Tour companies love to offer "bike adventures" that involve being bussed to the top of a 3000m climb and freewheeling down. The Abra de Malaga is such a descent, but we were going up it. I had been fantasising about it for months. The map shows a road slinking in seductive curls up mysterious mountains. The more mountains I climb, the more pictures embed in my memory, stealing more and more brain cells in order to build a picture of a Platonic ideal of mountain passes, hairpin after gorgeous hairpin, the dizzying stack of the Stelvio, the surreal rockscapes of the Dolomites, the exuberant impatient steepness of Alpe d'Huez, breathtaking Galibier, scorching Ventoux. The Abra de Malaga climbs to 4400m; it must be like ascending to heaven.
From Quillabamba there is a thrilling sight of the top of Nevado Salcantay. Not our mountain - that was Veronica - but it could just as well have been. It was intensely hot, and the road climbs steadily but relentlessly up the valley. Fortunately, the road is well used and there are plenty of shops where we could buy food and water. We were dreading the imminent camping challenge, for not only were the valley sides not at all flat, they were thickly covered in trees and things. Luckily we found the ruin of a shed or small house, just before the road started zigzagging up a very slopey part of mountain. It was inhabited by a rich selection of insect life. For dinner we had risotto al funghi and the mosquitoes had me. Although the road had been quiet during the day, it was inexplicably busy at night.
The weather pattern favoured early starts. Generally it would be sparkling clear at dawn, but clouds would form during the morning and park themselves over the mountains. Besides, this close to the equator, you only get 12 hours of daylight and if you're camping, you want it all. This morning, we were tantalisingly closer to the mountains, but there were clouds already loitering down the valley. And whereas the clouds could motor directly up the valley, the road now embarked on a long perambulation in and out of all the side valleys. We could see the point at which it would emerge with a brilliant view, but we had to get there before the clouds. It was a dead heat: we rounded the point just as the mountains began to vanish. Fortunately we had the consolation of several restaurants at Carrizales, the first one, a cosy wood cabin, steeped in woodsmoke from the log fire.
The trees began to thin out and the road climbed up a grassy flank high above the deep valley. There was very little habitation up here. We found a reasonably sheltered hollow for our camp; I remember it as being idyllic, for there were crocuses all around, but it was bitterly cold overnight.
Before dawn, we had a stunning moonlit view of Nevado Veronica, so close, it felt almost within touching distance. By dawn though, a mist had formed. As we maclded about cooking breakfast, the mist would clear for a minute, and give the mountain through a veil. Finally, amazingly, it cleared. It wasn't far to the pass now, and the thrill of a new view. Here we also found the reason for the nocturnal trucks - there were roadworks and the road was closed during the day. We swept down on a grand tour of the valley top, past the beautiful meadows of Pena. Down to the Sacred Valley, this valley narrowed between two massive flanking cliffs, a gateway for gods.
I'm afraid I couldn't get the descent over fast enough. I was getting edgy about the looming business of trying to buy the train tickets for Machu Picchu. So far we had had nothing but failed attempts to buy these tickets. You couldn't buy them in Cusco and you couldn't get them from an agent. Apparently you could get them from the station itself in Urubamba, but after an afternoon spent searching for the station, which was eventually cornered in the grounds of an hotel, there was nobody there. Although the manageress of the hotel in Ollantaytambo assured us we could buy tickets the day before, the station master would only sell them in the morning.
Somehow we got the last two tickets; wonderfully, our seats were right at the front. The train follows the river down through a deepening valley; a mysterious landscape, the near-vertical mountains cloaked in forest, here and there a glimpse of an Inca site on a crag. The tour group in the train discussed their pet dogs. "My 'Princess', she just loves, I mean really loves, foie gras." 'That's so cute!" "Well, d'ye know - Mr Pookie - the boss! - he likes his steak medium rare - a bit more, a bit less, he won't touch it." Outside, the mountains reared up in a crescendo, and vertically above us, on a dizzy knife-edge ridge, was Machu Picchu.
After slumming it for ages, a whole week!, we were in need of some luxury and the Hotel Pakantampu was good, despite having to share it with a group of wretched birdwatchers who got up in the middle of the night and banged doors. We made our way up the Sacred Valley as slowly as possible, staying in all the nice hotels. At Pisac, although we stayed at the Royal Inka, the Hotel Pisac in the town was a better prospect for dinner, as it served family-sized pizzas. Where there are family-sized pizzas you will find cyclists.
We crossed paths with a "biking adventure" and were interested to know where they were going. In contrast, they had no curiosity whatsoever about what we were doing; nothing existed for them beyond doing groupy things together such as ordering beers in a blokey way, counting the number of beers they'd had yesterday, and sitting with their knees as far apart as possible. I rather get the impression that such people don't go to Peru to see or experience Peru, but rather to "do some mountainbike ride". So they would be ferried to the start of a. 'ride', never mind where, so long as it was a good ride. Indeed when we asked them where they'd been, they didn't know. I suppose it is fair enough for people to want this sort of holiday, for after all, we had no pretensions as to be doing anything more than entertaining ourselves here, but it does seem to miss out a lot.
The tour operators have a lovely picture in their brochure and we'd worked out it was on the Uchuy Cusco trail. We needed a shopping trip to Cusco, and we imagined we'd return by this route. The group leader told us it was very exposed and scary and in any case was a two day trip. We thought we'd save it for another time. Mind you, we suspected their concept of 'day' differed from ours, as they were negotiating a 9am breakfast. We were over the 4000m pass before they'd finished their coffee; this makes up for all points lost by failing to do the Uchuy Cusco trail.
Having restocked on food goodies and replete with luxury, we were off south for the second part of the adventure. There is a mountain south of Cusco, Nevado Ausangate, and a very attractive 5-day trekking route around it. We'd had the idea to take bikes over part of the route, return down the Pitumarca valley and back along the road. We had found the web page for an agency in Cusco offering the whole circuit as a mountain bike tour, with mules to carry the luggage. We had considered mules, but we didn't think we would have the time nor the language skills to hire them, and in any case preferred the flexibility of doing our own thing.
We rode along a newly-paved road from Pisac to meet the main road, and so to Urcos, which was a boring ride, and Urcos an unattractive town. The weather hadn't been so good the last few days: it was overcast and spitting threats of rain. From Urcos the road to Ausangate (and ultimately, Puerto Maldonado) was piste, and took an age to climb in long zigzags up the same hill. Oh, how I can still recall those views now. We camped near the top of the pass, somehow, as is our unique skill, finding the spot which would hide from the morning sun until about 11am. Another long day of mountains and several more 4000m passes took us to Tinqui, at the base of our mountain. We couldn't see Ausangate - it was covered in cloud.
There is a 'road' part of the way to Upis, a dirt road, but rideable and with beautifully professional kilometre marks. Then just footpath. Then, a bog with a river through it. The trekking route comes a more direct way from Tinqui but both routes have to cross the bog and the river. There was no mention of crossing the river in the Bradt guide or in any account we'd read. We did see a plank 'bridge', but with bikes, we had to ford the freezing water. Our shoes were wet through and we were cold. It started to snow. We put up the tent, locked the bikes together and hoped for a better day tomorrow, as it ought to be on my birthday...