The Journey Begins

The next morning I had the final 900m or so of climbing to finish off before I could drop down to Cajamarca.  This was my first pass over 3000m of the trip, but will probably end up being at the lower end of the scale!  Despite being on a main road, there wasn’t too much traffic and the lorries and coaches that went past were, on the whole, surprisingly considerate in leaving me space!  There’s still a certain stress with them thundering past, especially if you hear them approaching as you near a corner.  It only serves to strengthening my desire to spend as much time on the quiet dirt roads as possible.  An uneventful morning’s climbing left me overlooking the wide and lush valley containing Cajamarca which, 500 years ago, played host to the beginning of the end of the Inca empire!

It was high time to find myself a hostel to relax in after four days of pretty full-on cycling, not to mention to allow myself a bit of acclimatisation time to get used to the altitude (2,675m) and to contract and get over the standard issue travel-tummy!

Meanwhile, Si had set about getting in touch with the legendary Lucho, who runs the Casa de Ciclistas in Trujillo.  This is a house next to his workshop that he runs as a haven for touring cyclists.  I hadn’t had time whilst I was in Huanchaco to visit and say hello, however he did his best to try and source some spare tubes for me.  For this type of tube, that usually means getting them bussed up from Lima, however even his contacts there didn’t have any of them.  He did, however, have a few with larger (Schrader) valves on them (same as car tyres have), so I took my bike over to the chaps at Bike Cajamarca and they kindly drilled out my rims to make the valve holes bigger.  Si’s then bringing the tubes out to Celendin when he comes to join me for a week riding together.

After three days hanging out in Cajamarca, it was time to get moving again so that I could make it over to the aforementioned meeting with Si.  This time I had given myself three days to travel the 111km (with approx 2200m of ascent), as I knew the main pass topped out at just under 3800m and not having spent much time beyond about 3000m before, I didn’t know how my body would handle it.

After a brief stop at the Ventanillas de Otuzco, just outside Cajamarca, I got a bit of climbing in the bank before starting to look for somewhere to sleep.  I had resolved that that night I’d go for it and try my hand at wild camping.  Another thing on the long list of things I’d never done before!  I eventually happened upon what I thought was a suitable spot, below a track that led off the main road, at a mere 3250m!  As I set about pegging out the tent, I looked back up to the track from which I had come to see a schoolboy peering down at me.  He had clocked me quite easily.  It was, if you’ll excuse the cheese, a schoolboy error!  The number one rule of stealth/wild camping is to find somewhere discreet where you can’t be seen from the road.  I had failed at the first attempt!  It reminded me of a school CCF camouflage exercise where I had tried to hide behind a sapling of a tree and was spotted straight away!  Needless to say, I felt like something of an idiot.  Anyway, I waited for him to go before I gathered my things and moved a little further down the hill, behind a row of trees and out of sight.  As a bonus, it also had a much better view!  You live and learn.

I had read that many people end up not sleeping much on their first night of wild camping – the mind runs crazy with thoughts of what’s going on outside the tent and who might find you there!  I was absolutely fine to begin with and drifted off to sleep quickly.  However, when I awoke a few hours later, the wind had died down and I could therefore hear every little rustle in the surrounding vegetation.  It’s difficult to stop the mind wandering and imagining what is out there.  You know it’s probably just a bird or something small, but it begins to sound much more like a menacing animal!

This got me thinking yet again about fear.  Jonathan’s wife had asked me at lunch on the first day if I was afraid/scared about the trip.  I had replied that of course I had a little fear but I didn’t want to (and couldn’t afford to) live my life in fear.  These experiences have only served to convince me that, whilst it’s important to acknowledge it, it’s just as important to then try and let it go.  It’s not an entirely negative emotion – it’s part of what has made us humans such excellent survivors. It provides a useful counterbalance to what might otherwise be a rash action.  Ultimately, however, it stops you pushing out of your comfort zone and into the unknown.  Here’s to living with less fear…

The next day took me up the final 600m to the top of the pass to Celendin, at a new record height of 3730m!  Thankfully, despite a mild murmur of a headache the previous day, I didn’t have any issues with the altitude – besides the inevitable breathlessness if I pushed too hard.

It was, for the first time, pretty chilly and misty up there, so it was a case of layering up for the ~50km descent into Celendin, where I found a hostel on the Plaza de Armas, in anticipation of Si’s arrival the next morning on the long bus journey from Trujillo!

All in all, a really enjoyable, if somewhat trying at times, first week!  I think I’ll try and improve further on the picture-to-waffle ratio in coming posts – here are a few more pics…