Constant Movements

Cuenca was now  many kilometres away, the last days of cyclism had
been very happy ones. Finally I felt the symbiose between me, my
"donkey", my travel buddy Nuno and all that surrounded me. Me and
Marina rode the mountains and the deserts with pure happiness, in a
mutual effort - my energy used on its mechanical pieces as a way of
propulsion towards the destinations that we slowly reached. All the
human contact in Cuenca had build up my confidence and recharged my
batteries, and with renewed energies, it was also easy to harmonize
with everything else.

-----

-----
In Loja, 200 kilometres from Cuenca, where after 5 hours on a bus and
a sinuous road, I met Nuno, we decided that he would be the "leading
man". It seemed that when we studied maps together we could not agree
with the routes and destinations. I personally felt that the balance of
our relationship as travel buddies depended on each of us focusing on
different aspects of the journey and therefore I was very happy to let
Nuno analyze maps and choose routes. I admit that my passivity might
not be ideal, but on this trip I am just happy to be lead, more than
to lead, I want to be to a passenger. I get to the conclusion that my
life in London was always made of decisions and choices (well I guess
life always is) but it feels good for a change to let things happen
randomly, and not to plan more than a week in advance. It was Nuno who
taught me that is more important to live the way than to arrive to the
destination, after all, I am not that keen in just collecting entrance
tickets  to ruins, touristic places or cycled kilometres.

Now that we were "beating to the sound of the same drum", the  first
day of cycling was rewarding. We left Loja under a scorching sun, and
we climbed the first mountain, descending to Catamayo to a valley on
the other side of the mountain. We arrived there at the beginning of
the afternoon and probably ate the thinnest, hardest and most horrible
grilled meat of the whole journey - this was apparently the local
speciality, it was called Cecina and if these people enjoy it I dread
to think what other niceties they enjoy. After the "delicious" lunch
we climbed another mountain on a real challenge to my determination,
curve after curve I could see my effort as I ascended the mountain and
saw the valleys way below my feet in vertiginous drops

For the first time on my journey we had to admit that we wouldn´t find
a place to camp, we were surrounded by cultivated landscape with
impenetrable fences. We took a side road in the hope of reaching a
house and ask permission to camp in their backyard. The surprise of
the forced hosts was  visible, they had never seen cyclotourists on
those parts and could not quite believe that our bikes were not
motorbikes, but they let us stay for the night. The children took
great joy in watching us cook and to play with us. We set the tent on
what we found the next morning to be the pigsty, as we woke up  to the
sound of the pig´s hoinks.

The following day rose grey with an endless climb, we left just after
breakfast. The rain that was at first only shy drops became heavy and
every inch of my body was soaking wet, but not even that took my
determination of enjoying my regained energy. We reached the last
village in Ecuador before arriving in Peru, in the afternoon,
Cotacocha, and stayed there two nights in the hope  that the rain
would stop. The rain didn´t stop and we headed south under frizzly
rain. To our surprise the rain was replaced by sunshine and clear
views over the green valley as we descended the mountain.

Jeff

Slowly the small dot became an unmistakable silhouette. He was
climbing the mountain as if he carried the world on his bike, but it
was 70 kilos of luggage spreaded between a whole lot of spares, tools,
clothes, food and not the world that Jeff was carrying. Each cyclist
is a unique being with distinct needs, after all!

In Cotacocha we had agreed to meet him on the way to Peru since we had
chosen the same route.

Jeff has got very big green eyes that sometimes become blue but who
always look shy. His hair is long and burnt by the thousand hours
spend under the sun on his bike. With his long hands he holds the
inverted handlebars in a position that seems to challenge his back´s health. His bike is his body extension and it was made to measure, to fit his long legs and his thin body. His height, he says, might be a consequence of the almost 10 months he spent in his mother´s womb. His childhood was spent  in the woodlands in Canada and in his youth he was a bass player and a singer in a heavy metal band. This peacefull and calm human being released his anger shouting and screaming to the frenetic sounds of the heavy metal. His joy for music extended to the radio station at his university where he was responsible for the radio programmes. Jeff´s great dream became to cycle the world although he had
never left Canada whilst he was a teenager. He lived a spartan life for the last 4 years before his trip to save enough money to make his dream come true. His work as a geographer might explain the meticulous way with which he plans his journey. For Jeff, mountains
and the places he passes by are a collection of altitudes, kilometres and coordinates. The human aspect doesn´t come easy although he is a extremelly kind human being. How different must Latin American culture and habits seem to him?

One day he asked for seafood soup, he is vegetarian but since being
vegetarian can be tricky in these countries Jeff has convinced himself
that it is easier to just eat what there is to eat...or maybe not,
when he saw some whole prawns, a piece of octopus and some other sea
animals floating in his soup he said:

-"I cant eat this - my soup is full of cockroaches!"

Nuno laughed and ate his delicious cockroaches!

It was good to meet him again on the road. We shared the last
kilometres from Ecuador to Trujillo in North of Peru. Jeff was
expecting Peru to be full of thieves and people trying to con him, but
slowly he also started to discover a more human country with less
dangerous landscapes and more surprising ones than first expected.

----
Crossing the border

The first thing that stroke me when crossing the border of Ecuador in
Macara to Peru was the stinky smell of dried faeces. We had to stand
the smell in that border crossing for longer than we wished for
because Jeff´s wheel was starting to demand a lot of attention and he
had to keep mending the tyres due to the constant hole punctures he was
getting. After all the bureaucracies that involve crossing a border
were dealt with, my senses were distracted by something that was
happening in the Rio Calvas who at that time of the year  was brown
with very strong current: children, some of them who weren´t older
than 10 years, fighting against the rebel river, swimming with barrels
of petrol from one bank to the another. Later I found that petrol is
more expensive in Peru hence the  smuggling. The "closed eyes" of the
guards from both borders shocked me not for the obvious failure of
their duties to the laws of international trade but their cold
indifference to the value of these children´s life who daily challenge
death without anyone seeming to care.

The stink and the poverty is something that one has to get used to
when travelling in Peru. Around the colourful markets that can be
found pretty much everywhere in any village or city, the
intense smell of the myriad of  fruits, vegetables, meat and fish
get´s mixed with the smell of those products in an advanced stage of
decomposition disposed on the floor sometimes right next to the fresh
products. It is without a doubt a  journey of the olfact and sometimes
not a particularly good one! Often in Northern Peru I saw signs asking
the populations to fight the fruit flies, but with the amounts of
rubbish that gets thrown in the streets it seems to me that this fight
already has a winner - the flies!

And the thousands of children that can be seen everywhere selling
sweets, singing in the colectivos (vans tranformed in local buses),
cleaning shoes in the streets, doing acrobacies in the middle of the
chaotic traffic. Their faces are dirty, their clothes are old with
holes and the look in their eyes is sad. Why cant they have a normal
existence? Why cant they receive love and affection everyday?  Why
dont they have food? Why dont they have a safe place to sleep? Why do
they have to beg in the streets?

- Because as long as we live indifferent in our daily comforts
refusing to realise that our comforts often result  in other´s
discomforts, specially when we buy cheap products, when we elect
corrupt and careless politicians, and above all when we keep living
an aphatetic and ignorant way of life, nothing will ever change and we
will continue to be partially responsible for these childrens lack of
hope!
-----

----
Other travellers had warned us about the dangers that awaited us once we
crossed the border to Peru: the money would be fake even when taken
from cash machines, robbers would be at any corner waiting for the
right moment to rob us, camping outdoors would be impossible because
surely someone would come and rip the tent or do something worse, the
plethora of dangers seemed endless but on the forth day in Peru we
were still alive, in good health, and with pretty much all our goods
when we arrived in Chulucanas a city with 70 400 inhabitants. When we
were looking for a place to stay for the night a lady and a young man
on a motorbike  started talking to us saying that she was a teacher,
married to an archeologist and that it would be a pleasure to
receive us in their house. We suspiciously followed the lady, where was
she taking us? But her contagious smile, her sweet and brown eyes, the
almost childlike voice and her human warmth, vanished any doubts. This
being full of light and her husband Mario had a genuin interest in
receiving us. Rosita, as I called her, was a teacher who had inherited
a private school from her mum and she had the gift of kindness and generosity.

We set our tents in the schoolyard, it was the school holiday, so no
screaming children first thing in the morning. Mario, her husband, was
an archeologist who worked for the council doing research of the
arqueological wealth available in the region and he was also
responsible for its promotion in the hope to attract visitors. He took
us in his mototaxi to the local ruins and other places that were
supposedly of turistsic and cultural interest, however, to my eyes,
the tumbs of the Pre-Inca Moche Culture resumed to an abstarct pile of
earth like the surrounding ones. The ruins of Piura a Velha, the first
city founded by the spanyards in Peru and destroyed centuries ago due
to the effects of the El Niño was just a group of decrepit
stone walls like the ones that can be seen anywhere in the world in any old abandoned village.

I get the impression that Peru woke up to late  for the importance of
its history and past, perhaps inspired by Machu Pichu and the
resources that it brings to the region, however most of the ruins that
can be found in Northern Peru were built with a very perishable
construction material - adobe and one needs either to have a great
interest in local history or a big imagination, to be able to see the
beauty within those silent destroyed stones and walls.

Mario was a man with a very strong character. Big brown eyes
occupied his face and his skin was the colour of chocolate, he used
to open his hands when he spoke as if he wanted to received the world
in them. He was very found of his space, his books and his
archaeological discoveries, from there originated some of the ceramic
that he so carefully reconstructed bringing them back to life. Our
interesting conversations often resumed to monologues where Mario let
his mind run free to the many subjects he had interest on such as the
meaning of life, spirituality, history and politics, however I had to
bit my tongue more often than I would have liked because despite being
a man of culture and in a certain way, of science, he was also a very
chauvinist one and some comments made specially to his wife, remembered
me that I was in the hearth of Latin America were the Macho culture is
at its alive and kicking!

One of Rosita´s main worries was the menu that she kindly would presents
us with. Day after day, she would cook us Peruvian delicacies making us
travel around the flavours of Peruvian food!

On the fifth day we left, not because we wanted to, but because we
didn´t think it was decent of us to stay any longer. Once again I said
goodbye with tears in my eyes. I felt real affection and love for
that family, those friends who had  welcomed us from the street,
those strangers who became as familiar as someone from my own
family...They will remain in my heart and my mind as the proof that
Peruvian people are composed by people with good  and true intentions,
very genuine and very warm and welcoming. The robbers and the bandits
may well exist like in any other part of the world but they are fewer
and less noticeable than the nice people!

Sechura, the desert

Everything was flat. Everything was yellow. Everything was infinite:
the road, the heath, the sand. The blue sky, one or other truck that
sounded its honk in the infinite and lost echo of the Pan-Americana. In
constant intervals we read a sign indicating "Perigo de Morte - Área
de Exercícios Militares" (Danger of Death, Area for Military
Exercises), at a distance of no more than 20 metres from the road. It
occurred to me what a sad death it would be if one had to go to answer
nature´s call and died doing pee whilst being the target of a military
aircraft! Nuno actually wanted us to camp there and experience the
Peruvian desert, but neither me or Jeff were willing to prove the
threatening sign´s veracity!

Interesting to see how all the villages and cities in Northern Peru
were built on the several oasis of green originated by the rivers that
flow down from the Andean slopes leaving a trail of green in the dry yellow
that dominates the landscape.

Our final destination, to complete this stage of cyclism was Trujillo,
the third biggest city in Peu with 768 300 inhabitants, and where we
were expecting to be welcomed by a mythical figure amongst the
ciclotourists who cycle Latin America - Lucho.

- Hola, es possible hablar con Lucho? - I said a few days before we
arrived in Trujillo, anouncing our arrival on the phone.
- Si, un momento... - a feminin voice was heard on the line and then a
scream - Lucho es para ti!
- Si, soy Lucho - a coarse voice answerd on the other side of the line.
- Mi nombre es Joana y soy una ciclista de Portugal, estoy con mas dos
amigos uno de Portugal, y otro de Canada, y es para saber se podemos
quedarnos en su casa?
- De Portugal?! Claro que si, son los primeros ciclistas de Portugal
que recibo! Y poden venir quando quieran, seran muy bien venidos.
- Bueno entonces hasta pronto, ya nos veremos breve! - I answered in
my basic spanish.

A few days later and not in the way that we would have liked to have
arrived after such great days of cyclism - we had to take the lift from
a van of some engineers stoped by the police and forced to take us
and our bikes due to the danger of us being robbed in a village 40
kilometres from Trujillo called Paijan.We arrived to Trujillo safe and
sound and when we passed Paijan all we could see was another village
on the road like many others that we had passed before. Who knows maybe
the bandits were having a siesta...

Casa de la Amsitad is the name that Lucho gave his house, well in
reality it is his mum´s house. He
rents a room there where he receives cyclists and other adventurers
alike. Already 900  and odd cyclists stayed there and left the stories
of their adventures written on the visit books. And in reality there
are a lot of stories from fake cyclists, to cyclists on tricycles,
handicapped ones, cyclists with children and even a walker from
Colombia who was supposedly walking to promote Universal Peace, and
who was there when we arrived, but who was visibly more interested in
himself and his adventures than in Peace itself. I was the 934 th
cyclist to stay in the house and the first Portuguese one!

Lucho was indeed a very warm, funny and welcoming man, low stature and
brown skin, it was hard to see how old he was because he has a rugratt
look on his face. He his very young at heart and is joviality is
contagious. One could say that he lives for his passion for bikes and
cyclism, he used to be an elite cyclist, but he had more talents
awaiting to be revealed. One night we invited him for one of our home cooked
meals that funnily enough was seafood rice (the same food that Jeff
detests) and after dinner Lucho opened the room where he keeps his
racing bikes and instruments and presented us with an absolutely
fantastic drum kit performance. No one escaped from giving their
musical contribution: I had to sing, Jeff had to play the bass
guitar, Lucho`s friend (a professional singer) had to sing obviously
and Nuno clapped his hands.

I also took advantage from the fact that Lucho fixed bikes and left my
Marina in his capable hands, after it my bike was brand new and
he liked my bike so much that he called it Negrita. Negrita, or Marina
as you wish to call it was so pleased that she survived without a
scratch to the next part of the trip, but that is for another story.

We remained in Trujillo for three weeks, much longer than we had
planed to stay, the weather forecast for our destination wasn't
great, some areas were closed due to heavy floods and landslides, on
the other hand my bum was being tortured with painfull injections to
cure a recurrent urinary infection. We walked the roads of Trujillo
back and forth countless times, there is not much to do in Trujillo
apart from enjoying the colourfull buildings of the Plaza de Armas that
look like an electrified rainbow!

-----
Who knows if those lazy days in Huachaco, a beach close to Trujillo
that attracts surfers and backpackers were the last ones where I
would see the Pacific Ocean on this journey? Huachaco was a small
fishing village where its inhabitants ventured the big waves in small
boats called "caballitos de totoro". Now the boats are kept on the
seaside, and according to Lonely Planet, they can still be used. I
didn´t see any in the sea but they are there witnesses of a past of
brave fisherman who in times challenged the waves of the Pacific.

Me and Nuno let the sun burn our skin on a lazy afternoon spent at
the seaside. The next pedal strokes would takes us to the Andes and
the rain  would probably keep us company, so we just stayed there and
enjoyed with pleasure the smell of the sea, the sound of the waves
caressing the sand, the seagulls flying free and the photographic
sunset at the end of the afternoon.

Follow my journey through Nuno´s eyes on www.ontheroad.eu.com and Jeff´s on http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/jk