June 5, 2025
Day 23: Epic descent!
3346 feet of vert
Sleeping inside in Totos at 10,800 ft
Today, we descended about 7,000 feet! It was a glorious paved descent with many many switchbacks.
But, let’s start with the morning. Like most mornings camping above 14,000 ft, we woke up to a frosty tent. Neither of us have been sleeping too well at altitude so we were awake before the sun rose and started to make some coffee to drink inside the tent as it got light out. After our typical breakfast routine, we started to pack up and luckily caught a bit of the morning sun to warm us up and let our things dry out a bit. The nights are quite cold here, but as soon as the sun hits, everything is better! We started climbing right away, per usual. We were going up our last 16,000 ft pass of the route! It was steep and hard at times, but paved, so felt more manageable! We reached the top and immediately put on layers, but took a moment to appreciate the views and how far we have come. There were many times earlier this trip that we wanted to quit or that we thought we might be forced to bail due to bike issues, but we made it here—the last time we will be above 16,000 ft, and above 15,000 ft for that matter, for the rest of the route! Holy cow!
Now it was time for a long descent—we would go from 16,200 ft to about 9,900 ft. There are some undulations in there for those of you doing the math and saying that is not 7,000. The first part of the descent was epic! The narrow road followed a ridge line and took us past beautiful alpine lakes, red dirt mountains, animals roaming the hillside and eventually down to a BUNCH of switchbacks. It felt like we had the road and the beauty all to ourselves, as we saw very few cars and people (minus the two cars who came quickly around the switchback without honking…scary!).
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We took these switchbacks down to the town of Paras (cute and lively town!) where we stopped for lunch around 11am. We got fried eggs and bread from a local restaurant and then ate some fruit (bananas and oranges) in the town plaza.
Many people came over to talk to us. It’s fun to interact with locals, but sometimes we don’t like the attention—particularly when middle-aged men stare or ask us how much our bike costs or ask for a photo with us. But these were lovely interactions today! We spent about half an hour sitting on a plaza bench, conversing with an 18 and 19 year old girl, one of whom had an adorable 6 month old baby. The 19 year old wanted to take a picture of us with her baby (we did) and wanted to know all sorts of things—what fruit is in the US? What currency does the US use? Does Megan have a mom? A dad? Siblings? Does Erin? They wanted to know if we were single—we said yes for simplicity sake. Didn’t want too many things to get lost in translation. Eventually there was a whole horde of 5 or 6 Peruvian women - with their beautiful floral hats and skirts - listening in on the conversation, all of us just gathered around the plaza bench.
After lunch, we were ready to hit the road again. Our front tire has been getting a little soft over time, so we added some air and headed off for the last 13 miles of the day. In our search for a bike pump (inflador) in the next town, we had an uncomfortable interaction with another older man. He was slurring his words and asking us for money. We left promptly and resorted to hand pumping our front tire. We climbed another ~1200 ft to the town we were staying in for the evening (Totos) and arrived to town around 3pm. We washed our bike shorts, hung up our wet tent and sleeping bags/pads from the frosty night and showered - a hot shower! We did some food shopping for tomorrow’s biking and then went out to dinner: fried rice and french fries from the restaurant next door.
We are happy to have somewhere to sleep inside, charge our electronics and stay warm for a nice change. The nights don’t feel as long inside and with electricity :)
Today's ride: 43 miles (69 km)
Total: 676 miles (1,088 km)
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