May 26, 2025
Day 13: Broth!
~5500 ft of vert
7.5 hours from hostel to camp
Camped at ~13,500 ft
Like most days so far, day 13 started with coffee and oats. This time, on the floor of the municipal building and with some real bananas mixed in too! We have added our green juice into the daily regimen to get needed nutrients from fruits and veggies. We are also taking daily probiotics now to try to keep our tummies happy and strong. We are very happy we packed pepto bismal tabs and probiotics from home so we had them at the ready.
We packed up and headed out around 8am for what was going to be our longest day of climbing since getting sick. First we had the last bit of busy road descent which led us right to a big, impassable by bike, pit of mud at our turn off. Luckily the gal Emily that we met last week had given us some tips on how to handle it—follow the railroad. It was scary to have to take railroad tracks across a bridge but we made it across! We were off on our climb. We meandered up, through the typical changing vegetation. We enjoy noticing how the vegetation changes consistently every 1000 ft or so. We made our way through some small towns, past some mining and only had a handful of barking dogs today. This part of the route is the “select route” of the Peru Great Divide and we could notice that we felt more in the big mountains. By the end of the climb, we got up close and personal with the snowy peaks that were just in the distance at the beginning of the day.
This climb was manageable for the first half, but had fairly steep and challenging sections in the second half. The steep sections at altitude were hard for us to bike, so we ended up pushing our bike some to catch our breath. In typical Peru fashion, clouds were building all morning. Our goal was to go slow and steady, but fast enough to beat the weather. We had a campsite in mind about 9 miles after descending after the pass. After reaching the pass, we were right next to the most amount of snow we have seen yet! There were also huge glaciers lining the peaks to our left. It was cold and beautiful!
Weather was coming in, per usual, as it started to rain and hail just a bit. Like nearly all the passes around here, we put on ALL of our layers and didn’t stay too long. We headed down the other side, into a beautiful valley lined with mountain streams. There was lots of water everywhere. We winded our way down the other side, trying to thread the needle between storms. Our gloves still wet from yesterday’s riding.
About an hour and a half later, we made it to our campsite for the night. This gave us time to set up the tent and cook in the light. Tonight’s dinner was gourmet- so it took a little longer to cook! We had pasta with red sauce and boiled carrots with garlic and oregano. Wow! It only took us about an hour to cook it. We also created a delicious carrot garlic pasta water that we happily drank instead of draining! Yum, we made ourselves a broth! We enjoyed the meal AND we still cannot wait for pesto pasta and sausage at home! There are a lot of things that we keep dreaming of—fresh strawberries and yogurt and frothed milk and cinnamon and waffles and ice cream. Lucky for us, our friend Linn gave us a freeze dried ice cream sandwich before we left for this trip which we happily enjoyed in the tent at the end of the day. Thanks Linn!
We listened to a dirtbag diaries podcast in the tent and are headed to bed before another day on the Peru Great Divide!
Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 355 miles (571 km)
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1 month ago