Long Trek on Skate Decks

Day 17: Day long Decent

We woke up on the fish farm after having a great sleep with a star filled sky. For breakfast the patrons of the restaurant/farm served us the best French fries we have eaten in Peru. I felt better too. Fortunately the fish that I had watched die for my meal the night before did help. I was no longer ill and I already felt stronger. Then we were off to finish our hard earned downhill. We skated all day into 60 kph head winds. It was very frustrating to say the least. We should have been flying down the road doing 60-70 kph but we were reduced to a slow roll or even hours of pushing downhill. Some sections felt as if we were climbing. We spent lunch in Challahuanca were we ate fruit and got teased for being gringos and it was off again to fight the downhill climb. Adam Aaron and I kept our spirits up by racing each other (slowly) riding hills switch and using liberal amounts of speed mooching and bump drafting. At about 5:30 some deep dark clouds started to form overhead. We decided we should consider setting up camp. Just prior, we passed through a small town. There we purchased cookies and somehow managed to find some avocados. Just before heading off to setup camp. Adam asked a local if it would rain during the night. No he said, it wont rain tonight the clouds will pass… 4 kilometres away, as we scrambled desperately to set up our shelters in the hail, torrential down pour and 70 kph winds  we mocked “No… No lluvia esta noche”, it won’t rain tonight.

Day 18: 3 soles

By some miracle grace from god, or perhaps credit should go to the PTFE fabrics my bivy bag is fashioned from, I managed to wake up mostly dry. Only slightly damp due to my own sweat during the night. Even better I had lived many days within vivid dreams of being home with friends and family. We slowly rose from our shelters and began packing up our wet gear  so we could engage in battle with the very same winds that plagued our travel the day before. If not for this wind we would have made Albancay yesterday evening… After skating for a few hours we made it to the base of the climb into Albancay. The steep windy road was adorned with a horribly hot burning sun and the same damned wind. However I knew that at the top of the climb I would be able to rest for two nights. I charged the uphill hard with powerful pushes. My illness and lack of strength from the days prior had been completely eradicated. The misery of pushing masked by the feeling of power as I ploughed my way through gusts of wind and maintained a roll normally reserved for fast travel on flat terrain. After 45 minutes I had made my way to Albancay. Everyone seemed surprised to see me, not because I had skated up a huge steep slope, rather because I was white. “Gringo!” they gleefully cheered as I skated by. The whole gringo thing is starting to get old. Then a dog jumped out at me. Now when you tackle a hill in the manner I did you make a decisions… It’s like choosing to push hard, to attack the hill regardless as to what it throws at you. You completely ignore how bad you feel. Its an amazing feeling yet it puts you in a strange state of mind. Its fight or flight and after choosing fight  you are in fight mode. I chased that damn dog down the street and around a house. The dog jumped down a 7 foot drop and slid 5 feet on its belly as it barked at me its posture changed from the aggressor to the submissive. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, turned and skated towards Adam and Aaron. Still furious at the dog and the towns people who called me gringo. I needed something to sooth my hot temper.

I want a freaking ice cream cone…

Day 19: Albancay

Our second day and people are already treating us like locals. The biggest factor in this is due to our carrying water balloons around with us. Ready at a whim to retaliate against our attackers. Our Spanish is getting better and we tell the locals tall tales of being professional ventriloquists and drinking cat milk and we tease each other for their amusement. We frequent a small bakery and a little convenience store many times a day and engage in conversation with the clerks and owners. What’s  best is we no longer get Gringoe prices… The first time on the trip everything is much cheaper. In the evening we go to a pizza shop and we get the most amazing tasting food we have had in a long time. My pizza had spinach on it! I can´t describe what this meant to me. It´s been so long since I´ve eaten a vegetable other than potatoes. We almost cried with joy as we devoured our dinner. This was a good day.

Day 20: 2000 meters in merely 4 hours

The day began with running errands and a phone call to my ex spouse which left me in a weird upset mood. We left some balloons with the hostel owners children who introduced us to the popular pass time. Then it was time to pack up. The guy who worked at the hostel whom had been asking us all weekend how much all our stuff costs and if he could have my t-shirts sat in our room as we packed up to leave. He played with our stuff slowing us down considerably. Then when we were a few minutes past check out he tried to charge us an extra 10 soles. We pretended to misunderstand his Spanish and said no not 10 days to Cusco it will only take 5 and we thanked him profusely as we walked out of the hostel and took to our boards.
We began climbing; It was really hot and humid. My freshly clean shirt was soaked with sweat in less than 30 minutes. The humidity also seemed to get into the camera. I couldn´t get it to work at all. I feared it was broken. That paired with the weirdo at the hostel and my earlier phone conversation really played on my mood. Its funny how much bad morale can affect your physical performance. I felt like crap and I struggled to maintain a pace which I normally find child’s-play. Other things set me off. More dogs yelping at me trying to bite at my ankles, believing my skating to be my fleeing from their guard. I also cut my shoulder open on my drinking tube clip. My shoulder was covered with blood and my pack is stained. Somehow I managed to pull my thoughts away from all the negative and I once again began to appreciate the gorgeous scenery. My pace quickened and I began to lead the pack again. I tried to sing but the air was too thin. We were getting close. Fog rolled up the side of the hill and it chased us up the hill to the summit where we enjoyed a view of the clouds that sit to our right flank. It looked like we were gazing directly into heaven. We began to bomb a crazy endless decent at incredible speeds. Adam and I are getting more comfortable with our packs and we begin to push a little faster on the corners. The cars don´t know what to make of us and the children we pass run after us in awe. The sun set as we skated yet Adam and I continued for a good 20 minutes after dark we were having too much fun passing cars and drifting corners in the dark. We stopped because the roads surface changed to chipseal and we didn´t want to leave Aaron behind in the dark. When he finally caught us he was angry for subjecting him to riding in the night. We found our way to a small family’s home and asked if we could sleep in their field. Tomorrow we would awake to more downhill.

Day 21: A monster named chipseal  …and hes hungry for my wheels

The Family was really nice although kinda weird and the mother ripped us off by charging both Adam and Aaron separately for the same items (they had a small store in their home) We continued down the chipseal covered hill for a few hours until we reached the nearest town. We got called Gringo a lot as we ate at a restaurant. A small crowd began to form made up of Peruvians wishing to glimpse at real live gringos. We told them that In the US people eat dog meat and in Canada we drink Milk from large cats. We also told them it took us 2 years to skate from Lima to their town. After skating away really slowly we began pushing down hill again. The slope was steep but the pavement was really haggard chipseal. Every so often we would encounter a fast section that would have us rolling without pushing. I drifted my carves pretty hard for hours and by the time we had arrived at the bottom my wheels were pretty rough looking. We skated uphill for about 15 kilometres before setting up camp on a abandoned bridge that was covered in ants. I spotted 4 different species in 5 minutes including leaf cutter ants. We only have 84 kilometres and two more passes to climb before we reach Cusco.

Day 22: Limatambo to Anta

We woke and up brushed the ants off our gear before heading on to Limatambo. At the restaurant I got laughed at for being a vegetarian they suggested Chicken because it wasn´t meat. I had some egg sandwiches (stale bread with a fried egg) then we headed up the hill. The Chipseal made the climb hard. It was by far the steepest mountain pass we have encountered But that also means the climb would be shorter than any of the others. I felt sick so I took a few breaks and Aaron had to clean his wounds as Adam went on ahead. After a long gruelling stretch it began to rain and for some strange reason this cheered me up immensely. I splashed upwards to the summit and met back up with Adam.
We had a few hours of fast flat mixed with downhill all the way to Anta. In Anta we ate dinner in a restaurant. The owner was a kind honest lady who gave us fair prices on everything (in fact I think she undercharged us). We asked if we could sleep on the floor in her restraunt if we left before they opened and she agreed. I tried to give her some money and she smiled and told me to save it for Cusco. Tomorrow we will skate to Cusco. We have one more tiny pass to tackle before we drop into Cusco. We´re managing to do one pass per day… We´re getting tougher.

Day 23-24: Cusco

Woke up, thanked the owner of the restaurant and began our last accent to Cusco. It took us two hours. The climb was a joke, A tiny hill before a massive downhill through the streets of upper Cusco. We blitzed over speed bumps around people through dense traffic and drifted alongside cars through the windy corners that plummet towards downtown. The drivers here are a little nuts. On my way into downtown I encountered people passing vehicles around blind corners. I found myself on a few occasions threading the needle between cars that were 3 wide in two lanes around rough chipseal corners with little traction. It was exhilarating and it gave the locals something to watch to I´m sure.
In Cusco we found a quaint little hostel, we ate pumpkin soup we threw water balloons at Gringos from our hotel room. It seems the only way to cope with the constant staring and Name calling is to make it a joke and parody it. Cusco is too touristy. I am constantly bothered by street vendors that try to convince me that their Alpaca sweaters are not too heavy for my backpack. Adam tries to buy a 750ml bottle of water and they ask for 4 soles, 3 too much. It’s not the Peru I know, yet it totes itself the cultural capital of Peru. It’s very European filled with Churches and other fine buildings likely build by the Spaniards using the hands of the natives. Although I must say I enjoy how you kind find mostly anything here in Cusco (except for HDV Tapes for our video camera). We ate well the last few days and now I´m just about to go for lunch and then skate off towards Bolivia.

I´m getting sick of transcribing my notes to this computer so I´m off for now. More updates in a week.

Tags: Paul Kent