Back from our hiking sojourns around Cusco, and fattened up again after a few more days of post-hike indulgence, we couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to get back on the bikes and start heading North!
There wasn’t an obvioulsy appealing route out of the city, and most south bound cyclists we met in our hostel had arrived by bus to skip the hilly slog along a main road from Ayacucho. Tempting (for me,as I fundamentally really only like cycling downhill!),but poring over our maps did reveal another potential route though. Some showed the line heading out of Cusco via the historic Sacred Valley to, dropping down into the jungle to Quillabamba, continuing to follow the Urabamba river to Kiteni and onto Kimbiri, before climbing back up into the highlands. Other maps, however, showed a road that fizzled out somewhere in the middle of a dense patch of green on the map. Interesting.
A road less travelled from Cusco to Ayavucho and beyond
We could find tantalisingly little info about this jungle road,. Was it paved? Were there places to stay along the way? Was it safe? Did it even exist!? Asking locals in Cusco, and Googling to try to find if others had cycled it came back with the news stories of the drug and terrorist related violence that flared up in the region in 2012. The area is a prime growing region for cocoa leaves, the raw (legal) ingredient for (illegal) cocaine production, and had seen a resurrgence in Shining Path rebel activity in the early 2010’s. Kidnappings, murders and violence plagued the region, and the rest of the country, in the 1990s but their activities had been fought back in the 2000’s.
Nowadays the group are seen as being more aligned to drug trafficking than a political movement, and are much weaker. After the incidents in 2012, a military base was installed in the region and from what we could gather, this appeared to have quelled the violence as we could find no incidents reported in the last 4 years.
I was torn. Nervous about the news reports I was reading, but also reluctant to cast off a whole region because of something that happened 4 years ago. We were really keen to experience this different side of Peru, only 90km from the highlands of the Sacred Valley but a completely different climate, landscape and culture, and were definitely tempted by the prospect of cycling a road few other people had. We used google satelite to zoom in on the road as much as we could, and could see a few sizeable settlements along the way. We decided that if we made sure to be sleeping in towns, avoid camping, and cycle only in daylight, we would be fine. So it was settled…off to the Jungle!
It took us 8 days of riding, a day recovering from heat exhaustion, one day attempting and failing to get to the Pongo (a place Michael Palin called his “favourite place to travel in the world”), and an unplanned but very needed collectivo lift out of the valley to make it to Ayacucho and we were so glad we decided to go for it.
The people we met along the way were without doubt the friendliest of our whole trip so far, and we were constantly turning down offers yelled from the roadside to stop for a chat. The pace of life was turned on it’s head as we headed lower and lower and things got more and more lush and humid. In the highlands, by 6pm people are huddled back in their warm houses to shelter from the onset of freezing dusk. Here, the town plazas came to life as the sun went down and the brutal heat of the day started to subside. Ice cream, cremoladas (yummy blended fruity ice cream drinks) and all kinds of fresh fruit abounded, with roads lined with banana, mango, avocado and orange trees that made our mouths water but always seemed just out of reach! Being used to seeing women covered head to toe in traditional highland dress, now there were girls in shorts and strappy tops, men wandering around with bellies out, and an abundance of flesh that can only result from a life of plentiful food, cool Inka Cola, and lots of sitting around in the jungle heat.
We’d definitely recommend this route to anyone heading to or from Cusco….plenty of small towns with hostals and supplies, and a great way to see a different side of Peru. Just be prepared for the 3000m climb (or much less duanting 3 hour lift in a collectivo) out again!
Our jungle adventure:
Day one saw us leaving Cusco for Ollantytambo, via the Sacred Valley, the salt terraces of Moray, a unexpected bit of single track, and an incredible visit to the Sacred Valley Brewery where we drank IPA and got nostalgic about London.
Ollantytambo greeted us with a cyclist’s arse’s worst nightmare, cobblestones (damn those Incas), and sent us on our way to Abra Malaga the next morning with a 6:30am puncture.
Patched up, with a little crowd encouragement, off we went on our biggest climb yet, 1400m climb up to Abra Malaga at 4400m, spurred on by the knowledge that we would be duly rewarded with a 3000m downhill freewheel and pina coladas (surely??) by the evening.
All was well until we neared the pass, and our first real experience of the Peruvian rainy season sent us shivering under a shelter at the top. But there was no where to go but down, so for 25km down we went into driving rain and wind that soaked us through and froze our hands until we couldn’t brake anymore. It turns out downhills are not so much fun when you can’t feel your fingers, toes, arms, legs or face.
Soggy Abra Malaga
Just when we were about to pass from freezing to borderline hyperthermic, we finally saw a sign of life and potential shelter. A chalkboard at the roadside saying “Restaurant – Caldo de Gallina, Cafe & Te”. Chicken Soup, Tea and Coffee. I momentarily worried that I had died from the cold and gone to heaven, but the stabbing coldin my limbs reminded me otherwise and we numbly limped in through the front door into a warm, dingy room, scattered with a few tables and chairs and with some happily oblivious guinea pigs scurrying around. The owner took one look at us, shook her head in disbelief and scurried off to get wood to set a fire, served us up two huge mugs of coffee peruvian style (6 spoons of sugar) and a delicious hot soup full of potatoes and chicken. Wet clothes and bodies steamed themselves dry by the fireplace, numb digits came back to life and before we knew it the sun was shining again. Now the downhill fun really began!
Bizzarely, I’ve actually cycled this road before….7 years ago on a backpacking trip to South America. But that time they drove you up to the top, put you on bikes, and let you roll all the way down. This time was even more fun for having slogged up, and it took us merely a couple of hours to zoom the 70km down to Santa Maria, the air getting warmer as we went, the valley getting lusher and finally on to Quillabamba in an incredibly noisy dusk, the trees coming alive with insects and birds.
From Quillabamba it was 300km or so to the end of our jungley adventure. We rode through palm trees, dense vegetation and thousands of mango trees…
…stopping for our usual Sunday lunch in a packed outdoor restaurant, serving just one thing….
Fresh “paco” fish straight from the river, with boiled yukka. Yum.
…sampled lots of interesting jungle fruits…
…and drank a LOT of cremoladas to cool ourselves. Disappointed at the lack of pina coladas, we created our own. Coconut cremolada + rum = amazingness.
The jungle was definitely not the flat and easy ride we’d expected. Lots of undulating, and then one mammoth day with over 2000m of incredibly sweaty climbing, eerily quiet roads and a very well baracaded military base at the top. This was the stretch that was missing from our maps, and the soldiers at the base seemed a little surprised to see us!
Sometimes the road kind of disappeared….
…and some times it really disappeared….
A day trip to the Pongo was sadly foiled by a downpour that washed away the road and had us turn back
But we made a lot of new friends, perfect for our level of Spanish….
…some more welcome than others….
We picked up a new cycling companion….
…and got ourselves adopted by Daniel and his family, who hollered us in for some and fed us lunch. It was hard to tear ourselves away from their invitation to stay and swim at “their beach”.
We arrive in Kimbiri, last stop on our jungle adventure happy but exhausted. Cycling and sweating in the heat over the big pass had taken its toll and I spent the next 36 hours comatosed under the cooling breeze of the fan, swatting mosquito’s whilst my body repaired itself. A 3000m climb back up to Ayacucho was not the best plan for recovery, so we hauled our bikes into a collectivo taxi and up the long dusty road back to the highlands to Quinoa, just in time for a fiesta that kept the chicharron cooking and the music pounding all night.. Cheating? Maybe but as we climbed up the relentless, exposed and busy road in 3 hours rather than 3 days, I can’t say I was disappointed to miss out on the ride!
So in summary, we loved this route. The cycling was toughger than we thought in the relentless heat, and there is definitely an undeniable edge to the area because of the cocoa growing and trafficking. But with a bit of sensible planning, early starts and a LOT of water and bug spray, it’s a great way to do “that bit between Cusco and Ayacucho”.
Grrrls On Tour 
Love it Char, keep on rolling and stay clear of tge narcos! Keith