I left off the last plant segment, clear back in Peru, with this, the deflated “birdie”.
This is an Altiplano cactus that grew at elevations over 14,000 feet.Very pretty, “digital” snake that was hit on the highway.
More Solanaceae.
6-legged spider on the tent fly.
Quenual above (paper bark tree) and above that, one that looks very similar from a distance but quite different up close. The two often grow together.Vetch of some kind.
Taraxacum reappeared soon after descending the last time off the Altiplano and has been with me since.These (above & below) were a sort of tiger lilly growing in roadside gravels.
Pea family and mesquite-like.More trippy cactus above and below. Grades from the 14,000 foot Altiplano would drop over 8,000 feet to desert climates, cross a river, and then the begin climbing again.
Peruvean lupine.
Townsendia- like. Once again at over 14,000 feet.
Looks Claytonia megarhiza-like
These got fairly big, much like Hymenoxys grandiflora.
This thing was the only one of its kind (above and next two below) so I suspect it was planted by someone.
Pine, probably introduced, and Eucalyptus.Pine was 3-needled.VetchMore of the alpine cactus. Nasty to navigate around.Once again, akin to reindeer lichen.No clue here. Hi in Peru but looks like it should be underwater in ocean surf. Stromatolites!Lichens
Cactus within a grass that could be Sporobolus.Eucalyptus
This was growing at over 17,000 feet and looked like sky pilot.
More FabaceaeMany grasses.This thing was pretty much the high point of Bolivia, but was an incredible cactus. I found a colony of them on a hillside out in the middle of nowhere.
Somewhere in here I dropped off of the Altiplano and into a more desert climate and topography.
Erodium
Lots of non-descript shrubs.
Argentine saguaro.
This thing had quite an odd shaped pedal till a I realized it was being eaten by something.Yellow version of prickly poppy.
I saw this clear back in Oaxaca but it reappears here at a comparable latitude and elevation.
A legume that without flowers looks like ephedra (below).
Creosote. This looks virtually like the Mojave species Larrea tridentata but here goes by L. cuneifolia. The “lumpers” say they’re the same while the “splitters” have more than one species on each continent. The smell, which is distinctive, is the same.More cactus than I’ll ever learn.
I’m sorry I didn’t get more and better photos of this. Very different cactus.
I can’t find if they separate their saguaro species from Trichocereus (or Echinopsus) terscheckii, but this one, found further south, had a few differences from it’s northern counterpart. It had a very showy flower (below).
Very phlox-like
The ephedra-pea again.This is again some kind of mesquite. The thorns are 2.5 inches long.Oenothera and token dandelion .Tamarisk doesn’t invade the way it does in the Southwest, but it’s definitely here.
Sphaeralcea?S. America is where both tomatos and potatos (Solanaceae) originate so there are many species.Mesquite-like shrub.
Armadillo for the second time. (Too cool not to show it twice).Mimulus?
Some kind of tussock grass.
The next bunch were taken as I was passing about 40 degrees south, which is about what northern Utah is. Many familiar invasives are found where elevation and climate are similar. Both Melilotuses are here and a few others I didn’t photograph.
Rumex!Hound’s tongue.Bindweed. Not a very good picture, but it doesn’t need to be- everybody knows this this one.The brown grass I think is B. tectorumMulinum spinosum
Penstamon of some kind.
Above and below are of what I’m guessing is a chenopode and possibly an atriplex not unlike our shadscales and four-wing salt bush.
The star thistle mentioned in the blog already.This and below looks like an invasive as they will dominate road shoulders. Very showy invasive, though. Here I’m entering “green” mountains again north of Bariloche.
Lupine that again is probably an invasive.Lot of Cirsium. Not sure on species.Rose. Could be woodii.
Oenothera?Might be Sisymbrium altissimumPenstamon.Embothrium coccineum, or Chilean firetree, is a spring bloom that gives forested slopes the look of first autumn reds.Queen Anne’s lace, I think.Oenathera
Chloephaga melanoptera or Andean goose.Below, closeup of above.
Erodiium
The plants below are all in Patagonian mountains near El Chaltén.
Looks like Pachystima. Same habitat.There are a few different violas.Beech forest. There are a few species of Nothafagus. Two that are common here are antarcticus (above, I think) and betuloides, below, which means “birchlike”.
Caryophyllaceae.Wintergreen, Gaultheria pumila.If it were N. America this would be a Sisyrinchium species but here goes by Cordonorchis lessonii.Sisyrinchium arenarium.Anemone multifida.Euphorbia collina.Adesmia boronioides. The leaves of this plant look somewhat like our fernbush, Chamaebatiaria millifolium, but Adesmia is in the pea family and fernbush is rose family. What’s amazing is that they have the same pungent, not unpleasant, smell. Here, they say this Adesmia produces an “essential oil”. What were the circumstances of evolution that the two plants would concoct the same chemicals for their smell?Phacelia or Penstamon?Ranunculus.More stromatolites.
Above: Oxalis aderophila.
Erigeron.Don’t see a lot of sedge, but there are a few.
Looks like good old dandelion…..…….but has a wiry stem.
Andean goose and goslings near Chaltén.Cougar shit. Yes, they’re here!Seeds from an Osmorhiza species that could be the same as that found in N. America. We’ve all had to extract these things from our animals after a walk in the Bear River Range.
These plants are more in the alpine.
Adesmia salicornioides.
Above: Azorella spp.
Calceolaria biflora.
Above: Empetrum rubrum, or what N. Americans would call Crow berry.
Swertia?Well, if you made it to here you get a prize. This is Calceolaria uniflora, one of the incredible plants of Patagonian alpine. Looks like an orchid but was strangely classified as a Scroph when I was here in 2007. Now it, and C. biflora, a few photos above, are in their own family, Calceolareae. I remembered it being a good 3 or 4 inches long and was surprised that in reality it is barely an inch. They’ve recently found out that it is pollinated by a seedsnipe, a small bird. The white “tray” is high in sugars and as the bird pecks at it, rubs pollen onto its head from two stamens at the top of the plant.
Bariloche is under the “40” at the top of the map. The route goes through mountains to the south and then out onto steppes….……..and continues to pea-green Lake Viedma. El Chaltén is under the “O” in Monte. The white areas are ice caps- Campos Hielo Norte and Sur, which are counterpart to Alaska’s and British Columbia’s coastal mountains.
Before I get too far there are some heart-wrenching photos below that may be “viewer discretion”. They’re of guanacos that are getting hung up on fences lining the highways. The photos are not isolated cases- dozens of animals over a two hundred mile stretch. I include them that folks might join in urging the Argentine Gov’t to do something about it. It can’t be helping the economics of ecotourism, something they actively promote.
On another note of very sad news I would like to acknowledge the passing of our good friend and neighbor Jack Kidd. Jack had a great life and a wonderful family. His outlook was always positive and I believe he found a true happiness in a world fraught with difficulties. He was 92.
Rain with mild but unpredictable wind marked the first days south of Bariloche. Highway 40 remains in mountain valleys for about 100 more miles after which you’re spit out onto steppes and once again into pitiless wind. Distance-wise I’ve had the extrodinary good luck of having 70% tail wind but the flip side is that time-wise it’s been 70% head wind. As with hills, you spend all your time on the slow sections. 70% headwind would be unbearable.
Lago Nahuel Huapi between Angostura and Bariloche.Bariloche from across Nahuel Huapi.Near BarilocheContinental Divide crossing to water flowing into Chile.I try to leave any town on these vast stretches with four days worth of groceries. Getting it all on the bike is always a challenge.
The lombardy poplar, planted as windbreaks in towns and estancias, should be Argentina’s national tree.
A memorable stretch between Bajo Caracoles and Gobernador Gregores, two small towns the size of Snowville, Utah, began on one day with light tail wind. By midday it was a side wind and by early afternoon was much stronger with a component of head wind. Side winds, even with a component of tail, are tough to ride in. Side/tail wind needs to get around to about 45 degrees before it really does you any good. Even then, though, it can be scary because although it propels you faster, with speed you have far less control over gusts. Pure head wind greater than about 30 MPH isn’t rideable. Enduring a day of either leaves your face, eyes and sinuses burning; ears ringing. I use a neck gaiter-type face mask and ear plugs for the latter two. This day I knew in the early afternoon that if I got about another 20 miles behind me a >90 degree bend in the highway was going to put me in very strong late-in-the-day tailwind. It took about 5 hours of searing side wind to cover those 20 miles and several times I got blown off onto the shoulder, once over a guard rail (me only- bike stayed behind). But then towards evening there was 40 miles traveled at over 30 MPH on dead flat. I put the brakes on at 35. Total for the day was 130 miles. I got the drug infusion.
Tire that wore out after 600 miles. May have to make the last 1000 miles to Ushuaia on what tires I have (down to one spare).Water cistern in the middle of nowhere that has never impounded a drop of water. Made a good camp though, and out of direct wind.Smashed locusts covered the road in sections. Below, a bit of cannibalism.
Geoffery’s cat. I’ve seen a couple that have been hit on the highway and one live one running up a road cut. They’re a little bigger than a domestic cat. Lots of foxes as well.A near disaster here priming the stove in dry grass and wind. I keep the lid to the pot close by to tamp out what ever catches fire, but it got away from me here within seconds. I was able to beat it out with the ground tarp but for an uncertain instant was ready to grab what I could and run upwind, which was to the right in the photo.
Guanacos.
Over the course of trip I’ve had one “ride”, that was on an airplane getting from Panama City to Bogotá, Colombia. The rest has all been done on the bike….till now. In the last miles getting to El Chaltén I’ve accepted 3 rides, all in circumstances of extreme wind. The first was just outside of Esquel, a ski town set at the foot of some beautiful mountains south of Bariloche. Side winds were blowing me all over the road and a fishing guide, whose info I seemed to have misplaced, pulled over and without a word helped me load the bike into the back of his truck. He took me the last few miles into town and I had tail wind after that.
The next was 40 miles before Tres Lagos. I had gotten a first-light start that morning and under reasonably calm conditions rode 40 miles before real wind began to kick in at about 10 O’clock. With nothing to even resemble a wind break from horizon to horizon I made a lee out of a highway sign that had blown down. I propped it up against the remainder of the post it had broken off of and settled in for the day. With some additional wind screen, I could light the stove and spent the afternoon with hot drinks, sudokus and math problems. Slept some. I intended to ride that night when the wind would abate and try to get the remaining miles to Tres Lagos, a small town before the final leg to El Chaltén, where I am now. There may have been a dozen cars that went by throughout the day and a good five stopped to make sure I was OK. Just at sunset Daniel Steuri, from Lake Constance, Switzerland, stopped and offered a ride. I had learned from the last folks (who left me with water and would have given me anything they had) that a 40 km dirt section was coming up in about a kilometer. This was unexpected and would make getting to Tres Lagos by morning all the harder. I took Daniel up on the offer to at least ride to the end of the dirt. I was curious to try riding at night on the deserted highways, even with no moon, to see if it was a feasible way to get around wind if and when it calmed after sunset.
Escaping wind.Daniel
With the sun setting we took off and I was altogether amazed at how fast dirt road miles went by when in a rental truck with a driver that treated it as such. The problem was that we couldn’t get the tailgate of the truck up and though the the bike was locked in with a strap, a pannier came open. This I discovered as he was dropping me off where the pavement resumed. Things were missing. The stove was the most obvious. Daniel was more than game to go back and look for it and within a few miles we began seeing parts and debris strewn along the road. I recovered everything that I know of but the stove needed some repairs to be functional again. At that point I abandoned the idea of riding that night and went with Daniel the remaining miles into Tres Lagos where we got a room at a hostel.
The hostel didn’t take plastic and it took all the combined cash we had ($15 each!) to pay for the room. We then found out there were no ATMs in town. I had to have supplies for the next leg to El Chaltén and had no choice but to ride another 30 miles with Daniel to El Chaltén’s turnoff the following morning.
Daniel was just fun to be around and we seemed to hit it off. He does about the same thing for a living that I do so we had a lot to talk about anyway, but found also we well agreed on recent and disastrous presidential elections. He instantly came up with one of the repairs for the stove suggesting a soup can for a lost heat shield protecting the fuel tank. I made it out of a can of peas a couple of days later; works great.
El Chaltén is 50+ miles off of the main road, but I figured I could ride that far with what food I had. Well, I pedaled two hours to get 10 miles in impossible head and side wind, when a van heading to Chaltén to pick up tourists took pity on me. Third ride.
I was in El Chaltén in 2007. In the 10 years that have passed since, the town has at least quadrupled in size and I could recognize very little- maybe the visitor center. The town is at the foot of some of the world’s most dramatic mountains, Cerro Torre and Monte Fitzroy being the two most famous, and attracts tourists world wide. Relatively easy, if crowded, hiking trails wind around to the foot of the peaks and massive glaciers. Things are fairly expensive in town but there are no fees for the park and climbing is free.
El Chaltén was only declared a town in the 1980s. A few climbers first came to the area in the 1950s making the first ascents of Fitzroy and Poincenot, but found only an estancia where the town now exists. The 60s saw a few more but people started coming in numbers in the late 70s and 80s. The Argentine-Chilean border wasn’t well defined in many of the more remote frontier regions and here the land was up for grabs. Argentina rushed to claim it as it became clear it was destined to become a world tourist destination. Disputes over the border went on into the 1990s and it’s still a touchy subject between the two countries today.
El Chaltén and Fitzroy. The summit towers nearly 10,000 feet over the town. The Grand Teton, by comparison, is about 7,500 feet above Jackson Hole.Lago de Los Tres at the foot of Fitzroy on a blustery day.From the left, St-Exupery, Aguja Raphael, Poincenot, Fitzroy.
So, I’m in El Chaltén now and spent Christmas day in a bit of a vacuum camped outside of town avoiding campground fees. It’s an incredible place and I needn’t be in too big of a hurry to leave as I’m well ahead of schedule. The intent is to continue to Africa, starting in Cape Town and then heading north. At the rate I’ve been traveling I could be in the Middle East in blistering summer heat which is an impetus to hang here for a while. There’s climbing everywhere but I need to rent/buy gear and find partners. To enable that, get Wi-Fi, and just for a little social life, I’ve moved for a few days to a campground in town which runs about $10 a night. Expensive for S. America, cheap for the US.
Federica & Francesca from Milan, Italy. While on a hike to the base of Fitzroy they were maybe 50 feet ahead of me where a forested trail emerged into a clearing. They suddenly turned and began walking fast towards me and passed saying “puma”. I, of course, began walking fast towards the clearing to get a look. The animal was long gone in the seconds it took me to get there. They described it and I believe they indeed saw a cougar- they’re here. Of all the time I’ve spent in the outdoors the last 50 years, I’ve yet to see one. Just isn’t fair.
These are hard to look at. The fence wires are also too close together to allow adult Rheas to pass. When trapped on the highway side they would run along ahead of me till they were exhausted enough that I could pass them.I’ll end on something a little more up-beat; an Andean Condor floating past some climbers at a crag near town. With a ten foot wing span, it dwarfs the climbers who are at about the same distance away.
Thanks to everyone for the Christmas and birthday cheer- I have two versions of The Raven to memorize now! Happy new year.
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.
