Colombia

 In honor of this momentous occasion, let´s watch Commando en Español together:

Good people check

Left to right - Salome, Jhaun, Matthias, Miguel, Monica, Pablo, Nadie (not pictured), me

A temporary stay in Quito stretched out to about a week plus two days thanks to this fine international crew of gypsies and the hospitality at New Bask hostel (at Garcia and Almagro, if anyone is looking for a great place to stay in Ecuador's capitol city). Good people all around. I will remember you guys, y si tu leyendo mi blog, acuerdas...mi casa es tu casa.  

I'm back above the clouds for the moment, speeding towards Tulcan and then the promised land of Colombia. More adventures to come...

It keeps getting better

I´ve been getting alot of concerned messages from folks asking me for updates and pictures and such of the most recent leg of the journey. I've been a little slow as of late, so apologize to you folks that have been frantically hitting the refresh button until your browser crashes (protip: don´t use Internet Explorer to look at this blog, for some reason it can't handle my careful arrangement of pictures). Ecuador has been too much fun...the Hawaiin climate and all the free fruit from the locals has made this the most easy-going and nutritious segment of the adventure thus far. Needless to say, I've been reluctant to sit in front of a computer and work out another entry for you folks. The weather outside is too perfect. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 Let's get back to Northern Perú for a moment. With the steepest and longest climbs of the country behind me (hopefully for the rest of the journey), I was back to mercifully flat, paved roads and 120 km days on the highway. The oppressive heat and the dearth of all vegetation from Chimbote to Chiclayo was not exactly an enjoyable experience seeing that I had nothing to feast my eyes upon besides exhaust and roadkill. However, I was eating up kilometers like a fiend, and within two days, I was back in dense Peruvian jungle, where the roadside was littered with parakeets that were about as photogenic as Bolivians.

Roadside pyramids in Túcume...no big deal in Perú

 It didn't really occur to me that my trip through Perú was coming to a close. Compared to a lot of other ciclistas in these parts, my trip through the country was short thanks to a few rides in haulers up some challenging ascents. No sweat off my back. However, I probably missed out on a lot of interesting sites and stories to tell. This country is geographically vast, and it's history is...vaster? Sorry, my vocabulary is a little stilted due to all this spanish talk. I found some Umberto Eco in english at my current residency so I hope to get my skills back once I get "The Prague Cemetary" out of the way. Wishful thinking.

Good samaritans

 The other great thing about being back in the jungle is the rain. "Double-u tee eff" you might be thinking, but mind you, the temperature gets nice and toasty in these parts, and since seven plus hours a day on a bike with no spare clothes to change into is not going to have the ladies tearing out each other's hair to get to your swedish bits like some kind of Axe spray-on poison commercial, getting doused with heavy jungle rain is something that one learns to relish, especially since the rain water this close to the ecuator is about as warm--if not warmer--than some of the shower faucets in these parts. In Ñaupé, my caveman cleansing was not a custom shared by the locals, who quickly pulled me out of the rain and furnished me with dry clothes, some flat Sprite, and a place to stay for the night. The night was warm enough that all my things were more or less dry by the next day. Then came the dreaded saga of Píura...

I am five km's outside of the city when I see a group of five individuals at the side of the road. I don't think anything of it and continue past them at a chill pace. Soon enough, one of these high-school kids jumps ontop of my trailer while another takes me by the waist gingerly enough not to dismount me, but firm enough to start rummaging through my pockets. He's not coming off anytime soon, so I bring the u-lock down on his nose and he finally lets go, along with his friend. The five of them run off into a grand junkyard and I stop to check my things. My camera and wallet are still zipped tight in my pants, but my tunebox is gone, and with a fully loaded bike, the DreamCrusher is in no condition to give chase. I find the nearest police station to see if I can get some help finding these runts, but other than offering me a place to stay for the night, there's not much the police can do besides assuring me I will not be arrested for assaulting a minor.

While other tourists might shrug off a stolen ipoop as no big deal and thank The Seven that their passport and wallet wasn't stolen, I--as a cyclist with an excess amount of testosterone--will not allow such a slight to go unpunished. The next day, I return to the same location and start talking to pretty much every local I can find, describing as much as I can about these kids and asking if anyone has seen these sketchy looking so-and-so's walking around lately. It's not long before I find out where one of the kids works at night (the very same junkyard in which they made their escape). I also discover a sympathetic taxi driver named Samual who not only knows exactly who I'm talking about, but also had his money pouch stolen by the same kids a week before. We join forces and head to the junkyard to ask the whereabouts of one of the kids. We get an address from the boss and head a few miles up the road to a shack, where Samual politely describes our situation to the mother of two of the robber muchachos. After we help her move some fresh water inside her house, she agrees to take us to where the five robbers hangout in town. These kids were not expecting to see the two of us again, let alone with their own momma at our side. After we reassure them that we were not bringing the police, one of the kids with a bloody rag stuck to his nose brings out the driver's money pouch and my tunebox. This kid, with a nasty crusty blood soaked rag wrapped tight around his snout, has the chutzpah to tell me that he and his friends weren't the robbers, that someone else sold them the goods for 20 soles ($7.50). Some people. Anyway, the day was a success, and the moral of the story is as always "yes we can".

The ugly mug of victory

 Not exactly the ideal way to wrap up the Perúvian leg of the journey. The whole episode left me in a rabid state of paranoia in which I found myself sprinting through populated areas and clutching the grip of my u-lock anytime I caught what could be mistaken for an avaricious glance from suspicious individuals at the side of the road. I had to shake off this terrible hex before I reached the border, or else my experience in the country might be spoiled forever. So I ate some awesome ceviche in Mancora and all was well again.

Ceviche...I will miss thee

In no time, I was in Tumbes, almost the last stop in Perú, and passing over a border fenced off by an endless horizon of banana trees. In this flat coastal land, you can actually smell Ecuador before you see the first sign for the border checkpoint. You know you're close when that sweet delicious smell of rotting fruit fills your lungs. Upon laying thine eyes upon this land ripe with growth of every sort...I don't know how to describe the sensation. I guess I felt right at home. Herzog might have wished at one point for this place to shrivel up and die, but I can't help but notice some paleo-nostalgia when I roll through this jungle paradise. We're all howler monkeys at heart, aren't we?

This guy was big enough to eat a chihuaha

 Ecuador is a small country, but dense with towns and folks at every turn. Whereas Bolivia and Perú might have a town every fifty kilometros or so, one tends to pass through around four or five towns/cities on a bike in a single day in Ecuador. Some of these places are useless, like Guayaquil, which is very difficult to get in and out of in a bike and has little going for it besides mountains of cheap fried rice and the first Pizza Hut I've seen in a long time. In other towns, like Luz de America, you'll get pulled aside by a friendly family who'll take you to their gigantic garden to pick all the oranges, cacao and bananas that you can load onto your bike and show you how to chop and eat sugar cane. One quickly becomes overburdened with fruit on a voyage through this country. Trucks will pull up alongside me and start handing me bags of mini bananas or poka (they call it taxo over here) and I'll be hardpressed to find a space for all this goodness so I usually just eat it right there on the spot. I wrecked hard once when a farmer handed me a bag of mangos while I was heading downhill. Never again.

Tango dancers in old Quito

La Compañia de Jesus - founded 1605!

 I rolled into Quito with no expectations, and so I was pleasantly surprised when I descended into a mountain mega-city with the kind of ancient edificios as one would find in Cusco but with nearly the same amount of public infastructure as SF (nearly). Quito is the very first South American city I've seen with bike lanes...partitioned bike lanes at that, as well as a pretty impressive public bus system. This past sunday, Ave. de Amazona (one of the major roads that bisects the city) was closed down to all road traffic except cyclists to celebrate the cities burgeoning bike culture. Mountain bikes are really big with the locals, what with all the cobble stone roads closer to old Quito. I actually wanted to get a new smooth tread street tire for my worn rear wheel over here, but the only kind of tire the shops carry around here are kevlar crusted juggernaut rings of rubber destruction...so now DreamCrusher is half monster truck I guess.

Church of San Francisco

National Basilica

 Quito sports a monster collection of museums, and has by far some of the best collections of art and pre-Columbian artifacts I've seen in my entire trip...and I've visited probably a third of the these places (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Casa del Alabado, and Museo de Guayasamín) so there's plenty more to see. Taking photos will quickly get you kicked out of any of these places, so unfortunately I can't share the goods with you folks back home unless your one of the few lucky folks I've promised postcards to. One of the lesser known museums in the city is Museo de Guayasamín, a museum located in the Northeastern hills dedicated to contemporary Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín. I had no idea about this guy until some roommates took me up to the museum the other day to have a look. The collection of various grotesquiries and artistic interpretations of Latin American oppression and social inequality is a revealing point of view of the regions troubled history and how shitty wikipedia is at articulating the human cost of various economic reforms spearheaded by terrible dictators and autocrats.

Discovery Channel Discovery of the Week -  Women's Day
  About a week ago was Women's Day in Ecuador, a day in which all the dudes are supposed to celebrate and reminisce on all the differences women have made in their lives. The fellas in Luz de America celebrated by getting slightly less shithoused at 11 pm and not snapping their finger or whistling for the cook (always a lady) to bring another cervesa their way.

I've noticed that the living conditions for women in these parts, especially in the more rural areas of Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, and even parts of Argentina, are pretty damn terrible. While this isn't news to anyone, it kind of gets me fired up when I roll into towns at noon or in the evening to get some food and see countless drunk jerkoffs stumbling aimlessly around the street, cursing at their daughters or their wives to get them another beer while the womenfolk dutifully fulfill any request these drunk bastards may have before going back to a windowless, unventillated kitchen to slave away for the rest of the day.

Motherhood, above all else, is considered the highest value of a lot of women in this part of the world, and if I've learned anything from all the pre-Columbian art exhibits, it's a cultural tradition that stretches back for thousands of years. It is an evil tradition that keeps the ladies in perpetual servitude to men who never learn to grow up, who stay in a permanent state of boyhood because women are doing pretty much everything for them. The guys can't wash their own clothes, can't clean their own house, can't cook food (the firefighters in Chiclayo called me a goat, which is Perúvian for faggot, because I was cooking up some rice and taters for myself instead of getting a woman to do it). Like, I don't understand why a lot of these women just don't start kicking some ass since they're usually doing twice the amount of physical labor and getting twice the amount of physical exercise as the lazy ass dudes I see in a lot of these towns that can't be bothered to do anything besides scratch balls and gossip in a rather gay fashion with all their other useless buddies. I'd go as far as to say that a lot of these fellas just straight up hate the company of women and don't want to associate with ladies beyond handing off plata for booze.

I'm no sociologist, nor am I the kind of person that should be standing up to the powers that be and advocating for some dramatic social change, but all these things I've observed up close, watching alot of stunning ladies sequestered to the depths of the kitchen or working in fields while their husbands/boyfriends ignore them to spend the day getting drunk together and reminding each other how much they hate gays...I'd say there's a just a lot of self-hating homos in these parts that are trapped in a false visage of machismo. I guess it sucks for both parties...women can't escape the chains of motherhood, and these dudes can't bang eachother. I guess that equals things out...?

por ejemplo...

Still breathing in Ecuador

Let me breath a little bit (UPDATE)

Last time I checked in with you folks, I was getting turned around by police in Tingo Maria for the illegal act of being a gringo in the jungle. I have since regretted complying so easily with the checkpoint patrol for a number of reasons. Pretty much everyone since Tingo Maria say the terrorists live in the deep jungle far away from the main roads and have only killed gringos who wander into their territory, and that was years ago. So I guess I had to climb all these mountains again for nought, when I could've been chilling in Moyobamba by now. Fortunately, I am resting by the coast in a beautiful city named Trujillo, and the sweet smell of the Pacific is filling my lungs for the first time in months. How I missed this great ocean.



I was eager to get up to Cerro de Pasco, a town separated from the city of Huancayo by a three and a half day climb that promised to be the last time I would have to make a 4600 mts ascent before heading down to the jungle lands of Huanuco, followed by the province of San Martin. From Jauja to Cerro de Pasco, my heels cracked in a hundred pieces like baked clay due to the dry climate. Temperatures along the route dropped to below freezing levels despite the fact that it's summer out here, and breathing the air this altitude was a little tough. Sleep was scarce, especially in Cerro de Pasco, where I got fleas in a hostal bed. At least the free breakfast was good (mint soup with taters).

Dead chinchilla

The descent down to Huanuco was a welcome change from all the climbing in the past couple of days and the frigid temperatures of high mountain passes. The trip down to the city was one of the longest descents I've had since dropping down into Ayacucho (four hours!), hitting what must have been an average speed of an Usain Bolt sprint. Wintery clothes were eagerly stashed away as the beast and I entered the jungle for the first time. The clothing of the locals was getting scandalous compared to the usual heavy sweater getups of the past couple of weeks, so I decided to strip down as far as human decency allows in order to blend in, but I wasn't fooling anyone in Huanuco.

  

I have come to enjoy one very special attraction that can be found in just about every Perúvian city, and that is the central market, where you can find just about everything you need when it comes to produce, clothes, basic electronics and Albert Christ memorabilia. Always a few blocks away from the central plaza, one knows they've entered mercado centro when they find themselves inside a giant warehouse wreaking of rotten meat and fruit. Don't let the smell deter you, for this place is filled with gold...I'm talking about finding ten mangos for a dollar, kilos of plantains for a mere two soles, and just about every cow innard imaginable, and if you aren't in the mood for cooking up some cow tongue fajitas, then maybe all the ceviche and fried rice will suit your fancy. I can't say enough good things about the central markets...except for the areas dedicated to overly aggressive juice vendors...putting two bananas in a blender with some honey and water doesn't make you the boss of all things nectar related. Sit down and stop screaming at me to taste your terrible swill.

More mountains :-(

I guess another recap is in order...after a day and a half in Huanuco, I drifted down to Tingo Maria, where all my freeze dried wounds on my fingers and feet were assuaged by the heavy Amazonian humidity. It was a welcome change from the weeks of mountain climbing, but all too brief as I was quickly turned around at a police checkpoint as I tried to head towards the San Martin province for a quick ride towards San Ignacio, where I would cross into the eastern edge of Ecuador. I was not about to backtrack back into the mountains for 210 km's, so I hitched a ride with another hauler (free of old fashions) and rode to La Union. At this point, it's necessary to mention that all the Perúvian homies I've met in my car rides are usually not down with my tunebox...except when it comes to Fela Kuti. When I put "Expensive Shit" or "Opposite People" on the car radio, my amigos leave the tunes on repeat pretty much until we reach our destination. They're all big fans and I think it blows their minds after spending their entire lives listening to screaching cholitas sing about how awesome it is to cook big dinners for their husbands. It's a big change.

I almost forgot...La Union was a blast. This small mountain town just so happened to be celebrating it's carnaval when I was dropped off near the center of town. However, since the cold mountain air was not the kind of environment where one would find sexy ladies shaking their booties and boobies around in string bikinis, the whole event turned out to be one giant water fight instead. The main attraction was the large gathering of evil ghosts (accompanied by a band) marching through the center of town in scary masks and ponchos, trying to scare little children and get a rouse out of the populace. For the next couple of hours, the local people took a stand against satan by pelting his minions with water balloons, flour, and checha from high balconies while the minions danced their evil jig in the streets. As I was the only gringo in 200 km's or so, I was quickly pulled into the fray by a drunk old lady, had my face and arms smeared with chalk, and thus channelled the fiendish spirit of some kind of gringo baby stealing ghost. For the next thirty minutes, I danced a hellish salsa with my ghoulish old lady around town, all the while trying the best I could to dodge water balloons and other projectiles. It was all in good fun, and I hope to see my face in the local newspaper in La Union, what with all the people wanting to take a picture with the baby eater.

Perúvian bball lockout

No need to mention the details of my climb to Huaraz...frozen to my bones, frozen water bottles, coagulating chain grease etc., not very enjoyable in general. But then came another record setting descent...a full day and half of down hill riding from Huaraz to just past Yuracmarca, and then some the next day all the way down to Chimbote, but of differing degrees of quality. Huaraz to Caraz was excellent forest drifting with potable water on the side of the road and excellent fried fish in Caraz...

...then came Mordor, or the Caraz-Chuquicara leg of the descent, where plant life shriveled into pulverized dust and the river turned an ugly shade of gray. Although I have faced dirt roads many times before in Andahuaylas and Ayacucho, road conditions here wreaked havoc on my wrists and ass. This was not loose gravel or pressed dirt...large stones were deep set into the route with absolutely no give while other sharp stones were scattered about the path to sheer away the sides of my tires if I made a sharp turn. This was two and a half days of very painful riding and very little progress, and as I crept along closer to the mountain base, the headwind became all the more potent, and I was forced to dismount several times before reaching Chuquicara. Oh, also some young punks in Yuracmarca with the lamest super saiyan haircuts that have ever graced the pates of cro-magnons thought they might dismount me by hucking perfectly ripe mangos in my direction. It turned out to be a good opportunity to collect some dinner and practice my insult spanish with some little bastards.

My arrival in Chuquicara was like a dream, for two and a half day long rock road finally came to a halt and so did the oppressive headwind. I was greeted by some mountain rescue dudes who bought me water and beer and spent the next couple of hours discussing dumb presidents and drug policies in South America, something that'd been on my mind since Tingo Maria. They gave me some good advice on my future route through Perú (and informed me the Moyobamba route was in fact safe for gringos) and told me what cities to check out. The next day, I was off to Chimbote and Santa and got my first wiff of the ocean since the Bay, and from there I was off on the great Pan American highway, which was the most desolate stretch of land I've seen since Southern California. At least I was back to 100-120km days along almost flat road. I arrived in Trujillo nursing diarhea bowels, so once again, I was out for two days with little time to see the sites. Although I wish I had more time to enjoy this town, I must keep moving. Ecuador is less than a ten days bike journey away.

Discovery Channel Discovery of the Week: Guaba (or guava)

This gigantic green bean has lined the sides of roads since Chuquicara, and I would not have paid any attention to it if I had not seen the locals carting bushels of these monsters into town and selling them for 2 soles per kilo. I was intrigued, so I got one for myself.

At first glance, this appears to be an oversized green bean, and if I know my audience, an oversized vegetable is hardly an impressive sight for all the gringos out there...

...but crack into this bad boy and you're greeted with a sweet surprise. The white pulpy goodness that surrounds each bean on the inside has the same feel and texture as a marshmellow and peels cleanly away from the bean. The folks down here eat the pulp raw, but only when it's cold, otherwise it will make you throw up apparently. I can't quite put my finger on the taste of the pulp...there's definitely a hint of green bean in there, but it mostly tastes like a wet chunk of bubble gum to me. Definitely the perfect treat after a long ride. The locals also dry roast the beans with salt in an oven for a couple of hours, which is supposed to make for another awesome snack. I'm good with the pulp for the moment. 

So much for a quick ride through the Amazon

I made it to Tingo Maria today in record time only to be told at a police checkpoint that I will be kidnapped and thoroughly double D´d by fake communist revolutionaries if I proceed any further. It seems that every nationality is welcomed by these commies of the jungle except for Americans.

I asked the police why Americans are vilified in these parts and he proceeded to give me a long list of all the shit our great nation has pulled in the San Martin, Huanuco and Loreto provinces for the past thirty years or so. It would seem that the past four administrations (Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush) flooded this region with DEA agents and other "advisors" who--in all their wisdom--decided that burning down coca crops and intimidating all the local coca farmers was the best way to win the War on Drugs. Nevermind the fact that the majority of coca farmers in Perú´s Amazonian basin were cultivating the plant for legal consumption...I guess our wise, all-knowing government in the states prefers summarily torching small villages in South America over vastly cheaper and effective methods of rehabilitation on the home front. Protip: "source control" policies never work and tend to piss a lot of people off.

To distance the US government´s role in the region from the state-sponsored violence that was occuring in the region, the Bush administration outsourced much of these advising roles to Haliburton employees around 2003. Well, it was only a matter of time before a few of these nosey gringos started turning up rather dead in the basin. According to the police, the angry folks in the Peruvian Amazon have basically been snatching any North Americans who decide to wander into the San Martin province. Although the Perúvian government has been rounding up the ring leaders of these abductions while taking a stronger stance in protecting the interests of local coca growers against foreign intrusion in the past year or so, tempers are still raw and it will probably be another ten years before Americans can start setting things on fire again.

Ugh...so now I got to turn around and head back towards the Andes, into the cold once more, all the way to Ecuador...god damn it. A special thanks to our fantastic government for making things so difficult for those of us that want to see the rest of the world. As always, I blame Reagan.

Thanks, shitdiot

No more cold lonely nights on the frozen pampa (I hope)

My very first (wild?) monkey sighting of the trip, a moment to remember

The coldest leg of the journey is over, or so I've been told. No more wrapping up in every single item of clothing before sacking up, and absolutely no more socks with sandles. Huánuco marks the beginning of the Amazon leg of my bike ride. Here's to fifty cent kilos of mangos, sticky weather, and close brushes with malaria. Things are about to get interesting...