Happily tailgating a bus

Dear future me,

The number of adventures seem to multiply per day, so I don’t even know where to begin to acknowledge everything I’ve experienced in the last two weeks. I remember from my last big journey that at one point in travelling your own hard disk is overflowing with impressions and you can’t digest them anymore. It has been 4 months since I left home and it is already overwhelming me. I guess I need to find a place to rest for a while soon, before my battery starts to smoke.

I tested my hypotheses that Peru and Colombian are alike, but I was very off base. After chaotic Jaén I only found these amazing rustic, tranquil happy places that breath mountains, fresh air and ancient stories. My first stop was at Chachapoyas in a perfect hostal just a few blocks from the nice main plaza. Some people describe the town as a small Cusco, but without all the tourist. To get to Chachapoyas you enter a large gorge that has very ancient roots and divides two mountain ranges. On one side you have Chachapoyas, that in itself is already a nice place to hang out. But from here you can visit beautiful natural exhibitions like the Gocta Waterfall (hiking 2 hours in and another 2 hours out) or all the ruins from old times before the Incas arrived. And what better way to see those ruins with some nice company from two people I met at the waterfall. Together we exclaimed some ooohs and aaahs at the site of the Sarcophagus de Carajia and at the amazing views on the gorge and the death chambers of Pueblo de los Muertos. It all made up for my original deception when I arrived in Chachapoyas. This area is mostly known for Keilap, the Machu Pichu of the North. However, those antique city walls on top of a mountain didn’t stand the rain of 2022 and collapsed. 7 months later they are still renovating the place and the interior is closed for tourist.

Next, following the large gorge to the south, I ended up in Leymebamba for the very famous museum of the mummies. Here I learned that the original people of the Chachapoyas had a different way to preserve mummies than the Inca’s did. In my own words: the Chachapoyas collected all the bones, put the skull on top of that and bundled it together in a wrap and put a smiley face on it. The Inca’s kept the body as a whole and put it in a sitting position embracing the knees and hands at the face. They found over 200 mummies in this area and they are displayed in a dark chamber. The stories they tell! Apart from all the sightseeing of places, the environment and views are also very spectacular in this part of Peru. The ride from Leymebamba took me 8 hours of riding up and down huge mountains on very small and curvy roads. I am lucky that I only have sunny days so far, because for me that road was one to remember in a very positive way. Other motorbikers described the same road as a death road while battling rain, mist and cold.

This happy bikester however arrived in very good moods in Cajamarca to get ready for part two of my Northern trip. Because from here on I travelled through the rural countries where I didn’t see any other tourist hanging around anymore. Following the 3N down I ended up in Huamachuco. As I don’t plan anything, I had no idea what there was to see in this small town. So I had to discover at night that there was another ‘Machu Pichu of the north’ in this area. In the morning I got up early to ride this treacherous road up another mountain to explore the towers, castle and ‘Monjas’ of Marcahuamachuco. These monjas look like big arena’s for gladiators, but are actually houses in a circular form with a kitchen in the middle. And the area is huge, so it took half of the day to cover the whole site. The other half I spend riding down the 3N and getting into more rough and isolated country. You can tell by the road, by the time I got to a small pueblo called Santiago de Chuco, the main road turned into a dirt road. It kept me busy the next day too and at one point my bike got tired. Just when I was about to deep dive in some heavy (soft) sand on a steep downhill, my trusted bikey wanted to lay down. After 75.000 km this was the place, I had to pick up my bike with all its heavy load from the ground. Thankfully in no time I collected some muscle services from a few locals to help me get the bike back to its feet on top of the hill. Without any apparent damage I gladly continued my way through gravel, stones and sometimes sandy parts, until I met the pavement again. Going into a huge and stunning gorge in the Ancash region. While battling with the fierce winds inside the gorge I was struck by all the beautiful colors of the stony mountains surrounding me. This ride was the prelude to the famous Cañon del Pato (= duck), known for its many small and very dark tunnels. Finally I could test my tunnel skills and I found out that they are near to none existent when I don’t have any headlights. In the end I did have some damage on my bike: the fuse of the headlights burned in the crash. Again, going through a tunnel with no lights is practically impossible and I couldn’t repair the fuse on the spot. But this Nennie never gives up, so although I have a sticker on my case that tailgaters suck, I stuck to the back of a bus like glue during the next few hours. Keeping my eyes on the two red lights in front of me, I hoped for the best in the non-paved tunnels of the Cañon del Pato and hey, I survived.

In Carraz, a nice little town at the foot of the Huascarán National Park in the Corderilla Blanca mountain range, I got my bike back to its original state, to get ready for some mountain riding. The town also gives entry to the Laguno Paron and again the sun was my friend. The blue turquoise lake is at its prettiest when the sun is out and reflects the snowy mountains in the back. I don’t know what happened, but the sun stayed with me during the climbs of the Corderilla Blanca. In two days I followed this circuit through the mountains, with no idea what to expect. I certainly did not expect the heavy rugged stony road up the first pass. I was actually scared, because it was already late in the afternoon, my case flew off again due to the heavy bumping, and the road got steeper, smaller and stonier. The views however were spectacular and kept me going. At the other side of the pass I found a small heaven in the form of a Hospedaje, where I met the most friendly and intriguing hosts so far on my journey. The next day I feared for another 8 hours of bumpy off-road riding, but as soon as I hit ruta 107 the pavement was all over the place. Yoohoo, sometimes I am really happy to see the grayish colors of good old tar. This time it took me over the Olympia Pass, showering me with mind-blowing and jaw dropping panoramas on lakes, snowy mountains, glaciers and zigzag roads.

This story became to be very long, so you can imagine how tired I am at this moment! How do I begin to process all these events, meetings, impressions and feelings? And how am I ever going to catch up on my photo-editing and videos?

See ya later,

Annemieke