(July 4 – written by Nancy) Happy 4th of July to our friends and family in the US!  Have an extra hot dog, some macaroni salad and a piece of pie for us.  Instead of hanging out with family and eating the time-honored foods of the holiday we instead had another longish day today, over … Continue reading Happy Independence Day – Celendín to Cajamarca (105k/17,031k, +4800ft)

(July 3 – written by Dave) The town of Celendín is home to roughly 25,000 people.  It would appear that about 25% of them regularly wear traditional straw hats that the town is famous for.  The hats are made locally, woven from toquilla straw, the same that is used in Ecuador to make “Panama hats”.  … Continue reading Celendín – Hats, corn and a festival

(July 1 – written by Dave) (posted on July 2) We made it over Calla Calla Pass today.  And what a pass it was.  The going up was not as hard as we thought it might be but it went on forever, or rather, it went on for 29k.  There were no downhill bits, just … Continue reading Calla Calla Pass – Leymebamba to Balsas (92k/16,868k, +4800ft)

(June 30 – written by Dave) We rode the last of the Utcubamaba River today.  We’ve been riding uphill beside it for more than three days now.  It started so wide that building a bridge across it was very difficult.  By the end of the day today, it looked like you could almost walk across … Continue reading Last of the Utcubamba River –Nuevo Tingo to Leymebamba (52k/16,777k, +2000ft)

(June 29 – written by Dave) As promised by Nancy yesterday, here’s a quick write up of our trip to Kuelap.  We were both looking forward to seeing the site but after Ingapirca (the Inca site we saw in Ecuador), our hopes were not too high.  Nothing bad about Ingapirca mind you, it was just … Continue reading Kuelap, Peru

(June 28 – written by Nancy) We continued our ride along the Utcubamba River today, through a beautiful gorge with steep rock walls on either side of us.  Nice weather, beautiful scenery, easy gradients and not too long of a ride – couldn’t really ask for more than that. We started off with oatmeal and … Continue reading Up the Utcubamba River – Pedro Ruiz to Nuevo Tingo (66k/16,725k, +3000ft)

(June 27 – written by Dave) First a quick report on the new kettle.  It worked perfect.  We had tea last night and coffee this morning.  It fit on Nancy’s bike nicely this morning, in a sporty North Face bag – an extra one we’d been carrying.  It looked so good that Nancy attracted zero … Continue reading Gorgeous Green –Bagua Grande to Pedro Ruiz (77k/16,659k, +4800ft)

(June 26 – written by Dave) I’ll start at the end, just to get it out of the way.  We’ve been in at least 20, maybe 30 hardware stores since we’ve entered Peru.  The purpose of this effort was to find an immersion heater that would run on 220v, the power of Peru and points … Continue reading Let the mocking begin –Jaen to Bagua Grande (66k/16,581k, +1800ft)

(June 25 – written by Nancy) The themes of today – rain, rice and riding with other cycle tourists.  The sound of rain coming down hard woke me up in the wee hours of this morning – not a great sound to hear when you have over 100k to ride soon.  All I could do … Continue reading The three Rs in Peru – San Ignacio to Jaen (109k/16,515k, +3900ft)