19.2 mi / 4.4 mph / 3000 ft. climbing
Home: Hostal Más

The place we’d found to have breakfast yesterday said they’d be open at 7am today, but they weren’t, so we had to search out a new place. An open door a block away revealed dishes at empty tables, so I guess some people just ate here, right? A couple “Buenos días!”es summoned the husband and wife from somewhere deep within, revealing that, no, those were dishes from dinner last night! Nonetheless they ushered us to a table in a back room (er, outdoor courtyard, but it’s just as cold indoors as out at this hour, so NBD), which also needed to be cleared. But once they got the stove started up, breakfast was good (at least after we immediately ordered more pan con huevos upon seeing the size of our first order)!

We began again with the traditional “climb out of town”, but this one was a beast compared to La Unión. First, it was gravel, not asphalt, and it was probably twice as steep, with some sections hitting 15%. Because we had a long day ahead, Rett relented and let me push her bike up a couple sections (I was pushing mine too), to prevent her from exhausting herself first thing in the morning.

Once the incline eased, the gravel surface improved considerably, and was much more rideable than yesterday’s. And much, much more rideable than Matt Pepperdine (another crazyguyonabike blogger we follow) found it two years ago. When he arrived in the village of Paracsha, the exposed stones had him so rattled and hating life that he had nothing but insults for poor Paracsha. Whereas the return of white mountain views and (relatively)-easy pedaling had Rett saying “I could live here!” It’s proof how the surface condition can completely change the story of the day, and unfortunately there isn’t a reliable way to know what it will be like until you’re on it. We’ve learned that any report more than a year old is so unreliable that it’s best ignored.

A mile or two outside Paracsha, along this barely-used road, we were mildly surprised to see a crowd of young children on a random rural property. One of them spotted us grinding up the hill, and toddled over to inspect this new curiosity. A couple more followed, and soon the teachers (?) were coming to see us too. As we stopped in the middle of the road, it was clearly the teachers (young women) who were most interested in these strange gringos. So right there in the middle of the road, they assembled all the kids (or at least the ones who weren’t too shy) in front of us, and then took at least 100 photos across their combined cell phones. Throughout the whole photoshoot, neither side made any real attempt to communicate (“what the heck are you doing out here?” could have easily gone both ways), but the fact that everyone was having fun was all we really needed to know, and it was effortless to communicate that.

As we (supposedly) approached Antacolpa, I said “it really doesn’t feel like there is a town less than two miles from here…” Which I guess is how you want it: spend most of the day feeling like you’re out alone in the wilderness, and then suddenly arrive to shelter and food.

The one unmarked accommodation in Antacopla was just where iOverlander said it was (asking in the tienda brought forth the manager), and the hard-to-believe cost was accurate too: S/20 (~US$5.60), and it would have only been S/15 had we forgone the (useful) WiFi add-on!

Ok, we had to leave our windowless room to use the sink and toilet, and said toilet was a hole in the ground that you squatted over and flushed with a bucket, and if you wanted a shower (we didn’t), it was cold-water only, and taken inside the toilet stall. But it was still way better than camping!

We wandered back through town toward the one or two restaurants we might have seen, and even though we were early for dinner by Peruvian standards, a friendly older woman (wearing glasses, which felt like a rarity here) welcomed us into her rustic dining room and served us good food we haven’t had before: a vegetable (yay!) soup starter, and then pachamanca, a regional specialty of hot-stone-baked meat (chicken in this case), over potatoes and rice. All for S/18 (~US$5.04) for the both of us; that’s nearly the cost of our hotel room, so does that mean it’s expensive?