47.5 mi / 8.7 mph / 2141 ft. climbing
Home: Hostal Mokara

Camping inside the stone hut at Calachaca Hot Spring worked just as well as we’d hoped. Perhaps some of its relative-warmth last evening was due to the sun’s energy stored in the stone walls, because by morning it had dropped to 34°F at the head of our tent, which has near the open doorway. But at the foot, next to the small pool where the hot spring water emerges, it was 45-50°F, so the “boiler” definitely had an effect. And even 34°F was quite a contrast from outside, where it was only 22°F! (and that reading came from Rett’s handlebar-mounted bike computer, which was just a few feet above the edge of the main hot-water pool, so it might have been even a few degrees colder than that. We’ve never camped in temperatures that far below freezing, so the hut definitely saved us!

No one else visited our “estate” overnight or through the morning, and it was again a luxury to have unlimited hot water available to wash up with (arsenic isn’t absorbed through skin, so as long as you don’t drink the water you’re fine. And otherwise it was clear and had no sulfurous or other odors). Less-luxurious was the labor involved in carrying all of our gear back up the 30 stairs to the parking lot. As acclimated as we are, at 14,000 feet it was still impossible to carry a load without pausing at least once on the way up.

And that was my (jacket’s) undoing. Carrying my bike up, hoisted on my shoulder, I was too exhausted to carefully lower it down when I reached the top and instead gravity yanked it out of my grasp. One of the sharp cut-off zip ties that holds our bike pump to my frame caught the back of my upper arm and I heard the terrible ripping sound of my jacket being eviscerated. White puffs of down came drifting by in the breeze like super-slow-mo droplets of blood in an action movie, and I clamped my hand down over the cut and stumbled back to the shelter of our hut as if it was my own flesh that had been wounded. I just got this Cumulus down jacket new from Poland as we prepared for Peru, and I love it far more than my old Arc’teryx one, so if not my flesh, at least my heart was actually wounded. But we had yet another day of tough riding ahead, so there was no time for careful repairs (and even in the windless hut, the down was still determined to escape). I quickly slapped a patch of GearAid tape over the perpendicular tear lines (designed and carried for this exact purpose), and saved the mourning for night.

We heaved our now-loaded bikes up the steep sandy access path, and then hopped aboard as it leveled out. Rett showed that she still remembered the sand-riding skills she had newly-developed yesterday on the half-mile ride to connect to the “real” gravel road. And yes, the gravel was quite good, far better than the sandy desert route we rode/pushed in on yesterday. For continuing (or coming from the) southwest, the gravel is the direct route; if coming in from the northeast, it adds 4 miles over the direct route, but now we could see that likely would have been a worthwhile price to pay. It might not have gotten us to the hot spring any faster (the extra 400-foot hill must be accounted for), but it likely would have been easier. Which in turn would have prevented the extra delay (and fear and exhaustion) from yesterday’s sand-induced separation-and-search!

None of the days on this traverse are easy, but unlike yesterday’s ride where all the challenges were saved for the end, today’s work was heavily front-loaded. And that’s not even talking about the wild-camp morning or the unpaved start. Showing the diversity of nemeses on this Ilave-Tacna route, today it’s actually when the pavement returns that things get hard, because this ride’s “highlight” is a climb to 15,750 ft., a level we haven’t reached since Pastoruri Glacier, two-and-a-half months ago.

The end of the day should be easy, with a vertical-mile descent down to 10,000 feet. But including that massive downward slide in our elevation profile obscures the fact that our first “little bump” this morning is in fact an increasingly-aggressive 1200-foot climb. We were able to attack the first half of it with decent success, but the mountain’s stout three-pronged defense (gusty headwinds, 6-9% grade, and limited oxygen) meant we were reduced to slowly trudging up the final 600 feet, pushing our bikes for the final two miles to our last highest point in Peru (or likely ever?!)

The struggle and time it took for us to cross the first pass left us reasonably-terrified of the second one, even though it was less than half the height. But a simultaneous lowering of all three defenses made it almost…easy? Most-minor, but still not nothing, us that we had an extra 250 feet of oxygen at the lower summit. Then, the grade was much easier, never exceeding 4%, far more-engineered with some switchbacks that started nearly feeling unnecessary! And finally, rather than the headwinds expectedly increasing as the day wore on, they diminished to a non-factor, either because we were protected by the slopes as the road wound up the mountain, or just because Peru figured we deserved a break.

From our second summit, we began our huge descent, first in fits and starts for 8 miles, and then in earnest. But from the very beginning (and even the second climb), it was clear that the road builders had a very different philosophy than the “tough guys” who built the road that blasted up to the first pass. It was almost bizarre how they limited themselves to such an accommodating slope (around 4%); the switchbacks were like nothing we’ve encountered in Peru, averaging half a mile between the ~50 gentle hairpins spread out lazily across the mountainside. The unspooled road ran for 23 miles into Tarata from the point where we first glimpsed the bottom of the valley just 6 crow-flies miles away!

When scouting this multi-day route, I had StreetViewed a section of agricultural terraces stepping between switchbacks. I’d thought that was today’s route, but obviously this mountainside was dry-ass desert so I must have confused it with tomorrow. But no, suddenly those terraces appeared, fed by an extensive network of concrete canals (some in the process of being poured) that must tap off from a river/aqueduct before it carries on to Tacna.

We knew we’d be able to make it through two tough days of riding with a wild camp in between, because Tarata would be the biggest bit of civilization since departing Lake Titicaca. Though the two nice hotels (kiddie-corner from each other) turned out to actually be an outlier. There were a couple of not-exciting restaurants on the main plaza, and so the best alternative we could find was an indoor food cart, where a woman cooked us up some good smash-style hamburgers with fries on her portable griddle/fryer in the entrance to the small dining room with a few tables. The two bodegas were very non-gringo-style, and the mercado, while conveniently steps from our hotel, was rather sad and empty.

Still, we were able to get everything we needed, so taking a rest night before the final ride of our traverse felt like a good idea. On our second night, we were shocked to learn that the “Apacheta” craft beer advertised and sold in our hotel lobby was not only from this small town that doesn’t even have a pizza restaurant (though I think it’s produced in Tacna), but it was excellent too! Rett got a Eucalyptus Honey, and I randomly picked “muña”, which turns out to be an Andean herb in the mint family, which went perfectly with my Oreo cookies. It made no sense at all (who besides gringos, who never come to this town, would have an interest in strange craft beer?!), so we just gratefully took it as another gift from Peru.