May 20, 2025
Day 7: Too tired to write much
5000ft of climbing (steeeep gravel)
Camping at 13,600 ft
9 hours from camp to camp
Today we biked! Turns out having working tires still ain’t easy…the biking is hard! (And we did have to swap out our tube in the rear tire due to a slooooow leak).
After a cold, frozen, and frosty morning, we went up another high pass in the morning and descended through a mining area on the other side. We descended for a long time, eventually following a river down and down and down. This popped us out at hot springs—baños terminales —a popular tourist destination from what we could tell. Lucky for us there were picnic tables for us to eat lunch at and then blow up our rear tire with more air (slow leak). We kept biking down the road to the series of tiendas where we bought some crackers, water, chips, 4 bananas, and some more avocados. We ate two bananas each and some chips for second lunch and then continued our way down the river road until we started to climb again. This climb was steep and loose and hard. We followed it for a while.
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We have been learning that there may be bike pumps in town because people may use them for moto bikes. We stopped partway up a big climb because we thought our rear tire was soft and it was slowing us down and we wanted to change the tube. Out of nowhere, a moto bike goes by with—guess what—a bike pump on the back! Unfortunately he sped off into the distance by the time we realized we needed what he had. However, this gave us hope that if we made it 1 (steep) mile to the next town (Parquin), we could borrow a pump and this would make changing our tube much faster! We added a little bit of air in the meantime and then set off to town. In town, we asked everyone we could see if they had a “inflatador” and eventually 5 dudes pushing a car through town said they might. About 5 minutes later, a different guy on a motorbike returned with a pump for us to use! Hooray! He was very nice and we paid him 5 soles for letting us use his pump. We shook hands and he introduced himself at the beginning and end of our interaction. This was our quickest tire change yet.
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Little did we know, the steepest climbs of ours had yet to come. The road that goes through the town of Parquin is STEEP and not just like lowest gear on your bike steep, it is pushing our bike horizontally and heave and sigh steep. Eventually we made our way up the steep hills and up more steep hills and up more steep loose gravel towards what we hoped would be water to camp at. Lucky for us, we eventually found water right as it started to rain. We grabbed water, pitched our tent and buckled down for the evening, eating our usual dinner of ramen. This time with an avocado and crackers as a side.
Today's ride: 33 miles (53 km)
Total: 229 miles (369 km)
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