In the village of Nako
We spent a couple of nights in Nako as it is such a lovely village. The old part of town is an eclectic collection of mud stone houses. Most of the houses have a small walled pen for goats and cows, a bottom story of the house is for animals or grain storage, then living […]
The Bowels of the Himalaya
Every time I think we are emerging from the bowels of the Himalaya we are submerged again into yet another incredible gorge, cycling under solid and not so solid cliffs, bouncing along roads that maybe 10 years ago were smooth tarmac but now are broken and rough. The smooth descent from Recong Peo was followed […]
India’s Religions – gods and cricket..
From Sangla and the Baspa Valley we bounced down to and along the Satluj and back up to the district headquarters of Reckong Peo to sort an Inner Line Permit to allow us to carry on up to the Spiti Valley. We thought we may have passed the last of the hudro projeccts as the […]
Dead Cow Road to the Beautiful Baspa Valley
Our progress along National Highway 22 is being slowed by diversions to amazing places off the highway. They are popular tourist destinations with local Indian tourists from Mumbai, Delhi and Kolcatta and we are often stopped to get our photos taken. It is not peak tourist season yet and there are not many foreigners around […]
Stunning and Altered Landscapes
We headed up the Satluj valley from Rampur. We had a few hours along the main valley before a 1000m climb to a small village called Sarahan – famous for an old Hindu temple Bimakali, named for the Goddess Bimakali who occupied a small shrine room guarded by her tiger consorts. We were lucky with […]
From hill top station to hot lowland riversides
In the Indian way of things it takes half a day to sort a sim card in Shimla, the up side is that we discover The India Coffee Company coffee house. We leave Shimla in the heat of the midday sun (even at 2200m). Up thru dense pine forest, climbing and contouring to our ridge […]
Heading for the hills – Delhi to Shimla
We were up at 4 am for our travel day to the foothills. First step was to go back to the Parcel Office with our bike boxes and get them registered for the train trip. Despite assurances we stayed with the boxes and supervised their transport across all the railway lines of the New Delhi […]
On the ground in New Delhi
Is it a good sign to spend the first 3 hours of your journey on the tarmac in a plane that is being cleared by authorities for lightening strike? Despite that small inconvenience we made all our connections through to Delhi and we arrived mid-morning to be met by our taxi driver from the Pearl […]
The Peru Great Divide Route
I spied this route on the website Andes by Bike and I got excited. it looked remote, tough and spectacular. Neil and Harriet had only just completed it in a north to south direction and we were the first team to ride it northbound, with an extra section from Arequipa to the start. Their notes […]
The Grand Finale – wow
We have been blown away by the vistas of the Cordillera Blanca, and our circuit of Huascaran has been an amazing way to finish. The loop (Carhuaz return) is approx 200km and close to 5000 vertical metres (which incidentally took us into the stratosphere) and the first 90km is baby bottom smooth paved road. We […]
The Low Point of the Journey
Leaving Oyon we had a big day with 1500m of climbing and 2000m of descent, followed by a ‘rest’ day of a 50km downhill. This dropped us to a new low for the trip of 1300m (the day before we had been at 4800m). The scenery was reminiscent of Pakistan – dry landscapes with pockets […]
What the mountains have to offer
Peru was described to us recently as 3 countries within one, the coast, the mountains and the Amazon headwaters. We have only experienced the mountain region and it’s riches. Our impression is that even tho’ it is the toughest of the regions for the people to live, it is thriving. Small towns seem to be […]
The Big Mountains Muscle in
As we near the end of the third section of this Peru Great Divide it seems that the everything is ramping up a notch – the roughness of some of the roads (seemingly the descents for us), the views from the passes and on these last two days some big glaciated peaks started appearing in […]
Surprises in the Rio Canete
From Laraos we plummeted down a curvaceous smooth paved road to the Rio Canete and joined a single lane paved road from the coast heading inland. The paving lasted a few km before we hit the ripio again and bounced our way up the steepening and dramatic gorge to Huancaya. After a particularly steep section […]
Steep climbs on short rations
We couldn’t leave Huancavelica without one more visit to the cake shop for a second breakfast. Then up the road for a steep climb up a side valley to yet another scenic pass, complete with cowboy who left town about the same time as us and passed us near the summit. The other side had […]
Rejuvenating in Huancavelica
It took three days in Huancavelica before we felt we wanted to move on. There was a lot of eating to be done and in between times, things to see and do. Today was a good example: Wake up. quinoa muesli, fruit and yog, big sandwich of avocado, tomato, cucumber and olives. Go for a walk […]
The unknown is the best part
Licapa – camp 4700 – camp at a different 4700 – Huancavelica. The day previous over the two passes had been hard and when we awoke in Licapa we contemplated a rest day but it was only 3 days to the provincial capital of Huancavelica and limon pie so we made a plan to carry […]
Deep river gorges to high mountain passes
Vilcashuman – Cangallo – Chuschi – camp 4200 – Totos – camp 4150 – Licapa Rested from our stay at the Inca town of Vilcashuman, we set forth once more. It was Sunday and after a climb back up to the rolling high country, we started a descent to Cangallo. We were accosted by a […]
Cranking the uphills, hanging in there on the downhills
Abancay – Santa Rosa – Sanayca – Soras – Putongo – Antas – Vilcashuman Struggling a bit with righting this after our first beer of the trip (at the end of another solid day on the bike)…but I will persevere! We have had a challenging and amazing 6 day start to our mission following the […]
Alan uses up his truck pass
We only had to go 7 km to get to the larger (and hopefully more hygienic) village of Huacullo, where we planned to rest out our respective ills. It was not ideal as it was still at 4600m and it is hard to heal at that altitude. We were blown away at what a beautiful […]
Caylloma to Cullipampa
Leaving Caylloma we were treated to a smooth road, gentle climbing and a calm bluebird day, who could ask for anything more. An older local woman walking the road did pass us on part of the climb (our excuse was having to stop for some roadworks and she took a shortcut!). Climbing up on to […]
Leaving the paved roads behind us
It is a pleasant suprise to find some old computers in Caylloma – even if the ´s´ key needs a hammer to make it work! We left the tourist town of Chivay with me feeling under the weather but we only had a short day planned and our last day on ashfalt for a while. […]
Rest days in Chivay, and the mighty condor
It was time to enjoy our last chance of being in a tourist town. Chivay is the same population as Wanaka but much more compact. No supermarket but a central shopping area of many small stalls, selling everything from veges to plastic containers to tourist paraphernalia. No post office, in fact no postal facilities in […]
Rooming with the police and the high pampas
From our Hobbiton camp, you guessed it, the road kept climbing. Alan struggled this day and 400m above the village we rested at a high point, near an SOS pole with telephone. Weirdly we heard this woman’s voice say something and I only caught the last ‘necessario’ and Alan’s take was that someone perhaps called […]
Early Accommodation Variety
From a flash hotel to camping in hobbiton, we have certainly enjoyed the variety of places to spend afternoons relaxing after a mornings biking. With the road seeming to know only one direction – up – we are forced to cover short distances but it keeps at bay ‘mal de Montana’ or altitude sickness. From […]
Last day in Arequipa
Today we were on our bikes for the first time and it was a great feeling. Through Google Earth I had sussed out a hill climb to a view point above town and we were hoping to get several hundred vertical metres under our belts. We biked around a park near our hostel and through […]
Exploring Arequipa
We are starting to have our little routines in cities/towns in South America. For me I like to get my legs waxed at least once on the trip – a lot cheaper than NZ and fun to search out. I had two women – mas rapido – much faster – was the reason and they […]
Our third mission..
Back in South America again and the continuation of our travels north. We flew into Arequipa last night and we are chilling after the long day of flights and a hectic few days before leaving home. our plan is to spend a few days here looking around and acclimatising before we set off. We have […]
Bhutan Snowman Trek – not biking but..
After returning from Cusco we enjoyed the rest of a Wanaka winter, back-country and cross-country skiing and enjoying hanging out with Amor the Jack Russel and living in our little cottage by the Clutha river. I had two months to put back on a few kg’s before jumping on the plane to Bhutan for a […]
Cycling the high Andes
Our trip last year finished in Santiago so this year we found ourselves cycling out of the Santiago airport northbound for Cusco via northern Argentina, northern Chile, Bolivia and southern Peru. It was a challenging, fantastic trip using back roads where possible inspiried by the Andes by BIke website. Enjoy the posts below – displayed […]
Machu Picchu – what a place
The biking was finished and it was time to become tourists – one can’t (or shouldn’t) visit Peru without visiting Machu Picchu – the famous Incan city. We opted for one of the cheaper tour options that would fit into 2 days. Day one was a 6hr mini bus drive over a very scenic 4300m […]
Nailled on the final pass
We had one final pass between the Lago Titicaca watershed and the Cusco region. We spent a couple of days from where we left the lake till we crested the 4300m pass which had been a paved and easy gradient affair from the eastern side. Needless to say we were both pleased to get to […]
The mythical Lago Titicaca
On our own again and heading into the last leg of our trip across the Bolivian border to Peru. From El Alto we had a day to reach the mythical Lago Titicaca – renowned for being the highest largest lake in the world. It sits at 3825m and it is big enough that it feels […]
Time with amigos
Now is the dry season in Bolivia but tell the weather gods that! Our rain in the Yungas forced a bus ride up to the paved road that climbs over La Cumbre (4700m) to avoid the sticky wet mud. We got dropped off in Unduavi, a row of eating stalls and no accommodation until the […]
Food glorious food…
Anyone who has cycled will know how important food is and the nice thing about cycle touring (as opposed to tramping) is that you can carry more food and you can (usually) buy more food on route. We have definately eaten well and in Bolivia esp. the food has way exceeded our expectations. A wee […]
Yunga ing..
We have been in Bolivia for over 3 weeks now and for the first 2 weeks we were at a constant 3700m and our major foe/friend was the wind. To the east Bolivia drops steeply into a landscape not too dissimilar to the Nepalese foothills. There are less people living in the land and there […]
From small town to big city
After finishing the last post in the wee town of Llica we hit the streets in search of food. Alan is rather partial to street food so we ended up partaking in 4 plates of deep fried papas fritas and chorizos lathered in mayo and tomato sauce. A wee treat while we were joking with […]
The incredible Salar de Uyuni
The greatest salar of them all is the Salar de Uyuni. East to west it is 150km and approx the same north to south. It is on everyones hit list on a visit to Bolivia and every cyclist wants to ride the sparkling white pristine flats. All the tourist towns within cooee of the Salar […]
Flamingos, salars and more trains
Pays not to lose hope as you never know what it around the next corner and with cycle touring each day can be so different in so many ways. We left our train station camp (after a big breakfast in the cocina of course) and finally we had a day with no wind at the start […]
Nada de nada – nothing of nothing!
We left the tourist oasis of San Pedro de Atacama rested from 2 days off. It was a 1000m, 40km climb in good conditions before a 60km stretch (1100m descent) to Calama and we were optimistic we could do it in a day. We didn’t count on the westerly that picked up as we reached the pass. […]
Into Chile in a big rig
The alternative route to Chile was over Paso Jama. The border control boss showed us the shortcut to this paved route which would open before Paso Sico as it was a major border crossing. He assured us the 50km shortcut was undulating, and then it was a futher 50km of paved road to the border […]
The Polar blast
The hostel owner at San Antonio (de los slow internet – note have uploaded rest of photos to last post now) mentioned a polar blast but we listened more to his prediction that the weather was improving the next day. Lost in translation was the fact that 3 cold fronts had joined force and were […]
Highest Pass and no headaches
We were pretty pleased with ourselves to make it over the Abra el Acay with no problems and although tough we had no symptoms of altitude sickness. The pass is the highest road pass in the Americas (tho we hear rumors of possibly a competitor in Peru) From Cachi we had the most amazing ride […]
Sand,sun but no surf
Well the daily averages had to drop sometime and it is not due to altitude (yet) but sandy and undulating roads. We have worked out how to use the log function on Alans altimeter watch and though the villages we are staying at are 300 or 400m higher than the last, the daily height gains […]
The end of the ´easy´ life
We have arrived in Cafayate – a place which for 3 weeks has seemed a looong way away. It is where we head to high ground and leave the paved roads behind. We will need to ´suck´ it in a bit more from here on in. No grand lunches at wineries (has happened once), no […]
Clocked our first thousand – Chilecito to Belen
We enjoyed our respite in Chilecito in a nice hostel. Our stay coincided with International Animal Day so struck some large groups of kids and dogs!. Visited the Cristi de Portugeza – impressive for its view over the town, and the landscaping of steps of varying cactii leading up to the top. We learnt never […]
Red rocks and a big hill
From Jachal we had a short day thru the Cienaga hills to a sweet, very Aussie like campsite – gums and dry ground. Next morning our early start was rewarded with a great sunrise on the rocks. We had a good descent to the plains and some very looooong straight roads. Neat to pass a […]
Olivas desde los Dios (olives from the Gods)
Before we left San Juan we invested in a couple of small units of pepper spray – for the dogs – not that we have had any dogs chase us but that is probably one of biggest worries – so we are now armed with pepper spray – complete with invisible dye that shows up […]
Avoiding the trucks
Sunday morning at the hostel we were woken before 6 with an out of control drunk football team singing and banging pots. There are some aspects of Latin America we will never warm to and they usually happen between the hours of 11pm and 6am – when we are trying to get some sleep! Timing […]
Descent of the Andes to Mendoza
After a late night and camped at 2700m we both woke a bit seedy and waited for the sun to warm things up. This is not a place for botanists (few trees) but is a geologist’s dream. The colours and varieties of rock, scree, penitente and high mountains was stunning and we enjoyed our (mostly) […]