John Matson and his mother Ruth, in Lima, Peru

Lima, Perú has a population of 8 million and is by far the biggest city we’ve cycled through.  John Matson guided us through shantytowns and past a surfing beach to a nice B & B in the seaside neighborhood of Miraflores.

Ruth was kind enough to do our laundry and John drove us around the city he retired to 5  years ago.  He also took us to a seaside community south of Lima where he is buying a beachfront property that he may turn into a B & B.

My pedals have been squeaking, so I bought new SPD pedals for Julie, and I’ll take her Crank Bros pedals that are better than mine.  The cleats have worn down on my cycling sandals ( my only footwear for the past six months) and the cleats won’t come off.  So I bought new bike shoes and put Julie’s old cleats on them.  I also got new shorts and a long-sleeved shirt.

Punta Negra, (John Matson's next home) 42k south of Lima.

Vulture on a ruined church steeple.

Gold-plated side altar in the Cathedral of Lima

Why does this Coke ad remind me of Minnesota?

This town recognizes a common problem.

John Matson met us on the Panamericana Highway today.  John was my neighbor 46 years ago on South Street in Amery, WI.  He now lives in Lima with his 91 year-old mother Ruth.

We cycled through desert terrain and climbed a ridge where the fog condensed, greening the sand, allowing wildflowers to bloom.  Julie got a flat tire late in the afternoon, then we climbed higher into thicker fog and ran out of daylight.  Julie got a lift from John for the last 15k as I coasted down to this seaside town in fading light.

Morning drizzle ended before our late start, but the sky stayed gray all day.  We planned a short day to do internet in the morning and laundry in the afternoon, after a couple of long days.  Many large, smelly, chicken farms are in desert stretches along a brand-new section of the Panamericana that looks like an American highway.

Whee! Our biggest downhill run yet from 4,000m (13,000′) to sea level; we didn’t need to pedal for the first 66 km.  We wore all our warm clothes in misty 11°C at the top, shed layers halfway down at a sunny 32°C, then put more back on as we entered the coastal fog with headwinds and a cool 18ºC.

I felt a shortness of breath this morning as we climbed to our highest altitude yet: 4,000m.  I felt okay in the afternoon spent cycling on the high valley, but Julie felt weakness in her legs and a headache, possibly altitude sickness.  There is an hospedaje here, at the top of the pass, with spartan accomodations.  A bus driver from Lima, Raul, slept in another bed in our room.

Huaraz is a large town situated in a high, wide valley between two mountain ranges of the Andes.  The deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the Americas occurred here on May 31, 1970 at 3:24 in the afternoon. Like Yungay (previously reported in David´s blog), the quake destroyed most of the city killing about 1/2 the population of 30,000 people as their adobe homes crumbled around them. There are few reminders for the casual observer of this devastation and today it is a bustling tourist town of 100,000 people.  Tourists come to enjoy the beauty of the area and to climb/trek the mountains of the stunning Cordillera Blanca, so named because of the glaciers which blanket the high peaks.  The first person to successfully climb here was an American, Annie Smith Peck, a 50+ woman, who in 1908 with two younger Swiss guides, reached the summit of the northern peak of Huascaran, the same peak that during the 1970 earthquake broke partly away and buried the town of Yungay.

The first lengthy bus tour of our trip took us up a mountain, stopping briefly at the beautiful glacier-fed lake of Querococha, and then continued on over the pass to the town of Chavín de Huántar, our destination.  Here are found the most important archeological ruins of the Chavín culture, the first major civilization in Peru, pre-Inca, dating from about 1000 to 300 BC.  Like all of the  ruins we have seen thus far,  it didn’t impress at first sight.  We stood politely in what had once been the square, before the crumbled temple, trying to pick-up  meaning from our Spanish speaking tour guide, who spoke at great length  about what we could see.   Finally, we were led to the underground labyrinth below the temple, where the engineering achievements  of the culture could best be seen.  I wondered what activities took place in the tiny rooms we explored, as unfortunately, I understood very little from our tour guide .  Then, after waiting our turn (for what, I did not know) we walked down a narrow corridor, where at the end, bathed in an eerie light, stood a 4m high trapezoidal shaped obelisk, carved with the face of what I later understood was their god.   It was an awesome sight.

Back in Huaraz we visited a small museum which housed perhaps hundreds of small stone statues from nearby Recuay dating from about 200 BC to 500 AD.  The great variety of images etched in stone included jaguars, snakes, owls, women with their children, soldiers…many naked, and other figures important to the culture.  I wondered about the stone masons who carved the statues and if their sense of humor, at times, came through in a few of the figures.

David and I enjoyed the other amenities that tourist towns bring, fresh brewed coffee, vegetarian options in restaurants and wi-fi in our room.  I also enjoyed my conversations at breakfast with Zarela, a staff person at our hotel.  She helped me feel that perhaps I actually was learning Spanish.

Huascaran N & S (6655m & 6768m) in the Cordillera Blanca

Huacaran North towers above old Yungay

Today is the Fall Equinox.  I departed Amery 6 months ago on the Spring Equinox.  We cycled up a valley between the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra; Peru’s trekking center.  We stopped for a couple hours at the memorial over the town of old Yungay, buried by a landslide in 1970.  An earthquake loosened granite and ice from the tallest mountain in Peru, Huascaran (6655m)  and the resulting aluvión reached a speed of 300 kph as it dropped over three vertical kilometers on its way to Yungay (2537m), 14 km away.  The town and almost all its 18,000 inhabitants were buried.

We also took a break in the town of Carhuaz, and considered staying there to watch a bullfight.  On the way to Hauraz, we met a Swiss couple on bikes finishing a nine month tour of South America.

The landslide smashed in crypts on one side of the cemetery

Only the cemetery, on a hill, survived the landslide.

A crumpled bus rose to the top of the debris.

Swiss cyclists Sylvan & Emmanuela

One of many tunnels in the Canyon del Pato

This is a rocky road, not gravel.

We still had a terrible, very bad, muy malo road for half the day: but it took us through the increible Canyon del Pato, with over 40 tunnels.  By following the gradient of the Rio Santa we are gradually entering the mountains; unlike in Ecuador, where we climbed high above the valleys. A couple in a car, Andres and Patricia,  passed us in the morning and again in the afternoon when they stopped to offer us a badly needed cold drink. We are staying in their hostal with great views of snow-capped peaks.

Julie's too tired to pose by the waterfall.

The riverbed is nearly dry, after being diverted for hydroelectricity.

Cacti along the Rio Santa

Bus on a dusty, rocky road.

When the pavement ended it looked like we were entering a construction site.  The road was so bad I hoped it was the wrong way; but dozens of buses soon passed us, crawling along at barely 25 kph. We averaged only 8 kph on our worst road so far. We had 50k of unpaved road yesterday, and thought nothing of another 55k today; but we still had 10k left to go at dark, and Julie got a lift for the last 5. The only hostal in town was full, but the proprietress let us have her bedroom.