Time in Hand

Needless to say, I took advantage of the plentiful water and had a couple of coffees in the morning sun, whilst I waited for my tent to defrost.

That morning was a fantastic ride through really wide-open landscapes with a cloudless sky.

In the afternoon, I polished off the final pass of the route, happy in the knowledge that I was at 4900m and it was all descent from here…

A mining train line, just before I joined the Carretera Central, that signalled the return to civilisation…

And then the road itself…

The next section of the Great Divide route continues only a few kms further down the road, however I had made the decision by this point that I would head down to Lima to give my wrist some time to heal and get it checked out if necessary.  It’s meant to be a somewhat more strenuous section and I’d need to be fully fit before I tackled it.

Being at 4350m, and with 120km of almost constant downhill to Lima (on the coast), this ought to be descending heaven!  The irony of it is, however, that the road is pretty horrible – it’s the main route into the centre of Peru from Lima so has a lot of HGV traffic.  It seemed that the safest place to be when descending was drafting right behind a large lorry – this protects you both from behind and in front from the crazy drivers who love overtaking round blind bends and don’t really count a bike as a vehicle anyway.  Furthermore, Sally is many things, but aero she is not!  She’s got a sizeable bosom and a fat arse, which not only slows her considerably in a headwind but makes her a little twitchy.  And, as I’ve learnt already, when you’ve finally got a big descent down a valley in Peru, you can guarantee a headwind!

That evening, I headed down as far as a hospedaje in San Mateo and then picked up where I left off the next morning, pedalling furiously into the headwind and tucked up as aerodynamically as possible, albeit not sat on the top tube (à la Chris Froome).  It was, without doubt, one of the most unpleasant descents that I’ve ever done on asphalt!  That said, the seemingly never-ending descent gave me a really good appreciation of the scale of these mountains, something which may sound silly but I guess I hadn’t really understood given my relatively slow ascent up to the higher peaks.  They are enormous!

I had decided to descend on my own wheels as far as Chosica, which turned out to be a very sensible choice – the road descends into chaos beyond there!  After a couple of hours waiting for a combi with a roof rack, Sally was slung atop for the ride into Lima…

Once in Lima, I made my way over to the lovely Daniela, with whom Si had put me in touch via Facebook, who had very kindly offered to give Sally a home for a while whilst I recuperated.  From there, it was to the hostel and then out for a beer and some quality food –  I can’t tell you how excited I was about the prospect of proper bread, good coffee and cheese!

This really was a fantastic route.  Despite the considerable amount of climbing and the accident (and ensuing downtime), it takes you through some veritable wilderness with some of the most bewitching scenery around – something that even most Peruvians probably never see.  I’m really looking forward to the next part.

Now, to keep myself busy whilst I wait for this wrist to mend…

UPDATE: Finally had the wrist X-rayed in Lima and confirmation that nothing’s broken – just a bad sprain and rest prescribed – itching to get moving again!