June 18, 2025
Day 29: The finish but not the end
~2800 feet of vert
Sleeping on the 17 hour bus ride to Lima ;-)
We woke up at 5am for our last day on the Peru Great Divide. Like all mornings, our morning started with coffee. But this time, we drank it out of a real mug - how glorious! We’ve just been using reusable plastic backpacking bowls for everything: breakfast, coffee, dinner. We had breakfast and coffee in the adorable kitchen that’s part of the hospedeje we were staying it. It was decorated with fun and colorful Peruvian flare.
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After packing up the bike, we rolled out of town at 6:20am. We didn’t have too much mileage or vertical today: about 30 miles and under 3000 feet of climbing, which we thought we could finish by 12pm. Turns out those final 30 miles were all pavement and a smooth gradient, so they went by fairly quickly! The ride felt special, and also emotional - like everything we were seeing was the last time we’d see it. Goodbye alpacas. Goodbye barking dogs. Goodbye vacas (cows) in the road. Goodbye tiny farms. We climbed and climbed until we descended. It’s wild how fast scenery and flora and fauna can change here. The foliage at 13000 feet is so different than 11000 or 9000 feet. As we descended from 13,000 feet, things got greener, trees started to appear, and we could see the crevice of the deep valley below us inching closer. People say the first half of the route is the prettiest, but this second half of the route has also been stunning and moving in its own unique way. Less alpine scenery, but more cacti and trees and villages and kind Peruvian people.
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We stopped for our last fruit stop in the town of Sañayca, the final town on the official route. We enjoyed bananas and oranges in the town square (looking back, we wish we counted how many town squares we passed through on this trip!), and then we started to roll again. We only had five more miles until the official end of the route. Then we were planning on hitching a ride to the town of Abancay, where we’d take a 10pm bus to Lima.
Well, let’s just say nothing is easy on this route. There is something everyday that challenges you - whether it be a steep, loose pass, a soft front tire, or clouds when you’re so cold and you need the sun to be out. Today, our challenge came with two miles to go until the end of the route, when the bike started feeling wobbly. “Erin, are you standing up?” asked Megan, thinking that’s why the bike felt a little wobbly. “Nope,” she said. “Stopping,” said Megan, as she quickly came to a halt on the descent. She peered at the back tire: flat. Hissing air flat. Dang - that trusty back tire! It’s been so good to us! The tire was definitely on its last legs, it’s tread very worn down, making it more prone to a flat. It was somewhat comical and felt symbolic of this trip as a whole and the challenges we have faced the past 29 days. Two miles to go and we flat - I mean, you can’t make that up! We were in good spirits, mostly because we had a grande inflador so we knew it wouldn’t take long to change our tube. In fact, it took about 25 minutes and we were off again, winding down our final two miles to the river below. Megan challenged Erin to try and help more with this one. Usually, Megan takes the lead on the bike mechanicals, but this was a chance for Erin to test what she had learned. She proudly helped change the flat! Early on in the trip when we decided we couldn’t go tubeless, we had said that we’d go as far as our four spare tubes took us. And today, we put in our fourth and final tube, which took us to mile 940, the end of the route. How perfect is that. Despite the challenges we’ve faced, we have also faced a string of good fortune and good luck that helped us reach the very end.
We crossed the “finish” — mile 940. It was anticlimactic to say the least. The finish was just the intersection of two roads: the road we descended and a busier, two lane road that went to Abancay in one direction and Nazca in the other. It was quiet, with nobody nearby except two people across the road sitting at a bus stop. It’s so interesting how the finish of a trip this big - this dynamic and complex and emotional and physical expedition we had — can just feel so….flat?? Our surroundings were the same. Of course there were no finish lines or people cheering. The finish was just the end of a line on a map — but really, it was a feeling inside of us that we had to process and feel about this journey being over. “So we’re done?” “This is it I guess.” A mix of emotions. It felt surreal. We hugged - a good long hug. We did it.
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2 weeks ago
Congrats on an epic accomplishment!
2 weeks ago
We were anxious to get to Abancay and knew that the processing of this trip couldn’t happen in 10 minutes, so we wanted to tackle our next goal: finding a ride to Abancay, appropriately 2 hours away. Megan looked across the street at the two people at the bus stop. It was a good sign there was a bus stop in the first place. “Are you waiting for a bus?” she asked in Spanish. “Yes, a small bus to Abancay,” they replied in Spanish. A small bus — we wondered what that meant, and more specifically, if such small bus could fit our bike. Through limited Spanish, it sounded like there were no specific bus stops and the bus would just pull over if you waved it down. With uncertainty as to how big the bus was and what time it was coming, we decided to bike two miles downhill to a town, where we thought it would be easier to hitch a ride to Abancay. We arrived in town about 10 minutes later and were searching for a good spot to hitch, when the small bus appeared and pulled off the road right behind us. The bus was a large van, similar to the one we took from Oyón to Huacho at the beginning of the trip. Thinking it was worth trying to see if the bus could take us, Megan walked over and asked about the bike. “Si!” The bike would go on the roof — a typical experience for us! We quickly removed all of our important bags and belongings from the bike and, with the help of the driver and a very nice older Peruvian gentleman, hoisted the bike very high to the roof of the big van. And then we were off! All of that happened in the span of approximately 20 minutes, from completing the route to getting us and our tandem onto the van. Drivers here are wild! If they don’t like the speed you are going, they will pass you — even if on a blind turn and even over solid lines. We wove our way along the windy roads all the way to Abancay. At one of our stops, two passengers in the car offered us some of the mandarins they just bought — very kind! When busses pull into towns, there are typically multiple people (typically women) on the side of the road trying to sell fruit and snacks and fried trout to passengers onboard the buses.
Around 1pm we finally arrived in Abancay, where we had help from some people nearby to lower our tandem off the roof of the car. The kindness and generosity of the Peruvian people continues. We then made our way through the chaos of town - via walking and riding — to the Cruz del Sur bus terminal, where they confirmed that yes, our bike would need to be in a box. Given we had nine hours until our bus left, we wanted to find a place to shower and store our stuff while we got everything we needed to wrap our bike and prepare for the 10pm bus. We got a small room at a hospedeje across the street from the bus terminal - super convenient. The owner of the hospedeje suggested some furniture stores where we might be able to find a large box for our bike. So, we were off again! Hustling down the streets of Abancay with our eyes peeled for large furniture stores and big pieces of cardboard. We were very hungry at this point and stopped for a quick meal (eggs, rice, and fried plantains) before continuing the box hunt. Alas, we found a TV and refrigerator store - PERFECT! The employee inside spoke English, so we were able to easily tell him what we wanted. Turns out, they didn’t have any empty boxes. He kindly escorted us to two more shops, which also didn’t have boxes. We felt disheartened but were trying to remain hopeful; there has got to be cardboard in this town! He suggested we try a transportation service store on the other side of town. It would be a long walk, so he helped us get into the right bus and told them where to let us off. The buses here are an experience - they are vans and a worker inside the van stands next to the door and slides it open and shut for passengers, while shouting — and sometimes it kind of sounds like singing - words we cannot understand. We finally got to the shop, which had some big pieces of cardboard that would be a good start. A few stores down, we were also able to find some flat, beat up motorbike boxes. We figured we could tape a bunch of the cardboard together and made our own tandem box. A man at the motorbike shopped helped us waive down a taxi, which transported us and a LOT of cardboard back to our hospedeje.
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Once there, we scurried to a hardware store to get some packing tape and zip ties. This day had lots of hustling if you can’t tell already! We ran around like chickens throughout town—swerving in between people and squealing to each other when we saw things we might need. With the packing materials we needed, we were ready to make the box and pack the bike, hopefully only in the span of a few hours.
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Well, turns out building a sturdy box of out of large pieces of scrap cardboard is tough. The owner of the hospedeje came down to the garage we were working in and suggested we “taco” the bike, essentially rolling it it in cardboard. The method didn’t sound like exactly what we wanted to do, plus we wanted to wrap the bike in some protective, cushioning wrap first. We thought the owner would leave to go do his own thing, but he stayed with us and helped with the bike from start to finish. And thank goodness he did! We do not think we would have been able to do it without him. With three people, multiple cardboard pieces, and lots of cellophane wrap, we were able to wrap the cardboard around the bike and create a box. It was around 7pm at this point.
The next hurdle was seeing if the bus company, Cruz del Sur, would accept it. Our bike made it from Lima to Huaraz at the beginning of the trip, but the box was bigger this time because we didn’t remove the rear wheel. When we walked up to the counter with the box, the agent stared at the box and then at us. “Too big,” he said. The bus was coming from Cuzco and already had luggage in it, so it was unlikely the box would fit with the other luggage under the bus. It would need to be shipped as cargo. Oh goodness — what does that even mean? Turns out Cruz del Sur sends boxes in trucks via cargo, and ours could go via cargo and arrive in Lima on Friday afternoon, one day after us. With our return flight to Denver on Saturday night, we felt vey uncomfortable and anxious about this option. There was little room for error. We asked if we could wait and see if the bike fit in the bus before shipping it as cargo. He agreed.
We left the bike at the terminal and went back to the hospedeje to shower, get dinner (more Chifa), and pack up our stuff before going back to the bus station around 9:30pm. We were anxiously waiting in the terminal for the bus, crossing our fingers the bike could fit onboard. The bus had arrived and we were waiting to board. Megan walked over to the counter, where the agent broke the news: the bike would not fit. It would be shipped as cargo. We were bummed but hopeful it would work out. There wasn’t much we could do. We put the AirTag in the box so we could track the bike, then we boarded the bus and began our 17 hour ride to Lima, leaving our sweet tandem bike behind. Despite being bike-less, it felt good to finally relax on the bus after a hectic afternoon.
Today's ride: 31 miles (50 km)
Total: 923 miles (1,485 km)
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2 weeks ago