life @ 13
Thursday, March 12, 2009
back.
peru pictures
not surprisingly, it's easy to lose track of the days when you're travelling. recently i've been quoting my time off the bike at 3 weeks....however looking at the blog, damn, it's been a month. more on the fix for that below, but first where i left off.
south peru was good. having company was excellent. learning the true meaning of tours and tourists...well...was educational. the sky of the altiplano is spellbinding. the south coast is like nothing else...desert sandwiched between mountains and endless ocean. had some classic peruvian travel experiences: bus breaking down in the mountains in the middle of the night, bus trying to leave when your friend is in the station bathroom, being told to get off the beach because it's too dangerous, train to maccu piccu is not running, hopelessly lost in towns where the street names change every block, sunburn after 20 minutes outside, cab drivers changing the price, etc, etc. experienced the other side of lima, miraflores, where all those of means have relocated to over the years. damn, the food was good there.
decided to eschew the $4 cab ride to the bus station in lima (the bus to trujillo was $10...$4 seemed extravagant to cross town) and took a local bus. when i told the driver and conductor where i was getting off, one laughed and the other made the point-finger-gun-at-head-and-shoot gesture. apparently the bus station was not in a great part of town? turned out to be one of those parts where you're OK as long as you don't make the wrong turn.
now, back in trujillo, with the casa de ciclistas all to myself. Lucho and Abuelo (a 68 year old cyclist from chile) headed north to Chiclayo.
to make up for all the road i skipped to get to trujillo, i decided to ride with them for a little while...in the opposite direction of my trip. first time on the bike in an entire month, and it felt great...at least until my insufficient eating for the day caught up to me. no big deal. did 45k in about an hour and a half, helped by some kind of massive tailwind. the bad news is, this will be a massive headwind when i leave for Huaraz/Caraz in the next couple days. the good news is, it's only for a day. not only did i ride with them TO Paijan, the most infamous town in peru for cyclist-robberies, i rode past it, then back through again (at almost half the velocity), then stopped right in the middle.
i guess the most salient news is that for the first time in damn near 7 weeks i'm feeling 100%. most importantly, i've decided that whether i like it or not, my body is apparently not capable of fighting off little infections that the locals all resist and most all travelers grow to resist. this in and of itself does not bother me much...it's the fact that i have to be the whiny white kid who is always telling restaurants to leave things out, not eating/drinking anything remotely suspicious, and worst of all turning down offered food. but, this is. much better than sending myself home.
still trying to decide how to slice up peru. first i'm up to the cordillera blanca and huaraz. from there, i either stay in the andes all the way to cusco...a very, very slow but probably highly rewarding trip...or i descend back down to lima (could spend a lot of time there), zip down the coast for a while, then take some good paved roads to cusco. from there, i have much gana to hop over the andes again to the amazon-ish region, cross to bolivia by boat, and high-five all the people descending the "worlds most dangerous road" on their downhill bikes as i work my way up to La Paz.
peru pictures
not surprisingly, it's easy to lose track of the days when you're travelling. recently i've been quoting my time off the bike at 3 weeks....however looking at the blog, damn, it's been a month. more on the fix for that below, but first where i left off.
south peru was good. having company was excellent. learning the true meaning of tours and tourists...well...was educational. the sky of the altiplano is spellbinding. the south coast is like nothing else...desert sandwiched between mountains and endless ocean. had some classic peruvian travel experiences: bus breaking down in the mountains in the middle of the night, bus trying to leave when your friend is in the station bathroom, being told to get off the beach because it's too dangerous, train to maccu piccu is not running, hopelessly lost in towns where the street names change every block, sunburn after 20 minutes outside, cab drivers changing the price, etc, etc. experienced the other side of lima, miraflores, where all those of means have relocated to over the years. damn, the food was good there.
decided to eschew the $4 cab ride to the bus station in lima (the bus to trujillo was $10...$4 seemed extravagant to cross town) and took a local bus. when i told the driver and conductor where i was getting off, one laughed and the other made the point-finger-gun-at-head-and-shoot gesture. apparently the bus station was not in a great part of town? turned out to be one of those parts where you're OK as long as you don't make the wrong turn.
now, back in trujillo, with the casa de ciclistas all to myself. Lucho and Abuelo (a 68 year old cyclist from chile) headed north to Chiclayo.
to make up for all the road i skipped to get to trujillo, i decided to ride with them for a little while...in the opposite direction of my trip. first time on the bike in an entire month, and it felt great...at least until my insufficient eating for the day caught up to me. no big deal. did 45k in about an hour and a half, helped by some kind of massive tailwind. the bad news is, this will be a massive headwind when i leave for Huaraz/Caraz in the next couple days. the good news is, it's only for a day. not only did i ride with them TO Paijan, the most infamous town in peru for cyclist-robberies, i rode past it, then back through again (at almost half the velocity), then stopped right in the middle.
i guess the most salient news is that for the first time in damn near 7 weeks i'm feeling 100%. most importantly, i've decided that whether i like it or not, my body is apparently not capable of fighting off little infections that the locals all resist and most all travelers grow to resist. this in and of itself does not bother me much...it's the fact that i have to be the whiny white kid who is always telling restaurants to leave things out, not eating/drinking anything remotely suspicious, and worst of all turning down offered food. but, this is. much better than sending myself home.
still trying to decide how to slice up peru. first i'm up to the cordillera blanca and huaraz. from there, i either stay in the andes all the way to cusco...a very, very slow but probably highly rewarding trip...or i descend back down to lima (could spend a lot of time there), zip down the coast for a while, then take some good paved roads to cusco. from there, i have much gana to hop over the andes again to the amazon-ish region, cross to bolivia by boat, and high-five all the people descending the "worlds most dangerous road" on their downhill bikes as i work my way up to La Paz.
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