From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

We rested in Ayacucho, recovering from our experience with the roads, the dust, and the sand flies. Not many of the flies venture into town. We spent the first day with Jean from France, who is biking from Quito to Ushuaia. It was nice to hang out with him, and he showed us a little around the town, where he’d been staying for 2 days. 

The main square was very beautiful. The city is coming back into its own after the violent 1980s, caused by the “Sentier Lumineux”. They were a revolutionary movement turned guerrilla army that reined terror down over the region, assassinating political leaders, elders and even simple villagers, and planting bombs in front of public buildings. 

In 1992, the leaders of the movement were arrested and region started to turn around. In recent years, political idealism has given way to cocaine trafficking. Nearby, just on the other side of the mountains, the slopes of the Andes are covered in coca plantations and clandestine mini-laboratories where the plants are transformed into cocaine. 

The cocaine route is well known to the police. During our afternoon waiting in Mayocc we talked with one of the police officers and he explained that the route is only a couple hundred meters from the police station, but that there’s not much they can do without proper funding. Their old police car sits in the road in front the station, but it’s been sometime since it started. 

On Saturday, we took the local bus up to Quinua, following the ruins of the capital city of the Wari Empire who controlled the Peruvian Andes 500 years before the Incas. Just a little above the village, a great monument had been erected to celebrate the victory of the Peruvian troops over the Spanish colonizers in 1824. Peru gained its independence from Spain after this great battle. 

Early Sunday morning we got on a bus, continuing along the difficult route. Before leaving, we felt a little like we were cheating by taking the bus, but having seen the roads, we were really happy not to have tried to bike it. More than ¾ of the road was just as bad as the road had been a couple of days ago, stony and dusty, and this one was all uphill. We definitely made the right call, and only regret that we didn’t have more time to admire the beautiful landscape or meet some of the peasants that worked the land, 4100m up in the mountains. 

In order to travel during the daylight hours, we got out at Andahuaylas. It was a long first day, 9 hours in the bus with only one bathroom break, one breakfast break at 10:30, and one unscheduled stop when the bus got a flat. Today, we covered the second part of the journey. Another 4100m climb followed by a dizzying downhill slope to 1850m that would have been a real nightmare on the bikes because of the poor road conditions, and then finally 20km on paved road to reach Abancay, where we are now. 

Next, we’re going to leave the bikes for a couple of days and walk about 70km round-trip to visit the Inca site Choquequirau, nick-named “Machu Picchu’s little sister”, since they’re so similar. The site is actually more spread out than Machu Picchu, and the advantage is that it is (at least for now) only accessible by foot and is much less touristy. We’re hoping to meet with some MFIs when we get back to Abancay.

PS: Here’s a little picture of Choquequirau, to give you an idea of where we’re headed.

Sébastien