47.0 mi / 12.0 mph / 1173 ft. climbing
Home: Wasi Andenes Hotel

Breakfast is included at Michaela and Jaime’s AirBNB (one of the vanishingly-rare places for which the 2nd “B” is still meaningful!), and all the reviews said it was amazing. But none described any details: would it be sufficient for bike tourers? Would it be served early enough for us to get on the road when we needed to? I needn’t have doubted. Later, when I asked Michaela what percentage of their guests had been “like us” (pointing to our bikes), she said the majority! I don’t know if she explicitly meant bike tourers, or just similarly-independent travelers, but our 6am request was taken in-stride, and the spread of fruit, eggs, bread, cheese, and a million extras was excellent cycling fuel, and available in such volumes that 4 hungry cyclists couldn’t completely clear the platters (though I was bringing the team down with my still-not-fully-restored appetite). Michaela also said that our kind are the best guests, because we also take things in-stride, have relatively-low standards, and just “get it”, but even the most-pampered traveler would have had no complaints with breakfast!

The obvious and well-traveled route south from Cusco to Lake Titicaca (and onward to Bolivia) follows Highway 3S, through Juliaca and onward to meet the lake at Puno. But only in the last couple days had I come to understand the depth and breadth of the hatred that cyclists universally hold for the “Mad Max” city of Juliaca. Our dislike of big chaotic cities seems to be somewhat lower than the average bike tourer’s (partly because we enjoy the benefits of big cities more than most bike tourers), so I frequently discount such complaints. But here the commentary was enough to make me consider an alternate, also because it made the distances between stopping points work out a bit more evenly.

Since we knew Roberta and Nicolo were also heading to Puno, Rett reminded me to tell them about my “discovery” of the quiet route through Lampa that bypasses Juliaca. So after they arrived yesterday afternoon, I wandered over….and heard Michaela talking to them about what a nice town Lampa is, and that yes, it would be a beautiful ride. Ha, they didn’t need our advice at all! Coincidence #8 (and #9?)!

Even though we were heading to the same destination for the fourth time, we maintained our independence and made it out the door just a few minutes before our travel partners. We had been treated to a return of clearer skies, which painted a scrolling illustration of what had drawn Michaela to settle here in the Peruvian Altiplano.

After 33 miles on Highway 3S, the base of a mountain nosed toward us on the plain, and we branched off to the right side toward Lampa while the national highway went left to Juliaca. Traffic (which had been moderate, but not terrible) immediately dropped to essentially nothing. Yeah, only 1% into the bypass, this was already clearly the better way to go!

The downside of our Juliaca-bypass route was the 800-foot up-and-down hill guarding Lampa (the national highway route to Puno is basically flat the whole way). But it was a fair trade, and I was glad that the Italians got a chance to experience at least a mini-version of a classic Andean pass in Peru, to give them a flavor of the riding that is the standard north of Cusco. Because the scenery and vista-flip surprisingly gave 70% of the value with only 30% of the effort of the monsters we cut our Peruvian teeth on.

Our bypass route via Lampa was about more than just avoiding Juliaca. We also wanted to see the Pink City’s bizarre and impressive church. According to Michaela, Lampa was once one of the region’s primary cities, but became more-disconnected when the railroad (and then the national highway) passed it to the east. That history helps explain why it has a colonial church that outdoes Ayaviri’s, but the it’s the money from 20th-century national politician Enrique Torres Belón that paid for its restoration, as well as the creation of an insane burial vault inside, where he rests in the town where he was born.

The chuch’s tourist hours aren’t great for us, 9am-12pm, and 2pm-4pm, so part of getting an early breakfast at Michaela’s was so that we could get into town early enough for the afternoon opening, since we’d want to move on before the next morning’s openings. Thus we were proud of ourselves for completing our ride so early that we were able to check into our hotel and get showered and changed, rather than being forced to head straight for the church. Less-lucky were the local people having a (wedding?) ceremony inside the church as random curiosity-seekers were poking around. In fact, we were first too timid to even find the tomb, since it required walked up toward the altar. But back outside (intending to return later), I noticed a local talking in Spanish to another tourist, directing him back inside, so we followed-the-leader within inches of the parishioners in their pews, and turned a corner where a woman was happy to sell us two S/10 tickets.

The tomb itself is a near-colorless chamber, completely different in character from the rest of the church (which was quite impressive, but traditional). A large dome is topped with a replica of Michelangelo’s “Pietà”, though the sculpture here is crafted of blackened metal rather than white Carrera marble, perhaps hinting at the horrors held below.

There are four portals providing a view to the interior of the dome, which reveal a large circular chamber descending well below ground-level. And the walls of that chamber are decorated with hundreds of human skulls, and dozens of full skeletons! I can find no information on the macabre megalomania that inspired Belón to create such a monument to himself, nor on the level of corruption required for the Church to sign-off on such a monument being constructed inside their building. But with those deeds done, we’re glad to come, almost accidentally, to this remote Andean town to pay our bewildered respects to all these souls that were involuntarily-enlisted in the project.

When we arrived to the tomb’s chamber, there was a school group (understandably) atwitter at the abomination, and then a few others came in and twos and threes, but eventually Rett and I had the site to ourselves, with our footsteps slightly echoing off the walls as we circled around the dome attempting to understand the insanity. I’m not sure if I’ve ever even seen a real human skull before this (maybe in a museum?), so this was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Enrique Torres Belón’s Wikipedia entry describes the Michelangelo replica, but barely mentions what lies beneath, which seems like the most literal example possible of “burying the lede”.

When we finally left the tomb chamber, the ticket-seller was then happy to guide us back out and around the still-ongoing ceremony in the main sanctuary, right up to a doorway on the left side of the altar which led down stone stairs and into the “catacombs” beneath the church. While the domed chambers and long tunnel were interesting (including a short deeper section that made us feel like we were in a video game), the skulls at either end, that would have been an attraction on their own in any other place in the world, felt like an afterthought following the scene at the tomb.

As if to further highlight the insanity of such a notably-grisly monument sitting “hidden” in this small town, there was nothing even close to a foreign-tourist-catering restaurant for us to visit for dinner. Needing a break from chicken, we were happy to find a tiny spot, with an initially-shackled wooden door (until we called in and asked if they were open), assembling pizzas on familiar pre-made crusts, with lights barely working, the dusty ghosts of Christmas decorations on the walls, and a single song on their party speaker playing over and over. It was wonderful!

On the walk back to our hotel on the edge of town (where Nicolo and Roberta had of course chosen to stay as well, though in this case it was less due to coincidence than that it seemed to be the only real option in Lampa), I was distracted with the fun of sending small groups of teen girls a-giggling by flashing them a smile and a “buenas noches” when I noticed them sneaking glances at us, and so we made a wrong turn. But that led us to a whole new plaza, and unlike the two fairly-traditional ones next to the church, this one’s water-and-light show had me giggling as much as those girls! For months we’ve been laughing at how nearly every fountain in every plaza in every Peruvian city, no matter the size, has not seen water in years. And then suddenly in this partly-dying town with a monument to death, we found where all the water from all those other fountains had gone to! That’s Lampa! That’s Peru!