PowerCycle

07/16 I cheated. For the first time in 2.5 years I had to catch a lift. Last night I happened to be gazing fondly at my bike when I noticed a broken spoke. The black cloud had returned. I was really hoping after I’d tightened everything up that would have been the end of the broken spoke days. Knowing Cusco was only 50 miles away I decided to leave it and just ride with the other 35 spokes taking the weight. I’ve had to do that several times and never had a problem–there’s virtually zero wobble with one spoke out. Well I was about 3/4 up a huge climb when I felt the tire wobbling a lot. 2 other spokes had broken.

This happened right past a tiny village so I coasted back downhill and waited for a suitable ride to come along. There was just no point in trying to fix it. I had exactly 3 spare spokes left but I would have spent a couple hours taking everything apart and with 3 out who knows how many more were in bad shape. A couple guys in a pickup came along about 15 minutes later and gave me a lift to Cusco which was about 40 miles away.

They dropped me off about a mile from the hotel I wanted to stay at but the tire held together for the ride there. Cusco is not a fun city to ride a bike in either. Rough, narrow roads and lot’s of traffic. Turns out that hotel was full but not even a block away I found another place that is pretty good (Choquekiraw Inn, S35, hot water, wifi, quiet). After getting settled in I set off to find a bike shop. Turns out there’s one 1/2 block away. They are going to fix the wheel and replace everything else worn out on it like the rear casette, front chainrings and chain. It’ll take them a week but they were cool with me leaving it there until I get back from Florida on August 11th.

Coming out of Abancay there was a big climb up to the pass but the view on the other side made it worth it. The area to the north of the highway is a conservation area and it’s dotted with huge snowcapped mountains. Machu Picchu is on the other side and was only 20 miles away for most of the way. To lighten my load I decided to plant my machete in the ground at the side of the road. The danger factor has been non-existent since leaving the coast and it’s not really practical for smacking dogs that get too close.

The first night I stayed at the Hostal Santa Catalina in Curahuasi. The town was quiet but there was a pizza place with probably the best tasting pizza I’ve had in South America so far. As it turns out that pizza was a new lifetime record for me…pizza for 3 night in a row.

The second day brought me way down in altitude to about 6100 feet where the temperature was hovering around 95 F in the valley. It was a very surreal thing to be riding in that heat and then to be able to look up and see mountains with snow on top. Stopped in the village of Limatambo and grabbed a room in the Hostal El Tambo for S15. Not sure why I picked a room that overlooked that Panam Highway but I was already a bit sleep deprived so what’s another night.

A mile outside Limatambo is the Inca site of Tarawasi. Being the lazy sort (and it being damn hot outside) I took a taxi after asking the lady at the hostal how much it should cost. She told me S1. The first taxi driver wanted S3. Figures. Taxi drivers have to be the biggest gang of thieves in Latin America. I laughed and flagged down another one. This one joked that it was S10 and he probably would have tried to charge me that had there not been other people in the taxi.

Tarawasi ended up being the biggest waste of S10 I’ve spent on any touristy thing so for. It’s supposed to have been a ceremonial center, as well as a resting place for the Inca chasquis (Inca runners who delivered messages over long distances). The big attraction was a polygonal retaining wall that had 28 human-sized niches carved into it. The Lonely Planet guide says the wall itself is worth the trip from Cusco. It’s not. I felt like I was walking around a rundown farm. Sure the wall was a nice wall and everything but what was it for? I have no idea. What were the niches for? There were also two big buildings that looked about as Inca as I do. For S10 they could have printed up some brochures or stuck up a little informational sign. 5 guys, who seemed to work there, were laying in the grass the whole time which made walking around while they stared at me a bit weird. I did get a fancy ticket that had the funniest rules translated into English that I’ve ever seen. I still have no idea what I was supposed to do with my bottle of water. I walked the mile back.