Ephemerica

Leaving the city of Cusco, we had our first taste of the Andean altiplano. It reminded Matt of the time we have spent in the mid-west, particularly the flat farm country of North Dakota. I wasn’t fooled, however, as the Andes were clearly visible rimming the edges of the wide plain, whereas in ND there is a extremely straight line dividing land from sky. The flatness (aside from one pass—our highest yet!) was nice, however, and allowed us to make good time on the route from Cusco to Puno, Peru.

In order to make it to Salta before Christmas, we have mapped out our days, giving ourselves an allotment of days to ride between cities (based on what others have done) and an allotment of days to see cities and other sites of interest. The allotting of days turned out pretty well, we won’t need to skip, or even short change, anything that we had on our list, but we don’t have a lot of wiggle room in case of sickness or injury. Luckily, we also chose some slow people on which to base our riding estimates—we decided to push ourselves a bit on the way to Puno and were able to gain two extra days and will gain one more between here (Copa-copacabana) and La Paz. Hopefully, the trend will keep up and we will be able to bank some extra days in the rest of Bolivia as well (we have already used our extra gained days—part of the incentive to ride further is knowing we can take a day off )

The most exciting thing that has happened on this leg of the journey is that we have run into several other bike tourists. About 15 km before we reached Puno, Peru, two French women rode up behind us. When we stopped to chat, we found out that they were on their way from Lima, Peru to Santa Cruz, Bolivia and had about a month left to go. They were about to stop to eat, so we told them where the hotel we planned to stay was and decided to meet up again in Puno. Unfortunately, the hotel ended up being fairly expensive and the French ladies decided not to stay (we were too tired to care by the time we got there), so we missed seeing them again.

The second set of cyclists we met were heading into Puno as we were riding about 15 km south of town. When they saw us, they pulled over to our side of the road and waited for us to arrive. It turned out to be a German couple who has been on the road for 4.5 years making their way from Germany to Africa, then Australia, New Zealand and Asia before arriving in Patagonia and starting the last leg of their journey north to Alaska or Canada (depending on whether they can get a second US visa after leaving for Canada). We chatted with them for quite a while—they had a lot of good information for us regarding the rest of our trip, though we couldn’t help them much with Peru past Cusco. They will be passing through Seattle in April/May 09, so we hope to see them again!

And finally, we ran into the two Colombian cyclists that we had met way back in Latacunga, Ecuador. We were more than impressed that they had made it from Latacunga to Copacabana, Boliva in less than 1.5 months. When we had a chance to chat with them, we learned that they had hitched at least a couple rides, which made us feel a bit better—though, even so, they must be pretty strong riders! We also learned that although they look obviously Latino, the campesinos working in the fields and kids on the side of the road still yell “¡Hola, Gringo!” at them. I knew it was the bikes!

We were a little nervous about the ride from Cusco to the Bolivian border—there is one fairly old story of a cyclist being robbed on this stretch. It was several years ago though and we were itching to ride, so we decided that because we knew of many many people who have ridden the stretch safely since that time, we would go for it. We were both a little on edge and suspicious of everyone, but it mostly just made us feel guilty for suspecting everyone of the worst. What would commonly occur is that a man with his whip (for herding animals) would come out of the field and walk along the road. We’d get all tense and ready to sprint if necessary, then when we passed him, he would give us a huge smile and wave saying, “Hola, Como estas?” And then we’d feel all sheepish. Another nice occurance along the road is that although many of the kids still are asking for money, alot of them run over to our side of the road so that we can slap their hands as we pass, when there are several in a row it’s almost like the begining of a game.

We haven’t done a whole lot besides riding, though we did take a day trip from Copacabana to visit the Isla del Sol, where the Incas believed the sun and moon where created by their god. The boat was extremely slow, but the trip was good nonetheless. There are some interesting ruins, including the spot where the sun originated. Lake Titicaca is pretty amazing as well. As we were riding along the lake on our way to Copacabana, it was easy to imagine that we were riding along the Puget Sound. We even had snow-capped mountains to admire on the distant shore.

Posted by cindy on November 15th, 2007 | Filed under: Peru, Bolivia