Up outta the moisture

I´m back at the fringe of the mountains now, a town called Ollechea that shows up twice on google maps, didn´t notice the first one in real life. My paper map situation is really rough now, tons of helpful pueblitos are missing, so nurishment is a surprise unless I carry it.

I have to come clean, I took a station wagon the last 100km to Maldonado too. All these major roads have an armada of station wagons, vans and whatever they can come up with, shuttling between towns for whoever hails them. The price was right, it was really hot, and I didn´t know of any place to stay in that stretch. Looking back, I should have stayed at the motorcycle freetown. If they make a Mad Max four that takes place in Peru, that´s the location!

My driver honked at anyone outside their house anywhere on the way, and it worked, we rolled into town fully packed. First it was two sacks of rice and an old woman to collect the money in town. Then some other general randos. I had no idea what I was doing in Maldonado, so I just got out in the shared car district, which was a ditch with a few cars parked on both sides and the drivers all chatting. It worked out really well, the crowd that formed in minutes directed me to a really great hospedaje, Español.

Anything with wheels does a lot of work down there. I saw a huge flatbed truck unloaded except for a bunch of bags of rice thrown on the back. Drivers don´t waste any opportunity.

Oh yeah, definitely don´t go to the amazon if you´re not ok with bugs. The mosquitos were not as bad as Wisconsin, but maybe they weren´t in season. In the market in Maldonado I felt something on the back of my neck, grabbed for it, realized it was the size of my palm and felt it grab back in a sticky wormy insect way. I cracked my arm like a whip and never managed to see it. It was probably just a huge moth. The kittens in that town had no fear of them, I saw one carrying a moth the size of it´s face around in it´s mouth.

And I took the bus back out of the jungle, forgive me. For 15 soles they brought me 150kms back to Loromayo, the town with the world´s most adorable racism, and the start of the road to Puno. For 10 soles I stayed in the same place as before, it did not come with light this time either.

I´m sorry to keep coming back to the toilet humor, but this place really has quite the situation. Imagine the staircase in your house is concrete, outdoors and open to a huge variety of insects. And then there´s a toilet just right there in the open, no curtain or anything, and obviously no seat. My headlamp has been really useful, (thanks for the Christmas present mom and dad!) but in the jungle it was kind of funny, attracting all sorts of insects to my face and corners of my mouth, especially right here.

The first minutes on the road to Puno were very promising, but hit a low later. I left to a parade of Peruvian children chanting, ¨Gringo!¨ the same ones from before. Couldn´t have been happier. I regret not getting a video of that. Then the typical territorial dogs chased me for a minute, and I love playing with them, I bark back at them, slam on the brakes to call their bluff, bike in circles, bike right at them standing their ground, and whistle like I want them to follow me. No shortage of immaturity on my part.

Then like 20 minutes into the road this guy passes me on a motorcycle and turns around to talk to me. He says, ¨There are robbers up there! Don´t go there!¨ and makes a pistol with his hand. I asked, where, in 100kms, in the woods or the next town or what? And then, SHIT! Necessito el baño! Ahorrita! My dysentary got bad again, probably cause I drank sweet tea in the jungle made out of river tap water. I ran off into the woods for a bit, came back. That pretty much ended the conversation, and I kept on.

After that it was mostly just gnarly uphill work, but it was my favorite scenic parts of Peru, the cloud forest phenomenon, in reverse and really slow. I got ripped off in the first town, 15 soles now for a Hospedaje ($5), but this one had light and a better outdoor bathroom. There was also absolutely incredible torrential rain while I was here, which makes tons of noise on that corrugated roof, and lightening really close over and over. Would have been a miserable night in a tent.

The next morning was way cooler than usual, so I got on the road early. I think all the flowing water downhill must carry the heat away, which is what makes the amazon basin so hot, and the mountains cool. That´s the pseudoscience that works in my head anyways.

Right away I came to a huge stream crossing. They were adding more rocks to it so the trucks could pass. They told me to wait an hour, have breakfast and relax. The most talkative guy at the tienda turned out to be a gold prospector with some crazy eyes. He said Peru is rich in metals, but nobody cares about anything but the gold! They get 70% of what flows down the river, but their process isn´t advanced enough to get that last 30%. Also, there are massive nuggets in the ground, but to find them is just guessing with a shovel. But in the United States there are detectors that can find the gold! Just then the construction worker standing by got the crazy eyes too, and they all got my contact information so I can buy a detector for them and bring it next year and hunt gold with them when I visit. Heh, probably not going to happen.

With all the rain there was tons of mud and tons of WIDE stream crossings. I got really good at them, didn´t usually have to put a foot down.

One of the stream crossings was a great swimming spot. Deep enough that kids were diving and doing flips and stuff. Spent some good time there, futily washing my bike for the upcoming mud and stuff. A bus full of construction workers rolled by, and one of them said, ¨El gringo, tambien!¨

Next night, I stayed in my tent in a construction site that had a roof, couldn´t find a town. Left really early so I´d be out of there before the workers showed. I still got to talk to the Seguridad folks rolling by, but they were fine with squatting.

Following afternoon I went through my favorite part of Peru, the highest reaches of amazon clouds. I ate an entire pinapple for lunch, kind of like a vegetarian lobster meal. Price tag was 75 cents, but I got ripped off, the next people paid 50 cents, haha.

I got caught in pretty hard rain, ended up seeking shelter in a cave, and then a pueblito´s school construction site. The worker showed up right away and said I could camp there. Then he and 4 of his 7 kids watched me try to light my stove and it ran out of fuel, so I got a dinner invite! They had basically fry bread, as the Native Americans have in the states, and then some really syrupy thick red tea, both were awesome!

They gave me the best seat in the house, on a firm matress next to a TV showing Planet Earth in Spanish. I thought that was funny, coming inside from some of my favorite scenery on Earth to watch a movie about Africa. They were living in the old school, as far as I could tell. Just over the top nice, I leaned back and they gave me a bag of clothes for a back rest. They fed me first, and the largest portion size.

They surprised me with breakfast too, in my tent. I traded them some bananas I was carrying, but it wasn´t enough.

Since then I´ve accended about 1500 meters over 20km on the map, and it´s very noticably drier, all in one day. The bugs are much less, and I can barely whistle now. The mountains are obviously different too, banana trees can´t survive here, but they were plentiful yesterday.

Sitting in this Internet cafe I was hounded by the kids. Had an audience of about 7 at one point, now just one standing there quietly. They taught me a little Spanish, and I taught them that Los Angeles is really far from Chicago, and about Shaquille O´Neil.

I think I got about 18 days left, which should be enough time to make it to La Paz. Next stop, higher hills.