Cycling along dusty, bumpy roads, I made my way from Angasmarca to Mollepata in Peru in one day. Here's my blog touring blog post from the day.
Cycling out of Angasmarca, Peru
Blog post written in August, 2010
Leaving Angasmarca, it was back onto the dusty, bumpy road once more. Cycling with the trailer makes life difficult on tracks like these, that's for sure. Not for the first time, I thought ‘never again' and will return to using just panniers for bike touring in the future!
The condition of some of the bridges was no better than the roads. A lot of bridges just consisted of tree trunks places across the narrowest part of a gap in a valley, and then covered with dirt.
A half hour's riding to bottom out at a river crossing, and then the uphill grind began. This was tough cycling, and quite brutal in the first hour or so, where I had to push the bike up some of the crazier, sandbox gradients.
I timed my cycling well though I think – In rain, this road would be quite impassable.
You can see from this picture that the dust thrown up from the road covers everything, from the grass, to the walls to the bushes. You can only imagine what I looked like !
A quick video of road conditions in Peru
Finally, just after Mollebamba, the downhill began. I stopped to take this video. Perhaps you can appreciate how challenging the conditons were!
Finally, the descent into Mollepata gave my legs a most welcome break, and I soon made it to the plaza of this tiny village.
I had originally intended to cycle on from here, and try to get some more distance in, but after asking at the shop on the plaza if there was somewhere to stay, I was taken to a small Hospedaje run by just the nicest little old lady.
For 25 soles, I got a room, lunch and dinner, which was just the job.
After lunch, I went to the shop to buy some snacks, and got talking and drinking with a few guys there. In typical Peruvian style, we shared one glass and passed it around with a ‘salud’. Quite a quick way to get drunk though, so I left them to it after an hour to have a siesta!
Tomorrow looks to be a really challenging day. There is no road following the river, so I will indeed be descending quite a ways to the river before having to cycle back up 1500 metres over switchback roads to the town of Pallasca.
Given my past performances over similar roads, I should be able to make it in one day, but I’ll just have to see what happens!
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