24.4 mi / 11.7 mph / 838 ft. climbing
Home: Hotel Panamerica I

Inside the tent in was 48°F when we woke up, significantly warmer than the 42°F when we went to sleep. Climbing out revealed that the once-clear sky had clouded over (and under), so it presumably was a genuine overnight warming, and not just our bodies cranking up the thermostat. We had no disturbances once the workers had headed back up the barely-a-road yesterday afternoon, though trucks grinding up the highway 200 yards away sometimes made me think a vehicle was coming toward us, until I remembered that no one would be driving this way at night!

This was our 12th night of wild camping in Peru, which I think quadruples the total number of times we had wild camped previously over four years. So we’re still relatively-inexperienced at it, but getting better, and it’s satisfying to know that we can be truly self-sufficient for a night or two at a time. One thing I’m getting better at is pooping in the woods, simply because I’d never had much reason to practice until now. Here it helped that we were actually next to a rare Peruvian example of “woods”, and inside the pines there was a deep layer of humus that made it easy to dig a hole and bury the evidence.

We climbed 2100 feet coming into Abancay, and 4500 yesterday, so that left only 700 feet remaining on the 7200 foot uninterrupted (except by nightfall) climb, the tallest we’ve done in our nomadacy. The top marked both the end of that 7200 foot climb, and the immediate start of a 7000 foot descent, encapsulating the cruel beauty of the Andes in that one clause. Reaching that top only 37 minutes after we started this morning proved that we could have combined these two days into one if we had really needed to, and raises the question of whether finding, setting up, and breaking down camp takes more energy than simply pushing onward would have. But since this isn’t a race, energy-expenditure is far from our only consideration, and last night was a good addition to our wild-camping experience.

A bit of climbing and the sudden appearance of an endless stream of mototaxis signaled our arrival into the small-but-well-equipped town of Curahuasi. We targeted the Timothy Tower-endorsed hotel near the far end, and the absence of anyone at the reception desk (it wasn’t even 1pm) allowed me to snoop around and choose a corner room on the third floor with a view of both the mountains and the courtyard garage where our bikes would stay.

Eventually a guy from the attached restaurant came up to officially let us in, though no one could ever find the key to the room (once a shocking state-of-affairs, this has now become an “eh, no big deal” for us…we just tell Lamby to growl at anyone who tries to come in while we’re gone). Before even showering we went back down to that restaurant, and ordered a couple of chicken milanesas, which turned out to be plates so huge that they left us undecided about dinner: cook something in the shower (we already knew we’d be setting up the stove to cook breakfast for another super-early departure), or go out somewhere.

After several hours enough hunger returned that we decided to go out to a highly-rated pizza place, only to find it closed. So we looped back around town to Tradicional Pizzawasi, another well-rated wood-fired place, only to get a response to my WhatsApp query from the first place five minutes after we sat down, saying that they were now open (thinking places are “closed”, when we’re really just too early, is a frequent error that we make). Well, Pizzawasi was good anyway, and actually had a vibe of an old-school pizza joint in Chicago, so no disappointment here.

Timothy Tower spent two nights in Curahuasi, preferring its relative peace-and-quiet over Abanacy. While we seem to be a bit less-bothered by big-city chaos (especially when we can be isolated in an AirBNB), it was easy to see the attraction of Curahuasi: big enough to have everything you might need (or want), but small enough to feel manageable, and calmer.