Day 54: Huacho to Lima

93 miles

It’s hard to be happy with a 93 mile day, but if I can separate myself from my cycle computer, today wasn’t all that bad. I was in dire need of a bike shop in Lima and I had no choice but to stop. Lima has always been one of my planned bike shop stops. I was hoping that the shop would be able to fix my bike up in a couple of hours and I could keep rolling into the evening, but as I’ve come to expect in Central and South America, bike shops here take 2 to 3 times longer to do the same work. What should be two hours turns into six. In addition, I didn’t get to the shop until 1 o’clock because of all of the flats that I had last night, so I was not that surprised when I got to Lima and learned that my day was ending prematurely.

I set off from my motel back into the fog and back into the headwind. The first section of my ride was relatively rural once I made it out of Hiacho. The terrain was flat and unremarkable, especially with the rolling fog. About 100 km north of Lima development started to become more consistent. I was passing through small towns and even though the map didn’t show it, the highway remained lined with shops and houses between the villages. Closer to Lima the road became busier. I worked through one of these small towns, a tuk-tuk taxi pulled out right in front of me and I had to swerve across the road to avoid slamming into him. I yelled out Miralo! Que estas haciendo? Watch it, what are you doing? My momentum carried me past the tuk-tuk as it turned onto the main road. I shifted back into the shoulder and kept riding, but as the tuk-tuk built up speed it pulled level with me. The driver shouted out something that roughly translated to “if you do not want to be hit, get off the road, you fucking idiot.” to which I replied “cállate su boca y sigue conduciendo.” essentially, “shut the fuck up and keep driving.” This obviously wasn’t a very nice or smart thing for me to say. The driver took notice and turned into me. The side of his vehicle sideswiped my shoulder and I was forced to turn off the road. I thought I was going to keep it upright, but as my wheels tires off of the pavement my skinny wheels became mired in deep sand that lined the edge of the road. My wheel got swallowed up into the sand and I tipped over. I had managed to kill most of my speed so I was only going about 8 miles an hour when I hit the ground. I escaped with nothing more than a couple scratches on my knee and a lesson how not to talk to the taxi drivers. Over the past few days here in Peru “cállate su boca” has become one of my favorite terms. It’s not uncommon for drivers to pull up next to me and lower their window to start yelling and shouting at me. They tell me to get off the road and all the usual stuff. My little game is to initially act all confused and hurt. I’ll stare at them like I have no idea what’s going on, like I don’t understand anything they’re saying. My soft gringo face usually gets the message across. After a couple seconds the drivers will usually come to the conclusion that I’m not only a stupid cyclist, I also don’t understand Spanish, and I’m not trying to hurt anyone. Right as I can see their faces soften just a little bit I’ll lash out with the “cállate su boca!” It works every time. Their faces are hit with a wave of confusion and surprise. Their eyebrows shoot up and it looks like they’ve just been splashed in the face with cold water. I usually take advantage of the second surprise to duck away and get out of their striking range. In this often miserable place with miserable drivers and miserable conditions, this game has been one of my few consistent joys over the past week. Just because it backfired once doesn’t mean I’m going to stop. I just need to be smarter about when I play the game. The drivers in Lima were particularly mad and kept yelling at me so I got to play the game all morning.

I was looking at my map and noticed that the main highway dipped inland, but a smaller road stayed right along the coast. The smaller road looked more direct despite its many twist and turns in and out of the coastline. I figured it would be a much prettier road to bike, so for the first time since entering Peru, I got off Carratera 1 and jumped onto the smaller road. It ended up being a fantastic decision. Although I found out when I was already several miles into the cliffs that the road that bikes technically weren’t allowed, this road was perfect for biking. It was much safer than the main road, and it was very enjoyable ride. As the mountains approach the coast, they turned into sand dunes over 1000 feet high. The top of the sand dunes disappeared into the clouds, so it looked like sand came cascading from the heavens straight into the ocean. The road was carved out straight into the side of the dune. It slowly climbed, until it was several hundred feet above the ocean below. In some spots, the dunes went straight into the ocean, only leveling out into a flat beach meters before the breaking waves. In other spots, the dunes gave away to crumbly rock outcroppings which jutted out from the dunes. Between these outcroppings little pocket beaches were carved out in horseshoe shapes. These pocket beaches would’ve been idyllic private beaches if it weren’t for the highway a couple hundred feet above. If we’re on the beach, instead of feeling secluded one would feel scrutinized as if under a microscope from all the passers by above. Nonetheless, I was one of the passers by who got to enjoy the view. This section of road only lasted about 20 km, but it is my favorite stretch that I’ve ridden in Peru so far. In addition to being beautiful, the street dunes reduced the headwind to single digits for the first time in weeks.

After emerging from the other side of this peaceful road, I was popped out into the outer limits of Lima. I was still 50 km from the city center, but as far as I could see, there was consistent development. I have expressed my dislike for Peruvian cities in the past, and though I acknowledge that Lima has some beautiful architecture and beautiful culture, it’s hard to dispute the opinion that the outskirts of town are more important depressing barrios. The closer I got to Lima, the busier the roads got. I wasn’t upset about this, though. Generally, cities slow my average speed down, however, in Peru, I have found that my speed increases through cities since all of the infrastructure breaks up the wind and cars can provide me an artificial tailwind that combats the headwind. The vehicles on the road were not affording me very much respect or space, so I took an entire lane and rode with that aggressive mentality that I’ve had to break out in a few busy cities in the past. I rode smooth and controlled. The drivers didn’t like that I was taking a whole lane over, but there was nothing they could do about it short of straight up running me over. I was traveling at the speed of traffic, so people really didn’t have any reason to be mad at me. They were mad just for the sake of being mad. Every couple of miles there were 30 or 40 armed Peruvian militants. They stood alongside the road under the shadow of armored vehicles and displays of heavy militarization. They tried to look tough and scary and imposing. At one point a military helicopter roared over the road, as if that would do anything to deter the cocaine trade. All of the military men broke down as the helicopter buzzed overhead. They looked up and smiled and a couple of them even pointed as the helicopter passed over. In a truly well equipped and well trained military like the United States, you would never see a service member break attention at the passing of an aircraft. Lima is one of the largest cocaine smuggling ports in the world. The militarization makes sense, but it clearly isn’t much of a deterrence because Lima continues to have a very dangerous port.

I made my way through Lima proper amid protests and closed streets. This seems to be a common occurrence in Lima. Last time I was in Lima, there were a lot of protests and chaos.  I always see pictures of protests in Lima on the news. Peru is no stranger to political upheaval. For years, they have suffered from corrupt presidents who have been forced to vacate the presidency after holding office for just a couple of months. My bike shop was in Miraflores, which is south of downtown along the coast. I rode through standstill traffic and eventually got onto one of the busiest highways in South America that took me down to the Miraflores district. After hours of heavy development and congestion, the green streets of Miraflores were a radical change. Miraflores is the wealthy section of Lima. While the rest of is known as the city with the least green space of any major city in the world, Miraflores has plenty of trees and irrigated parks. There’s a walking path along the waterfront with expensive shops and tall buildings. It’s a nice city, but the divide between the reality of 99% of Lima and the little bubble that is Miraflores and Barrancos is shocking and a little bit sad. In the rest of the city there’s nothing but brown brick and dirt, the exuberant wealth of Miraflores has built an entire golf course in one of the private parks. I would find it difficult to live in Miraflores knowing how far removed it is from the poverty that lies just a few kilometers away. However, for the afternoon it was quite nice. I haven’t seen grass or real trees in a long time. I was able to find a very nice supermarket and load up on produce and foods that I haven’t seen in thousands of miles. I found peanut butter, avocados, and for the first time since leaving the United States, I found a salad I believed was safe to eat. At the supermarket, they had one of those premade salad kits in the plastic bags. I figured this would be safe to eat since it was coming from a high-end store and was prepackaged. I should’ve just left it alone in retrospect.

I dropped my bike off at the shop and feasted all afternoon. It took me about an hour to find a hotel because everything was so expensive. I refused to pay more than 30 American dollars for a hotel when my hotel last night had been eight dollars. Finally, I found something around $30 and sat on a little terrace among some tree boughs while I ate my avocado, cheese and turkey sandwiches and finished up some blogs that I was lagging behind on.

I was hoping I would have time for a nap, but as per usual, my time seem to disappear much faster than anticipated. The bike shop wanted to be paid in cash so it took me a while to find an ATM that would allow me to withdraw enough money to pay them. My search for a hotel had taken an hour and my blog writing hasp taken a few hours and eating had taken an hour. Before I knew it, it was time to go back and pick up my bike. The shop, GIANT Peru, was very helpful and friendly. They did an excellent job cleaning and tuning up every part of my bike from my wheel bearings to my drivetrain. I was able to get a new hand pump, new tubes, and new valve extender. The mechanics and owner grabbed a quick selfie with me and I was out the door at 7 PM. At the shop I’d met a nice man from France. He was a chef working in Lima for a while. His dishes looked incredible. We spoke in English for about 5 minutes, which was lovely. This was the first English conversation I’ve had since Nicaragua! Today I also saw my first gringos in all of South America. There were tons of gringos milling about Miraflores, myself included of course.

I went back to my hotel ready to go to bed. I wanted to upload the blogs first though, but of course the Wi-Fi was out and I don’t have any data left for the month, so it took me another 30 minutes to get my blogs uploaded. Before I knew it, even on my rest day I was going to bed after eight. I guess I can sleep when I’m done with this project.