Jeremy's Bike Blog

I arrived at the airport with my packed bike figuring odds were 50/50 that I’d be allowed on the flight with my bike. According to http://united.com/baggage/ArbitraryPostTicketPurchasePolicyChange or whatever the page was, the bike was not going to be allowed. But two calls to their customer service, taking more than 30 minutes to get any answer whatsoever, gave 2 different answers to “Will this apply to my flight given that I purchased the ticket before the policy update?”

I figured odds were even that if I just showed up and hoped for the best, United’s inability to deal with it’s own bureaucracy would spare me from it’s would-be lack of transactional integrity. It’s strange to have a multi-month excursion hang in the balance of possibly not happening at all. Really, it came down to which ticketing agent I got, and I got a very nice and helpful one who happily seemed to have no idea about the policy.

The flights went off without a hitch, as did my bike arriving in tact. I was done assembling the bike at 2am. I called a hostel only a few miles away and got word that they (were awake and) had vacancy. As I rolled my bike out the airport and past the cabbies, they implored me to not take to the road on bike at night. I reckoned they would say as much to encourage me into a cab, and politely declined, but upon seeing the mega-highway onto which the airport’s egress fed, decided I would be pushing my luck, especially given all the good luck I’d had that day, and tempting fate a bit too much. I would have taken a cab, but after assembling the bike and attaching all the bags and everything, it seemed like a pain in the butt to get it into a cab for a couple hours of sleep in a bed. Besides, there were all kinds of people sleeping in the departures section of the airport, so I talked my way past the guy at the entrance checking boarding passes and passports, laid out my foam pad and got maybe 90 minutes of sleep until the sun came up at 5:30.

I biked to a nice hostel in Miraflores, stashed my bags and bikes and walked around town. Once I was able to check in proper, I caught up on sleep then went out to make myself a nice meal in the common kitchen. Despite my luck in getting to Peru, my spirits were somewhat low until I got the rest and nutrition I needed after a long-ish flight from Seattle.

The next day was Sunday and I set out on my bike and immediately fell in with a Sunday bike-day thing that seems to be common in large cities in Latin America. I’ve happened upon the same in Mexico City and Guadalajara. I rode it up to the Lima museum, checked that out, checked out the old town, grabbed some food, got a haircut, and did typical tourist stuff. Back at the hostel I chatted with a bunch of chipper Europeans.

Based on recent accounts (friends and friends of friends on Instagram), and a podcast episode interviewing “pikes on bikes” who toured here ~8 years ago, I’m decided I on going through the Peruvian Andes to get myself to my first pre-determined destination, Cuzco and Machu Piccu. I’ve brought more stuff with me this trip than I have in the past, in part because I’ve made two major gear changes based on observing my favorite cycle mates in the past. I’ve brought a 2 person tent so that given rain (and there will be rain) I can hang out at camp relatively dry and not holed-up in my biivy sack. I’ve also brought a proper cookset (MSR firefly). At the same time, the person whose recent trip I’m most hoping to emulate, in the sense of hitting the deep Andes as much as possible, has been going from South to North from the tip of Chile, and has honed his rig down to what looks to be a proper bikepacking setup. He’s dealing with a lot less stuff and a lot more familiar with what one needs and doesn’t need in this region.

This is all to say that I admittedly brought too much stuff, at least to go at speeds that I’m used to going, especially considering the nicer (remoter) routes through Peruvian Andes are notoriously demanding in proportion to the load one is carrying. So I made the choice to go the slow and cushy route this trip. We’ll see how it goes.

In two days, I’ve gone 115km (70ish miles) and gotten from sea level to ~3000 meters (~10,000 feet) in one long, usually gradual, sometimes steep, occasionally very steep, climb. I’m about 2/3 of the elevation to the 4500m passes, and then, I think it’s a lot of up/down. At my current rate, it will take about 3 weeks to get to Cuzco. My first estimate, based on most direct route (along coast then cut inland) was a week. If the downs aren’t too slow-going owing to road-conditions (I think I’ll be on unpaved for a few hundred km) it should be somewhere between 2 and 3 weeks. And I expect that I’ll be offline for a lot of it, so don’t worry mom!

Getting out of Lima was gross:

Last night I stayed in a hotel/dorm room courtesy of the owner who is a warm showers host. Tonight I’m again in a hotel room, for $8.50. I’ve scoped out town and decided where to go tomorrow to get my provisions for up to 5 days (hopefully 4 or fewer) of no provisions. I haven’t used my stove yet this trip, but I’m totally going to tomorrow and for the next few days.

Views from San Mateo, my last town for a while (at least according to GoogleMaps and Maps.me):

By and large, the people are super nice. Laid back and proud of their amazing heritage without being boisterous. A relatively small amount of conspicuous littering. There’s also a conspicuous awareness of sustainability w.r.t. both personal health/fitness and the environment, things that line up well with my personal priorities and preferences.

It definitely helps that my Spanish continues to improve.