Hauaraz

There a little eaterys everywhere and the world travellers ones charge three times as much. Chicken rules. Very difficult not to eat it. It has a Central Market which is so exotic it’s actually exciting and thrilling to be in there. We bought a yellow fruit because we had no idea what it was. Inside like one of those sucky covered pads you just put soap on and frogs spawn, delicately perfumed and delicious. There were trays of freshly gutted guinea pigs which I think had been blanched as they were entirely without hair and the colour of suet. Oh and that old favourite of vast bowls of goats heads. These ones appeared to have been the victims of a bomb attack and were charred in unpredictable ways. Anyway the Flies liked them.

Our hostel is by no means slumming it. We are served breakfast by Rosa who has a stovepipe hat and dresses like a bundle of washing. She is sweet.

The 16th. We receive two vast cardboard boxes of bike bits and build them into two bikes. Visit nice little museum with a load of boring stone heads. It also had some more excellent pots and an Incan theodolite which was not what I thought it was going to be like.
17th was our first bike run. What will happen? Well we found a good way through town and the main roads weren’t as bad a lot of main roads and we were soon on to dirt which lead sharply uphill through shantytowns stuffed onto the hillsides but the houses, although universally unfinished (The Adventurous decorator puts plastic bottles on the ends of the concrete reinforcing rods that stick out of the top of every house.) However the houses are quite okay by UK standards. Also the hand painted adverts are all over the place.

So a very stiff climb to Willcawina Inca ruins, which aren’t ruined in fact are pretty intact. A three-storey block which has access from outside on all three floors and walls roughly the same thickness as the diameter of the rooms inside. Murder for me as I am constantly bent double. Both Susie and I think we are going to pass out and have to sit down so it is a bit of a surprise that we can continue pedalling upwards around into high agricultural lands and eventually to the lazy dog Eco Cafe at 3500 m. As a Lewesian I feel much more at home. A community-based project with Junior school, clothes outlet and Organic Cafe where strangely I had a Chinese Peruvian dish which really was precisely midway between the two. we are warned to return circuitously by the Charming American woman who we had lunch with as there was a dog who bites everybody on the direct route. Actually she did a bit of research and said you may be okay. “He hasn’t bitten anyone today.” so it was the long way home for us. One unexpected slug in the tea was an innocuous little gnat like thing that sort of tickled my legs and I’ve still got large itchy scabby blotches three weeks on. We were medium smug about the circuit that we did but it was described as the ideal way to start acclimatising.

The 18th Sunday. The second run. As recommended by the mountain bike tour guide. Climbed to eventually 4000m But much too slow (he was a real Optimist) but very beautiful up a river valley. Everywhere is coursing with melting snow water which is running out fast. The people leave you alone but are very friendly. The dogs didn’t and they are unfriendly. Deep down in the psyche of every dog is something that shouts DEER when it sees a bicycle. So then that is a tussle between being too hot or lazy to do anything or go into a full attack and bite a leg. We have tried talking in conciliatory English as we approach some apparently rabid slathery brute but we are told to stop and exert the dominance of a superior species. We are told to stop and Shout Vata which is Quetcha for “Piss off what do you think you are playing at”. I have so far only been surrounded by three (very difficult to hide behind your bike) dogs who I thought we’re actually going to bite me. I’ve resorted to the old extended bike pump and thrashing about a bit trick. I’m going to try setting an alarm next time. The other problem is that the tracks are made of really quite large stones and small rocks which roll a lot and are damned difficult to ride up with unladen bikes. Ours are now quite difficult to lift as the second section which we have to traverse the mountain on, a trekking trail, succinctly proves. By the time we hit 4,000 meters we are stuffed. We have made some stupid decisions which leaves us at the highest point dreadfully short of breath exhausted and with less than 1 hour of light. We had been told that there was a newly finished dirt road that wasn’t on any maps and very luckily we found it and were able to sweep down really fast compared to the other routes and even so arrive freezing in total blackness and desperate enough to cross the unlit town with no lights to spend 30 minutes in the shower trying to stop shivering. That’s highlighting some pretty rookie mistakes. Had we be loaded we_ well we couldn’t have been.