Cusco to Tarapoto by bike part 3

Cusco to Tarapoto by bike PART 3: a boy’s own adventure up the Eastern flanks of the Andes

-Haven’t read Part 2? Click Here!–

Day 12 – 18 Oxapampa to the end and a few random thoughts about what it all means……

I honestly think the ride from Oxapampa to Pozuzo might be my favourite Peruvian bike ride ever. It is 80kms all gently downhill, following a spectacular-looking river (which I check out for a return trip to kayak, one day soon), passing tumbling waterfalls through the most gorgeous cloud forest. Just divine, and we are in Pozuzo by 1130 so fill up on apfelstrudel and strawberry juice and, as Hugo’s not interested in the museum, we agree to keep going.

Welcome to Pozuzo, an Austrian-German colony in the middle of the Andes with great apfelstrudel and strawberry juice.

In true style, the road proceeds to disintegrate in front of us, then starts going uphill and, to add more misery, it starts to rain but is still crazy hot. We take a dip in a river and keep going, eventually rolling into Codo de Pozuzo, “Beef Capital of Huanuco” and the usual zero-star hotel but a remarkably good pork rib (and rice, yucca and bananas of course).

The road disintegrates and starts to go uphill – just what we did not need

We cycle through miles of fallen primary rainforest, now hosting a few bored-looking cows. It’s a sad reality but beef cattle is huge business down here. The road is awful, Hugo’s pedal falls to pieces and he bravely soldiers on, on a stump. Never have either of us been so glad to see tarmac, and I briefly consider a Pope John Paul kiss to celebrate. A friendly motorbike mechanic bodges Hugo’s pedal (and it lasts the rest of the trip). Another 1-star hotel, more rice and chicken. I’m seriously missing my veggies and pasta.

Slash and burn for cattle ranching

Ever wondered where all those fruit boxes come from? – possibly not a very good use of primary rainforest off-cuts

Next year we’re going to do it in a moto-taxi!

So, back in 1989, I remember going to a concert in the Kamikaze nightclub in Cusco by the then number 1 Peruvian rock star, Miki Gonzalez and a song stuck in my head called “Vamos a Tocache”.  It was a protest song about the fact these places were off-limits due to terrorism. 

And now I’m heading there, only 35 years later! I’m over-excited to see this mythical town and my trial Spotify month even finds his greatest hits, so I play them back to back to inspire me onward. I am really “Going to Tocache” today!

And of course, it’s back uphill to 1800m, including going through a very dark tunnel beside some very big fuel trucks heading to supply the jungle town of Iquitos. It’s nerve-racking cycling that keep us on our toes all day, and we roll into Tocache, totally frazzled.

Hugo entering the tunnel hoping not to meet a truck…

Back into the hills again today – will they ever go away?

UFO’s sighting in Peru are quite common. Here’s one I spotted today!

What can I say about Tocache? – Well, it’s just another one of those jungle towns really, but we find a hotel with HOT water (our first in 9 days) and a surprisingly good burger bar on the corner of the plaza and fall into another deep sleep, as we’ve still got a long way to go. Absolutely no sign of the terrorists or narco traficantes that Tocache is supposedly famed for.

Today we headed to Aguaytia for the night

Yey – only 35 years late, do I finally get to “Vamos a Tocache”

A quick history lesson… back in the late 1980’s, the Shining Path, a Maoist terrorist group came to dominate this region, based on the grounds of “What’s Lima ever done for you? Come and join us and fight to overthrow this government”. The government reacted by sending in the police and the army, often made up of terrified 16-year-old conscripts who’d never seen the jungle. Atrocities occurred on both sides, aided and abetted by the “narco traficantes” whose idea of “perfect working conditions” is utter chaos, so they can get on with their dirty business uninterrupted.

It was indeed not good for many years, but slowly the government put in basic infrastructure – roads, bridges, sewage etc and suddenly, you could get your crops to market and make a living and the reason for a terrorist movement died out. They then chased the narcos out. Well, they are probably still here, just better hidden, but generally, peace has been restored by making life manageable.

There is a lot of money down here now, from cacao to beef, papayas, pineapples, palm trees (for palm oil and coconuts), lots of rice paddies, and even maize. And sadly, timber – we saw several truckloads of tree trunks heading out to Lima, hopefully “sustainably sourced”, but probably not.

And the next thing we know we are seeing signs saying “Tarapoto 350 km” and we are nearly there! I don’t want it to end! I swim in the Rio Huallaga one night to cool down and the next day we agree to start at 0500 to avoid the worst heat.

Interesting artwork on a local VW Beetle

We bump into another local cyclist and I have my first “rice-free” breakfast in 18 days. Fueled up on delicious porridge, fresh fruit and granola, I’m back “on fire” and we arrive, 100km done, at our proposed night’s stay by 1 pm. And so I suggest we just keep going and see what happens, and so we do.

We’ve been following the Rio Huallaga for a few days so it should be all downhill right? Not so, the road builders are having none of that, and take us on a circuitous route up and over various foothills. Before one, I grab a banana juice and milk from a local stand for $1 and it consists of 4 whole bananas, a good splash of sugared milk and the obligatory tablespoon of sugar, and I blast up the hill as if it were flat!

Rice paddies everywhere along the Rio Huallaga valley, not a coca plantation in sight

A whole lotta coconuts

Papaya plantations everywhere

Palm trees for Palm oil production

Cacao for chocolate has all but replaced Coca (and it is legal and more profitable)

We pass our record day (144 km largely downhill) but the road builders make us suffer to get to 150 km with a cruel tortuous uphill in the boiling midday sun and I find myself swearing at the road and the stupid situation my bloody-mindedness has put us in, but we have no choice to keep going now.

And so, exactly 12 hours after we set off pre-dawn, we roll into Tarapoto’s Plaza de Armas, we hug, find a friendly taxi driver to take our photo and as I push my bike into the hotel garage, the GPS clicks up exactly180 km for the day. It is going to be a while before I ever beat that!

Setting off pre-dawn on our last day of cycling to take advantage of the cool air

The last climb at Km 150 around 2 pm on day 18 of riding and I’m swearing at the stupidness of it all

Yey, we made it  – 1882 km in 18 days – so much fun!

We meet later by the pool for a beer. Hugo is wearing a clean shirt I’ve never seen, he’d carried it all the way and forgotten about it. I produce a bag of mixed nuts I’ve been carrying since Cusco as “emergency rations” and I confess to the number of times I thought about eating them when Hugo was way ahead of me out of sight (but I didn’t!) and we laugh at the insanity of what we’ve just done.

Re-entry into “society” from these sorts of expeditions can be tough. The next day, despite no alarm, I wake up at 0530 on the dot and briefly contemplate getting up, but the next thing I know it´s 0830 and we enjoy a leisurely breakfast together. At 1100, I feel the need to go and get cake and juice. I think I’m a sugar junkie now and will have to adjust quickly to a reduced calorie intake or accept the consequences.

A lovely local bike shop sells us 2 rather small bike boxes for $2 and we pack the bikes and dispatch them by courier back to Cusco for $20 each (and they’ve arrived, 4 days later as I write this). What a great service!

2 bikes all packed up and ready to courier back to Cusco

Back in Lima, ambulance sirens and car horns replace cockerels crowing, ceviche and cappuccino replace rice, chicken and gatorade. A rude lady charges me $40 “excess baggage” to bring my balsa wood crocodile souvenir on the plane and I think about remonstrating, but somewhere on about day 16, I genuinely believe I reached some sort of “enlightened Zen type of place” when the voice in my head went silent, I’d thought all my thoughts, and I’m so desperate to hang onto that place, that I smile and pay up, and I think she’s as surprised as me to get away with it.

Back in Cusco, I sit and stare at my computer screen with a big smile on my face and start writing this blog and it just flows and flows, so I’m sorry If it’s so long… I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.

1,882km in 18 days, one day off, some 70km on the back of a 4×4, but the rest entirely by pedal power.

We’ve seen the most amazing scenery and met the loveliest people, enjoyed crazy conversations on just about every topic you can think about. We’ve laughed, I’m pretty sure, at some time on the journey, we’ve both thought about crying. We’ve had highs and lows but pulled each other through. 

We have been to the middle of nowhere and seen a bit of Peru that no tourists will probably ever experience. We are like a team and I joke, if tourism ever goes down again, hopefully Hugo will give me a job in his car salesroom, as I’m now very confident I could do a good job!

Man, I love Peru! It is so much bigger than all of us combined, so magnificent, so unruly yet so tranquilo, so full of friendly happy people, just going about their lives, where the unexpected is the norm and magical realism is alive and well and just waiting to be discovered.

A quick update on my thyroid condition. It did indeed “go off” (maybe that was the Day 16 moment?!) sometime on this trip and the good news, is we now have a new “normal” to work with, so I’ll be back to my good old self very soon. To prove it, I entered a cross-country bike race this weekend and managed 3rd in the over-50s. Next weekend, it’s the Andes Race 13k running race (which the whole office has entered) and the one after that it’s a  “fun run with your dog” around Cusco. That should keep me busy! I can’t wait, and Hugo and I are already planning the next trip. Maybe we’ll get to Quito? Or apparently, there’s a new road between Cusco and Cotahuasi that needs exploring….

So what are you waiting for…“If Not Now, When?”

The longest day ride I’ve done… yet

Our complete route from Cusco to Tarapoto – 18 days, 1882km of sheer fun (and a bit of hard work)

Trying to put our trip into perspective and show you how big Peru is! We just did the equivalent of London to Monaco, with a few wiggles along the way…

-Haven’t read Part 1? Click Here!–