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| Ecuador on the near side and Peru on the far side of the river |
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| Day one in the mountains of Peru |
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| Sun breaking through the cloud |
Lots of people had warned me that the roads deteriorate in
Peru compared to Ecuador but I was pleasantly surprised to coast along a paved road once over the river that separates Peru and Ecuador. The inclines
seemed to be more gentle than what I had experienced over the previous few days
in southern Ecuador.
Near the end of my first day in Peru as I cycled into the
main square in San Ignacio, which was the first town of any significance over
the border, I met Federico and Brenda again, the Argentinian cycling couple.
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| Federico getting some practice on his make shift didgeridoo that he made out of plastic pipe, sounded just like the real thing. |
That night the three of us stayed in a room of the Municipalidad/ town hall. As
a lone touring cyclist with a packed up bike you get plenty of stares but as a
group of three you get even more. One of
my first early impressions of Peruvians compared to their northern neighbors
was that they really like to stare. Over the course of the afternoon the word
“Gringo” had been shouted at me more times than in the previous three months in
Colombia and Ecuador. This wasn’t totally new however as I had heard it all too
often in Central America. For the most part I think it is simply a friendly
greeting and the people are just interested to see somebody different pass by. I was amused to hear that Federico and Brenda
also got called Gringos and that people would often say “Hello” to them instead
of “Hola” even though they are Argentinian. The following morning the three gringo
cyclists headed off together for Jaen. It was enjoyable to be cycling with other
bikers even if it was only going to be for one day. I knew that once I got to
Jaen that I needed to find somewhere safe to leave my bike and most of my gear
as I had a return bus trip down to Lima planned.
As we cycled into Jaen after dark, Federico cycled up
alongside a moto-taxi (Tuk-tuk) to enquire about somewhere cheap to eat and we
got directed to a restaurant on a side street where the evening meal consisting
of soup, main course (rice, bit of chicken & salad) and a drink set us back
the grand sum of 3 Peruvian Sol which is the equivalent of EUR 0.77
(Unfortunately this has been the only time to date where I have found a full dinner
for that price!) That night, after a bit of negotiation, we slept in our tents
in the secure car park at the back of the main police station. The police had
initially suggested we sleep in the street in our tents outside the station.
They weren’t as receptive as other police and firestations where I’d stayed
which was frustrating as this was the one time where I really wanted somewhere
that I felt safe to leave my bike and most of the gear for my bus trip to Lima.
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| Federico and Brenda |
I was glad to have made it to Jaen with still enough time to hop on a bus to the capital to try and catch my friends Dina and Ciaran who
were over from Dublin on a two week holiday. I bid farewell to my cycling
buddies in the morning, they had decided they were going to cycle down via the
coast of Peru to save time. As I sat on a shaded bench in the car park
wondering to myself where on earth I was going to leave my bike and most of my
belongings for the bus trip along walked a detective who started to talk to me,
interested to hear about my cycle. After a few minutes I popped the question… Will you mind most of my worldly possessions
for the week?! Unfortunately the answer was no. Not because he wasn’t keen to
help me but because he was going on holidays a few days later and wouldn’t be
around when I made it back to Jaen. All was not lost however as he put a call
in to his cousin who lived locally and thankfully Sara agreed to mind my stuff
for the week. It happened to be Sara’s birthday that day so not only was she
agreeing to mind the bike and bags of a complete stranger but she also invited
me over to the birthday lunch.
After my shower, I was made to feel very welcome as we had a lovely
relaxed lunch. As I sat there eating a generous portion of birthday cake I
thought to myself how lucky I have been on this trip to be shown such a
generous welcome in so many places. Then off I rushed to catch my overnight bus
to Lima.
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| Sara's birthday lunch |
I felt like an excited school kid complete with packed lunch
as I waited to catch my bus. It was far from a luxury bus but I was still
excited to be getting a different form of transport, see some of coastal
Peru that I would otherwise have missed and of course excited to be meeting my pals. I didn’t get much sleep that night squashed into my tight
seat attempting to keep one eye on my valuables. I also got a taste for what
lay ahead of me, checking out some huge climbs that seemed to go on forever,
even on the bus, and also a taste of the insane driving that prevails, especially
by bus drivers, speeding around blind corners on the wrong side of the road.
Many of the buses have religious names and pictures of Jesus and/or the Virgin
Mary on them, possibly hoping that this will protect them whilst driving like a lunatic? The following morning we
drove for hours along the coast line which was mostly arid desert. An hour or
so of it was enough to do me and I was happy that I had decided that my bike
route through Peru would be via the Andes. Late in the afternoon, 21 hours
after we left Jaen I staggered off the bus in central Lima, more of a grumpy
exhausted school kid at this stage. As I expected, Lima was a large city. It
had taken at least an hour to get into the centre passing some very basic
looking shanty towns on the outskirts.
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| Plaza Mayor, Central Lima |
The following evening, having caught up on some sleep, I met
Dina and Ciaran in Miraflores, Lima. Despite having been lucky enough to meet
up with different friends along my route south, Dina and Ciaran were the first
friends I had seen in over a year who still live in Dublin. It was a great
catch up and they very generously treated me to dinner.. thanks guys! They
forced me to have my first Pisco Sour since getting to Peru! Despite having raw
egg as one of it’s ingredients it makes for a tasty drink and is pretty much
the national cocktail of Peru.
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| Ciaran, Billy and Dina, in case you wouldn't have figured that out. |
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| Parroquia del Sagrario on Plaza Mayor... and Ciaran |
The following day after coffees in Miraflores we headed for
the centro historico. Strolling around one of the impressive central plazzas we
bumped into Jan and Evit, the Slovakian cyclists I had met in Medellin. They
were passing through Lima for the day, before catching a bus that evening to
Cusco. Later in the afternoon, we headed back to Miraflores for a quick visit
to the beach to see the Pacific Coast before Dina and Ciaran had to catch their
flight home to Dublin. It had been a relatively quick meet up but I was glad to
have bused down to Lima to catch up with them.
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| It's tiring work walking around a big city getting quizzed by Billy all day |
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| I was glad to see the Pacific Ocean again not having seen it since Panama. It was tricky to get to the beach having to cross a busy highway but we made it! |
Dina and Ciaran were not the only ones I had arranged to
meet in Lima. The following morning I was met by Fr. John O’Leary who was a
family friend that first came out to Peru working as a catholic priest in the
1970’s. He was based in one of the poorer suburbs called Via El Salvador about
an hour’s drive from the city centre. Although I had never met him before we
quickly hit it off as I spent the day with him exploring the local neighborhood
together.
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| Street in Via El Salvador |
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| Another street in Via El Salvador |
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| View over part of Via El Salvador. It gets a lot of fog coming in from the ocean... not to mention the dust. |
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| Map of Via El Salvador |
Unlike many of the poorer neighbourhoods that surround Lima, which were initially settled by squatting the land, Via El Salvador was a mostly planned neighbourhood John explained but that it had changed
immeasurably since he had first come to live there. Most of the main roads were now paved but lots of the side roads were still sand trails. We had lunch with two
of his colleagues, one an English priest and another Irish priest from Donegal
in his 80’s who was still well able to get around. Later in the afternoon I met
some of John’s local parishioners who were all very friendly.
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| Fr. John with some of his parishioners. |
I spent another day or so in the city mainly around the two
touristy and affluent coastal neighbourhoods of Miraflores and Barranco but I
was certainly glad to have visited what was probably a far more accurate
representation of how the majority of Lima’s resident’s live out in Via El
Salvador. Thanks John for welcoming me to your adopted home in Via El Salvador!
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| Street art in Barranco, Lima |
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| Street sign in Barranco, Lima |
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| Some of the fancier pads along the coastline in the affluent suburb of Miraflores |
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| Meal on the bus back up to Jaen. (Shielsie, you'd love it) |
I got one of the fancier and supposedly safer buses back up
to Jaen because the same day that I had bussed down to Lima there was a bus
crash in southern Peru killing 51 people after it plunged 200 metres into a
ravine. (
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/13/peru-bus-crash-kills-51)
I stayed with Sara’s family once I got back to Jaen before
packing up and hitting the road the following morning for what I expected to be
the most challenging country of the trip as I would be sticking almost soley in
the Andes on my way through Peru.
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| Climbing all day |
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| Hola Woofy! The dogs in Peru were unfortunately as mad as their Ecuadorean neighbours. I have been chased by hundreds of dogs on this trip and usually a shout or a stone will get rid of them eventually but I was glad to see this rothweiler tied up. No Woofy, you can't chew my leg. |
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| The kind policia of Cochabamba put me up one night. I even had my own room. |
As always it was great to be back on the road. It didn’t
take long for the proper climbing to kick in. Jaen was at a relatively low altitude
and being closer to the jungle meant that it was quite humid but over the
following days as I climbed my way higher into the Andes the air became less
humid. By the end of my second full day on the bike I was despairing after only
cycling 35 km that day which had been almost entirely uphill. It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that if I was going to actually stick in the
Andes I was not going to be getting anywhere too fast. Martin, the Argentinian
cyclist who I had met back in the Casa de Ciclista near Quito, had told me that
if I made it through the mountain ranges of Peru in my target of two months that he would give me a
round of applause! …I was starting to understand what he was talking about.
Another thing that I had been warned about by other touring cyclists familiar
with Peru was the incessant horn honking. It didn’t take long for this to start
to really get on my nerves. Every second vehicle that passed would honk you out
of it. Being the friendly guy that I am I like to wave at cars and people as I
pass but there seemed to be less waving in this part of the world than other
places. I also started to become more reluctant to even make eye
contact or look at an oncoming vehicle let alone wave at it as the invariable
response, if there was one, would be a prolonged deafening horn honk.
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| The future of Peruvian football is in good hands. |
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| Extra homework tonight |
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| Only joking, no homework! |
One evening after another challenging day of climbing on
poor quality roads and passing through lots of road works I was looking for a
place to stay. After asking around a lovely guy came through for me. He said
that I could stay in his almost finished house where his family had yet to move
into. Despite having walls and a roof I still erected my tent as it was still
quite cold and draughty. He came back later in the evening to invite me for
dinner with his family in their home about 300 m down the hill. As I sat at the
table in the dark room with no windows and blackened walls from the fire they used for cooking I thought to myself that I might be as well
be sitting in a hut back in 1840’s Ireland. It was literally a small fire made
of wood in the corner with a large pot over it. There were no chickens running
around on the mud floor but they did have about 10 guinnea pigs in the corner
that they would eat at some stage. I also thought to myself that no matter what
had happened to date on my bicycle travels or no matter what happens for the
remainder of my journey that the entire project was worth it if for no other
reason than to be sitting here in this dark mud hut sharing a meal with this
very generous, welcoming and clearly very poor family. It was a touching
experience, it was also a tasty potato soup with a few mint leaves added that must grow locally.
The following morning they invited me down for breakfast. They were intrigued
to know about my country, what is the food like and would I get a boat back to Ireland. We took some photos before I bid farewell, fully energized
after another delicious hearty bowl of potato soup. I was happy to see that
potatoes seemed to feature more commonly in Peru than in previous countries. It
made a change from the ubiquitous rice.
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| Thanks for the delicious soup and for putting me up |
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| A house with walls made from dried out mud. Common in Peru. |
Over the next few days I got to know what other bike tours
had meant when they said that the roads really deteriorate in Peru. I also
struggled quite a lot with following directions that people would give which I
don’t think was entirely down to my limited Spanish.
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| Big trucks working in the mine, wouldn't like to meet one of them on the open road |
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| Alpaca |
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| Swiss couple I met outside Cajamarca who are cycling north from Ushuia. They warned me about the strong winds in Patagonia. |
I arrived into Cajamarca late one afternoon soaked and
freezing after an extended fast downhill in the rain. Thankfully I had decided
to take a few days off here as it is a picturesque colonial town with a lot of
history. The Battle of Cajamarca was
where the Spanish Conquistadors completed the defeat of the Inca empire and
where they captured, ransomed and eventually killed the Incan Emperor
Atahualpa. There are also the famous “Banos del Inca” on the outskirts of town
which are well known hot springs I visited one afternoon.
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| San Francisco church |
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| Painting depicting Incan Emperor Atahualpa promising a room full of gold to his captors if they released him. |
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