know the basics of geology and human history.
Walter StellarMount Arenal
Venomous fer-de-lances, pit vipers like our rattle snakes- but no rattles- are found in the area and a few folks had just returned from photographing one near the trailhead. Walter walked with me to see it but the snake had moved on a few minutes before we got there. I saw people’s pictures though and he looked big and formidable. It kept me on edge walking the trails. Walter explained a little of the development of anti-venoms and how individuals from the same species can have different neurotoxins that require specific anti-venom. The anti-venom is derived by giving horses small doses for which the animals create their own antibodies. Then both the horse’s blood and antibodies are matched to a patient. It’s low probability to have a bad encounter hiking a trail, but he said folks working sugarcane fields with machetes are bitten not infrequently and the country prides itself with quick response time and few if any fatalities. In historic times people would often die from fer-de-lance bites. It was all quite fascinating.
Arenal rainforestButressed tree trunks called yoss. Walter explained this is an adaptation to give shallow-rooted, but large trees a means of pyramidal support.
The growths on the tree limbs (above and below) are bromeliads, a sort of benign parasite (epiphyte) in the pineapple family that taps into the life lines of a host tree. They collect water in their centers that in turn are host to other aquatic species. In Central America poison dart frogs carry tadpoles to them when they’re ready to morph into adults.
Bridge with grated steel decking…………and some problems.
The guilty look of a dog that just ate leftover chicken I was saving for lunch.
Translucent petals.Ant trails.
Next was a hilly route to San Ramone and then on to San Jose. I needed at some point to replace the hiking shoes lost back in Mazatlán. I wanted to do a long hike to Coasta Rica’s highest point, 12,500 foot Chirripó, which was coming up. San Jose was about the last chance for shoes. I actually found a pair of lightweight Merrils for a premium price, but they should last awhile. I had been in Tevas (a sort of hiking-grade sandal) since about Flagstaff, AZ.
I left San Jose and began the long but fairly steady grade to the 10,970 foot pass located a half mile from 11,300 foot Cerro de la Muerte. The highway traces an antient route from the southern coast over the crest of the Cordillera Talamanca to the Central Valley where San Jose is located. Rainy weather at this elevation, even in tropical Coast Rica, can be quite cold, as I found out spending a wet night at about 9,500 feet. Early Europeans were known to have perished there. I was glad to have hiking shoes.
These rainforest streams are ice-cold and have species of trout in them.
Above: Lophosoria quadripinnata
Camp on the way to the 11,000 ft pass near Cerro de la Muerte.
After a descent of almost 9000 feet to the town of San Isidro (and the total wearing out of a set of brakes), I checked into a hotel (and casino!) and investigated logistics for climbing Chirripó. The 12,522 foot Chirripó requires a 25 mile round trip and nearly 9000′ of elevation gain. There is a hotel of sorts at about 11,000 feet that people usually stay at for about $16 a night. I did it as a “one-dayer” but really should have stayed a couple of days at the hut exploring an incredible place. The Central American version of “alpine” is a unique habitat called the páramo which on Chirripó has become a world destination for botanists. I saved no time in doing the long day as I needed two extra days languishing at the hotel in San Isidro till I could walk normally again after running much of the downhill trail. Two days at the hut would have been far preferable. I must say though that my knees held up well- they were a worry not only in doing the long hike but for the bike journey in general. All my problems however seem to have been a function not of worn meniscuses but rather of disuse- the biking has been a cure for that.
After trying to figure out the busses, I ended up taking a 4:00 am taxi 15 miles to the trailhead town of San Gerrardo for about $30. The bike was left at the hotel. I was hiking by 5:00 am while it was still dark. I kept at a steady pace and did the round trip in about 12 hours. The weather overall treated me pretty well with mist and occasional clearing, but on the descent the last few kilometers were done in a downpour and a trail that was a muddy river. The photos below outline the trip- enjoy a virtual ascent. Once in the “sky island” habitat, many plants became identifiable as counterparts to those in the alpine Rockies and Arctic. Many are endemic and I wish I knew more which was which.
Something comparable to the arctic’s reindeer lichen.
Above: Hypericum sp., or St. John’s wort.
Below: Dryopteris wallichiana
A fall on some slippery rocks and attempting to save the iPad (which I did!). No big deal at home, but I take better care here with the greater risk of infection in the tropics.
Chirripo trail where you first emerge into the Paramo.
“Johann” but he had another pronunciation I couldn’t get. He was from the Netherlands and we walked a couple of miles of trail together. He was an intern studying hotel management of all things in San Jose.
Heather/heath maybe Pernettya sp.
GeraniumCastilleja
Some counterpoint to shrubby cinquefoil.
The lichens clinging to the tree branches could pass for the Rockies’ Usnea hirta.
Above: Lycophytes. Posssibly Lycopodium clavatum or Phlegmariurus sp.
The day started clear but mist came from the Atlantic side that led to some light rain.
Above: Lycophytes
Vaccinium counterpart.
More Reindeer lichen.
Water I didn’t hesitate to drink untreated.
Glaciated valley.Glacial tarn.Chirripo summit, a genuine horn.For the climbers out there, the final summit trail was “3rd class”.Claytonia megarhiza!Summit. There were a few seconds of clearing, but no views of the oceans- just a sea of lower level clouds.
Achillea?Straia or scratches left by a glacier.Crestone Base, the high camp / hotel for Chirripo, seen from a distance.The Crestones, granitic rocks above the Hotel that have climbs on them.
Maianthemum racemosa?
Above: Macrothelypteris torresiana
Forest fire remains.Amanita muscaria or fly agaric, a “risky” hallucinegen native to the Northern Hemisphere but now grows world wide.
Tomorrow if my legs are under me again I’ll start for Panama. Never saw a Quetzal!
Closeup of El Salvador. The winding road at the bottom was long and hilly but beautiful.A small corner of Honduras was crossed. I stayed in Choluteca before crossing to Nicaragua.
Nicaragua & Costa Rica.
I detoured San Salvador, El Salvador’s capitol, and instead took a beautiful and winding road along the southern coastline that reminded me of Northern California’s Highway 1. The rugged coastline gives way to more agricultural land to the south of San Salvador. I stayed a night in Zacatoluca, a town that’s been in El Salvador’s news recently for the attempted arrest of its police chief on corruption charges and colluding with gangs. He managed to slip away and it’s believed he was tipped off by authorities farther up the ladder. Corruption is rampant in El Salvador.
El Salvador coast. Hermosa.Still seeing cactus.
El Salvador, like its neighbors, endured civil war in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Once again a United Nation’s brokered peace ended hostilities, this time in 1992. The ceremony for the peace treaty was held at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City where the president of El Salvador shook hands with leaders of the five main factions of revolutionary resistance. The resistance forces were granted a party in parliament. They struggled for the first years, but have won the last two presidential elections with Salvador Sanchez Cerén in office today.
El Salvador is home to two of the world’s most notorious gangs, Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS 13) and Calle 18. As civil war spread in the late 1970s the United States under the Carter Administration took in thousands of El Salvadoran refugees, many of whom were settled in poorer areas of Los Angeles, California. Once there, they learned about American gang culture in an environment that couldn’t have been much improvement over civil war. Many ended up in jail. After the peace accords were signed a good portion were repatriated, particularly those serving prison sentences. When they returned home they brought gang culture with them which easily found a foothold in an impoverished El Salvador. Today the two gangs fight with eachother and with police. The boundaries of all sides overlap. The reasons for fighting are unrelated to the civil war and amount to a cycle of endless retaliation. They find work doing “security” for the drug cartels. Homicide in the US was 4 per 100,000 persons in 2015 and as high as 16 in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. In the UK it was 1 per 100,000. In El Salvador it was 103 per 100,000. This is the highest rate of killing in any country that’s not officially at war. Honduras and Guatemala are not far behind. Check out http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/insight-crime-homicide-round-up-2015-latin-america-caribbean for more info.
The city of San Salvador abuts Lago de Ilapango which is the caldera of a super volcano. The volcano is dated to have had a major eruption in the 500s AD and speculated to be the cause of an unusually hard winter and cool summer in the years 535-36 AD in Europe. The result was crop failures and famine.
The morning I left Zacatoluca I stopped at a coffee shop and was asked by a guy, Manuel Barahona, where I was headed. A native El Savadoran, he spoke English well and after talking a minute I offered to buy him coffee. He declined but we sat talking for over an hour while I fixed a flat. We went over some of my passport woes and he explained the procedures by showing me his passports of which he had one from El Salvador and one from the US. He also had a California driver’s license. He said he started out in the US 35 years ago as a taxi driver in Atlanta and later San Francisco. He eventually became a citizen. He now owns a trucking company in El Salvador. He also owns a house in Redwood City (Menlo Park) near the Stanford campus. He should have been buying me coffee.
Manuel Barahoma.ZacatolucaManuel pointed out that many El Savadoran business signs have white lettering on a red background, sometimes with a star, that’s a vestige of the civil war revolutionaries. Whether it’s a sort of union or just symbolic I never found out.I passed several wood shops in El Salvador. I make part of my living doing the same stuff these guys do. The shop in this photo and the two below are owned by Jose Alcides Echegoyen. (503) 64262218. He’s taking orders!
Readjusting and oiling a hub race. These are vintage Campagnolo parts from the mid 1970s. “Campy” components were said then to last a lifetime and it’s been a good portion of one for me now. They’re still as good as new.The black clip slides off and exposes an oil journal. I add a few drops of 140 WT gear oil with a syringe. For the bottom bracket I remove the seat post and pour in a 1/4 cup of oil and lay the bike on one side then the other. I do it once a month or so, or after riding in heavy rain.This tire’s completely had it but is still holding air!
Buying a tire in a chaotic bazar in Masaya. No armed security here.Shop owned by Armando Romero.His wood lathe….…….and joiner.Armando drying wood. His younger brother is on the bicycle. (503) 76490019 – He’ll take orders as well!Looking across Lake Nicaragua to a faint outline of Ometepe, the world’s largest freshwater island.
Wind farm along Lake Nicaragua. The enormous prop appears to be made of a light weight composite of some kind.
Welcome to Honduras!Honduras becomes noticeabley drier and has open savannahs. Both Honduras and Nicaragua have about 1/5 the population density of El Salvador.Honduras
I clipped a corner of Honduras that was less than 100 miles long and for which I spent only one night in the town of Choluteca. I learned that I had distant relatives in the capitol, Tegucigalpa, about a day’s ride out of the way. It was, however, an uphill day’s ride and I decided not to do it. So, I had two border crossings in two days and long lines both entering and exiting each. El Salvador and Honduras both had the “option” of just walking through but Nicaragua finally had check points that told you where you needed to go. I’ll always wonder what would have happened if I would have skipped immigration coming into El Salvador; Nicaragua didn’t seem too concerned with previous countries. Manuel seemed to think my problems could have been solved with a bribe.
San Cristobal, the highest point in Nicaragua at 5725 Ft.
Cows and horse-drawn carts were common in rural Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is regarded as the poorest country per capita in Central America. Cycling through you see fewer cars on rural sections and horse drawn carts are everywhere, even a few in the outskirts of Managua itself. Poor maybe, but not impoverished, and the gut feeling is that people there are engaged and working. Some statistics put Nicaragua at a better wealth equality than either Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala and is close to that of the United States. Not to get too carried away with comparisons, but if Guatemala seemed idle, Nicaragua seemed busy. Their highways were the best of Central America yet, and consistently good throughout. I know I got heckled a lot less there.
Nicaragua has had a great deal of turmoil throughout the Twentieth Century. In a gray mix of Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt Corollary and protection of American investments in Central America (Nicaragua was then, and is still today, a proposed site for a Pacific-Atlantic canal) the US Marines occupied an unstable Nicaragua in 1912 and stayed till 1933 except for a short period in 1925. During this time Anastasio Samoza held positions with the marines and found his way to a contrived sort of presidency in 1937, a few years after the marines left. In 1934 he had a resistor of the US’s installed government, Augusto Sandino, assasinated. Today’s Sandinistas (the FSLN) take their name from Sandino.
Samoza evolved into a textbook example of a corrupt dictator. Among many notorious acts, he dutifully declared war on Germany when the time came but never supplied troops. He instead took the opportunity to confiscate German assets and land posessions in Nicaragua for personal profit. He was finally assasinated in 1956 and a more benevolent son took over for a few years but died of a heart attack. Several Samoza puppets held the presidency until 3rd son Anastasio Samoza Debayle became president in 1967. To paint a picture of what he was like, he made the famous statement I don’t want an educated work force, I want oxen.
In 1972 Managua endured a devistating earthquake that destroyed much of the city. Emergency aid was sent from around the world but rumors were out that supplies weren’t getting to intended destinations. Pittsburg Pirates outfielder and now hall-of-famer Roberto Clemente had donated and organized 3 plane loads of goods thought to have been held up by corrupt officials. He traveled with a 4th plane to make sure it got to folks in need but the plane went down and he was killed. He’s remembered though by Nicaraguans and south of Managua in the town of Masaya he has a stadium named after him.
The years following the earthquake showed haphazard rebuilding in Managua, and further increase in wealth for the Samoza family. Rizing unpopularity saw the end of the Samozas in Nicaraguan politics in 1979 when they were ousted by the Sandinistas. The new government was led by a committe of several persons, the Junta. They had ties with communist Cuba but with the reputation the Samozas had created, the Sandinistas were granted aid for a short time by the Carter Administration. When it was later learned that Nicaragua was supplying arms to El Salvadoran rebels the aid was cut off. Ronald Reagan then came to power and any thoughts of aid were turned instead into support for Samoza-led Contras then amassing on the Honduran border. The United States congress was divided on the issue but the passing of the Boland Ammendmant was a measure to stop military aid to Nicaragua. Members of the Reagan Administration and the CIA attempted to go around the amendment and it soon evolved into the Iran-Contra scandal. The details are many and tragic, loaded with failed policy, and at times comical. Go to https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/n-contrasus.php for more of the story. The big picture might be summed up as the United States and the Soviet Union (through Cuba) supplying some of the world’s most sophisticated weaponry to a pair of opposing sides for whom concepts like communism and capitolism were at most abstractions: They slaughtered eachother.
The FSLN’s Daniel Ortega assumed the first Sandanista presidency in the late 1980s, but under international pressure a free election was held in 1990. Ortega lost to former Junta member Violeta de Barrios Chamorros. He ran and lost a couple of more times but then won in 2007 and holds the presidency today. He’s been a controversial figure over the years and has many times surprised the world with stands on given issues. If nothing else he’s a survivor.
An area between Managua and Masaya had several shops that were really turning out some fine work. This shop belongs to Jose Leonel Ambota Chavez. C177747829. He had an antiquated cell phone and no knowledge of Internet use.
Welcome to Costa Rica! The bird center screen in the lower photo has his head buried in the abdomen and was kicking up dirt with his feet to get in as far as possible. Watching them was hilarious.
After long and glacially-slow moving immigration lines (in un-glacial heat) I crossed into Costa Rica where camping again became easy. I even spent one night in a pine forest on the order of hundreds of acres is size that someone had planted evidently for a timber investment. Hearing the wind through pines was a nice reminder of home. Camping opportunities since leaving Mexico have been few and hotels expensive. I paid $75 one night in Managua, $60 routinely in El Salvador and $60 the one night in Honduras. I probably could have done better but at the end of a long day there’s not much energy left for shopping around. Planning ahead with Internet searches is tedious and fraught with obsolete websites. Hotels in one town in El Salvador, Usulutan, repeatedly turned me away. I barely found a place in waning daylight, and it’s a town where a gringo took chances being out after dark. I’m now at Nuevo Arenal on Lake Arenal in a reasonably priced hotel in an otherwise expensive economy. The lake is amazingly beautiful but correspondingly touristy at an international level. English speakers are common. It’s been rainy.
