Cusco to Nazca - What goes up, finally comes down.

Effortlessly gliding 3kms downhill into the desert. World's highest sandhill beyond.

**As always, more pics can be found in Piscasa, here

After spending a week longer in Cusco than planned waiting for Anna to get her stitches out and for our travel insurance to pay the hospital bill we prepared to hit the road again. Due to our recent medical mishaps and the fact Anna still had a ridiculous-looking bandage on her forehead we decided to abbreviate the difficult ride out of Cusco by taking a bus through the first 300kms through the mountains. There was no large towns on this route and at least three mountain passes over 4000m with valleys at 2000m in between them, making it one of the most challenging (and demoralising) sections of hill climbing anywhere in the Andes. We organised for the bus to drop us at the town of Piquio, in a valley one 4000m pass and 150kms from the desert town of Nasca. Ben had read on another cyclists' blog that there was only 600m of climbing from here to the pass, before an exciting-sounding 3000m downhill. There was also a reserve at the top for Vicuña, an endangered relative of the Llama which we thought might make an interesting campsite.

Thats a Vicuña crossing the road.

This all sounded like a reasonable and sensible sounding plan, which of course meant it was doomed to fail and immediately did. From the moment our local bus lurched over the first hill Anna began to feel pangs of motion sickness, which only worsened as the bus continually plunged from one valley to the next through a series of impressive switchbacks. The situation was relieved slightly with an emergency iceblock but not before the very loud spanish-dubbed movie started playing on the in-bus entertainment system. The movie of choice was "Problem Child", followed immediately by "Problem Child II". We cannot recomend these movies.

Lunch in an unknown town was a welcome break. We had thought a bus travelling a mere 300kms would only take 3-5 hours but after 4 hours we were hardly half way. We made a poor decision picking our lunch destination, going primarily on price. It was the standard two course deal, the first being the familiar unknown-meat soup, but we didn't recognise any of the second course options. With the waitress waiting we got flustered and just pointed at two different options, Ben ended up with beans, Anna ended up with unknown pureed something. We couldn't even tell if it was animal or vegetable, but she's a good eater so she ate it anyway. Six hours later when we were still on the bus she was vowing never to eat unknown food again. We watched another spanish language movie, this time a sassy Jean-Claude van Damme number before the very loud Peruvian folk music was played for 3 hours. Anna escaped to her ipod, Ben learnt Peruvian folk songs. A strong contender for our worst bus experience ever.

We assembled the bikes in the dark and walked 20 meters to the closest and probably only place to stay in town, where our 10 year old host showed us to our room. Anna was up all night reliving her lunch, Ben slept like a baby. Ben walked next door in the morning to pick up eggs and bread for breakfast which we covertly cooked in our room despite there being a sign telling us not to (such disobendience!).

The climb out of town was not 600m.

Well, technically it was, but it was followed by a 600m descent and 1200m climb. We could see this bad news unfold before us as the road snaked all the way down to the bottom of the valley before snaking alllllll the way back up the other side. We tried to be optimistic "...Well, at least the road doesn't seem to go all the way to the bottom of the valley.." (it did) and then "..According to my altimeter we should be almost at the top.." (we weren't). As we climbed a couple of local boys hopped on their bikes and rode with us but eventually they fell behind and thunder clouds began to roll in. Switchbacks continued up as far as the eye could see. It started raining heavily, Jackets and rainpants were hastily pulled from the bottom of our bags where they had been carefully stowed away as we thought we were going to the desert. A man pulled over to tell us there was heavier rain ahead and there was a place to stay a mere 40kms away. We had cycled 40kms in 7 hours up to this point. About 4kms later we passed a toll booth, rode another 200m, climbed through a fence and over the lip of a small hill and set up the tent for the night.

That road sign really says it all.

As soon as darkness fell the temperature plunged below zero, for the second time that day we had to dig around at the bottom of our bags for cold weather gear, sleeping on all our clothes and with hats on. Anna still had an upset stomach from the bus ride and unknown meal from the day before but after a couple of sub-zero trips outside the tent decided that the time had come for emergency medication to prevent further trips. We woke up in the morning to the tent covered in ice.

The sun immediately started melting the ice causing water to drip into the tent. We were sleepy and it took a while to realise that the water was dripping inside the tent, onto our down sleeping bags. Anna shoved her jacket on top of her sleeping bag to catch the water, but eventually it overflowed and went all over her thermarest, under her sleeping bag and generally everywhere. We had a full-blown wet-down disaster on our hands. Wet down takes ages to dry and looses all its warmth-giving potential so the life of our sleeping bags was at stake here. Giving up all attempts at stealth we spread our stuff out everywhere around the tent to try and dry it out. The bright orange sleeping bags could been seen from everywhere in the valley.

The local endangered camelid, as viewed from our tent. We woke in the night to the sound of nearby hooves, we hope it was just these guys.

We had a terrible breakfast of porridge with no milk and was just beginning to pack up our bags when Ben looked up and said "Umm, there's a farmer walking towards us with a gun..." which there certainly was, he was about 20 meters away and walking straight towads us. We tried to think of some spanish apology words whilst shoving our stuff into our bags faster than we have ever done before. Anna managed to get in "We're very-sorry-sir-it-was-raining-I'm-sick-it-was-cold" before the man laughed, told her to relax and asked where we were from, where we were going and how cold was it last night in the tent. After a bit of small talk he carried on walking further into the field. Still have no idea what the gun was for.

After having a sit down for 5 minutes to recover from the heart attack the gun man gave us we noticed we were about to receive further visitors. A giant herd of llamas was a mere 10 metres away walking straight towards us. Are llamas dangerous? Do they bite? Will they stampede and crush us to death? These were all questions in our minds as the llamas moved closer. We chose to play dead (it works for bears doesn't it?) and very, very slowly reached for the camera. We figured they could probably smell fear, and we were still sweating fear from the gun incident of 5 minutes ago. They passed without incident however, their owner strolled past at the end and wished us good morning as if this happens every day.

"No sudden movements, just very carefully reach and get the camera out..."

An hour later we reached the top of the pass and started our descent of the Andes. Thank. Bloody. God.

The summit.

As you would expect the 3000m downhill was awesome. Annas helmet rubbed on the cut on her head so she did the whole downhill without her helmet on. It was probably the slowest downhill ride ever as a result as she was super paranoid about crashing. As we got lower the landscape got drier, we cycled past the world's biggest sand dune, had tuna sandwiches for lunch using a can of tuna we brought in Patagonia before xmas and rocked into Nazca at about 5pm. After stopping to ask for directions we met a man who had passed us in his truck coming down, he spoke perfect english with an American accent after living in Hawaii for 10 years. He took a photo of us, thought we were crazy and gave us great directions. We stayed in a nice room in a hotel right on the plaza.

Anna followed doctors orders and removed her bandage only to find there was at least 4 stitches the doctor had forgotten to remove. We couldn't believe it! For now we decided to leave them in and maybe deal with it in Lima, only a week or so away.