14.1 mi / 6.5 mph / 1111 ft. climbing
Home: Hostal Buena Vista

By normal standards, today’s ride would be very short, with more downhill than uphill. But we’ve never encountered roads as slowing as Peru’s, and it would take us more than two hours of pedaling time at the very slow average speed of 6.5mph to go from town to town. Chacas and San Luis are just over 5 miles apart as the condor flies, but with the roundabout path that the road must follow down and back up from the river valleys, including all the switchbacks, means that our bicycles must roll nearly three times that distance.

So we started with a hearty breakfast at our hotel, repeating our order from the day before: coffees with milk (which comes as a little cup of espresso that we add to hot water), and “Andean Breakfast”: chicharrón (chunks of fried pork ribs), fried slices of sweet potato, and pickled onions with herbs on a plate, and a basket of bread. Are we supposed to slice the bread and pile the other ingredients inside to make a sandwich? Who knows, but it tastes really damn good that way, so that’s what we do!

The downhill was easy enough, though steep and curvy, so we were generally hard on our brakes and going less than 10mph. It brought us to a laughably high low point of 9,300 feet. Once we started going back up in the warm sun, we got multiple offers of chicha (corn beer) from farmers working in their fields. At one of the places, a group of men were working in the field while a small band was playing music on drums and wooden flute, seemingly some sort of harvest celebration? I don’t know why we didn’t stop for some chicha.

With just a mile-and-a-half to go to the center of San Luis, the pavement ended and the road turned to rough, uphill gravel. This wasn’t a surprise, but it was still baffling. Why would the rural areas have pavement, and the city gravel?! If there must be a split, it seems like it should be the opposite! I think the Peruvian Transportation Department might explain that we had joined a new route designation where the gravel began, but that’s just another layer of opposite-world: the paved section was AN-107, a highway of the Department of Ancash, while the gravel section was PE-14C, a national highway! Huh?!

While the road is simultaneously a “national highway” and a “crappy gravel alleyway”, at least the traffic volume aligned with the latter personality (nearly zero). Even though it totally felt like an ignored back-road, it’s literally one of the two connections that San Luis has to the outside world, so it’s sort of amazing how few vehicles venture outside of their small towns (though it’s not like the towns are overwhelmed with traffic either: everywhere we’ve been in Peru, except for the busiest streets of Huaraz, walking in the street is totally common, and vehicles will just go around you if they need to).

We did take advantage of the “national highway” to top off our camp fuel with gasoline. The gas stations here are full-serve (with prices comparable to the US), and neither attendant at the two places we’ve stopped so far has had any issue filling our little bottle (though the kid at this place stepped warily out of the building, not really expecting that two bicycles pulling in would need his services).

We pulled up to the hotel that Timothy Tower stayed at six years ago, entered the little open doorway and climbed the staircase, but no one was there to answer. I went back down and pushed a button near the doorway that may or may not have been a doorbell, and whether coincidence or not, moments later, a guy walked by and asked if we were looking for a room. He called someone on his phone, they had a discussion about “double room, foreigners”, etc., said “they’re coming now” (I think!) and walked off. After a few minutes with no one turning up, we sat down to wait. While we were able to occupy ourselves on our phones, it was a bit surprising that nearly an hour had passed by the time we decided that probably no one was coming. I’d found another place with decent reviews around the corner, so I went to check it out while Rett waited. There a young woman immediately appeared when I rang the 2nd-floor bell (and was happy to deal with my poor Spanish, even breaking out Google Translate herself), quoted me a S/35 rate for an ensuite room with hot shower, the option to store our bikes in the hardware store on the first level, but no WiFi.

When I went back to collect Rett, a woman from the shop next to our first hotel choice sprung up and indicated we should still wait, made a (second!) call to our potential host, and then even went walking around the corner to fetch them (it sounded like maybe they were at a restaurant?) When we saw our second helper returning without our potential host in tow, we finally cut bait and moved over to Hostal Buena Vista. It seems we still have a bit to learn about selecting accommodations in small-town Peru.

Our fourth-floor room had an excellent view of the mountains, but it meant that I was happy to leave our bikes down in the shop, which they accommodated like it was the most normal thing in the world. There was no shower curtain, but the water was good and hot, and the room was big enough to easily hold the bikes if we had wanted to lug them up. And how much is S/35? Officially US$9.94. Less than $10, easily beating our previous-low accommodation (US$17 in Baja). Crazy!

After “checking in” (this was the first place to skip the registration book that we’ve had to fill out everywhere else), we then did another fun four-stop grocery-collection. On one street several vendors had produce laid out on the ground, and the avocados we saw were too unripe for our needs, so the woman happily suggested that her neighbor’s stock was riper.

Another wandering to get dinner led to striking out on my first target (Google Maps is a bit less-reliable here), and we surprised ourselves by actually entering a very out-of-the-way, basic, and empty Chifa restaurant when the owner/chef/waiter caught our eye (Peru seems to be pleasantly-free of high-pressure sales tactics, so we definitely made our own choice). “Chifa” is Chinese-Peruvian fusion, super-common everywhere, but this was our first go at it. And it was good! Especially since it included a lot of vegetables, a bit of a rarity.

Once again, the answer to the mystery of “how do these places stay in business?” (whether it’s tiny empty restaurants, the five pharmacies in one block all selling the same stuff, or the little tiendas) seems likely to be connected with our US$10 hotel room: any business model becomes so much more workable if real estate is nearly free!