On my way

Two Dutch fire engines accompany the entrants. Some are seasoned cyclists on a lengthy race, others, tourists on bicycles. All on their way to Ushuaia from the equator or getting on or off at a stop on the way. Amongst them is one 69 year old Dane who is very familiar with the saddle and two Scottish diabetics who are shooting up along the way and talking English in a manner that no one else understands.


I started at sea level in Trujillo and am now at 3,200m in Huancayo. The route is through the Andes, so it is up and down each day. We have pedalled past the highest point on the trip at 4,800m en route from Trujillo to Huanuco. The last 600m of that got my heart thumping against my ribs, and my lungs rasping for air like a 70 year old. A non-Danish-cyclist 70 year old that is. The Danish One does not rasp in such a way. The view from the top was spectacular. The colours of the Andean rock layers curved with pressure over time in the stong but cumulus blotched sunlight was startlingly beautiful. I would show you a photograph but I did not carry my camera that day. It´s a big old SLR that I´ve brought and weight on the bike was of consideration that day, therefore the 5kgs lighter that I was meant that the picture is in my head and not on the web page. Other pictures will hint at the beauty.

My most used phrase of the trip so far: Tiene Loperamide por favour? Yes, I´ve got one of the synonymous stomach bugs of South American travelling. The timing of the start of my shits was unfortunate. Just before commencing the 4,800m climb. My soft but manageable poos left the playing field and on came something altogether more wattery. In Scottish-Dutch footballing terminology, it is the 89th minute, nil-nil and there is a free kick on the edge of the 18 yard box. The manager takes Marco Van Basten off the pitch and brings on Frank McAvenny. Watery indeed.

So the hills are big but the downhill stretches are a suitable reward for the uphill efforts. A typical day involves the ascent of a Munroe. The big days involve two an a half Munroes of vertical ascent. I´ve not tackled one of those just yet, but they will be a test of the thighs and also of the available daylight. Sunset is at around 6pm and there is not much time to spare following an 8am departure on days when the ascent is of that scale. The breakfast cereal is not something to linger over, so a sharp departue is of no trouble. The soup to welcome us into camp each day is however very good. Perhaps it is a strategy employed by Bike-Dreams to ensure a sharp departure and a quick arrival.

The route on from here is to Ayacucho, the city of blood my guide book tells me, and then on to Cuzco, the city of bloody tourist hawkers. My second visit to Machu Picchu will ensue from there. I was told in 1996 that the mountain on which the site is set was subsiding at a rate of one cm per month and they were worried that it may collapse. Mountains are not the sort of thing that you can underpin. I guess it must have settled as, of today at least, the mountain still stands with the final outpost of the Inca civilisation still there on top. Hopefully it will hold out two more weeks as I´ve paid my cash for the trip and my insurance will probably have a subsidance clause.

Dogs, dogs dogs eh? Why do they dislike cyclists so much? What in the name of Darwin is natural selection up to getting them to chase bicycles? We´ve had two bites in the group so far, and each day we all use a variety of techniques to fend the hounds off. I find a verbal feck-off to be stress relieving but alltogether useless. Slowing down to be less interesting works well with the non mentally ill dogs that are not dead set on sinking their teeth into your ankle whether you are moving or not. Thankfully rabies is very uncommon but the inconvenience of going for a shot post a bite is certainly an annoyance, so I may take the extreme step of spreading the breakfast cereal on my lower legs to reduce the liklihood of the dogs biting.