From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

Day 1: Izcuchaca

Our bags were all packed full of everything that we’d need for the next four days. We had lunches (tuna, tomatoes, bread, mayo, and chips), and dinners (packages of soup, pasta, and chocolate desserts), and snacks. The bikes were pretty laden down on our way out of Huancayo, especially after our visits to 2 big grocery stores.

It’s a paved road to Izcuchaca, but I had trouble keeping up with Sebastien. I was tired – still a bit wiped from our 4800 m climb. On the way, we passed lots of police blockades – this road is used by the drug cartels to transfer goods. At one of the stops, the agent in charge asked us a couple of questions – more for fun than anything else. He ended up inviting us camp to at the police station for the night. We declined – it seemed better to look into the hostel – there would be a shower. Sebastien checked out a room with a private bath, but the manager then prepared us a room with a single bed and shared bathroom. We negotiated the price, deeply unimpressed. There was no hot water, but the manager said he’d get one of the employees to set up the electric heater.

We haven’t really written about this, but in Peru most of the hotels only have cold water. They have an electric water heater that sits just above the shower head with an element that heats the water, more or less, depending on how well it works. We haven’t had much luck with these electric heaters. Usually when we try to turn them on, the element shorts out and/or we get electric shocks coming out of the faucet! We did get it to work in this case and had hot showers (we’ve become experts since we’ve been dealing with these since Mexico), and to make up for the room, the manager gave us some locally-made buns.

Day 2: Sand Flies

We left Izcuchca early in the morning to cover as many kilometres as possible, and we were still thinking that we’d be able to make it to Mayocc the next day. But my legs had other plans. They were already sore in the morning, and the road was stony. We bounced over every rock. It took ten times the effort to bike on these dusty roads than on a paved road. 

Every time a car drove past we had to cover our faces so we wouldn’t get a lungful of dust. After 29 km, we decided to pitch the tent. We could hear a stream coming down the side of the mountain, and we thought that it would be cleaner than the Rio Mantaro, the polluted river that goes through La Oroya. We followed a small road which led to a pool of water, and we camped beside it in a little dry patch, hoping that there wouldn’t be any traffic. Just a little ways beyond us, we could see abandoned houses. 

We showered, but it was a constant battle with the sand flies. Sand flies are small, and they don’t sting, they bite, taking a big chunk of skin with them and leaving an itchy welt. They also transmit “bartonellosis” a disease characterized by a high fever and aches. We swatted them as best we could, but as soon as we let down our guard even a little, they swarmed around us.

Day 3: More sand flies and an abandoned village

40 km down the road, and there are still just as many sand flies…. They’re driving us crazy! We don’t even bother sitting down for lunch – we just walk around in circles trying to prevent the flies from landing on us. We sprayed ourselves with bug spray, the same stuff we’d used in the Yukon and in BC, and not a smell that we had missed! The stuff doesn’t really slow them down, but it did keep them from landing on us, at least for a little while. The flies disappear as soon as the sun goes down, only to begin their assault again at dawn.

We spent the night in an abandoned village. A man on the road told us that there were only 2 families left there. He asked us if we needed to camp, and showed us the best stops in the ruined town. There were other cyclo-travellers who had already arrived. A stream ran directly from the mountain and I followed it upstream to take a shower with my little saucepan. The water was freezing, but it was so nice to feel clean! Sebastien planned to shower too, but only after the sun went down. He wanted to spent the last daylight hours cleaning our bike chains, all choked up with dust, with a toothbrush.

I washed some of our underwear too, thinking of these women that we had seen that morning, washing a large blanket by hand in the icy water. I smiled to myself, thinking how ridiculous I must look with my two little pairs of underwear and boxers.

Day 4: Sand flies, and more sand flies

We covered 33 km today. It was another hard day, biking through the dust and being bounced around like bag of potatoes. The road is getting worse and worse. Some workers came to take water from the stream near the abandoned village to water the roads and settle the dust. They promised that the roads would be better…. we’ll see.

Around the corners, the loose dirt certainly doesn’t make things easier. We have to put our feet down to make sure we don’t slide out. On the right side of the road, the valley stretches out way beneath us, with the river at the bottom. It makes me break into a cold sweat – I’m still afraid of heights. And there’s no guard rail to make me feel better. Even if there had been one, it probably would have washed away with all the flooding they have each year. 

Going around one corner, I did fall and my bike landed in the 10 cm of dust that covered the road. I swore as the sand flies settled down on me. I was pretty cranky – and vocal about it! Just a few minutes later, a dog jumped up on Sebastien and he fell as well. The dog took its fair share of stones, and certainly wouldn’t be back to bother him. By the time we stopped for the night, it was late and we couldn’t find any water. All the streams running down the mountain were surrounded by make-shift homes, inhabited by locals who laughed at us as we passed by. We weren’t in the mood to ask for any hospitality, so we just kept going, hoping we’d find a quiet corner to camp just around the next bend in the road.

Eventually we pitched the tent near the Rio Mantaro, the polluted river we’ve been writing about. As we went for a shower, we only hoped that most of the pollutants had stayed upstream. We filtered some water too, since we’d run out. None of the villages we went through had any big bottles of water for sale, and if we inquired, the locals would ask why we weren’t taking advantage of the water that nature provided. Yup, even though the water isn’t safe to drink, they drink it anyway. That night, we saw people come down to the Rio Mantaro and fill up their drinking water containers.

Day 5: Asphalt: the world’s best invention, ever!

28 km today. The sand flies started early in the morning. They drive us nuts and seriously get under our skin – literally and figuratively. We dream about them, itching, and then wake up in the middle of the night to find that we’ve scratched at the bites until they bled. They are pushing us to the limits of our sanity. We have decided to bike to Mayocc and then find some form of motorised transportation. We’re even ready to climb into a tractor-trailer, if that’s what it comes down to.

Ah, Mayocc. We knew there was a police station there and hostel, no doubt very seedy. We had thought we would get there after just 3 days, and by the time we actually make it, we found that even our low expectations of town were not to be met. There were just 3 small stores – it was basically a ghost town. We bought enough for lunch and dinner that night, just in case, and went to the police station. After a long wait faced with the great indifference of the officers, they came over to us. We explained our situation to the clerk whose job it was to it stop all the vehicles that went by, and he said he would ask them to take us. We waited 4 hours and 6 cars went by. Finally, an empty collectivo came by and took us 20 km down the road, only 10 km from Huanta, where we were planning to sleep. We understood afterwards that the bus was on its way to pick up agricultural workers and take them home to their remote mountain village.

We got back on the paved road right at the edge of town! All the sudden pedaling was easier and we could climb the hills without much trouble. We got back into civilization, pretty worn down. The sand flies really got to us. We ate chicken and chips and slept in a real bed.

Day 6: Ayacucho…. Finally!

50 km of paved road – it seemed like we were flying. We stopped on the way to visit some Inca ruins, but they weren’t very impressive.

Getting back on the paved road has also meant the return of other less savoury elements: the garbage by the side of the road, the drivers that pass us in the face of ongoing traffic, and people calling out “gringo” before they even say hello. We’re losing patience. We’re tired, physically and mentally, and we simply can’t put up with this anymore. A dog came out to chase us, and when the family started to laugh it made me all the more annoyed.

We finally made it to Ayacucho, one of our major stops on our way to Cusco. It took us an hour and a half of biking around to find a decent place to stay, and the town is not flat.

Up next?

The sand flies are our worst enemy these days. They can drive us around the bend in mere moments. We’ve heard that lots of cyclo-travellers have been bothered by them between Huancayo and Abancay. Some managed to tough it out, and we tip our hats to them. It took us 6 days to get through the easy part of this section, known as the most difficult leg of the Americas. Lots of others threw in the towel and hopped on alternative modes of transportation.

So we will join that latter group. We’re going to find transportation to take us to Abancay, avoiding the dusty, rocky road. We’ll skip out on 3 climbs of more than 4000m and the elevated habitat of the vicunas (like llamas), but it’s totally worth it in order to save our sanity, our legs, and our equipment. Better not to start hating the bikes at this point, when there is still so much more to discover.

PS. The best part of this section has been the amazing scenery and being able to pitch our tent in the wilderness.

Sara