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.

Our time in and around Cusco is nearly at an end. Cusco is probably the most magnificent colonial city we’ve seen so far on our journey. Of course, the history of the city goes back well before the colonial era, as evidenced by the remnants of astonishingly constructed stone walls throughout the center of the city. The stonework of the Inca is the basis of all the archeological highlights throughout Cusco and the Sacred Valley, and we certainly weren’t disappointed. The first and most important thing we had to plan when we arrived in Cusco was how we were going to get to Machu Picchu. There are two common approaches to take: hop on a train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes (the town at the base of Machu Picchu), or take a 4-day trek down the classic Inca Trail, which delivers you to Machu Picchu at dawn of the last day. The Inca Trail hike is quite spendy, and can be pretty crowded even now during the non-peak season. And the train is actually somewhat spendy too—considering what it is—and the fact that they charge foreigners almost 2x what they charge locals for the train sticks in the craw a bit. We chose an “alternative” route into Machu Picchu, the so-called Inca Jungle Trail.

Just about every travel agency in town (and believe me, there are a LOT) offers some version of this tour; we chose a company called Reserv Cusco that was recommended by one of our guidebooks. The trip is 4 days: Day 1 is a long bus ride and then long descent by bike to the village of Santa Maria. Day 2 is a hike along part of an old Inca trail (not THE Inca trail though) to the village of Santa Teresa, with a visit to hot springs at the end of the day. Day 3 takes you from Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes along dirt road and railroad tracks. On Day 4 you visit Machu Picchu and then return to Cusco. All of the hiking basically follows the Urubamba river valley into Aguas Calientes. One problem that we encountered was that while our guide was supposed to speak English, no one in the office spoke English—which led to some confusion on our part about what we should bring along. I was under the impression that part of our bags would be carried ahead of us by van; instead, we had to carry them the whole time—which would have been fine had we understood that in the first place. The bike ride was also pitched to us as a huge descent, from 3800 m to 1300 m. We actually didn’t start our descent until 2500 m, which I knew thanks to having my bike computer along. Again, not a huge deal, but this was definitely not like the famous “death road” ride in Bolivia (which we hope to do soon!). In any case, the route was good fun. Our group was supposed to be 5 in all plus a guide, but when we got picked up the morning we left, it was just the two of us, everybody else had canceled! So our trip was a private tour. I think we would have liked the extra company and the opportunity to speak English and make new friends, but our guides were friendly enough. We had a bit of rain over the first 3 days of the trip, and were pretty tired and soaked by the time we reached Aguas Calientes.

The following day we got up at 4:30 AM so we could make the 1.5 hr climb to Machu Picchu and arrive at the gate when it opens to see the sunrise. Well, after two days of hiking (even though it was mostly flat), we were pretty beat. To add to that, it had rained the entire night before, and it seemed to be threatening again in the morning. So…we went back to bed for an hour and then took the bus up the hill Thankfully, we were wrong about the rain, and it ended up being a beautiful day on the mountain! We ran around and snapped pictures to our heart’s content. But be forewarned—the paths through Machu Picchu are one-way only…you will get stopped by very serious looking guards if you try to go the wrong way! I climbed up Wayna Picchu (the mountain behind the site) and got the above picture of Machu Picchu, which is supposed to resemble the body of a flying condor. There’s not much more to say about the experience other than it is as superlative as everyone says it is. The surroundings are beautiful, and the structures amazing.

We decided to add a little DIY bit at the end of our tour. Instead of returning to Cusco right away, we hopped off the train early in the town of Ollantaytambo. We spent the night there, and then in the morning visited the ruins that are just on the edge of town there. That afternoon we bussed to the town of Pisac, which also has large expansive ruins. Neither are quite the match of the grandeur of Machu Picchu, but they were both beautiful, interesting, and definitely worth seeing. We then returned to Cusco just in time to meet up with our Australian friends Brooke and Shane, whom we met when we were saving the turtles in Costa Rica. We’ve been trying to hook up with them again since then (including missing them in the Galapagos by only a few days), but hadn’t seen them until now. We hung out with them for a few days in Cusco, and went to see the four ruins closest to Cusco with Shane (Brooke had a bout of food poisoning ). They are off now hopefully having a great time on the Inca Trail. We’re hoping to run into each other again in Bolivia!

Cindy and I are wrapping up seeing all the stuff there is to see in Cusco—some archelogical sites, churches (the cathedral here is AMAZING), and museums. It’s a bummer though that they don’t let you take pictures inside any of the churches or museums…It’s almost like we didn’t go. Anyway, assuming we get our stuff all packed up tonight, we’ll get back on the bikes tomorrow morning to head toward Lake Titicaca and Bolivia.

P.S. Oops—forgot to explain the title…there are lots of street vendors here trying to sell various things to the hordes of gringos in town. But this is the first town we’ve been in where every other person to approach you wants to give you a massage! We must say “No, gracias” 50 times a day or more. In fact, there is an Irish bar in town that sells T-shirts that will say “No, gracias” for you

There are no good maps of Ecuador. No matter what the map claims the distance between destinations will be, add 20 km to get the real distance. The road signs are additionally misleading, giving distance varying by 20 km in the space of 5 km or less! This problem resulted in more than a couple days being much longer than expected. It also resulted in me taking a speed bump at full speed because I was too busy gaping at the distance predicted by the sign on the road to notice the bump—I definitely caught some air on that one!

We also have also met with some temperamental weather. It is the beginning of the rainy season again, so we biked through fog and rain in the afternoons. Our descent into the town of Alausi (which other blogs have told us has fantastic views) was through dense fog. We had to stop to put on all our clothes to protect us from the misty, cold cloud. It was a slow descent as we could only see about 20 feet ahead of us. Alausi was a pretty city that is the start of the famous train ride down the devil’s nose. There weren’t any trains departing while we were there, so we weren’t able to partake, though the road out of town follows the train tracks for part of the ascent, so we got a part of the experience.

Out of Alausi, our next destination was Cañar. We knew that it was a lot of climbing (around 2000 m) over only about 80 km. There were a couple places where we might find a hotel along the way, but there was nothing confirmed. Immediately starting out of Alausi we were climbing. At one point not too far from town, I looked ahead and saw a pickup truck stopped on the side of the road and a couple of men standing next to it. This made me a bit nervous until I noticed one of them had a fancy looking camera. I assumed that they had stopped to take some pictures of the amazing scenery, until I noticed that the camera was actually aimed at us. Then I notice another person with a camera, and another and another. We rode by and smiled and waved for the cameras, wondering what was going on. When we passed the truck, it all made sense—the truck had an emblem for the Ecuador Ministry of Tourism on it. A couple minutes later, the truck passed us with two of the people in the truck bed taking more pictures! Matt called for them to stop and requested that they send us the pictures. They gave us some Ecuador pens, pins and pamphlets and promised to send along pictures, but it has been a couple weeks now and we haven’t heard anything. If you are in Ecuador be on the look out for tourist brochures with pictures of bikers!

Around 10 km after leaving Alausi, the road deteriorated pretty badly and we were riding on rough gravel or dirt for most of the day. This really slowed our progress as there were many ups and downs and the gravel made the descents especially slow. So when we found a hotel in Chunchi, we decided to stop. The next day, the road was mostly good, but we hit a pretty heavy rain storm. We were able to take refuge under the porch of a church, but we were already drenched and cold at that point. We tried to continue on to Cañar, but the descents proved to be too chilling on our already cold, wet bodies. So we hitched a bus the remainder of the way.

We took a bus from Cañar to visit the Inca ruins of Ingapirca, the most important Inca site in Ecuador. The ruins were a fairly small site with much beautiful stonework. I was pretty excited to be visiting an archeological site again, though it was just a glimpse of what is to come in Peru. In the town of Ingapirca, we happened upon a festival with a couple different parades, first the school kids in marching bands, then people on slightly unruly horses. It was crazy to see all the women in indigenous clothing videotaping the parades on their fancy cameras!

From Cañar, we had a long, but not too difficult day to Cuenca. At this point, we started looking at the calendar and calculating just how much time we had left to get to Boliva before the new entry requirements begin on Dec 1. Since we want to enter Bolivia well before the new requirements in order to avoid any hassles, we realized that we had less than a month or so to make it through the rest of Ecuador and all of Peru. We wanted to dedicate at least a week of that time to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Clearly it was time to hop a bus!

We made a mad dash by bus to the town of Trujillo in northern Peru. The bus ride was pretty uneventful and the scenery, especially in northern Peru, was pretty bland. Vast deserts with lots of low shrubs and tons of garbage strewn everywhere. We weren’t too sad to have missed out on biking this part. The reason for heading to Trujillo was that there is a famous ‘casa de ciclistas’ there run by Lucho and his family. We were cyclists number 883 and 884—they have been hosting touring bikers since 1985. We felt a little sheepish arriving and departing by means other than bikes, but other cyclists assured us that Lucho regularly picks up bikers from the bus station and it wouldn’t be a problem.

We spent four nights in the casa arranging for transport to Cusco (we splurged on airline tickets rather than spend 30 hours or more on the bus—I’ve been having problems with motion sickness on the busses lately), taking part in the Peruvian census, exploring the area and getting to know Lucho, his family and the other cyclist at the house.

The census was Sept 21 and the entire country was shut down. No businesses were allowed to open and no one was allowed out on the streets—not even tourists (luckily we had a nice place to wait it out!) When the census people came to the house, we also had to answer questions and be counted.

We also found out about many more casas de ciclistas in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Most exciting is that the other cyclist staying with Lucho has connections (his fiance) with a casa in Salta, Argentina which is where we had hoped to be around Christmas time. When we told him this, he said we would be welcome to spend the holidays at their house! We are also having some new tires and other parts shipped to us at his place, so we will even have some gifts.

We are in Cusco now, we and all our stuff arrived on the plane at the same time and safely! We are hoping to be able to ride the rest of the way from here—no more busses! We still have a long way to go though, almost 8000 km, so we will need to put in some long days if we want to finish before winter hits Patagonia.