06/10 After a somewhat long climb leaving Huaraz, K&M and I found a nice camp spot across from Lago Querococha which sits up at 12,940 feet. We got lucky and found a little cluster of buildings right before the road started another climb up to the pass. It looks like during the day someone runs a store/restaurant but the place was closed when we got there at 4pm. It’s a shame they don’t have a campground in this area of the national park but the fenced in area around the buildings worked out perfectly.
Getting up to the lake wasn’t without incident. While we were all stopped at the side of the road some idiot in a jeep thought it would be funny to cut over from the other lane and come within a foot of where Karen was standing. We didn’t see the driver but we all gave them the finger.
That brings me to a short rant about guys in Peru. I’ve been here about 3 months now and of every country I’ve been in, this country easily has the highest population of twenty-something year old guys that act like complete retards. I would say that virtually all my interactions with guys in this age group are negative unless I completely ignore them and they do the same.
The reason why I ignore them is because when I ride by and say hi this is usually the response: they ignore me, they don’t say anything and just stare, they wait until I pass and then say something that I don’t understand but is undoubtedly meant to be insulting or my favorite, I’ll pass by and they’ll giggle like a little school girl. If there’s more than one of them a stupid remark followed by giggling is almost always the reaction. At least if I ignore them I didn’t expend any energy.
I don’t know what happened when they hit 13 but that’s about the age they stopped all mental development and decided to be lazy, sexist, alcoholic, moto-taxi drivers. It’s really a shame because if they represent the future work force/leaders the outlook for Peru is pretty dismal.
Anyway, this morning started off with a park ranger shaking my tent at 5:30am to let me know it was OK to camp there. Not kidding–that’s all he said after he woke me up and I said I’d be out of my tent in a second. I did end up climbing out into the cold morning air and he just asked about my trip. At least I got to admire the large amount of frost on my tent and bike.
The rest of the climb up to the pass was along a very scenic valley that got us up to 14,725 feet. It was here that we ran into the Kahuish tunnel. After posing for some pictures we donned our headlamps and rode pretty fast to the other side before a truck showed up. There is quite a bit of 24×7 traffic since it’s the first paved road that crosses the Cordillera Blanca range coming from the north.
Emerging from the tunnel there’s an impressive view of Mega Jesus that some Italian missionaries built. It was a very Greek-like statue though and for a second I thought I was about to ride into Athens. In the picture below you can see a tiny red dot to the left of the statue–that’s Karin. The 32 mile ride down to Chavin started off on smooth pavement but quickly turned into a bumpy gravel mess.
Tomorrow we’re walking over to visit the famous ruins, a Unesco World Heritage site since 1985, they are thought to be the only large structures left behind by the ChavÃn culture, one of the oldest wide-ranging civilizations on the continent. They even pre-date the Incas, their culture dating back to 1000 BC.
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