From the jungle to the clouds

I am now back on the road again after a short side trip without the bike into the jungle. As i was so close to the Amazon i felt it would be a shame not to become aquinted with it. From moyabamba where i had been staying I took a short bus ride and a long boat ride to a small town accessable only by boat called Lagunas. Lagunas is the gateway to the Pacaya Samiria national reserve,a dirty little town on the banks of the Amazon ( or a tributary to it) 10 hours by boat from ther town of Yurimaguas which is accessable by road. On the boat I met a man who offered me his services as a tour guide. He offered the cheapest price i had been able to find and he had impressed me with his apparent knowledge of the jungle upon our first conversation. I later learned that he was a little bit of a fibber. I first realised this later on at his house when another traveler had asked him if he knew any plants that could sooth a headache. He said he had an oil from a local tree that can help`, i walked in on a very spiritual scene whereby our guide, lets call him Kleva, was rubbing this oil on the head of the headache bearing traveller. i looked on the table to see an open pot of the south american equivalent of vaporub. I found this hilarious but didnt confront him on it. We were also told of crocodiles 20metres long and pikes weighing over 400kg which i am quite sure is not true considering i weigh around 75 and i have never seen a pike even as big as my leg. Anyway I was luckily put in the safe hands of another guide in Klevas family named Pedro who didnt feel the need to fib so much to impress me, the dumb tourist. We spent 3 days together exploring the jungle in small winding tributaries in a dug out tree trunk canoe. It is the rainy season so everything is flooded and mostly only accessable by boat. We went hiking one evening in the dark into the jungle in order to spot some of the local fauna. We didnt find much but the sound of the jungle at night was deafening, I really enjoyed knowing that within metres of my could have been anaondas or crocodiles and many other creatures capable of taking me away into the night never to be seen again. It was also interesting to see the culture of the locals that lived in the area. some so remote that they are only reachable by days on a ferry and more days in a small canoe. Though our plastic guzzaling culture has still managed to reach them, I see from the big boat small conoes cemerging from deep within the jungle to meet us and stock up their handcrafted boats with luminous coloured fizzy drinks and sugary sweets. It hit me as a strange contrast.

After having most of my blood taken from me by the relentless swarms of mosquitos that hassled me every single hour of my stay in the jungle I returned to Moyabamba to

Tarzan

collect my bike, say my goodbyes to my new found friends and shitty ducks and by on my way again.
From Moyabamba the road was kind to my over rested and possibly under used legs, gently rolling through flat coffee plantations for about 100km The rain came down most of the day but it was a blessing as at an altitude of around 800 the heat was quite real. The following day was not quite as easy, I was climing all day and i must have slept an around 3000m though i cannot be sure. The road was paved but quiet and I enjoyed both the change of climate and the change of scenery. Winding up into old growth forests green,wild and inviting to the small boy in my that stills wants to be tarzan. After climing around 60 km I found a lone house on the side of the road and asked if i could camp on their land possibly under their roof. They accepted and were very kind, after question time they even fed me up the staple meal of rice, pasta, patatoes and platains plenty of carbs for the next day.
Following day took me to Chachapoyas 130km from where I slept in the mountins and my biggest day yet. 80 of those including a 50km section of cruisy decent took me to Pedro Ruiz  where I found my cheapest lunch yet 2.50 soles which is about $1 for a big bowl of soup and a meal of rice veg and a fillet of fish and a drink.The last 50km very slightly climbing along side a beautiful river winding through the valley bed on a gravel road it seemed occupied by me, myself and my bike and not alot else. part way up the last climb to chachapoyas my i realised i had lost a bolt from my rack and my panniers were swaying around like a dad at a disco and doing some harm to the bike. I managed to bhitch the remaining few kilometres with a truck full of campesinos who filled me to the brim with coca leaves and a homemade alcohol from pure sugar cane which tasted like it was about 100% alcohol. Upon arriving at Chachapoyas i felt great due my successful day and mostly the substances that had recently been forced upon me I found a lovely hostal called 'Chachapoyas backpackers' run by probably the nicest couple in Peru.
The next day was a short one up the same road by the river to the town of Tingo where i stayed and Hiked the next day up to over 3000m to the site of Kuelap A pre incan arcealogical site very seldom visited for being second in size only to Machu Piccu. The 3 hour hike up to the site was beautiful I didnt see another soul until reaching the top.
The roads I have been travelling are some what more remote and less travelled then the roads i was riding in Ecuador. I am received by the locals usually by looks of astonishment  and a friendly 'hola' some times just 'Gringo' followed by some laughs, often I am just gorped at and my greetings are ignored and sometimes people just look absolutely terrified of me, a long haired bearded gringo, on several occasions children have run away from me screaming. On chatting with my friend in Moyabamba who has lived in Peru in remote communities for years I discovered that there are some tales or myths about gringos obviously started as silly stories by grandparents or great gantparents but over the years have become somewhat real in the eyes of their beholders and though we now live in a very connected world there are still some places that live in ignorance of reality. One such myth encountered in a very remote village was that us gringos come to the villages to steal children, we take out the childrens spines in order to extract a very valuable oil which is then used to create rocket fuel. It sounds absurd but it is probably not far from the kind of ignorance of the outside world that is encountered in england whereby anybody wearing a turban has come to blow us up.

The next day, another short cycle, took my to a town called Leymabamba the site of a museum hopusing 219 mummies that were discovered in a cave in the surrounding mounatins only a few decades ago. After a late start and a broken chain on the road I arrived later than expected and the museum was closed. Though while eating lunch i saw abnother cyclist come into town wet and muddy as i was, a frenchman going in the opposite direction as myself. We were probably the only two tourists in town.We spent the evening talking routes and bikes over a couple of beers.

a dead thing

In the morning i had the museum to myself and spent an hour getting acquiented with the dead fellas and reading about the pre incan and incan cultures that have used the surrounding land in eons long gone.

i was hoping they just ran out of money and used the downhill sign the other way up

old growth forest

rock wall hanging over the road

rolling along the river

broken chain

steps up to Kuelap

the road narrow enough for only one car and a frightening drop off the other side of that non existant barrier

reinforced rack

The afternoon was spent climbing another 30km up to around 3500 (or more i am not too sure) where i had to pull out my gloves and i could see my breath and then decending a further 60km to camp at 800m on the bank of a river I slept naked with no fly and the door unzipped in a puddle of my own sweat haunted by the mosquitos in my ears but enchanted by the fireflies around me competing with the distant stars in the clear night sky. I awoke at 5am in an attempt to pack up camp and start climbing out of the valley before the sun had a chance boil the valley and sap my energy. I only made it 2 km and had climbed not at all before the my rack fell victim yet again to the rocky road and buckled in 3 places making it impossibly to ride. I then sat in the very heat i tried so hard to avoid for 2 hours waiting for a vehicle to pass capable of carrying me to the next town of Celendin. I made it there around lunch time after hailing down a bus and to my delight the first metal shop i found but a block from the bus stop was both able and willing to weld alluminium. I had him reinforce the thing in order to prevent another snap somewhere down the road. I think I have spent more repairing this bloody rack than I bought it for in the first place. I used the remaining hours of light to start the next climb up to Cajamarca and made it 15km before finding a nice flat pasture and with the permission of the land owner set up camp for the night. Quite a contrast to the night before, I pulled out my big jumper and had to use my sleeping bag plus clothes but was far more comfortable. I fell asleep at 8pm and awoke at 11pm thinking it was morning, didnt get much sleep after that as i felt well rested enough to start riding again not untill the dawn when I fell in to a deep sleep and didnt want to wake from it. This led me into another late start for the following 40km climb to the next valley of Cajamarca. I found a roadworkers camp an hour up the road and had a second breakfast as my little bowl of oats wasn´t doing the job. The road was mainly unpaved but wide and empty, rough in patches. There was about 20km of asfalt upon which in the peak of my day i was able to over take my fist motor vehicle going uphill a heavily laden motortaxi, this made me think that the bicycle really is the best mode of transport available untill they zoomed passed me again 30 meters up the road. The last few kilometeres of the climb i had to walk as an increasing pain in my knew hindered my ability to ride but the at this slower pace i felt i coult absorb even more of the stunningness sorrounding me. It was then a partly rough and rocky and party asfalted decent do the City of Cajamarca completing a bang on 100km day. A town which to my delight hosts is abundant with decent cheese and some cheap wine luxuries unknown to me for some time.