20.2 mi / 5.0 mph / 4150 ft. climbing
Home: Abandoned Hairpin Wild Camp

My lower back had been acting up for a week, but our time off (or just time in general) had restored it to about 90%. So I got pretty angry when I re-wrenched it while hoisting my heavy bike up over the threshold to get it out of our AirBNB’s courtyard. Especially since getting out of Ayacucho was going to be stressful enough without any physical ailments. At least Rett’s stomach and energy were back to 100%.

I had spent more than an hour yesterday trying to plot a low-traffic route out of the busy central city, but steep hills, unpaved streets, and paths so pedestrianized that we wouldn’t be able to squeeze our bikes through, kept funneling our path onto the busiest main roads. Even just starting down the narrow one-way street from our AirBNB would be a challenge, since the stream of cars was nearly constant, there was zero space for them to pass, and it had lines of hard plastic reflector “speed bumps” that are dangerous enough to ride over that Rett wisely chooses to dismount.

But somehow maybe our 9am Sunday start time was magic? Because we didn’t have a single vehicle on our tail the whole way to the main highway and the city’s central roundabout, and even there, traffic was light and manageable.

But a few blocks later, every vehicle in the city seemed to converge on us, in a chaotic section with shops doing active business spilling into the roadway. There was so much starting and stopping and avoiding of mototaxis and carts and people, that we just got off and walked for five or six blocks. But then the road widened and opened up, and traffic again dropped to nearly-nothing. Some of that was because Highway 3S immediately begins switchbacking up the hill while still well within the urban area, and vehicles with more horsepower than us simply shortcut the switchbacks and use the gridded city streets to go up the 10-15% hills. That left us in peace to zig-zag over a distance 2-3x what they were traveling, at a comfortable 4-5% grade.

Once we got far enough out of the city that the shortcuts disappeared, traffic on the lone remaining route up the mountain became consistently, moderately busy for the rest of the day, but the relatively-wide road and small percentage of heavy trucks meant that it never felt too stressful.

Maybe the highway traffic also felt comfortable because drivers are used to seeing cyclists. We saw probably a dozen “Sunday roadies” (though frequently on mountain bikes) heading up or down the smooth-paved road (and also one bike tourer heading down), definitely the most that we’ve seen in Peru outside of a city. With a consistent slope of just under 5%, a steady 250 feet per mile (with one brief downhill in the middle of our ride), it was a challenge, but nothing that was destroying us.

We also got an unusually-respectful pass by a policeman; they generally drive pickup trucks, and are usually better-than-average, but this guy waited behind us on a curve until he had good visibility. Half a mile later, we saw him pulled over to the side, and he offered us a lift! (indicating that once we got to the top of the climb, it would be flatt-ish for a while, before then descending; which of course I knew, but we weren’t scheduled to reach the flat until tomorrow.) Rett reflexively declined the offer, though I said maybe we should at least think about it. But we reasoned that we were close enough to our target for the night, and we were feeling good, so it would be nearly as much work to load the bikes into the truck as it would be to just keep riding. Too bad he hadn’t been around last week when Rett got sick!

Also, we were shooting for a wild-camping spot, and having a policeman drop us there might have been awkward, and if he had been willing to take us further, it would have required a whole new round of planning. The last known water source was a mile before our hoped-for camp, so we filtered from the fast-flowing roadside canal and loaded up our bladder, and also did pre-camp sponge-baths to wipe off sunscreen and sweat (it had been sprinkling on-and-off all day, so thankfully we weren’t too sweaty).

Our virtual guide Timothy Tower (and his guides, the Shaws) had camped at a spot that required a lot of pushing up through a vegetation-covered path. But Tim had noted an easier roadside spot three miles further (and 800 feet higher) as a possibility, and given our rest in Ayacucho, pushing a bit further on our first day out seemed like a good idea. Satellite and StreetView made that spot look pretty exposed and visible, but I’d noted another possibility just a couple hundred yards further. I used the historical satellite images from Google Earth to discover that the stretch of hairpin off to the left of the main highway was a section of the original gravel road that was abandoned when the highway was paved sometime between 2006 and 2013, and given a slightly different route.

Appearing on scene, it was even more perfect that I’d hoped: easily-accessible (just a bit of a ditch to roll the bikes over), but with cliffs and a surprising amount of vegetation providing multiple spots that were completely-invisible from the highway passing above. And for a hairpin curve, it was surprisingly level, so there was no problem finding a flat spot to pitch our tent. And for such an ideal hidden place, there was almost no garbage! It’s quite a mystery how such a good spot wasn’t already marked on iOverlander.

Another unusual factor, compared to all of our previous Peru wild camps, was that it wasn’t immediately freezing upon arrival, since it was “only” 13,000 ft. above sea level. Even by 5pm sunset, it was still 55F. And while the vegetation prevented us from seeing the panoramic view into the valley directly from our tent, it also ensconced us in a perfectly wind-free shelter. Rett had pre-cooked a couple quinoa-and-spinach dinners to carry with us; in such an “easy” wild camp, doing one of our complex meals would have actually been possible, but the ease of just a reheating was definitely appreciated too. Overall it was an excellent and encouraging restart to bike touring after being laid low a week ago.