My dad visits me in Peru

Packing a truck full of six bulls to take to a bullfight. 

Video from between Cajamarca and Cajabamba

13 March 2024 Day 488

Thomas is this French cyclist I rode with for two days.

He left France a year ago and then waited tables on a French Caribbean island. He went on a sailboat trip with a friend and ended up in Colombia, where he backpacked for six months. Three months ago another French cyclist inspired him to try cycle touring and he likes it.

Thomas shoots finger guns whenever someone shoots a picture.

Tunnels and old rocks in Peru:

Thomas continued straight on the main road towards Lima - he wanted to buy a new bike - and I turned left into the mountains.

I stopped at 2pm because this wild campsite was too good to pass up.

These mountains are part of the Cordillera Blanca. A local person told me they were white with snow 30 years ago, as the name suggests.

17 March 2024 Day 492

The Avid BB7 brake is an affordable disc brake caliper that I love to use. It's really reliable and powerful. Unfortunately the brake pads are hard to find and expensive in Latin America and I found myself without any extra brake pads.

My front brake pads totally wore out.

I just neet to go another few days of cycling to Huaraz, Peru, where there are good bike shops.

Unfortunately there was still a lot of rocky downhill, which sucks with just one brake. I just took it slow.

My brake levers were turned to the side after I crashes over the handlebars. I hit a goat that ran in front of me around a blind corner.

Camped in an old mud building.

18 March 2024 Day 493

Luckily it's mostly uphill from here to Huaraz, where I can fix my brake.

This is called Cañon del Pato.

The canyon leads up towards Huaraz, through 50+ tunnels.

Clean water is scarce in the canyon - the river is filthy. So I paid ~1.5USD for each bottle of water like this.

20 March 2024 Day 495

Huaraz was a very inexpensive city. Hostel for 4USD and a meal for 1.75USD.  Brake pads for my BB7 brake cost 33USD, though. So I bought a totally new shimano brand brake caliper for about 30USD. It's worse than ny BB7 brake caliper, but the pads are easy to find.

This is Charlie, an American cyclist.

In the picture you can see that Charlie is giving finger guns, like Thomas the French cyclist. When Charlie flew into Lima, he met Thomas there by accident...then I met Charlie a week later by accident... small world.

24 March 2024 Day 499

Charlie and I left Huaraz together.

5000M at Pastoruri. Hard to sleep at this altitude, because I keep waking up out of breath.

26 March 2024 Day 501

Hiked to Pastoruri Glacier this morning and got up to about 5000 meters. Saw some cool fossils. Back on the bike, I saw some tracks in front of me. It was Charlie, and I caught up before too long. Fantastic riding in the park, and we descended like 1800 meters. Now we're camped at an archeological site.

Incredible scenery!

In the National Park.

Charlie.

Charlie's bike (left) is a 29" 1-by Surly Krampus. It's an early model that doesn't have any rack mounts.

Charlie and I went to an archeological site.

Similar convex, tight-fitting stonework to what I saw in Ecuador.

28 March 2024 Day 503

Today Charlie and I got caught out in a gnarly cold thunder/rain/hailstorm. In the evening I asked for a hospedaje in a tiny town and somebody let us find shelter in an empty room.

The next morning I paid the property owner a couple dollars for letting us stay in his building, and we continued.

Exceptional scenery today:

Mining operations.

His low gear isn't low enough, and at our break today, he said he might just go chill on the coast. He's been walking a lot of these hills. He was planning on resting a day or two in Oyón, which I left this afternoon. So we might not see eachother again. Anyway it was nice riding with him for a while and it'd be cool to meet again someday.

My dad will fly to Lima with his bicycle and tour with me for a few weeks. I slowed my pace by cycling down to the jungle in the east, so I could meet him. Here's a video about my jungle adventure:

My dad Ben (foreground) in Lima, Peru. 

After meeting my dad in Lima, we took a bus back to the Andes, where we would cycle tour. The bus broke down, causing hours of delay. Attempting to make up lost time, the driver skipped our stop completely. 

Waiting to be let off - at the mercy of the bus driver. 

By the time we were let off, we had descended 800 vertical meters from where we planned to acclimatize. So instead of resting and acclimitizing, we climbed 800 meters up a steep rocky road, to 4300 meter (16,400 feet) above sea level. My dad is a badass for doing it with no acclimitization at all. 

Shearing. 

Here's a video compilation of cycle touring with my dad: