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Here are the relations from the two weeks of my trip to Peru, beginning with a few days in Lima then into the more formal, or not – let’s hope not, mountain biking tour. It’s ongoing until it ends, so it’s all a rough draft until it ends, unless I don’t update this part when it does, but then again all of life is a rough draft with no opportunity for second draft or even a finished one.
Check relations from the first 3 days in Lima before the meet up with the Sacred Rides gang.
day 1 – Arrival and shortly after a 5 hour food tour.
day 2 – Walking and flying over Lima. Including day 2 and 3 of the cat park.
day 3 – A walking tour of Lima.
day 4 – Lots of walking, coffee at Manolo for 2 hours, 3 hours at the cat park, 2 hours a Edo for sushi and the meet and greet at 6pm with fellow riders and guides.
6pm passed. Now it’s 6:30pm and we get a bit nervous. Did they forget us, are we meeting somewhere else? No. Only the usual traffic delayed the 6pm meeting by half an hour. Finally we meet up with Wayo and Xavier only to part ways quickly before we meet again for consumption of pisco and chicken in that mall in Miraflores by the ocean.
A great meet up for sure and great fun. Despite a group of only 4 people, including the guide I feel much more at ease than before.
We, Lonnie, Nancy and I walked back to the hotel from the restaurant to burn off some of that desert and pisco sugar. The extra streets we got lost on helped burn the calories off and burn the initial divide as I made a fool of myself. I had an excuse: so few people to talk to that understood me, or tried to besides the poor Peruvians who had to take my totally broken Spanish as anything but a squeal.
So here we are, the night before the first ride. If you read on, you’ll see how it went.
Pachacamac is about 40 kilometers south of Lima. 22km or riding with 500 meters of accent in the Lurin Valley.
22.8 Km and 532 meters of gain and 604 meters of loss.
Click on the photos to open up a gallery with larger sizes.
This was our first ride and a rather short one, but it still was not easy with some heat and humidity adding to occasional upward ride. This is a dry and rather barren area except for the farmed valley floor. None the less it was beautiful and fun to ride.
At the end of our trip we stopped by a popular, with locals, cebiche spot near the main road back to Lima.
This was Sunday so the restaurants and streets were packed. The streets around popular stores were packed with people and cars.
This very long ride, the longest of the trip is 50 kilometers long with massive decent of 3,500 meters, starting in a small village of Buena Vista in the Andes and ending at the Pacific Ocean.
I’ve put this epic ride with lots of photos in its own section – check it out.
All roads lead to Cusco. At one point nearly, “20,000 miles of road traversed some of the world’s most challenging terrain — mountains, forests and deserts.” (NPR – 8/29/15)
We flew in from Lima to Cusco today, so the ride was short: just under 11 kilometer, but at an elevation of 3,600 meters and we all felt it. It was more difficult riding up 300 meters.
On this ride we rode by an Inca ruin called Sacsayhaman – or sounds like sexy woman – before heading higher then back down to the hotel over city steps.
In the evening we went out to dinner. I just got a few evening photos.
The ride starts at a mountain pass called Tica Tica at 13,123 feet or about 4,000 meters. Pretty high and the highest I’ve ever ridden.
We rode into the sacred valley for a three day stay.
I’ve put the relations from this day into a separate post with lots of photos.
Check our the 40+ photos of our trip to Machu Picchu in this post.
It is into this valley that the Inka people are said to have escaped from the Spaniards. This ride started at 4,400 meters.
Soon after we started the downhill we saw a couple of girls just waiting for us to buy stuff. It was an unusual scene. No one is here and suddenly you can shop. What happens is that they saw us going up the road in a van and quickly got in place. We each bought something. There was another two children further down with their goods as well.
We had lunch in the town of Huilloc where the couple below prepared great food with lots of potatoes and ginny pig as the main protein.
From 4,400 meters down and up.
This was my no. 2 favorite ride of the trip. Starting at Abra Le Lares at 4,461 meters where it was really cold and windy and flowing down fun and challenging trails until the end in the town of Calca.
As you can see the views were spectacular. The ride began with a fast downhill on hillside without trails.
Then we got onto an flowy, wide and very fun Inka trail.
As we went lower it got warmer, but the jackets went back on when it started to rain. Thus no photos closer to the bottom.
A total of 22.2 kilometers and 1,616 meters of decent.
Last Day – CuscoBack in Cusco there is one day left. I took, what I think, some nice photos. Check out that post and photos.