Southern Exposure

Thursday, February 5

Today was one of the most difficult and beautiful rides of our trip. We were venturing east off the coastal road into the heights of the Peruvian Andes, the Cordillera Blanca. Our destination was a small village of Caraz where we planned on staying for another day to take a day trip into the Nauscaran National Park known for its stunning snow capped peaks and pristine alpine lakes.

55 miles of paved rode turned quickly into a dusty rocky dirt road that we would follow for the next five hours at about 20 miles an hour along some of the most spectacular desert mountain scenery we have seen.

This was the type of road I dreaded ever since we started this trip. For the exception of some roads in Costa Rica and occasional short distance dirt roads, we have been keeping to pavement. I knew that the further south we got the worse the road conditions would get, and especially in Peru, Chile and Argentina. If you want to see spectacular views the only way to get to them is by dirt. Peru is notorious for the bad condition of their roads, so this was the true test to my dirt riding skills, as well as my mental and physical strength.

I tried to keep reminding myself what I learned in the dirt riding class: sit straight, hug the tank with your knees, relax your arms, look ahead. Easily said than done, my first instinct was to panic and grab on to the bars as hard as I could. While trying to maneuver the pot holes, the mud, and the slippery rocks, I was forgetting to breathe.

It started out harsh. As I was concentrating on the road, Matt who was riding in front of me stopped to let the bus pass by. I was following him too close and in the split second instead of using the rear break I clenched the front break, slid on the rocks and fell on my right side, my right foot caught under the bike. It hurt a lot, but didn’t seem like I broke anything, just a nice size bruise. Matt helped me lift the bike up and tried to cheer me up. I was giving into the panic – 60 more miles of this, I don’t know if I can do it! But somehow dropping the bike helped me let a certain tension out of my body, and I was determined to dominate this dirt road monster.

The narrow road veered through the base of the mountains along a good size river with strong current and brown water. It was physically tiring navigating the road trying to chose the less rocky track to be in, especially because one side of road dropped drastically into the river and the other one had sharp continuous cliffs that I certainly didn’t want to bump into. A few times I slid and almost fell trying to steer through the middle gravel section of the road, but was getting better at steering and holding on to the bike, letting it correct itself.

After about three hours of riding we ventured into the Cañon del Pato which had a cool dam and a lot of long tunnels, which were obviously not lit, so you ride in complete darkness hoping that there are no surprising rocks or holes along the way.

At some point there was a beautiful waterfall on the other side of the river. We stopped to take a picture and noticed that a couple of locals were transporting a goat across the canyon.

There was a woman, a goat and a man in a small “canopy car,” he was pulling the rope moving the “car” slowly along the wire stretched high above the river. It was a fascinating sight. We could not figure out what they were doing on the other side because the mountain was very steep and there didn’t seem to be any trails that a person or a goat could walk on, up or down.

Around 3 pm we made it to the first village town and the road according to our map was supposed to be paved. No such luck. After another 30 or so miles we finally reached our destination of Caraz. The town was tiny and felt dead, until we got to the main square. The funny little three-wheel taxi cars that look like the ones you see in India (but made proudly in Peru!) were buzzing around the zocalo, so that was a sign that there was some life in this town, even in the off-season.

We settled in a nice and spacious Los Piños Lodge, which had an outdoor garage. Our bikes and gear were completely covered in mud, so we were happy use their hose to clean ourselves and the bikes up.

We found dinner at one of the restaurants on the square, and grabbed some ice cream on the way back to the hotel. The locals are known for their sweet tooth. There is a panaderia (bakery) and an ice cream shop on every corner, and they even have such ice cream flavors as “beer.” No, we didn’t try it, chocolate always gets priority.