50th. Arrive at 5:30 in the morning in Huancayo. Assemble bikes on the pavement and set garmin and follow it through streets in which teams are setting out tableaux on the streets in dyed sand. We are told it is the festival of Santa Rosa of Lima which will go on for 4 days. Actually it seems to go on for longer. She is the patron saint of the police department so some of the tableaux are cheerfully far right. Left the town trying to follow the route of another blog. Reprovision in a shop that had never seen the likes of aliens like us. Outside is a lorry parked with a dog on the roof. Then out on a Stoney dusty Road where we find a trad brass band in costume and taking photos of each other in the early morning in the middle of this half built half village half suburb. Then back on to the main road out and there are lines of people having desayuno ( breakfast) which is mostly Caldo de Gallina. Noodle soup with one piece of chicken, one potato and one boiled egg, Unpealed, in it . We are joined by an old lady who is given corn and potatoes who strikes up a conversation with us and finishes both of our soups for us . we plodded, boiling, up hill untill 2:30 then over the top and then whizzing down when we see a large trout farm and restaurant .So we have to stop ,don’t we, and have fried trout and rice and beer- I think my second of the holls. Its so nice that time flies and we set off too late and then I have a puncture so send Susie to scout for rooms I have to mend my puncture and do a downhill sprint in the gloam to the wonderful little town of izukucara to ride over a bridge over a ravine and into the town which until this spring has been a station town on the Huancayo to Helvellin railway the highest in the world but now deffunct. We booked into the hotel next to the exstation. Dreams shattered. Quite modern in Conception but now sad, semi abandoned and only going to get worse. Out onto the streets for the Fiesta of Santa Rosa and immediatly pulled into circle of dancers and given communal beer. Everyone drinks from one glass. Actually a charming old gent comes over and gives me a bottle of beer and welcomes me to the place. I thank him, put it down ,he leaves and it is immediately stolen by drunken old ladies who then pull me into the dance offer me back the beer after drinking a lot of it and during the dance tried to karate chop off my legs. I think this might be it because I am definitely twice the height of anyone else in the village . A fabulous mariachi band strikes up and as I have been told not to take photos I make some quite long sound recordings and it is altogether a magical evening. 31st. Left the miserable hotel early and had one of our best breakfast sitting on crates in the main square of egg and cheese buns made by happy behatted old woman. We set off along the increasingly precipitous road which has amazingly little traffic on it and we are having a ball. The cliffs, ravines and River are breathtaking and we are constantly sweeping Downhill untillwe get to Cayceres where a road traffic girl says Road works stop. So we try to say that we have to get some way to the next place with a hostel as camping is tricky when the terrain is either vertical or road. The queue is rife with rumor and most of it says that no one is going anywhere today so we go back into an OK hostel and consign bikes to a celler next to the shop under the house which is stuffed full of electricity workers in orange jackets. When you go out on the Razzel around here you put on your thermals and puffy jacket because you will be sitting in a little unheated room with the front open as the temperature divebombs which is described as a restaurant. I mean they have their plus side, quite large portions which mostly chicken and rice and potatoes and cost between 1 and 2 pounds 50 which is a bargain and means that even if you are traveling for 6 months you can eat out every night if you fancy so that’s what we are doing.