May 17, 2025
Day 4: Burping up chicken (pollo) on a climb
Camping at 13,700 ft
Left camp around 7:30am and we arrived around 5pm (with a long break in Cajatambo)
~6600 ft of climbing
We woke up around 5:45am and had a lovely morning drinking coffee, washing our clothes in the agua caliente of the hot springs, and eating oatmeal at a table.
We started biking around 7:30am. Today’s ride: all road climbing. We kept climbing and climbing and climbing all the way to the town of Cajatambo. It felt like we could see the valley wake up in the morning. It was overcast at first, but all the fog started to lift as time went on and we could see the magnitude of the peaks towering around us. Some clouds stayed in certain parts while others cleared. We were passed by a few cars and motorbikes, but generally the road was quiet and peaceful. Except for the rockfall. One section in particular was currently undergoing rockfall. Water was rushing down, bringing with it flying pebbles and hunks of larger rock onto the road. We waited for it to calm down and then scurried quickly across, holding our breath and hoping for the best. We eventually made our way to Cajatambo, arriving around lunchtime. We wandered through the streets, asking for spare bike tubes (cámaras) or tires (llantas). Everyone was very nice and everyone thought that someone else would have it. Turns out there were no 29 inch tubes in Cajatambo that we could find. We got a name of a guy who said he would drive us to Oyon if our tubes punctured and we needed help while we were biking. Megan reached out to a South America bikepacking Whatsapp community to see what people suggested. One girl said she was coming our direction and had an extra 29” tube. Feeling emboldened by the pavement, the promise of another bikepacker coming our way and cars that semi-frequently drive this road, we decided to keep going and camp somewhere further up the road to make more progress to Oyon. We figured we could most easily reach Huacho—a place with a bike shop— from Oyón. Needing to charge things and wanting a real meal-we settled on eating lunch in the Huayhash hotel restaurant in Cajatambo. We first bought some dinner food, more cookies and crackers and toilet paper from a tienda - essentials! Then we headed to the restaurant. We ordered one dish of chicken, fries and rice and another dish of chicken fried rice. It’s a challenge thinking about what you can and can’t eat here. We are hoping for the best that this food will treat our tummies okay. It’s really easy to get in your head about food and sickness.
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After spending some of lunch thinking through options one more time and doing more bike shop research, we eventually headed out for some more climbing. We continued biking, into the cloud covered mountains, crossing our fingers for no punctured tubes. We couldn’t see where we were going, but we knew it was up. We were burping up our chicken lunch most of the foggy climb. We had to stop so Megan could have a short cry break - a lot of overwhelming emotions coming out. It’s too hard to cry and bike when you’re pedaling uphill at 12,000 feet.
We climbed until we made it to the water source we were looking for and found a spot to pitch our tent on semi flat ground. Only covered in small animal poop—better than big animal poop!
We pitched the tent, Megan got water while Erin took a lay down break in the tent (needing to recover from an unhappy chicken-burping tummy). Then we made ramen (3rd night in a row) for dinner. However tonight we had some new yummy chocolate and Oreos to accompany it! Yum! We will try to head to Oyon tomorrow and then make our way down to a bike shop to give our tires some much needed TLC.
Overall, it was a good day! And also a hard day. Sensing a theme of the adventure so far? Good and hard. The hard: decision-making. Should we take a shuttle to the bike shop today or bike further, hope our tires make it, and take a shuttle tomorrow? If we keep biking, will it rain? Where will we camp? Where is water? Not only is making a decision hard - so is leaning into the decision once it is made, accepting it and moving forward. It’s so easy to look back and regret a decision. “We should have taken that shuttle to the bike shop after all.” It’s so easy to blame ourselves for decisions that, truly, have no right or wrong answer. The truth is, we don’t know what the outcome of a different decision would have been. Adventures like this are hard because they challenge you to think on your feet with limited resources - in this case, limited access to cell service, bike shops, and the Spanish language. It’s so hard to know what is right when you don’t have all the answers. Do you go with your gut? Do you go with the “safest” option? Do you remain optimistic and take a risk?
Our decision to keep going may have been riskier: we had no spare tubes if something happened to our tire. But part of the decision felt right. Is that enough of a reason to do something? You could say today’s decision was a “good” one because things ended up going okay and we made it safely to a place to camp with water. Or maybe it just worked out. We will never know. We have to keep challenging ourselves to look ahead rather than look back. When you’re traveling on a bike in a foreign country, you don’t - and can’t - have all the answers. It wouldn’t be an adventure if you did.
Today's ride: 32 miles (51 km)
Total: 160 miles (257 km)
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