52.3 mi / 7.7 mph / 1256 ft. climbing
Home: Hospedaje Bendiciones

For months we have been (on average) heading southeast through Peru, drawing an arrow that points toward Bolivia. But Bolivia doesn’t particularly want American citizens to visit for some reason, and that in turn (along with the weather, road, and economic conditions of Bolivia) negatively-polarized our interest in visiting down to zero. So instead, we are making a right turn upon leaving Ilave, cutting southwest across the grain of the Andes, toward the Pacific Ocean and the border with Chile in the middle of the coastal desert.

Some Street- and Satellite Views of the road between Ilave and Tacna struck my “bike touring” inspiration chord, and Rett’s adventurous side foolishly signed on to this escapade based solely on my excitement, without truly understanding the challenges that it would involve. Foremost among these challenges was The Unknown: those Street- and Satellite Views were literally the main source of information, because although I could find hints of a cyclist or two taking this route, no one had provided even the roughest documentation about their experience.

For the vast majority of our time in Peru, we have closely-followed the well-documented routes of generous cyclists who came before us, so suddenly flying “blind” would be a huge risk, but it also felt like it could be a perfect cap to our 5+ months in this unparalleled country, proving that we’d accumulated enough knowledge and experience to fly high on our own, and maybe even laying down a flight path for others to follow in the future.

All of the four riding days between Ilave (12,600 ft.) and Tacna (1900 ft., with a 15,740 ft. pass in between) would have their challenges, but the first day to Mazocruz was potentially the worst, so we were again up at 4am, and heading out of town a bit before 6am. The main challenge would be the unknown amount of unpaved road (and its quality) that we would need to rumble through across the 50+ mile distance.

Much of the first ~20 miles was excellent; a few sections of gravel, but mostly a newly-paved road, with the bright-white fresh concrete of the drainage channels indicating that this was part of the major project to pave the entire route between Ilave and Mazocruz, that then stalled out several years ago (reading through government press-releases is part of the research I did for this route).

After that, we began to hit “paved” sections that were massively deteriorated (possibly left unmaintained for years in anticipation of an imminent rebuilding that never happened). The variability was frustrating: we would get through a rough section, then hit something quite smooth, crank our speed back up to 13mph, excited that we’d have half-a-mile of easy riding again. But then in less than 100 yards, what had appeared smooth from a distance would suddenly reveal itself to actually be another field of potholes, forcing us to get on the brakes and bump our way through at 7mph.

I had actually compiled a list from Street/Satellite View of the mileage points where “paved” seemed to switch to “gravel” (and vice-versa). It turned out that our on-the-ground experience with the “paved” sections were significantly worse than the 3-year-old images had suggested, so I thought that maybe the “gravel” would actually be the better surface. No such luck however; washboards, hard rocks, and loose stones made the never-paved sections significantly-slower than even the formerly-paved sections.

After lunch, we entered the day’s highlight, a two-mile canyon lined with fins, buttes, and towers. Once again it exemplified the impossible surplus of natural wonders that Peru is blessed with, by not even having a name, a sign, or anything, while in the US it would have been declared a National Park 100 years ago. Whenever the road does finally get paved, the couple of properties nestled amongst the fins are sitting on a goldmine that they should at a minimum be able to convert into a profitable shop selling drinks to all the new visitors.

It’s too bad that we didn’t have time to explore around the towers of stone, but we had a lot more riding to do (also we stupidly hadn’t brought along enough supplies to allow us to camp nearby, which might have been the better choice!) iOverlander reported a hospedaje in Conduriri, a town ~10 miles before Mazocruz, and I revealed this option to Rett halfway through our ride once it had become clear that conditions were worse than expected. The only reason I had been targeting Mazocruz to begin with was that the good stopping points along the route were few and widely-spaced, and so stopping in Conduriri would just make the next day a lot harder. But at this point, stopping earlier than expected and then doing just ten miles to Mazocruz tomorrow (which still might take two hours!) felt like the best decision.

So I was surprised and amazed at Rett’s physical and emotional strength when we arrived to Conduriri and found the hospedaje to no longer be in business. She didn’t even want to inquire around about other options (we didn’t see any on our ride along the main highway), and instead we just bought some drinks from a restaurant (where all the other guests, and the owner, were laughing at surprise and amazement at the tall strange gringo who had wandered in) and then pressed on.

To start we were granted nearly a mile of smooth road that we could easily cruise along on, but then conditions deteriorated once again (I had long ago assumed “crappy gravel” would be the standard, so every section of undecayed asphalt, or decently-smooth gravel we encountered actually felt like a surprise bonus). The expected afternoon headwinds had also descended upon us (actually more in the form of gusty crosswinds), and while they added to the struggle, when you’re going slow due to the road surface anyway, the winds don’t actually slow you too much more. It took us 1h40m of wall-time to cover those last 9.5 miles, and a nomadacy-record 6h51m of pedaling time for the whole day, but given our 5:47am start, we still made it to our destination before 3:30pm.

There is one seemingly-nice hotel in Mazocruz, but they reported being fully-booked until December when we messaged them (maybe housing a road construction crew or something like that), and the other hotel that the Internet knew about had pretty dreadful reviews. So when I spied the sign for an unknown “Hospedaje Bendiciones” down a side street, we went to check it out. They only had simple motel-style rooms with shared external bathrooms, but they seemed clean enough, had easy access with the bikes, a hot shower, and WiFi (none of seemed available at the “known” hotel), so we went for it, and after apologizing for mistakenly showing us a queen-bed room that was reserved, the teenage boy charged us only S/20 (~US$6) for a room with two single beds, a new world-record low!

So this is the remote, rural town in which we would be spending Halloween, road-beaten and exhausted. It’s one of our favorite holidays (to the point where Rett had wanted to stay in Cusco for two more weeks to celebrate there), leading her to feel particularly depressed that we were instead doing zero dressing up here. So when we wandered to the town plaza to find (a surprisingly good!) chifa dinner at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, I was pleasantly shocked to see that at least four groups of trick-or-treating kids (with varying costumes, but some carrying plastic jack-o-lanterns to collect candy) stopped by during our 30-minute stay. We’d learned that Halloween is a big deal in Cusco, but I’d had zero expectation that the American tradition would have filtered out to this Andean backwater! For Rett though, their appearance only reminded her of what she was missing.

Day 2

Surprisingly, it had actually taken a bit of work for me to convince Rett that we should spend a second night in Mazocruz to recover. And not because she wanted to get out of our bare-bones accommodation (which she was actually reasonably-pleased with), but because she was still feeling mentally and physically strong enough to ride again. The problem was that our only option after Mazocruz involved two more tough days of riding, with nothing but a wild camp and limited supplies in between, so this would be our only rest opportunity in what would otherwise be a stretch of four tough riding days.

So we would stay, but in discussing our additional night with the family, the father ended up charging us S/40, twice what we had paid his son yesterday, after a confusing discussion (entirely due to our poor Spanish) about whether we needed to move to the queen-bed room, or had the option to move to the queen-bed room. We didn’t really know if we were staying or moving, or how much it was costing until we got change back, but it turned out we were staying, and I think the difference was because the son charged us as if we were one person (since we indicated we’d squeeze into the one twin-sized bed), while the father charged us for both beds (even if we’d wanted to sleep separately, the second bed was a collapsed joke, while the one we snuggled in together was wonderfully firm and flat). Still, “twice the price” is ~US$12, so a total non-issue!

For some reason, Mazocruz, at 13,000 ft., is significantly colder than Ilave despite being only 500 ft. higher, reliably dropping below freezing every night. But our simple room in a single-story motel-like strip was actually much-better-suited to handle the cold than a “standard” Peruvian building is, because it could catch full sun throughout the day and get quite warm inside, with the brick/concrete hanging on to some of that heat. And like several other places recently on the Altiplano, the bed came equipped with four of the universal heavy wool blankets (in addition to flannel sheets and comforter), which in total becomes literally difficult to lift, and feels like a lead X-ray protector when laid atop your body.

Last night’s restaurant search showed that choices were limited, but we discovered the town’s market to be bustling in the morning (maybe because it was Saturday?) Shops were bringing whole alpaca skins from inside to make massive piles in the streets, something we hadn’t seen even a hint of anywhere else, and it was unclear what they were being sold for. We still had our usual problems finding breakfast, but with some smiling encouragement from another customer, Rett was willing to try a stall serving chicharrón. I thought it was really good (especially the tiny round potatoes that were a variety new to us), though she was less-satisfied. Interestingly, they served us our tomato/onion salads on separate plates, whereas everyone else had them piled on top. Knowledge that gringos have concerns about eating raw vegetables in Peru? Seems very unlikely since almost no gringos ever come to Mazocruz, and we haven’t gotten such treatment even in far more-touristy places, but “we’ll treat these foreigners better than our locals” (the only other explanation I can think of) feels unlikely too. For drinks, we were in the same boat as everyone else, served a “water balloon” of tea (poured, late into our meal, in a plastic bag and tied off), though ours also came on a plate rather than just being dropped on the table! A couple minutes of observation revealed that biting off a corner and sucking it down is the solution to the puzzle.

Ever since we’ve hit the Altiplano, Rett has been in love with the voluminous, pleated, and decorated skirts worn by the women in this region, so we spent some time browsing the fashion stalls of the market before picking up groceries (broccoli, quinoa, cheese) for the meals that we would (pre-)cook back in our room.

But we went back out for dinner. The place where we had gotten chifa last night (noodles, with small pieces of chicken and beef(!), with some vegetables mixed in) had been a blessing, since it had been a long time since we’d had chifa, with us having become quite sick of “pollerias” (serving mainly roasted or fried chicken) recently. But it was closed, leaving a polleria as the only option, though their menu outside advertised hamburgers (which we also haven’t had in a long time) and other options. Thus it was sadly hilarious when we walked in, said “lo siento, hablo poco español…”, and before we could even ask what was actually available, an older woman at a table behind us somehow anticipated and dejectedly uttered a single word: “pollo.” As if she was just as unhappy about the sole option as we have been! Well, pollo it is then, and thankfully they were happy to serve us at all, since they started closing up at 6pm(?) One of our plates was charged at S/15 and the other at S/10, presumably because they had different chicken parts, and that was all they had left.