Chullquisa, PE to Huancarama, PE

34.7 mi / 10.7 mph / 1400 ft. climbing
Home: Hotel Milton

Our wild campsite was near-perfect: easily accessible, yet with essentially zero chance of anyone else visiting our overnight home. So it was a bit of a surprise on our ride back down to the highway (we had walked on the way up), a light work truck was parked about 2/3rds of the way down. It was presumably part of the potato-digging operation which covers the hillsides all around us, so the fact that our site felt isolated and hidden despite being surrounded by people working in the fields made it even more amazing.

#FindRett rolling out of our gravel pit wild camp.
Some swoopy mountains we could see on our way to and from the gravel pit offshoot, but not from our campsite.
Looking back to our campsite. The white truck is on the main highway, which we rode up from right-to-left, and then switched back right up the gravel road cutting across the mountain. Our site was roughly where that road meets the sky. Just out-of-frame to the left were a dozen workers in a potato field.
Clouds wreathe the mountaintops once again. But today we could directly witness some of those clouds forming, with white tendrils sometimes running up from the valley onto the roadway like smoke from a raging wildfire.

We had only 500 feet remaining on the 4200-foot climb out of Andahuaylas that we began yesterday. Once we reached the top, views opened to the deep valley on the other side, but unusually, we would not be descending into it. Instead, we would circle high above the branches of this unnamed canyon, tracing a convoluted counterclockwise loop around it that started at 9 o’clock and ended at 1 o’clock, dropping us only 1,750 feet over 20 miles. From that 1 o’clock position, we could look back up to the 9 o’clock position where we had started, because it was just 3.6 miles across the chasm.

Some volcanic-looking mountains near the 13,600 ft. high point.
Rett spotted this crazy 400-foot-tall cone-within-an-inverted-cone 2000 feet below us, of course with all surfaces cultivated. The road belting the the cone appears to have been built in just the last year or two, whereas the flat green patch at the top with the building has been there longer.
People in Peru must have heard the term “vertical farming” and completely misunderstood what it meant.
Rett had been hoping for a hot Caldo de Gallina lunch on our cold downhill into Andahuaylas, and today she finally got it, in the small village of Laramaru. Somehow it cost us S/40, which felt insanely high for two chicken soups, so this was either our first instance of getting “gringo priced” here in Peru (whatever, it’s US$12), or it’s just a high-end meal in this out-of-the-way place (it did come with a healthy load of sides and condiments).
The highway continues to ride high above the deep canyon.
It’s tough to see, but Rett is being chased by aggressive dogs here. This usually happens multiple times per day in Peru, but usually I’m right there being chased by the same dogs, not taking photos (“luckily” I was letting her ride ahead to get the below photo.)
#FindRett curving around Highway 3S, which remains high above the canyon.
A cow eats high above Quillabamba.

At the 13,600 ft. high point of our ride, the village of Quillabamba was just three miles away, but 5,000 feet (nearly a mile) below. That’s approximately the depth of the Colorado River from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but there the rim-to-river distance is more than twice as far as it is here! So essentially we spent most of the day circling a twice-as-steep version of the Grand Canyon. And since this is Peru, it means that there are towns on both the rim and at the base of this canyon! With various roads snaking up those steep walls to connect the two extremes!

A couple of the roads (or maybe the same road?) connecting the canyon floor with the National Highway 3,000-4,000 feet above it.
Finishing our 270-degree loop near the rim of the canyon bowl, finally exiting to the outside.

Once we curled out of that canyon’s domain, we were quickly into another, and in this one the highway does descend to reach the town of Huancarama near the bottom. Ideally it would have maintained its aloofness, because we would just have to climb back out of this canyon tomorrow, but of course this is not only “normal” for Peru, it has surprisingly become normal for us.

Upon exiting the canyon bowl, one of our first new sights was this mountain, seemingly being blown over, reminiscent of the “wave mountain” on our descent from Pastoruri.
Hi horsie!
Huancarama appears, 2000 feet below, at the foot of the wind-blown mountain.

Hotel reviews in Huancarama weren’t great, partly because they (and perhaps the whole town) had reports of intermittent water. So it was a surprise to see how big the town appeared from high above, and as the highway made its winding descent, it was lined with more modern, attractive, and expensive anti-erosion infrastructure than we’ve seen just about anywhere in Peru. Along with the nice giant-Jesus-statue park looking down on the town, this all gave an impression of wealth and development far greater than the poor, primitive town I had been expecting.

Descending to Huancarama.
“Blanco Cristo” watches over Huancarama.
The nice park that Blanco Cristo lives in is 700 feet above Huancarama, and 3 miles away via the twisting highway, so not exactly an easy place to visit from town.

While the water worked fine at Hotel Milton, and it had the most professionally-wired “suicide shower” we’ve used in Peru (along with a shower curtain!), it also lacked a toilet seat, and cost only S/40 (the same ~US$12 as our roadside lunch!) So internally the town is perhaps not quite as advanced as its first impression.

Our bikes lived in the enclosed courtyard at Hotel Milton (“Welcome to Huancarama”, unusually in English, says the faded banner at the top. The walls were also covered with photos of movie stars like Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin, with “Hotel Milton” incongruously laid over the top).
Huancarama’s sunken central plaza is another element that suggests more wealth than expected.
With the town sloping down to a valley before the dramatic mountains rose up on the other side, many of the businesses on the main street had open backsides to take advantage of the view.

We went out to do our usual shopping trip, walking the length of the main street and visiting several stores to acquire everything we needed. In actual ground-level size, Huancarama turns out to be just big enough to cross the threshold of towns that can support a central market (“mercado”), but it was one of the smallest we’ve seen, with only a handful of vendors. And while everyone in town was friendly (one shopkeeper even asked our names, a first!), they all clearly noticed the gringos who walked back and forth down the main street three times.

Some of that walking was trying to find a place for dinner, but none of the places with open portals seemed to be actively serving food, so we were at a bit of a quandary until Rett decided that we could get some street-vendor fast-food. Originally we thought we were just going to get salchipapas (french fries with hot dog pieces) since that’s how the cart was labeled, but we saw the person in front of us getting some sort of chicken thing, so we asked for the same. We sat on stools for five minutes while watching our chef cook and assemble our meals with surprising virtuosity, her hands moving with the speed and precision that comes from thousands of repetitions, extending for ingredients in every direction but never beyond arms-reach, and adjusting based on our responses to her perceptive “these people barely speak Spanish” questions. We ended up with super-tasty fried chicken filets atop a mix of buttered pasta, rice, and french fries, with sauces, and even hot tea, delivered in plastic bags, all of which we could take back to our room to enjoy. Faster, cheaper, and probably better than any restaurant we would have gone to!

A roadside wizard crafts our dinners.
No, it’s not a bag of urine, it’s a Peruvian way to get tea-to-go: poured from a hot kettle into two of these plastic bags.

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