7.8 mi / 6.0 mph / 353 ft. climbing
Home: Hotel Minero

Even though we were less than 8 mostly-downhill miles from Oyón (yesterday’s goal that we had stopped a bit short of), there was never any question of changing our routing and staying somewhere further tonight. Oyón is a major supply-stop on the Peru Great Divide bikepacking route, and although we decided some time ago that the PGD would be unnecessarily challenging for us, and would head east toward Cerro de Pasco instead, it would still be a challenging three days on gravel before we hit the next population center. So we would still spend some time there resting and resupplying.

And it’s a good thing that we didn’t have any long-distance plans, because when I rolled our bikes out of the hotel, I discovered that Rett’s rear tire was flat. Again. Figuring that we had plenty of time, I wheeled over to the town’s plaza in front of the hotel, where there was a shaded bench (much more-comfortable than a dusty roadside) to do some serious investigation/repair of the flat’s cause. And then the repair area became even more ideal. It happened to be directly across from a tire shop, and when the guys noticed me trying (and failing) to hear/feel the escaping air from the reinflated inner tube, they said “agua!”, and yeah, of course I know dunking the inflated tube in water and watching for air bubbles is a classic method for finding slow leaks, but a rounded tube-shaped pan of water is one thing that we don’t carry with us. But these guys had one, and they quickly ran the tube through it. That still revealed nothing, so they indicated that I should inflate it more (yep, we’re totally on the same page), and on the second try, yep, there was the leak that would have been nearly impossible to find without their help!

The hole was right near (but not on) the boot that was still in the tire from Rett’s three-flat day a couple weeks ago. Despite an extensive search, I could find no visible cause, so all I could do was patch it (the tire-shop guys offered a patch too) and pump it back up (borrowing their air-compressor for a moment to save myself the exhausting ~200 some pumps on our mini-pump to fill our high-volume tires). It’s never fun having a flat, but this was possibly the best place in the world to repair one! Peruvians continue to show their helpfulness and generosity.

Even though the repair delayed us less than an hour, Rett was upset about our day now being blown. But in my mind, the day’s short ride had opened an opportunity to do all the investigation/repair work while I had the tire open, rather than rushing through it and having to spend extra time reopening the tire later (and of course increasing the risk of a re-puncture and even longer delay on the ride to Oyón).

The downhill from Quichas continued on the bumpy “congealed” gravel, where the choice is to squeeze the brakes and go super-slow, or just rattle your way through it. Rett went with the latter, which is certainly a good way to check the integrity of the tire, and everything else on the bike.

At one point in the narrow road, a car slowed and the female driver said something incomprehensible in Spanish, and when we said we didn’t understand, she surprisingly switched immediately to English and warned that she was one of the lead vehicles of a line of 35 cars heading up in the opposite direction. We started walking while they all passed, and we got a lot of thumbs-ups and fist-pumps from the relatively-Western-looking drivers. Not sure what it was all about, maybe some adventure-trip related to the upcoming national holidays?

During our short walk, we hit our first paved road in four days, and while we knew our route wouldn’t stay with it for too long, we definitely enjoyed it while it lasted. It also passed through the surprisingly-cute small town of Ucruschaca, a place where water seemed to be flowing in from every direction, and some nice-looking restaurants made us wish it would have been big enough to stay in rather than less-enticing Oyón.

A couple miles outside of Oyón, we left paved LM-113 where it continued downhill, and turned onto the direct, uphill route into town. Even though LM-113 dives far below Oyón, and then bypasses the city around the south end before offering another opportunity to climb back up, the direct route was so atrocious that there is a small chance that the miles-longer, hundreds-more feet-of-climbing route could actually be the better choice. We literally walked the entire way into town, because it was the worst gravel surface we’ve encountered in Peru so far. It combined large loose rocks with a density of dips and potholes so high that there were essentially no flat spots. It also ran right up to the cliff edge, so would have been a bit scary even if smoothly paved. It certainly made Rett’s decision yesterday to stop short feel like the right one; it wouldn’t have been too much trouble to bash our way through the downhill part of today’s ride yesterday afternoon, but enduring this final segment after an already-exhausting day would have frayed our last nerves.

Arriving at cyclist-friendly Hotel Los Andes, we got news that would have wrecked us even further had it come last night: all of their ensuite rooms were booked, leaving only a room with two twin beds across the courtyard from the bathrooms. Shit! The proprietor indicated it was due to the Fiestas Patrias holidays, a risk I had been aware of, but had seriously doubted that Oyón would be any sort of holiday-weekend destination. I left Rett there to “hold” the room, and ran out to check in to other options. Hotel Minero had a room available, and while the S/100 price seemed high, I grabbed it just because I didn’t know if everywhere else would be filled up.

Our initial impression was worsened even further when Rett had a terrible shower experience. The warm-ish water soon began running cold, and then would come back only in strange bursts triggered by turning the cold faucet. (we later learned that we needed to tell them to “turn on the hot water”?)

But the hotel’s center-of-town location was really good (as was our rare first-floor room, that we didn’t need to lift our bags up to), and walking just steps to a good near-Western-style bakery, then to the central market (where we got peanut butter (barely seen since Huaraz), good oats, and granola), and finally Rett’s impulse-buy of churros from a street vendor, eaten while watching a bit of a very-well-attended girls’ soccer match, flipped our mood completely around.

Days 2-4

We’d initially booked in for three nights, but extended to a fourth, partly to stay through the entire holiday period, and partly to let Rett heal up a bit more for our next phase. The amount of time we’re spending in Peru means that we won’t be able to ride all the way to the tip of South America as we’d originally planned, but we’re enjoying Peru so much that we’ve decided not to rush and just figure the rest out later.

We had been worried about stores and restaurants being closed during the Monday/Tuesday national holidays, so on our Saturday arrival we asked at every place we patronized if they’d be open, and got positive responses from everyone. That turned out to mostly be true, so overall the holidays caused us no issues beyond having to pick a different hotel. We even dropped our laundry off on Saturday and picked it up on Sunday.

On the other hand, we thought we might be able to partake in a big party, but that never really came to pass. There were the well-attended soccer matches happening every day, and we heard bands marching down the streets, but both of those things seem to happen on pretty much any day in Peru. The “official” events were rather low-key, though it was fun to stumble upon them (mostly because our daily trips to the ATM took us right to the town plaza).

One night we got pizza (where a random kid opened our beer bottles with a spoon, after the restaurant’s fancy bottle-opener broke and the server couldn’t procure another one), and another night we cooked dinner in our room where I’d set up our camp stove in the shower (if they don’t provide reliable hot water in the shower, it seems only fair for us to generate our own!) Every morning we got breakfast (pan con huevos, cafe con leche, and papaya/pineapple juice) from the same place, just steps from our hotel (where one morning the TV was playing HGTV!)

Oyón is sort of known as “a mining town” (our hotel was “Minero”!), so my expectations had been pretty low, but after spending the four-day holiday weekend here, I came away quite taken with it. It gave us everything we needed to continue on to our next phase, and then some.