Adventures in Peru - High Altitude Mountain Biking

One day, James, a friend of mine here in Cotahuasi, Peru, to me and asked me a favor. He said he can put around a great mountain bike at the beginning. He asked me to help control a possible way to the plain Charcana as I was familiar with some 'of the path. I had a 16-hour walk through the area with Max, another friend of projects, a government official working visit of many. At that time he was looking for an area ofto maintain a high level is used for a vicuna. Vicuña are wild animals in danger of extinction, with reference to the lama, whose wool is very valuable, and poaching is a big problem.

Back on the bike, at 3:15 Saturday morning, a horn sounded in front of my house and I came Julio and Daniel in a truck for the three hour journey to the starting point at 14,000 feet above sea level. Along the way we stopped three times, each time we were shooting a horse and a number of people who go that wastoo. Fortunately, we were kept in the back of the truck cab in the cold with the horses to ride. There are no public transport, which leads to the high level, despite the fact that many people live there. The villages are small and distant, so that would not be economically feasible for Combi (mini bus) service. After what seemed like an eternity we were finally allowed to fall into the middle of nowhere on a sign for the school in "Laxa" with an arrow on the leftthere was nothing in sight, except a small trace.

It 'was the light of time brings us to 6:15, after a very rocky road and Max had wandered. Of course, the bike is very different from that walk. The road fell into a deep ravine and climbed steeply up the side. It 's been too steep to ride, so we had to push our bikes. Julio soon had a flat tire on the path of thorns. We went through the school, which was a room next to a couple ofHomes, but otherwise the center of a large vacuum level. We were on our way to Lacsa reached a point where I'm pretty sure we head in another direction to go because we need Charcana Andamarca had walked the previous trip. Fortunately, we saw a woman walking in the distance, was able to travel to go to her. It was on the right side of the track we were and we could see, has shown the way on foot along a ridge on the opposite side of the plane.And to think that it would cross, and how poor we came, we headed in that direction.

This was not a big decision, but we had almost reached the line, when he broke the strap on my backpack. Here we are at about 14,000 feet without needle and thread, how to repair a broken belt? The brake cable on my bike when it needs more, but I had cut off the excess, let it stick out the end. We left a lock of this and Julio usedThe wire to sew the strap back on the box! Crisis averted, and we were back on the road.

Now we are finally on the main road Charcana, who was an old Inca Trail. We walked among the ruins of the ancient village Lacsa, bypassing the current village. We followed the trail over the plains for miles, up and down on many deep gorges on its way. At one point there were a couple of stone towers, about six feet, near the road. Of course we had to stop andPictures with our bikes on top of one of the towers.

In typical fashion, was my fellow bikers and a bag of bread and a liter of water between them, and I'm sure laughed my complete package. But at noon, after changing my water, trail mix, cheese, an apple and cookies with them, they were probably happy that I had brought more than they are.

We were on a track that was new to me, and I was the leader, we all knew that we are in the right directionCharcana. We passed some houses and buildings, it was all of stone as the only building material in air. Even a lot of llamas and sheep, which in some way to eat the grass that grows very rough and sharp there to survive. We could not see because it was in a ravine somewhere Charcana in front of us. After many false sightings of what I hoped was the right canyon, we finally reached the extreme limit of the plateau, and I could see the other side of CharcanaCanyon. It seemed so close that we are not concerned about the passage of time and shots for too long on top of a couple of large stones that were on the edge of the rim.

Finally, realizing that he was late, we started to follow the path that led down the throat to Charcana. But the road soon turned off and the canyon instead of down, also facing Charcana. There was also a very ugly, and covered in bad shape, nothingas the main street had been. After a while, 'we decided that we are on the wrong track. But there was no apparent cross and this time we decided it was better than continuing to go back and try to find the right way, especially because we had no idea where to look. We could see a path to Charcana on the opposite side of the throat, so we decided to continue to climb the throat that seemed to catch the TRAIL deep river to cross, if we goimmediately.

After about an hour the way the river has come, and there was a suitable place to cross, for which we were very grateful. We were to discover even more grateful that we had seen how the other side was a great track for cycling, with gentle ups and downs and lots of fun curves. We had a great ride, but we were hungry, thirsty and tired when they finally arrived in the afternoon at about 4.15 Charcana clock. We were local heroes, when we hearddriving our bikes on the plateau but confirms that there are "spot" when we do, we would remain after Cotahuasi instead he said. The locals tried to convince us to spend the night there, but we had to make any plans for activities in the morning and said that we needed to go Cotahuasi tonight. Is there a telephone in Charcana so we called to see Max in Cotahuasi if he could get his truck and meet us part way and give us a ride. We wereAble to speak directly with him, but he left a message for him. We bought a big bottle of mineral water and biscuits, and passed after a short break after the way Andamarca and Cotahuasi.

This was a way I was familiar with and it was a good way, so we were able to make time for a good couple of hours before the beginning of the dark. I have a good set of bicycle lights in the morning, but before leaving I was not clear if the batteries have been accused of not bringingwith me. I've only had my small LED lights and batteries are fully charged, and had no spare batteries. Daniel had a small wheel slightly, but the batteries were not fresh either. Over time it grew dark, we reached a dirt road again. It 'has just been built and was not in the package, but was not great for cycling. So here we were, three bikers go with two lights as fast as we dared, a very twisty mountain road, trying to get as far aspossible before our lights went out.

We had ridden at night for about two hours with our dimming of lights and crossed Andamarca to a better and safer, when we saw some lights on us. We soon realized that it was the police Cotahuasi but the thought of going to some emergency measures as they had their lights flashing. Until then, our lights were worthless, so we went, pushing our bikes. We met the police at 8.15 am, 14 hours after we started running,truck and found that Max was sent to save them to us because it did not gas his own. We offer our bikes in the back of their pick-up and went back to Cotahuasi with them, save even a few 'hours a bike ride "in the dark.