Distance: 45 miles

Av speed: 7 mph

Moving time: 6 hours 8

Door to door: 11 hours

 

Our first taste of how hard the next few weeks are going to be, as we spent nearly the whole day cycling uphill.

 

A slower start than we had hoped for as we rewed greatly our decision not to put the canopy over us, getting woken by a huge downpour at 1 in the morning. The insect attack from yesterday also resumed, and we are now covered from head to toe in bites (perhaps throwing out the insect repellent in Cusco because we weren’t using it was a really bad idea).

 

We found out from a lady that around 2000m altitude the bugs are everywhere. We asked her if only at night time but she said no all day and all year, what a crap place to live we both thought.

 

Itching all over we set out on what would be one of our hardest days yet. After cycling down hill for 50 kms yesterday we now had to do the reverse, 50km from 1800m to 4300m.

 

Whilst Lance Armstrong would definitely have enjoyed being at lower altitude after three weeks of producing red blood cells at over 4000m we found the going tough as it was humid and the first time we’d got a proper sweat on since Argentina. The road, although in awesome condition, just kept going up and up, with never ending walls of hairpins snaking high up the valley. On top of this the constant beeping of horns, streams of sweat and relentless barking dogs made life pretty miserable for much of the morning.

 

Deciding we’d had enough of the main road we took a shortcut, which was 10km shorter and promised far less bad Peruvian drivers given that it was all ripio. At the same time however we would be rejoining the main road 1000m higher, meaning the road would be twice as steep in order to cover the altitude gained in half the distance. Reassured by an elderly man that the ripio road was the better option we set off, although soon realised we’d just made our job much much harder as the road was extremely unforgiving. Three hours later we emerged back on to the main road. Whilst we hadn’t seen a car for nearly all of this time our energy was spent and the final climb up to 4300m seemed to take forever.

 

After a whole day of cycling uphill we finally made it to the top of the pass as it was getting dark. We flew downhill in the dark, stopping in the nearest village to fill up our water before setting up the tent by the side of the road. Both exhausted but a very memorable first day of big climbing in Peru!