Northern Perú

We arrived in Perú by overnight bus from Ecuador on September first, crossing the border at 2 am. The bus route took us from high in the Andes all the way down to Perú’s Pacific coast, which is pure sandy desert for the entire 2500 km length of the country.

The northern town of Chiclayo, where our bus ride ended and our bike ride began, was in one of these agricultural pockets in the desert, surrounded by industrial-scale rice paddies and mills. Chiclayo is a vibrant middle-class city with excellent food, including the local specialty of cilantro rice with duck (“arroz con pato.”) Less remarkable was the sweet “King Kong” dessert – a ridiculous stack of shortbread cookies layered with dried fruit paste and “manjar,” a sweet milk-based creamy spread. We were also introduced to the best coffee of the trip: Perú’s “café pasado”, in which you add concentrated liquid coffee (“coffee essence”) and sugar (each to your own taste) to either hot water or hot milk.

We came to Perú for the mountains, so when we started cycling, we quickly left the coastal Panamerican Highway and turned inland to higher elevations. Very few rural families here have cars, so most people either walk or ride a motorcycle, or pay for a ride in one of the ever-present three-wheeled mototaxis, a beat-up white 1990s-era Toyota Corolla station wagon taxi (there are millions of these) or in the back of an open-bed truck. Peruvian drivers are aggressive and recklessly fast, and there are way too many memorials on the sides of the roads for lives lost in accidents. However, the presence of pedestrians, livestock, mototaxis, and frequent speed bumps in the road raises drivers’ expectation of slow-moving vehicles and obstacles, improving our comfort and safety. Also, drivers here are constantly honking to warn other vehicles of their presence, so we have ample warning as a vehicle approaches.

The plaza was bustling with an artistic exhibition. At night, dozens of artists with easels and paint palettes were positioned around the plaza using headlamps or cell phone flashlights to illuminate the dark scenes they were capturing on their canvases, and a new crop of painters was out there again the next morning to portray daytime scenes. There was a non-stop series of live music in the plaza ranging from a police marching band to a Mexican-style mariachi band, with some folk dancing thrown in. On an adjacent pedestrian way, wood and stone chips were flying for two straight days as sculptors raced to complete their works of art in the allotted time. We were even treated to live music during meals, since here, like in Colombia and Ecuador, restaurants will mute their stereo when a busking musician asks to enter and perform.

Next we ascended to the mountaintop ruins of Kuélap via a newly constructed aerial tram — part of the government’s recent and urgent efforts to protect and promote these sites for tourism. Kuelap was a city of 3,500 or so inhabitants built atop a mountain that was leveled by a high retaining wall around the perimeter, through which there are only three narrow entrances. The area was filled edge-to-edge with round stone houses, each of which had a stone porch outside and a guinea pig pen inside (a food source). There is also a round temple that may have been a solar observatory. The round architecture was unlike any we had seen to date.

After a 12-hour overnight bus back to Cajamarca that wiped us out in the same way a 15-hour overseas flight does, we were reunited with our bikes and soon started riding south. We had been 9 days off of the bikes, so we planned mellow riding days, and they were delightful. One day we stopped for a mid-day soak in thermal waters. The roads were rural and quiet, with occasional clusters of small adobe houses, and increasingly grand vistas. In one rural area, nearly every family manufactured Spanish roof tiles from clay harvested in their yard and then fired in a round adobe kiln next to their house, using the eucalyptus trees they farm nearby for fuel. 

We haven’t needed to camp, as the towns we’ve stopped in have had at least one simple guesthouse. Most rural guesthouses have been rustic - one with a dirt floor, one with the outdoor toilet flushed with water from a bucket, one with no water between 7 pm and 6 am (it’s common for municipal water to run only part of the day, but usually a guesthouse will have a rooftop storage tank — this one didn’t), and of course no internet. We often find restaurants in these towns closed, so we’ve eaten more meals from market stalls and street vendors. As a result, we eventually both got sick, as have all travelers we’ve met in Perú, as sanitation and water quality standards are lower in Perú than in Colombia and Ecuador.

Perú’s recently paved mountain roads are a delight, climbing at a comfortable grades with nice flat switchbacks. It's gotten us to really think about, and appreciate, what goes into a good mountain road. We’ve also ridden quite a few km on dirt roads - some by choice as scenic shortcuts, and others by surprise when the “main” road suddenly became unpaved for days. The dirt is hard work and significantly slows our progress, frequently requiring pushing through water hazards or around steep switchbacks, but the traffic has been incredibly light and the scenery unbeatable.

After a confidence-building dirt road shortcut that passed the first of many open pit mines, followed by a long, winding, narrow descent on unexpected pavement, we arrived in the small town of Cachicadán to a festival in the main square. The student band was playing to a plaza full of of people to celebrate the public school’s anniversary -- a common practice, as we later found out in other towns. The town enjoys thermal waters, and our guesthouse had 6 thermal baths available for rent - free to us as guests. The baths were constantly full, as the thermal water doesn’t reach people living lower in town, so they walk up the hill and pay 3 soles ($1) for a bath. Our guesthouse had access ONLY to thermal water, so we walked further uphill to a public faucet to get cold water to filter for our drinking water.

Since our first day in Perú we have been inundated with campaign advertising for an election that finally took place on October 7. In each tiny town there are many (too many) candidates, each affiliated with one of many different political parties. To deal with rural illiteracy, each party creates a memorable icon that appears on the ballot. Along the rural roads, these icons and the local candidates’ names were painted on the walls of nearly every building we passed, as well as rocks along the highway. The ads sometimes show an “X” through the icon, indicating how the ballot should be marked.

Pickup trucks and vans flying campaign flags drove around blasting campaign songs and messages from speakers on the roof. We arrived at the main plaza of a small town during a well-attended outdoor debate between candidates.

Most Peruvians we talked to complained of corruption and were cynical about the potential for politicians to deliver on their promises. On a small dirt road, a sheep herder asked us if the US politicians “rob” us, like the politicians in Perú do. A chiropractor told us that candidates buy votes from rural people with food or cash, or promises of future cash. A small-town local confirmed that the dozens of townspeople standing around with shovels on the torn-up roads in town were evidence of vote-buying by the incumbent candidate. Locals were apparently given road-building jobs with no training, supervision, or machinery, and virtually nothing was getting done. Despite their cynicism, Peruvians were clearly energized about the election, but it’s also worth noting that voting here is obligatory.