Alpaca Capitol of the World

I learned how to order fried chicken in Ollechea, so I took a day off to enjoy myself. Also my legs were tired after four days straight of nothing but uphill riding, and I knew the difficulty would only increase with altitudes beyond 2300 meters in Ollechea.

I really missed out on Ollechea cause of my laziness. A store keeper told me, "There´s a public bathroom down the road, you should check it out." Public bathrooms were the nastiest things in Peru, but really it was a hot springs. Yep, was too lazy to make it 1km and pay the 60 cents admission.

Then on the day I left, my 10 year old friend was really excited about a festival happening that night with fireworks and music and stuff. As I rode out of town I could hear a parade behind me that I was basically avoiding by accident.

I did two things right though, finished my book, so that was about 300 grams reduced from my pack. And also made some friends at the street vendor food stand.

They have these stands all over Peru, they´re tiny coal grills with skewers of flat meat, and then you get a baked potato on the tip. Optionally you can lather it with hot sauce. It costs just one Sol, 30 cents. I thought it was beef for hundreds of miles, and I kept getting weird looks when I asked for one as bistek. Finally in Ollechea I sat down at one that was loaded with just raw meat, so it was an excuse to mingle for a few minutes. Turns out its alpaca meat!

The girl running the stand had a pretty crazy situation, she was 12 years old, running that stand until late, she also ran the general store behind her, and went to school. I guess it´s not really like working though, her friends were all there. The whole town was on that street, along with a bunch of transients waiting for their buses to leave.

So after two nights I decided to head for Macusani. Everyone I talked to about Macusani said it was extremely cold, just like they said Puerto Maldonado was extremely hot. All over Peru people kept bragging about their Peruvian genetics, saying things like "I´m Peruvian, so my immune system is strong enough to withstand malaria" and "I´m Peruvian, so soroche doesn´t affect me." I started playing the game too saying I preferred the cold because I was from Chicago.

The other thing they kept saying was, "subido, subido!", or uphill. Man it was grueling, probably my magnus opus of cycling so far. I could see concrete barracades way up near a mountain peak, and yep, the road snaked around enough that I ended up there. I chewed enough coca leaves to make my mouth numb, but not numb enough for surgury. I think it really did help, it clears your headache and slows your heart. At sea level, or jungle level, it doesn´t do anything, coffee is much stronger.

To anyone trying the same trip, there is absolutely nothing between Ollechea and Macusani. No tiendas to restock or buy lunch from. There were seriously three huts, and one of them was part of Inca ruins. There is one town, but to get to it you have to go way into a valley and back up again.

Luckily there was a construction site near the peak, and the workers, as friendly as always, handed me a big sack of food! It was fully stocked, tea, soup, a pork chop, and rice. I would have never made it without that, at least I would have had to camp and eat my pasta.

Saw a massive condor near the peak too, check that one off the list.

I got really slow at the peak, was limping along and about to freecamp when someone told me I only had 5kms to go. They called my bluff on the cold, I showed up at the first tienda in town with numb hands and feet, speaking really poor Spanish. I was wearing shorts and sandals because even this day there was a stream crossing, the jungle wouldn´t quit!

The kid working the tienda was probably 7 years old. I bought my stack of candy and juice and was binging outside with obviously the whole family upstairs staring at me, and another kid a few doors down. I crossed the street for a more comfortable place to sit and saw the blinds quickly shut and the light turn off. Then they just stared from the other window, not fooling anyone.

I love how the Andean people won´t change their way of life no matter how rough the elements. Central heating and cooling just isn´t going to happen for the common Peruvian, so in the hostal they had the thickest alpaca blankets possible, two of them. It felt like the lead blanket they give you when getting X-rays at the dentist, and it worked. These people are like the eskimos of Peru.

It had to be in the 40s at night. Still, almost all the shops were open air. They´d have a rolltop entrance as wide and tall as the store. They even had people selling stuff outdoors in the square off bike carts. They told me it never ever snows. I can´t believe that, how could the conditions be any more suitable?

They really love Halloween here, all the women in Macusani dressed up early, they´re going as Rosanne dressed as a witch. It´s not that they´re really that huge, they´re just wearing 5 layers of traditional clothing.

I was really glad to get my cheese fix here, I hadn´t succeeded buying cheese since Maldonado. In Ollechea they did have it, when I asked they brought it out like a museum piece, all wrapped in an oily cloth. I didn´t want to buy the whole half kilo of cheese, so they yanked it back and hid it again.

I noticed a lot of people had pretty greasy hair, probably because showering here really sucks. I forgot to mention before, since Quince Mil there were intermittent water outages as well as power outages, and the water didn´t run the whole time I was here. Instead they had a 7 gallon bucket in my room, full to the brim. The power also went out in the morning, but I got used to that.

This was the highest city of my trip, 4300m, or 14,000ft! I thought La Paz was going to be the highest, but it´s only 10,000ft. As I write this, I´m still higher than that, Lake Titicaca is at 12,000ft. These people walked around like the altitude was nothing. They´d run down the street for blocks, and tons of people had bicycles. I bent over light headed after climbing two flights of stairs to my room.

I wish I would have stayed longer in Macusani, I´m sure there was a lot more to explore around there. The whole place is surrounded by herds of Alpacas, and they have a breeding program too. I´m sure I saw over 1000 heading down to Puno from Macusani.

The next day I started heading down to Lake Titicaca. I got a chance to redeem myself for taking a taxi earlier, the mountain pass after Macusani was 4800ft. There was a peak next to the pass that looked pretty easy to climb, so I put my bike down and went up there. What do you think I found at the top of the world? Two traditionally dressed women who saw me coming and avoided me. Also a circular stack of rocks. Peruvians really like to stack rocks, both for a purpose, and recreationally.

Not a whole lot to say about my trip down to Puno, I´ll keep it short. In one town everyone seemed afraid of me, but then a 7 year old girl half my size asked for a picture with me. Then four more people pulled out digital cameras and got a picture. I thought they were really poor but they surprised me.

San Anton was a tough town, I couldn´t stop anywhere without a curious crowd forming. I stopped to buy cheese and ended up with a semi-circle of traditionally dressed middle aged people, and pulled an old foreign language trick on them.

Rosanne Woman 1: Where´d you come from with this bike?
Me: Cusco, via Maldonado
Rosanne Woman 1: Where are you from?
Me: USA
Rosanne Woman 1: (Huge grin, complete Quecha gibberish, 0% comprehension)
Me: No, I don´t have a wife
Rosanne Woman 2: He understood!!

I figure with foreign languages you should guess at what your opponent´s questions and answers are going to be in advance of them speaking, and in the beginning, listen for those one or two words that indicate which direction they went. If you end up with no words to work with, there´s no reason you can´t keep a straight face and just completely bullshit.

Besides, they keep following the same pattern. Truck drivers and construction workers have been the easiest, they ask the same questions in almost the same order every time. Children are the hardest, way too fast, curious and tangential! But they push me to learn the most.

Lunch in San Anton had a bunch of strange things that now seem normal. The price was $1, there was a motorcycle parked next to my table indoors, and the meat was spicy Alpaca.

One last thing, in Juliaca I saw the motherlode of coca leaves today. This stand in the market had three bales about half the size of a hay bale. I asked how much, and the old woman held up five fingers. No idea what that means.

That´s all I can think of for now. Tomorrow I´m going to see about a boat to Bolivia, and the dreaded Bolivian visa that costs $135. I´m also going to take the bus back to Juliaca because that town is awesome compared to Puno.