Travel Journal
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Arica, CL to Valparaiso, CL
As we headed south through Peru, we got less-comfortable with the unwelcoming (especially to Americans) aspects of Bolivia, which left Chile as the only other option if we wanted to continue further south. But having crossed the border, we still found ourselves at a dead-end. Yes, the road technically continues all the way to the… Read more…
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Tacna, PE to Arica, CL
In many ways it felt like we had already left Peru, sometime during our 10,000 ft. descent from the Andes down into the desert on our ride into Tacna. But today we would officially cross the border into Chile. (Tacna’s modern un-Peruvianness may have some roots in history: for 50 years it was actually part… Read more…
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Tarata, PE to Tacna, PE
Our descent into Tarata a couple days ago had started at an utterly-barren pass at nearly 16,000 ft., and the landscape remained dry and arid the whole way down, until we hit a section of green irrigated terraces that started just a few miles above Tarata. I had assumed that this anomalous patch was the… Read more…
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Challapalca, PE to Tarata, PE
Camping inside the stone hut at Calachaca Hot Spring worked just as well as we’d hoped. Perhaps some of its relative-warmth last evening was due to the sun’s energy stored in the stone walls, because by morning it had dropped to 34°F at the head of our tent, which has near the open doorway. But… Read more…
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Mazocruz, PE to Challapalca, PE
For the second ride of our 5-ride final crossing of the Peruvian Andes, we were again up at 4am, cooking breakfast inside our masonry-block motel room, which had held enough of the previous day’s sun to remain a comfortable 55°F inside. That’s “comfortable” relative to the 28°F that it was outside, which itself didn’t even… Read more…
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Ilave, PE to Mazocruz, PE
For months we have been (on average) heading southeast through Peru, drawing an arrow that points toward Bolivia. But Bolivia doesn’t particularly want American citizens to visit for some reason, and that in turn (along with the weather, road, and economic conditions of Bolivia) negatively-polarized our interest in visiting down to zero. So instead, we… Read more…
