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05/12/2008
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Peru: Day 2
A sleepless night waiting for my friend continental to deliver my fine two-wheeler! Awake to - yes - no bike!!! No bike for Jim. No bike for me. Once again wayo comes through and we have bikes. We know our bikes are sitting at the airport. Can't we just do a quick drive-by to retrieve them? Promises!!
The Maroon Machine Shuttle Supreme
We load our gear into the maroon machine shuttle supreme at our hotel, hostel Eiffel in Lima, and take off for day two of acclimatization. We head up. Way up. 3650 meters up. Pablo works the tranny of the maroon machine like a silk weaver but the precarious positioning of our rig clinging to the sides of (if it could even be possible) steeper mountain sides makes for weak stomachs! I don't know that I can think of a time when a simple flat tire could kill me! Good thing I'd filled the karma bank by not yelling at the continental girl!
We climbed to up through arid dry mountain terrain, through a tiny village where we drove smack into the center of a mother's day celebration in the town square! Trying to imagine the equivalent back home… a ufo landing? Eventually the maroon machine came to a rest on a lush, green plateau. The rainy season has just ended and the plentiful cactus and wild flowers are in bloom! There was a sparse sprinkling of trees where we unload, but for the most part the terrain was rolling and grassy. But - the deception lurked in the green. Did I mention cactus? We mounted up and blasted down a cattle path pocked by their fine hooves. We were on the gas! Super fun sections winding down through the green. wayo our fine guide had to pick some lines to connect the cattle paths and we discover the green was littered with vicious thorn bushes and low-lying cactus!! It seemed the thorns would jump eagerly off the bushes in an attempt to rip battle wounds across your arms! I was once again thankful for not having any armor at this stage!! Still in the same outfit for the third day straight and arms covered in scratches! Nice!!
It seemed cactus thorns and rubber-holding air was not a good combo. I believe Derek is now considering a new career as a thorn-in-tire remover. He's honed his skills at changing flats!!
We made it back onto another cattle path, chased some donkeys down the trail,
pushed our bikes up some little sections, and rode through some massive wild
flower fields. The landscape was still rolling green with short plant cover.
If you didn't look too far they looked like rolling green hills. If you looked
far… you would do a double take. Right. Those hills were rolling plateaus on
the peaks and ridges of the Andes!! And we were at a low point in them at 3000
meters!
Chaseing down some donkeys on the trail.
The green started to thin out and the trial started snaking sharply back and
forth across drier terrain. Soil that allowed for faster speeds along the sides
of the ridges - not so granular. Faster than our first ride. So far we hadn't
dealt with certain-death exposure as we had on day one. The trial wound its
way down the side of a ridge and speed was a factor. A fun factor. With better
traction and having gotten mentally used to no armor I found my speed ever increasing.
Working the sides of the banks of the trail.
Confidence. I quickly found the weak link though! Of course the side of the
ridge we were following had water erosion. Of course. So the challenge was to
be able to predict whether a nice flowing corner would be abruptly cut short
by a sharp hard right or left to follow the contours of the water channels!
By this point the exposure still wasn't bum puckering but sliding out on a corner
would have certainly meant a long long tumble down. Not something to consider
while riding minus armor, and certainly not something to consider a billion
hours from the nearest hospital in Peru! I tamed down my enthusiasm.
Finding Confidence
The crew rode solid the entire ride! Super high fives to Jim for being able to adapt to v brakes and a vintage K2 rental not ideally suited for a long day of Andes adventures! More high fives to budd and Theresa for lugging their session 10's up the few ups - although I doubt they'd agree there just a "few" ups!
The downs. The soil turned a reddish hue. I felt like I could've been in Utah maybe. Wind shaped rollers everywhere. Fast and windy. Naturally banked corners. Past the sheep herders hut and his flock of sheep and herd of goat. Fun little rounded out snaky crevasses the depth of a good basketball player that could be railed fast.
I felt like I could've been in Utah.
As we neared the bottom the sun was getting low and eagerness was in the air. Wayo was pushing us to get out before dark. We cleaned all the lines and hit a dry riverbed. Not as wide and grand as day one… but still winding and filled with slick bits of hardened sand we were able to find lines in! We knew we had about 10 km's of road before finding Pablo and his maroon machine so we picked up the pace. Glancing back at the slopes we had just descended I felt overwhelmed. The scene was endless layers of sharp, jagged Andes stacked back to back to back! Overwhelmed and exhilarated, I pushed on with the rest of the group as we hit a dirty road and our exit!
One of those moments that makes it all worthwhile.
By the time we finished our fast dirty road out, the stars were leading the way. Dark had come but we could see Pablo's lights in the distance!!
Our second day of riding in the Andes far outweighed no gear and not having
my own bike!! I couldn't wait to relax in the shuttle ship and chill to some
Peruvian pan flute!
Stephen Wilde
Photographer and writer Stephen Wilde is on a 10 day trip with Sacred Rides.
He plans to blog his adventures here on nsmb.com whenever he has a good internet
connection and enough energy to push down on his keys.
For more info on this and other trips check out sacredrides.com
Anything to say about riding in Peru? Responsible
Riding? Or Stephen's photos? Whatever
you've got - give it here.
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