16.2 mi / 4.9 mph / 1400 ft. climbing
Home: Municipal Center

It was 47°F inside our windowless hotel room when we woke up, which sounds cold until you hear that it was 26°F outside! So as primitive as our accommodation was, it was infinitely better than camping.

It was Rett who suggested that Antacolpa felt like a Renaissance Faire town, and that feeling came from more than just our room’s 6-foot wooden ceiling and creaky wooden door closed with a rusty iron hasp. It’s an isolated village, connected to the rest of the world by a single gravel road (the King’s Highway?), which enters on one side and exits on the other. Cows, sheep, pigs, and many other animals live in the village, right alongside the humans, allowing a self-sustaining existence that minimizes reliance on deliveries from the outside world.

And it is welcoming to travelers making their way across the countryside and needing shelter for the night. From the glow around the imperfectly-sealed doorways last night, it looked like nearly all the ~10 rooms at the inn were occupied, though my feel was that we were the only short-term visitors. We saw several Peruvians walking around town wearing city dress, identifying them as outsiders nearly as foreign as us. When Timothy Tower visited 6 years ago, he learned that teachers were loaned here from bigger cities to improve the education standards, and maybe the same program is still active? I even saw a man in a 3-piece suit duck out the doorway of one of the inn’s rooms, which is quite a sight in a place where the (shared, cold) shower is inside the (shared, hole-the-ground) toilet!

We left the “inn” in search of breakfast, returning to the “tavern” we’d visited last night. There we were served more new-to-us dishes: cold cheese and bread sandwiches, and then fried eggs on rice with yolks so orange they were nearly red. We asked for coffee, but were served tea, so maybe that’s what the word “cafe” means in this village.

Today’s “climb out of town” was less-steep than yesterday’s, and had a better surface, which then got fairly bad as we headed downhill along Laguna Laurichocha. But even though downhill bad-gravel is no fun, if we’re going to have it on one side of the hill anyway, the downhill side is better because fighting both an incline and rocks on the way up is much more exhausting.

Halfway through the climb I noticed that my kickstand had loosened, enough to be flopping around and bumping my foot as I pedaled. It’s a semi-major operation to re-tighten it (removing a water bottle cage, the holster for a folding lock strapped to the seat tube, and the front derailleur clamp), and that’s assuming I can find the rarely-used 8mm hex-sleeve wrench bit to tighten the kickstand bolt, which I couldn’t on the initial search through my tool bag. Once I caught up with Rett to inform her of the issue, we decided to just temporarily velcro-strap the kickstand to the frame, and would do the real fix at lunchtime. But that meant no real stopping until then, since I wouldn’t be able to stand the bike up (yes, I know bikepackers somehow survive with no kickstand all all, but I’m not sure how!)

Five miles in we crossed a ridge at the day’s high point (“only” 13,700 ft.), and I was surprised that we couldn’t see Laguna Lauricocha down in the valley on the other side. Is the valley wall so steep that we need to get right to the edge to see it? No, there is only a small stream running down there. It’s supposed to be a very large lake! It took a mile of riding parallel to ridge/valley for me to solve the mystery: between us and the high mountains on the opposite side of the valley, there is actually a second ridge, behind which the lake is hidden. But in a magic trick that would make any illusionist jealous, the second ridge merged visually into the background mountains as if there was nothing else there!

Somehow the road kept twisting deeper into the dark mountains, thankfully without any major climbs. And then we made a right turn through a narrow cleft that suddenly opened into the most dreamlike hidden valley yet. As a child, I read most of ‘The Black Stallion’ series, and was utterly captivated by the mystical hidden valley that forms the core of ‘The Island Stallion’. I had wished that it was real and that I could go to that magical place, and suddenly in Peru, nearly 40 years later, I am there!

A wide flat bottom of gold, bejeweled with bright lakes and rivers, and pinched off by its guardian mountains at each end, it felt like a completely-undiscovered place. Of course it wasn’t, there were were farmhouses amongst the gold, and 2 or 3 vehicles passed us on the road as we traversed its 3-mile length. But such was the atmosphere created by the towering surroundings that it felt like we must be the only humans to have laid eyes upon it. And this place I’ve been waiting 40 years to find has no particular name, sits between two towns that even locals have barely heard of, on a gravel road that almost no one uses. This is just the nature of Peru.

As much as I wanted to remain for hours to absorb the atmosphere of the valley from my boyhood dreams, we continued on, and since it’s Peru, the next phases weren’t a letdown. We essentially entered the hidden valley’s hidden valley, and soon after, the day’s best snow-capped peaks appeared.

For the second day in a row, I said “it really doesn’t feel like there is a town less than two miles from here…”

At around 3:30pm the small village of Antacallanca appeared, in its own impressive valley that perhaps inspired the first settlers like the previous valley had inspired me. We stopped in the middle of the road in front of a small shop, and immediately a young girl walked over introduced herself. Several more children joined her, offering their hands for handshakes. The reports of this being a very friendly are certainly true!

We soon located the municipal building (not hard, it’s the largest structure in town!) where the town supposedly allows camping, and eventually worked up the courage to inquire at a bodega if they knew anything about this, and knew who we should talk to (reportedly the mayor). One of the three people standing out front immediately replied to our poor Spanish with a “Si”, and pulled the keys from her pocket! That was a lot easier than we expected! (and apparently that means the town’s mayor is a woman now!)

She showed us in, offered the 2nd floor (which supposedly had beds), but we were happy to just set up our tent in the open first-floor space. The bathroom wasn’t pretty dirty, and the shower, though clearly labeled with “hot” and “cold” valves, failed to produce any hot water. But for our S/20 “donation” (the same as last night’s hotel), it was still a great deal.

As we were wheeling our bikes inside, I spotted a couple of touring cyclists descending on the road behind the building (coming from the opposite direction), and thought we might be having a bit of a social night. But they never turned up, so they must have just continued straight through town and onward.

We went back to the bodega, and while the dark interior appeared to have little for sale, the proprietor kept producing everything we asked for, including vegetables, and I even spotted some beers, of which we brought four. The total came to S/21.80, and I got out my baggie of coins (that I’m always trying to get rid of because they weigh a lot), started counting, and the last coin out of the bag brought the count to exactly…S/21.80. In case we didn’t already know, the magic apparently extends to this valley too!

The municipal building had a big wooden table and a surplus of chairs, which made it so easy to do all the chopping and mixing and cooking that comes together as Rett’s peanut pasta. It’s pretty much an ideal situation, being able to sleep in our own “bed”, cook some relatively-healthy food, and stay sheltered from the night’s cold winds.

I went back out for a few minutes to watch a fairly-professional men’s soccer match being played on the town’s concrete sport court. It was well-attended (some fans had arrived on horseback), and another team (presumably up next) was having a meeting nearby. On the tiny pitch (less than 1/4 the size of a full-sized soccer field), it was a wild high-paced game, with all the players going full-on despite the bruising surface.

When Timothy Tower “invented” this accommodation six years ago, the town only had generator power that ran for limited hours. Now it has full-time electricity delivered over the mountains, so it’s a good indication of the progress and development that continues here. Tonight, the lights enabled the evening’s social sporting event (which always amazes and heartens me in these tiny towns) to continue as darkness fell.