Riding High: Bikepacking Peru (Film)

Words and additional photos by Danielle O’Hara

The Cordilleras Blanca and Huayhuash of Peru were an extravaganza of mountains, big skies, quiet campsites, and icy mornings. People were matter-of-fact, kind, and forgiving of our muddled Spanish. It was a proper adventure with just the right amount of discomfort, grandeur, and peanut butter.

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But choosing how to share the story of any journey is hard. It’s not just about the tailoring—your non-riding friends won’t care about the finer points of spoke repair, and your mum doesn’t need to hear about the near-miss with a landslip—but also the medium. As a medium, Mick’s films capture our daily experience, bringing the bite of the wind and the sight of clouds swirling around mountain peaks to life better than words can. Our photos, meanwhile, are doorways to stories or pauses in stories timed for the most beautiful or novel junctures.

A good tale told over a beer or tea is a story. As time goes on, the tales become more polished. Mick and I know our parts, the punchlines get smoother, and while we tell the truth, we learn to emphasise what makes people shocked and what makes them laugh. Even our bodies tell stories. We return, usually skinny and tired with awkward tans, legs that could carry us thousands of kilometres, and arms that can barely lift our bike boxes.

And the written word can tell stories of a different kind. To accompany Mick’s films, our photos, and the tales we’ll bore our friends with, we share some stories from Peru below.

A not-so-graceful mantle

After a hard, seven-hour ride with a 2,000-metre elevation gain up to Laguna Paron, we found ourselves navigating a landslip. I hauled my loaded bike up a short set of steps, fully aware—in the back of my mind—that the offset steps and the steep drop into the valley were more than I could manage alone. But usually, it works anyway, right?

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On the final step, I pushed my left foot down for momentum while lifting my bike up the narrow ledge. But the scree gave way, and suddenly, I was clinging to the top of the step with my left hand, the bike on top of me. My right foot held firm, my right hand flailed near the spokes, my left foot dangling over the steep slope. Pinned tightly against the cliff, I couldn’t see. Mick had stopped filming just 10 seconds earlier. I turned my head towards him and whispered, “help.”

“You or the bike?” Mick asked.

“The bike,” I replied.

I untangled my hand from the spokes, and Mick gently eased the bike’s weight off me. I reassessed. If he grabbed my hand, it would destabilise me and pull him 10 metres down the scree with me, 30 kilograms of bike included in the tumble. Rock-climbing brain activated, I figured a good mantle would do it. With the grace of a seal on land, I threw myself over the edge and wiggled onto firmer ground. We both laughed hysterically.

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Like many adrenaline-fuelled near-misses, the ramifications dawned on us later. Somehow, my only injury was a knee scrape. Adventure for the day well and truly achieved, we rode the final 200 metres to camp next to Lake Paron. We ate well-travelled Pringles while watching the clouds shift and morph around the mountain peaks as the sun set.

A not-so-graceful retreat

As soon as we left the gravel road gaining altitude from Huallanca, the four-and-a-half-day Huallanca-Oyon Highlux Photography route was hard.

Tussocks of grass lined the singletrack winding its way across the steep slope, making the ridable sections about aligning your pedal position to avoid clipping them. Not the best technical rider, I jumped on and off my bike, swearing at every shin strike. Eventually, I got tussocked, catching one with my pedal, pitching down the slope, and landing a few metres below with my bike on top of me. I lay awkwardly in the dirt, head on the downside of the slope, while Mick, again, came over to extract the bike from my limbs. Over the coming days, bruises appeared, and my neck burned. The hike-a-bike took three hours longer than planned; we eventually got riding again up over Abra Cuncush and down through the icy valley past Laguna Pucacoch. We camped under the gaze of Yerupajá (6,635 metres) and Jirishanca (6,125 metres).

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The next day started with a steep hike-a-bike. Already cooked from the previous day, my arm muscles were useless, and every push involved a power grunt. We knew the hardest two days were ahead, and while hike-a-bike is not my preferred method of forward momentum, I usually get it done. This time, my neck was angry from the tumble, my feeble muscles protesting at the thought of another three days. We’d heard another cyclist had previously bailed a day ahead and procured a donkey to carry his gear. We had food for one extra day, but in anticipation of the difficulty, we were going as light as we could safely go. Mid-morning, we called it, making a rough alternate plan involving backtracking to a previous intersection. We retreated.

As we backtracked, we collected water from a stream. While filtering, a cow wandered over to watch us. Then another. Then another. Soon, many cows were watching us. They looked…imploring.

“What do you think they’re trying to tell us?”

“Dunno, maybe they’re just saying hi?”

Turns out they did have a message for us, to be discovered the following day. We camped high in the icy valley. It was a rough night: too high in altitude to get a good sleep, slightly grumbly stomachs, and brutal cold that didn’t end until the sun finally popped over the valley walls mid-morning. We backtracked, reversing the hike-a-bike. But we were slow, sluggish. Not right. Every 10 minutes, we’d both sit listlessly for a rest.

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We agreed to backtrack further down to Huallanca and roll down the hill to spend a night in a hotel to recoup. Thankfully, the effect of the bad water hit once we’d settled into our room, and the next two days were spent relaying for the bathroom, sleeping, and occasionally venturing out for water, cornflakes, and milk. One morning, we had a false start, slowly idling six kilometres up the hill with Mick stopping every two kilometres for a poo.

“This isn’t going to work, is it?”

“Nope!”

Back to the hotel for another two nights. By the time we’d left, we’d eaten every packet of cornflakes in town. It was time to depart.

The critters of the land and sky

Part of the joy of a cycling trip is meeting the animals. Domestic, wild, of the sky or the land; those that watch us and those we watch. They are the company, the entertainment, the reminder that by pedalling along on two wheels, we’re being a bit weird. There were the alpacas, Andean condors, Andean geese, Andean lapwings, and all the furry and feathered creatures we didn’t know the names of.

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There were the dogs. Off the bike, the dogs were a delight. There was Bernie, the Bernese Mountain Dog at our hotel at Huaraz, a goofy 50-kilogram, eight-month-old puppy, oblivious of his size, confused at the lack of willing wrestling partners. He was also the lucky recipient of leftover breakfast bread rolls every morning, gobbled in one big inhale. There was Edith, the gentle mutt at our hospedaje in Lima, who scurried over for a belly scratch every time we saw her, suddenly deaf to our hotel owners’ calls, torn between the (very mild) stern words and the guaranteed attention. And there were the dogs in every town, who would wander, bicker, sneak into restaurants and sleep under the tables only to be gently prodded out.

On the bike, it was different. Unlike some places, it didn’t seem like the dogs wanted to take us down and gnaw on our bodies. Although keen on the chase, most weren’t ankle-nippers; it seemed purely for fun. We were a cow, or a sheep, a fast-moving mammal to herd or join. Riding downhill, our strategy was to ride as fast as possible, glancing over the shoulder. Riding uphill (the only other option in Peru), the first step in the strategy was to have a chat. “Hello friend, why the noise?” Some would stop. If they didn’t: dismount the bike and repeat strategy: “Hello pooch, good work on the barking.” Most would stop then. If not, the fail-safe fake reach for the rock would work, and they’d warily step or scurry back.

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Then, the cows. There were the bovine gastro-messengers from the story above. Another time, two cows stood in the middle of the road. Still, staring, curious. We stopped. One ambled forward and sniffed my tyre. They straightened, and we looked at each other. She stepped aside, and we went on our way.

Finally, the sheep. Once, passing through a small village, one at a time, three dogs hurtled out of a house to chase the most exciting thing they’d seen all day. Following, a baby lamb dashed after them, on wobbly enthusiastic legs, having some kind of identity crisis. Another time, we came across a few-day-old lamb separated from its ma by a fence. Both were bleating, distressed. I picked up the warm bundle and deposited him on the correct side. Another time, a tiny lamb on the road ran after me on its unsteady legs. I stopped. She sniffed my tyre, like the cows. We looked at each other, and I slowly went on my way.

And really, most of our animal encounters were just like that. We’d look at one another. Acknowledge our mutual absurdity. Then all go on our way.

Through sharing the stories of our ride in Peru, the memories sharpen, concentrate around certain events, certain feelings, certain images. But the stories don’t dilute the overall vibe that surfaces when we hear the word “Peru,” which is one of grand mountains lit by soft light at sunset, cold that creeps into your brain, bread bought from amused abuelas, and tyres rolling down limitless gravel roads.

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The Route

Further Reading

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