23.4 mi / 5.6 mph / 431 ft. climbing
Home: Hostal Primavera

It was 28F in the morning, enough to frost the tent for the first time (and then cause dripping inside when 7am sun melted it all at once), but not enough to freeze our water supplies. Thankfully the wind was negligible, so breakfast was chilly but manageable.

While I was walking around and packing up, I noticed my rear end felt a bit sticky. A little investigation revealed that yes, I had in fact pooped my pants at some point. It was a small amount, but that’s a bit like saying “it was a gentle murder, officer!” My best guess was that it appeared from a pre-alarm dozing shart. Cleaning up at a waterless camp was no simple task, but at least I could go to the sheltered hole-in-the ground toilet with some leftover wipes, a load of toilet paper, and hand sanitizer. Luckily neither of us had truly gotten sick yet in Peru, but there have been moments where my gut informs me that we’re in a different country.

That all put me way behind in my tasks, so I sent Rett off early, assuming it wouldn’t take too long to catch her on the rough gravel.

We still had a couple hundred feet to climb before the long downhill began, and I didn’t see Rett the whole way up, though I could occasionally spot her tire track in softer parts of the gravel. At one point after not spotting her trail for a while I began to get nervous, but a group of Italian hikers coming down from who-knows-where let me know that she had made it to the pass and was thrilled to be heading down.

We knew from previous reports that there would be no “woo hoo, we’ve reached the pass, now we can fly downhill!” The continued rough gravel meant that our speeds wouldn’t be much faster than our slow crawl on the way up, though at least our breaks would be more to loosen our hands from their constant squeeze on our brake levers, rather than to catch our breath.

In fact, we had provisioned to spend another night camping up here if necessary, breaking the 20 mile downhill (which on a different road might take as little as an hour) into two days. But when we reached the last camping area before civilization returned, Rett decided that we could complete the mountain traverse today.

By the time we started again after lunch, Rett had apparently gained enough hard-won experience at the way her bike reacts to big rocks or angled potholes, that she had become a whole new rider. Now whenever she hit a rough patch, she would no longer screech to an abrupt halt and leap awkwardly off the pedals, like she had earlier. She wouldn’t even tense up and hang on for dear life, hoping she could make it to a smoother section before her momentum died out. No, she was now just la-dee-da-ing her way through, confident that her bike would settle down and straighten itself eventually. Proof of her new skill was that I wanted to tell her these observations for a good ten minutes, but I literally could not catch up to her!

The last 10-15 miles into Huari were continuously populated with rural properties, a “sprawl” we haven’t seen leading to other towns. That meant there were a lot of aggressive barking dogs, and it’s here that we finally learned from experience how effective it is to immediately stop and hop off the bike (preferably putting the bike between you and the dog). It’s still annoying to have to do it, but less annoying than trying not to crash as they chase you.

Five miles from Huari, we got the first flat in nearly 500 miles of riding on our new tires (in Rett’s rear). A pinch flat from setting the pressure too low in order to make the gravel more comfortable? Luckily no, it was just a conventional flat from an unknown sharp object. Annoying when we just want to get to Huari, but no big deal.

But then five minutes later, it’s flat again. Crap. I’d checked the tire for any remaining sharp object poking through, but apparently missed it (the strands of tire casing fabric are difficult to distinguish from sharp debris). But no! It was a whole new hole! This one caused by a wire, that broke off when I tried to pull it through from the inside. Again I dug into the tire fabric to surgically excise any remains, and then even put in a tire boot as an extra layer of protection in case I didn’t get it all out.

And five minutes later, flat again! WHAT THE FUCK! This time it was the same cause, but how had a bit I couldn’t find pushed through the thick boot and through the tube? Best guess is that the boot slipped out of place.

By now we were worried that we wouldn’t make it to Huari before dark, and dreaded riding down the gravel road even with our lights, but it seemed most of the vehicles passing that might be able to give us a lift were going the other way. Not wanting a fourth flat, I spent a good 20 minutes digging into the tread, and it seems the “wire” was really a splinter of wood, which explains why it broke off, and the rest came out in tiny broken pieces as I kept digging. But WTF?! Bouncing up and down a rocky road for three days, and it’s a piece of wood that does in an expensive Schwalbe tire? Not cool.

Thankfully, the fourth try was the charm, and we made it into Huari as dusk fell. We were surprised at how large of a town it is, sort of a mini-Huaraz, but even hillier.

Our chosen hotel was another “keep your bikes inside the first floor shop”, though that meant we still needed to lug our bags up five flights of stairs (in retrospect we should have said we don’t care about the nice view and asked for a lower floor). With no shower curtain, water got on the floor, and with the sink drain pieces not actually connected to each other, if you sent too much soap down, water would get on the floor. But otherwise it was nice enough, and tough to complain at US$14.