48.3 mi / 10.9 mph / 1945 ft. climbing
Home: Hostal Gianfranco

Despite our 13,000 ft. wild camp being slightly-warmer than our previous 14-15,000 ft. camps, it was still far from “warm”, with the temperature dropping to 36°F by bedtime last night, and apparently down to 32°F when I got out of the tent at 6am (the thermometer inside the tent read 43°F in our still-windless shelter). But oddly, nothing was frosty or frozen, just wet.

And then it got wetter, with a light rain starting to fall just as I was about to start making breakfast. My sore back made for a restless night of sleeping (much more than the trucks on the highway 50 feet away; we’ve gotten quite good at sleeping through all sorts of noise), so our ideal wild camp seemed significantly less-ideal in the gray light of morning.

We still got packed up and rolling just before 9am, and Rett was immediately cranking (partly to make up for “lost time”), conquering the remaining 700 feet to the top of yesterday’s climb with barely a pause, and with me doing everything I could to keep up. The continuing climb revealed that our campsite had been the last good opportunity, as the remaining trees quickly vanished, leaving only high, bare grasslands for the first 30 miles of the ride.

Just after we reached the plateau, a branch of the highway took three-quarters of the traffic south with it, while we continued east. A pleasant relief, because somehow the Monday morning drivers out here in the middle of nowhere had felt a lot more aggressive than yesterday’s Sunday afternoon drivers.

The “plateau” still contained more than 1200 feet of climbing across the 25 miles until the true descent began, and while the endless barren hilltops hold a beauty that would astound us in most other places, here in Peru it was just an “ok” day of scenery. Certainly multiple vicuña sightings in the second half elevated the already-high elevations.

Our two-day ride profile is essentially symmetrical, with a 20-mile climb from Ayacucho’s 9,000 ft., to a “flat” 20 miles at 14,000 ft., to a 20-mile descent back to to 9,000 ft. But the experience was extremely-asymmetrical, because if the descent was a mirror-image of the ascent, it was twisted through a carnival funhouse mirror, in the best way possible!

Yesterday’s climb merited only four (not-very-good) photos in the blog post, while for today’s descent I needed to restrain myself to “only” quadruple that total. And that’s with higher speeds, fewer breaks, and more-difficulty stopping making photos much more common while ascending vs. descending, if all else is equal.

But all else was not equal! The valley on the southeast end of the plateau was much more “enclosed” than the open climb on the northwest side, with eight layers of mountain peaks here being squeezed within the space of a single valley-and-ridge there. It was also much greener, and more-cultivated, which coated the convoluted slopes in tones and textures. Both Rett and I independently felt echoes of Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park as mountain after mountain scrolled by nearly within touching distance. So again, just getting from place to place in Peru brought us to a road nearly as spectacular as one of the absolute peaks of cycling in the US.

But it wasn’t just the scenery that made the descent so superlative. It was also the best road we’ve descended on so far in Peru. The engineers (more-accurately, artists!) had joyfully commandeered a surplus of space along the mountainsides to allow the almost perfectly-smooth asphalt to glide gently downward at a relatively-gradual 4% grade, which meant that the convolutions could be beautifully crafted into broad swooping curves rather than tight hairpins. That meant we could comfortably fly down at 20mph, with only light pressure on our brakes. And there was almost no traffic on this nearly-perfect road. I wonder if all those cyclists we saw yesterday climbing and descending the Ayacucho valley know about this one on the other side?!

The speed we were able to maintain on the 20-mile descent meant that we were excited to arrive at our target hotel in Chumbes, before 3pm. We’d blown past the equally-small town of Ocros because accommodations there sounded pretty grim, and only slightly-better in Chumbes, with Hospedaje “Liz” getting the highest recommendation. But after we wheeled our bikes into the courtyard, we couldn’t find Liz or anyone, and also suffered a rare case where neither of our phones had a mobile connection. After calling out and waiting for a while, I left Rett and set out on foot to investigate the other two possibilities in town. One had no obvious entrance, and a group of men sitting across the street who were too drunk to offer any assistance. Arrival happiness is continuing to degrade rapidly.

At the other, I got no response to the bell at the locked gate, but just as I was about to leave, I was surprised to glimpse a couple of gringo women emerging onto the third-floor stairway. They soon exited, spoke English, had good things to say about their room, but couldn’t much help me find the manager beyond saying to call the number on the wall.

I returned to Rett and found things weren’t going much better. A manager had at least appeared, but she only had rooms with small shared bathroom, and for the less-musty-smelling bare-bones room, wanted an insane S/60 (because it had two beds). We went back and forth, wondering if we should just take the rough bird in hand, but eventually decided to both head out and hope for the two in the bush.

Returning to Hostal Gianfranco, my phone caught some reception, but a WhatsApp message resulted in no response, and escalating things to an actual voice call also just led to endless ringing. But then, a woman appeared from down the block with phone in hand! Smiling and friendly, she showed us a room at least twice as good as the best option at “Liz”, for a much-more-appropriate S/50: ensuite bathroom with decently-warm shower, table, chairs, outlets, no WiFi, but all in a clean attractive building where our bikes could sit secure in the locked garden courtyard (adding to the bikes of the actually-3 Europeans already staying). Phew…the last 30 minutes of our day had more ups-and-downs than the first 5 hours, even though we didn’t pedal a single revolution!

I should have known that the Europeans were also bike tourers, because there is likely no other reason for foreigners to stay in Chumbes. They were coming from the opposite direction, so we were able to do the useful sharing about our roads ahead. And thanks to their help, now at least the world will know that there is in fact one decent place amongst these two towns!