The good shower and good dinner last night in our Huancarama hotel room had lulled us into a false sense of civilization. Because at 4am this morning, nothing came out of the bathroom faucet regardless of how many times we reflexively turned the knob. Shit. I knew I should have filled up our 10L bladder Read more…

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 Read more…

The Peruvian Andes have no shortage of big climbs, but we’re currently in a 350-mile stretch where the elevation profile does little beyond climbing 6,000 to 7,000 feet to a pass, and then descending the same amount. We’ve completed two such ascents, and will finish with two more, but this middle one we’re climbing the Read more…

The violent storm ended at 8:30 last night, and perfect calm reigned after that. So calm that we woke to the inside of the tent being soaked, and a dense blanket of fog deadening the outside world. Before I could even get out to get started on breakfast, rain returned with exquisitely bad timing, and Read more…

We exited our hotel in search of breakfast before most of the rest of Chincheros had roused themselves (again leaving through a locks-from-the-inside door and hoping someone will have unlocked it by the time we want to get back in!) But one worker had stumbled out to open up our new favorite D’Mabeli, probably just Read more…

It was time for another of our early mornings: awake at 4am, breakfast in our hotel room, and rolling by 6:30am. And the reason was the same as usual: we would be dropping further into the valley, to a level where it becomes hot and buggy, and then climbing back out, so the earlier we Read more…