June 6, 2025
Day 24: Fake pavement
~6000 ft of vert
Sleeping inside in the town of Chuschi at 10,200ft
Today we climbed and climbed some more. And then descended. And then climbed. And then descended. And then climbed and then descended and descended just to end up back a little lower than we started. Sounds like a pretty typical day on the Peru Great Divide!
But first, we soaked in the gloriousness of sleeping inside and below 14,000 ft! And how glorious it was. We didn’t wake up to a frosty tent and damp sleeping bags. We didn’t have to freeze our fingers off trying to get the water to boil in our stove for coffee. Best of all, we were able to sleep pretty well through the night! Happily rested, we enjoyed our typical morning routine inside and even got to eat fresh fruit (bananas and oranges) with breakfast! We picked up a little more Sporade (Peru’s version of Gatorade?) on our way out of town as we started to climb. We had about 4,000 vertical feet over the next 10ish miles this morning. But, it was paved switchbacks and beautiful! It was a fairly enjoyable, albeit long climb. We wound our way up and out of town until town disappeared into the valley. We biked past cows and their owners, just sitting in the fields, watching their animals. We stopped for snacks where we learned the Spanish words for the 7 semillas (seeds) of the bar we ate— Linaza is flaxseed, girasol is sunflower, ajonjolí is sesame seed, cebada is barley and of course, chia is chia! Kiwicha is something we are still trying to figure out. Google translate doesn’t work for the word and the internet tells us it is grain amaranth? Anyways it looks to be a beautiful plant!
We biked up past the river that feeds into the valley and eventually reached a large plateau around 14,700ft. Due to the pavement, it only took us about 2.5 hours to climb the 4,000 ft!
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We descended to another river valley where we stopped for lunch—peanut butter and jelly with granola in tortillas! Yum! Because we are rationing our peanut butter—it is hard to find in Peru—our last wrap was a new concoction! We put a packet of mayonnaise and mustard and chips in it! Turned out to be pretty good and a nice savoury addition.
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We grabbed some emergency water to put in our filter from the river, but we are trying really hard to not drink from any rivers with animals nearby. It’s really hard to do here in Peru because the animals are everywhere! Mostly we try to stick to bottled water or sports drinks because that feels safest, but it’s good to have extra water in case of emergency that we could filter if needed. After lunch dessert, we started to climb some more. It’s fun to see the sporadic people around—on this part of the climb, we saw the usual Peruvian woman roaming the hillside with her animals, and we also saw 2 kids get dropped off in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, but we eventually saw a house. After reaching the top of this climb, we descended again.
This time, we had a decision to make. The official Peru Great Divide route took a right onto a side gravel road that cut off from the main road. Since the main road had been pavement up until this point and also went to the town of Chuschi, we assumed it would be paved all the way. When we arrived to this side road, we were sad to get off the pavement. We still had about 23 miles left in the day, including a nearly 4,000 ft descent. We were debating taking the main road to make it quicker and less hard on our bike, but ultimately decided to stick on route. A few minutes into this gravel, we were regretting that decision. It was not really “gravel,” rather a “rock road” aka terrible chunky gravel. We kept going for a bit, trying to not look back at our decision, but eventually we pulled over. This was not what we wanted. We are running out of front brake pads and don’t have any replacements—we are really hoping they can last for the next week left of potential riding. Also, we only have one untouched spare tube. Needless to say, we made the tough decision to turn around and climb back up the 500 ft we just descended to take the main road—we thought this would help prolong our chances of our bike continuing to function. On the climb back up, a middle school age boy on a bicycle was “racing us”. When we reached our turn off, he kept on going, pedalling up the hill to our left. Impressive! Perks of living at 14,000 ft—you got lungs of steel!
We descended the main road to a right turn, only to find—this main road was no longer paved! It was also gravel. Sad because we skipped a real section of the route only to have this section be gravel as well. Although perhaps still a little bit smoother? This was hard for us because the decision to take the slight detour was challenging. The decision brought up questions such as, What does it mean to have done the Peru Great Divide? Should we always stick to route? What does it mean to be a completionist? How much will the chunky gravel put our bike in danger of getting a mechanical? Weighing the pros and cons was hard. Ultimately, we feel good with our choice. Out here, you just make the best decisions with the information you have at the time. We are still learning and we are trying to hold compassion for ourselves and not frequently look back at our decisions with regret. It’s all for fun anyways!
Anyways, on the climb up this “main” road, we encountered a huge stuck truck! It took a turn too sharp and couldn’t make it. There were many guys trying to dig it out. Luckily, there was just enough space for us take our bike through with the pannier bags off.
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3 weeks ago
A few miles after this episode, we pulled over for a snack break! Megan was almost in tears because sometimes it’s hard to remember to snack enough. Even when you do snack a lot, it’s still not always enough! Erin pulled out a bag of Lays—Megans favorite, a sleeve of ritz crackers and some chocolate cookies! A good stoker always keeps lots of snacks at the ready for her captain. After the snacks, we finished our last climb of the day! Then we descended chunky rocky terrible gravel for 4,000 ft. So much for what we thought was going to be a smooth paved descent. It was a good thing we were well-snacked and took another chip break partway down because the descent was hard. Fortunately, Megan is a very skilled captain and at this point, has lots of experience handling the tandem on challenging descents. She is careful, thoughtful and methodical. We made it safely down to the town of Chuschi, our destination for the day, around 4:30. Town is beautiful and lively! There is a lovely garden and lots of tiendas with fruit, vegetables, cookies and snacks. We found a place to stay (30 soles for a matrimonial which is about 10 US$) and picked up some cookies and oranges for immediate snacking.
We went out to dinner again-more fried rice—and bought some more food for tonight and tomorrow. We are again happy to have electricity and a bed. No hot showers or wifi but wet wipes and free international data with T-mobile can make up for those :)
Today's ride: 43 miles (69 km)
Total: 719 miles (1,157 km)
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It's Erik Johnson. Wow! What an adventure! I loved binging your posts this morning. You're doing amazing and your writing is a pleasure to read! I laughed, I teared up, and I am inspired. Thank you! Safe and fun travels! Looking forward to seeing you both when you get back.
3 weeks ago