May 15, 2025
Day 2: Prickers
Bike time: 8:30am - 5:30pm
Where to begin. We’ll start with the hard and end with the good. Up until 5pm, things were feeling good. Right now, we are feeling a little anxious about our bike. We had two tire punctures today: one in the front early in the day and one in the rear later in the day. Took awhile but the sealant was able to seal the punctures, so we didn’t completely flat. We didn’t bring a spare tire (we do have two spare tubes), and we don’t know if it’s possible to get one on route. So we are hoping our tires hold up the rest of the route! They were fairly new when we started.
We arrived in a small town (Llipa) around 5pm and couldn’t decide if we wanted to sleep inside or continue camping (Decisions are hard for us! And they often take a lot of energy). Luckily, we were able to grab a few snacks from a small shop (tienda). The sweet man running the shop even gave us an avocado for free! It was not obvious what the conditions would be like if we slept inside or if there would be any meals in town so we decided to keep rolling and camp past town. A few minutes after we started descending from town, we heard a pssssss sound. It was the rear tire this time, dang it. What are we doing wrong? Maybe the tires were over-inflated after all? It took awhile but we got the puncture to seal. We walked down 50 meters to the next switchback (note, this is a loooooong descent) and decided to set up camp a little bit off the road. We were tired and just ready to have dinner. It wasn’t the best camp spot, but it would do. We still had beautiful views of the valley! After eating tuna and ramen for dinner (yay salt and a working lighter!), Erin crawled into the tent and yelled “ow!!”. Megan replied, “What??” Turns out we pitched our tent on a bed of teeny prickers. We were worried they would pop our sleeping pads, and we’d had enough punctures for the day! After weighing our options we decided to move the tent slightly and lay our rain gear and dry bags down underneath the tent for added protection.
So, that was the hard part of the day: all in the evening, when you’re already hungry and tired. Now, back to the pre-5pm day. It was a beautiful morning! We woke up to a slightly frozen tent and bicycle bags but it was warm in our tent and warm once the sun came out. Once we got on the bike, we had a small amount of climbing, which led us to a view of a beautiful valley with hugeeee mountains. The type of mountains where you look at your current elevation and think, “If I’m at 13,000 feet, how tall is THAT?!”
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We descended into the first town of the day and the flowers were gorgeous! It was like this most of the day — weaving through small remote villages and riding with stunning views of the valley below and colorful flowers next to us. Each town had an almost identical looking town square, surrounded by colorful buildings.
There were animals on the loose everywhere - both inside and outside of towns. Donkeys, pigs (and piglets!), sheep, and dogs.
A highlight of the day was interacting with an older Peruvian woman, who was very nonchalantly holding a chicken - a chicken that was likely going to become dinner. We couldn’t communicate much, but like our friend Steve told us, everyone wants to know which town we are coming from and which town we are going to. In this case, we told the woman we were coming from Conococha and going to Llipa. After our interaction, we hit the road to continue our descent to Llipa - everyone was out herding their sheep and cows for the evening. So cool to get a small glimpse into the lives of the Peruvian people who live in these small mountain villages - they truly live in harmony with the land.
Today's ride: 47 miles (76 km)
Total: 102 miles (164 km)
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You are having SUCH fun!! Keep on.
1 month ago