THE ANDES - Part I - Treated Kindly

Thick with hidden meaning their broad north English accents stuttered for clarity, repeatedly tripping on enigmatic attempts to describe their cycle ride through the grit and sand of one the most magnificent mountain ranges in the world. Paused on a seven thousand foot high craggy slope it was the end of the Andes for them and only the start for me. A chance encounter between finishers and starters, enthusing, idling and nattering naturally as touring cyclist so easily do. Me, hot and resting on the way up, them cold and warming-up on the way down. Me plump and laundered, them bright, battered and blanketed in dust. Conversation meandered through memories of Sheffield where we had both lived, to the weight of water going up steep hills to this, and that, then finally to how they had both faired in the last month on the Sierras.





They stood a stride battered bicycles, reaching instinctively for water bottles in mid-conversation, knowing where they were without the slightest glance. Their elbows rested quite at home on handle bar grips as eyes stared, sparkling bright against weathered skin. Creases in bags folded over mountain dust, dust collected like mountain memories that no amount of scrubbing could ever remove. Appearances and mannerisms speaking out; a familiar language answering questions that need not be asked, followed by the rather shocking realisation of what one was about to become, tempered a little personal reassurance that I had of course descended (or ascended) to such battered states many times before and would be quite oblivious to the slow shedding of city slickin’ smooth cycling standards.

In North West China over a year earlier I had anxiously sat at the foot of the Himalayas and stared incredulously at a lone, very lonely cyclist, head bowed and apparently quite incapable of acknowledging the rare presence of another touring cyclist. At the time it had had a most concerning effect on my outlook for the months to come and then, as now, on the foothills of another monstrous mountain range, up had collided with down. Before was meeting after. The weighty bowed state of a cyclist not looking and wondering, the sight of such down trodden lost-ness all those months ago in China had provoked an immensely powerful resolve extending (and unspoken) to a pact between my loyal cycling partner and I, that the descent from the mountains would (and must) be made with head held high, proud and full of good cheer at our achievement. A promise to ensure we would put into place whatever was needed to be healthy and happy on that momentous day. A completely excessive and desperately theatrical picture painted for our own needs, none the less it was a fine picture that helped no end in lifting heavy bikes through snowdrifts, gasping for thin air in below thirty degree temperatures, it was a mental reminder to pause and rest and to simply look how lucky we were. I was surely as lucky now to be pointing upward toward the Andes and so appropriated the same lifting vows to listen and take heed and to keep ones self in good cheer.





In the same way that a simple stroll in the park is so uniquely individual, so it is of course for very big bicycle rides. An attempt was made by the Sheffield couple to describe their particular cycle ride running painfully against the grain of the Andes, across all its huge valleys. The Tibetan plateau was mentioned to which all three of us had cycled (read: moment of mutual self-indulgent pride!) so was a natural yard stick for comparison. Alas it transpired (ironically) that their immense achievement and experience in Tibet (that place too big for bicycles) had proceeded to punish them daily in the Andes. Big misplaced, mountain plateau shaped expectations battled daily with (mis) guided, painfully inadequate European road maps showing primary roads ten miles in length that were in reality thirty mile stretches of hairpin bends on ten percent gradients on gravel! Twenty or so days spent on only one range of the Andes with no plateaux and no idea as to the desperate number of passes that they must scale.

At this point there is an uncontrollable urge to plant my banner of protest. A protest for all the cartographic, misinformed disillusionment that all the touring cyclist of the world have fallen victim to. A defence against the wrong doings of all the name makers, cartographers, geographers and mis-translators of local dialects that conjure up tenuous, teetering on cruel contradictions and blatant falsifications in all the navigable parts of our world . . . . . . . . . . It would take crossing two of the greatest mountain ranges in the world before being able to suitably discourage ones welling excitement at reading “flat pass” on the map. Likewise there is great injustice to being well positioned in the middle of some plateaux with trusted and published cycle notes to then stumble into some uncounted six thousand foot climb at four O’clock in the afternoon! What mystifying process is in place that allows recently revised maps to mark roads as primary sealed routes only to gaze at the dry riverbed running parallel and consider it as a better surface to cycle on? It would seem that in large swathes of the well mapped world it is only in allowing room for the opposite of what is described that one may safely assume what lay ahead. . . . . . . . . A momentarily disgruntled touring cyclist feeling considerably better for his outburst! So . . . . . . . . . . On that craggy Andean slope and quite unlike said mis-informants, honest leg felt information was swapped from cyclist to cyclist as to what lay ahead. My deep rooted fear of muscles crying out for oxygen was fearfully fuelled by their distressed faces proclaiming daily climbs of over 3000 feet on dirt tracks reciprocated (more kindly) on my part by the heart felt joy at informing them they were presently pointing downhill on what one could only imagine to be one of the largest uninterrupted downs in the world. Prior to our meeting I had already spent 4 whole days going up at 3mph. Onwards to the Top!







Next-door were six Peruvian miners in a tiny room with one bed. The few planks of wood between our two rooms rattled in the wind helping little to secure my fragile state. It was a terribly hard place to be. Raw and basic. Blood dripped from my nose, another wave of nausea filled my head already sore from the fumes of a diesel generator loudly choking outside the door. All this rubbish would be over by the morning but it would be a long lonely night.
Early that afternoon three truck drivers and I had shared digestive biscuits and warm (!) tea in a triumphant high altitude windswept whirl of happiness. Sixteen thousand feet and five days below lay the Pacific Ocean and the coast of Peru. It had surely been the most massive, uninterrupted ups one could ever possibly pedal up. One big hill, straight up from sea level. It was a monster, unrelenting and completely mind popping. I was in shock, quite incapable of grasping this new world. Small lamps on dusty tin hatted miners bobbed through dust swept streets. I sheltered in a blue neon lit miners café with the silent whites of Peruvian men glowing in the UV lamps. I had been served a delicious potato something with soup and a sweet something else and over the raucous distortion of the radio felt the first wave of dissyness. It was a wobbly career back to the shelter of bed where altitude sickness would work its way through me and be gone by the morning. Blue morning skies and a clear mind, feeling on top of the world and on top the Andes!







Day lit moons and deep stratospheric blues dark as space hung over massive daily descents into deep crevices with just enough room to fit a small hamlet before rising straight up to the next monstrously scaled ascent. Peering out of the tent, sunset red volcanoes visible in magnificence for four or five days of cycling pointed each evening like a mini miracle to rising moons, bright in a wild yet calming Andean sky, the deepest clearest night sky I had ever seen. Trails weaved past hot springs offering 13,000 feet high private mineral baths at sunset before hidden creases and folds in a vast landscape suddenly spiralled down thousands of feet between impossibly sculptured rock formations hollowed and holed, towering and cavernous in brilliant multicoloured strata. Roads led past dry riverbeds in a topsy-turvy world where rivers quite literally turned to roads and (when it rained) roads turned to torrential muddy rivers.













One arose to magic, to mornings cycling through sub zero, massive walled gorges silent but for the pleasure of white birds skimming across mirror smooth rivers hundreds of feet below whilst watching and waiting for the first intense beams of sunlight to find me, exploding into day with the indescribable joy at feeling the suns warmth upon ones frosty morning cheeks.





Each day held new treats, new landscapes and languages, strange cloths with stranger hats. Descending from brittle desert scrub, into gardens of mangoes and banana trees, ascending again to rolling grass prairies swaying in a kind Andean breeze all backed by eighteen thousand foot snow capped mountains tumbling down toward rivers sparkling in morning light. The magic of morning good cheer, of morning hope and waves to woman taking Llamas to graze, to children (quite literally) walking over mountains to school, to the men warming up their brass instruments for that days fiesta or to the woman scaling impossible slopes with child cocooned in warm blankets on her back.





The eclectic and eccentric mornings of cycling down the spine of the beautiful Andes. A morning pause in a farmers yard to sip freshly brewed coffee whilst he casually black bags and sethers the heads of chickens or the exchange of fine city cheeses for fresh bananas brought up from the valley (2 days down!). A family passes……………..one donkey carrying two children, another donkey carrying a baby Llama, a Llama carrying straw, a dog carrying nothing another dog carrying a monkey (at 10,000 feet!), a man carrying three chickens (living) and a woman carrying a baby.





Of all the hundreds of sightings and hours spent staring from a distance one particular afternoon I was honoured to receive the close surrendering stare of a great bird of prey. Not some brief altitudinal glance but a lingering timeless twenty or so seconds of motionless questioning. A privileged fifteen meter acceptance of my presence as it allowed me to share its space before lifting with wings bigger than I into the air. A memory of that inner stare will shine forever, as if above all other things I had cycled towards it yet without any knowledge of its wanting. A very personal moment and probably not the first time birds have been mentioned in these writings, doubtless to say it will not be the last! So in finally submitting to a confessional heart, strong from the months of world wondering and with a heart that simply will not be subdued it seems only right to now cast aside humiliation and to pour out ones admissions of the true extent of ones interest for these fascinating creatures.
Whatever failing there may have been to arrest ones momentum, to keep peddling past and not to pause at some interesting sight it is the persistent and quite irresistible urge to stop as one catches a new flash of feathery brilliance caught in bright sunlight or the pleasant startle at hearing a new tweet, chirp or coo that now leads to my jumping out of a debilitating London mind set and to pronounce out loud the joy of Bird watching. There, it is out! From its conception on the swooping descents of Turkey sided by great gliding eagles to the cheery chirps that rescue lost souls in deserts, to the thousand strong raucous of resting migrations settling down for the night in Central Asia to the distant yet immensely personal moment when one catches the gentle sway of some thorny branch in a desolate landscapes as a bird needlessly darts to safety. Then to that final consummating stare in the Andes shredding any doubt that, without the faintest idea (or wanting) of names, classifications or gender and thousands of miles in the making I had become a cycling bird spotter!
In defence of this rather personal revelation (should there be need for one) an educational encounter of quite humbling proportions would warm and re-assure that such huge swings in appreciations were more than some new chanced-upon fancy but a symptomatic indicator of an almost inevitable shift in character at being exposed to the elements for days on end.
As she spoke the presence of the Belgian woman towing her trailer in the same dust, ruts and stones that had ceaselessly battered Condors frame was absolutely humbling. Despite a mind quite at home with continual (over) exposure and perpetually poised to burst with wonder there could be no armoury of experience to cushion the shock and spiralling humility at her descriptions of walking the length of South America solo for two and a half years. Listening a gasp to someone that had passed through and beyond the mind warps of solitude and physical challenge, to a woman expound with intimate knowing her dealings with an horrendously dysfunctional road and that essential moment of vowing friendship to wind, rain and stone, all be it a fractious one! On a precipitous ridge, entrenched in rutted sand and sharing, the end came up. The BIG end that is, the hushed, pushed away taboo, contained (kept safe) in Unspoken words for sanities sake. Unspoken words (nervously) spoken between cyclist and walker followed by the reassurance that our quick peak at this shared taboo had, by its sharing, immeasurably strengthened our resolve to carry on.



Another slow paced someone inextricably pulled toward an intimate fascination of nature and of course birds! To conclude this avian wandering a few days before leaving Lima and the start of that monstrous up hill I had crossed paths with a disastrously confessional alcoholic bird spotter apparently of some repute and existing partly on the royalties from his acclaimed illustrated bird spotters guide book. After hearing all the fascinating stories to be heard on discovering new species I was compelled to advise him on his ill conceived methods of employing young lads to beat about the bush in the hope of flushing out birds and advised that he simply ride along the tracks and ways of the world and watch as endless streams of squawking birds flutter from their invisible perches shocked at the silence of his passing (yet quite at home with the hum drum of traffic). As he departed Lima, intent on adding to the thousands of birds he had catalogued an English cyclist arrived on a bicycle made in the same shop as Condor. Conversations with a cycle tourer, a marvellous remedy for placating ones nerves the day before heading up into the Andes.









Such incidental encounters and passings would, over the preceding months become as expected as they were abstract. A man may appear over the horizon then pass running and staggering for breath, arms flailing and gesturing danger with gun pointing fingers. Speaking fluent Spanish and managing well with local dialects the incredible walking Belgian woman had also received warnings from remote villagers quite alarmed at such exposed solo wandering up in the high Andes. They were still convinced the Sierras were hiding wild and dangerous terrorists that had (one hoped) dissipated more than ten years ago. To continue . . . . . . . .Three men gasping for water on high sand swept plains, two cycling nurses making their way from Alaska to the Southern most city in the world. A group of woman sweeping sand dunes in a gale or the obscure sight of a solitary private jet rippling in hot desert air . . . . . . . . Condor, me and a private jet sitting on a deserted runway with nothing visible for hundreds of miles except sand and scrub. Later that same day whilst dredging through sand to find firm ground for tent pegs a man had approached blooded from carrying his (still dripping) dead llama. A firm handshake followed by what I thought was a conversation about his frustration and sadness at loosing one of his herd. We shared coffee and dried fruit before he walked up and over the sand dune sheltering the camp from wind. On being asked where he was going he pointed “over there” to the miles of nothing, leaving one in the never ending wonder at the massive extent of the Andes beyond sight and knowing.



Tomorrow on a dusty track sided by towering volcanoes I would pass a Peruvian man dressed as a woman dripping red lipstick and blue eyeliner; begging for money in heart sinking (mud splattered) glittering desperation with his three shoeless children in tow, toes chapped and blackened from days of exposure to the cold. I cried that day.



It is the context of such abstract passings that repeatedly heave one into surreal high altitude sighs. Whilst wrapped up in the wilderness, feeling quite at home (and alone) to round a hill and suddenly find oneself repairing the inner tube of a huge supply truck lifting fruit over the Andes from the Amazon or to be startled by the sound of a full brass band carried on a Southerly breeze from nowhere to blinking in disarray through dazzling sunlight just to re-affirm that there really was a man dancing down a cliff with his (out of breath) pan pipe playing friend.
The randomness of the days occasionally twined into mistimed approaches to villages after dark, heavy with tiredness and often precariously scared from the unknowns. Mud walled plazas dressed up in damp paper mache hanging from strange wire-frame sculptures. Regular fiestas fuelled by hired musicians travelling the high Altiplano, drinking and drinking and dancing and drinking then obstructing (sometimes quite scarily) ones passage with flammable hails to halt and sink into passionate debates on matters of independence and woman. For all the village squares, plazas or clearings I may have entered since leaving Shepherds Bush it seems there still remained some great failing to feel truly at ease whilst wobbling past ambivalence, excitement or nonchalant indifference, still hopelessly attempting to reconcile ones past understanding with new faces.











A quiet failing to make normal the site of the new. New cloths, new welcomes, new bad tempers, new hair dooooo’s new smiles. New teeth, red teeth, gold teeth or no teeth and bashfully intimidated by time trapped dress codes, rural hats and mannerisms that at their worst had even effected personal walls of shyness between myself and ones simple desire to communicate. Flustering disabilities put to rest in memorably mundane moments that could some how reduce and return menacing perceptions to normality. Whilst sharing a shelter with a man during a storm there came the welcome realisation that throughout our sharing and communicating I had taken no notice of or more exactly had completely failed to register the full set of gold teeth the man had been talking through. Or whilst helping to fix a bicycle puncture a strange skirt and machete were, by a simple handshake redressed to normal afternoon ware. Now in the Andes following three weeks of pretended confidences around the many local hats and dresses of the woman there came the unchallenged chuckle of seeing a Saturday morning rush of proud bounding Bolivian women all flapping skirts and bobbing hats running along side their children in a local go kart race. Hats falling off in sprints of pride, a fantastic go kart cure, collapsing inhibiting timidity around their strange attire and costume.











How wonderful to realise the Andes had provided me such a fine welcome. As if the huge spectrum of challenges that had gouged across this grand cycle ride had simply run out? As if there were no offerings left to better and batter those that had come my way over these two incredible years on a bicycle? All the extremes memorised subconsciously in muscle and mind brought forward in some mode shifting magic that had enabled one to cycle up fourty degree Andean slopes on gravel as if cycling was always that way. To crack the ice on a water bottle with a chuckle and homely tap or to feel ones frustrations toward the wind amount to no more than not being able to continue whistling a song for the draft and noise of it all. There can be no truly rational explanation as to how one can so contently endure the massive mental and physical challenge of cycling up every day for weeks. I fall terribly short in trying to understand the mysterious contentment and peace felt during the insanity cycling up, up, up to then peer across a few miles of valley space to the next monstrous climb (see note). A truly remarkable time and quite inexplicable. A time where strength seemed to grow and was not sapped away by the madness of the moutains





One great fear lingered, a kind of self inflicted doubt or deep sense of foreboding that ones good cheer and able bodied joy at being so completely consumed by this massive beauty may simply disappear. As if one might wake up one morning and ACTUALLY realise the insane physical and mental demands that one was being expected to carry on with. That the mystical forces at play in the Andes may turn there attentions else where and that the collected pool, brimming from two years spent crossing deserts, mountains and jungles may suddenly run dry leaving me to flounder hopelessly at the sight of the next six thousand foot climb with no recourse or urge to continue! BUT joy! The pool remained full to the brim, brimming with lessons learned and subconscious familiarity. Awaking one morning on a teachers desk kindly provided for me in a small village school I came round to looking at a chart on the opposite wall showing which children had been injected for Hepatitis B. Half way through my gaze out of the window I caught the moment the bright morning sun reached the tip of the mountain that I would be cycling up that day. The prospect of it, of climbing up it that day left one with the oddest absence of fear or aching soul. Oh how I tried and tested my resolve on that two feet too short desk. Intimate projections toward the 2.5mph ascent to come after breakfast, bringing on the gasp for oxygen, the thin air and the thick gusting sand but nothing would budge and as the stove fired warmth into the classroom I knew then in that most appropriate of venues that I had learnt (or been taught) to be comfortable with this most massive of mountain ranges. To not be concerned with ones resolve running out and more concerned with having enough breath to gasp in awe at all the magic hidden in the folds of this incredible place.

NOTE: One example of such high altitude meandering was a busy afternoon of strenuous, twenty rubble strewn miles of cycling only to realise over supper that one had in fact only carried oneself across the Andes by four lateral miles!

Of course mistakes were made in those first incredible weeks of cycling. Despite a well-rehearsed store of remedies for lifting spirits and correcting a faltering morale it had at times taken an awful lot to dint the cold fear and hurting that one may have stumbled into. Copious reserves of Columbian coffee, a stash of local liqueur, chocolate, music, an attempted sing song but to name a few. A pantry now bolstered by the most opportune purchase of a half kilogram of Coca leaves bought along with mangoes and two loaves of bread in a tiny market village for twenty pence.







First instilled into action on a particularly dreadful evening of beginning a proposed three thousand feet gliding descent at sunset that manifested into a three thousand foot rock climb down a despicable road (term used loosely) with a late rising moon painfully inadequate as illumination for large stones, boulders, gravel and sheer cavernous drops. As night fell in earnest onto that lonely sub zero track hands began to ache from gripping break levers then were numbed completely from the night air. The rear mudguard sheered into the rear spokes as a small light from the village thousands of feet below tormented a battered mind spiralling down on a terribly dangerous ride. Oh how I savoured the lift of spirit provided by those Coca leaves, like the finest Yorkshire tea with a zing(!) a pushing away of irrational thoughts in a scary shrinking world and with it a much safer five mile downhill even if it did take three hours!





What ever force was at play in softening the immense physical strain of pulling Condors obscene bulk upwards, there was no magic to help lighten ones soul, at times tearfully heavy with the daily shock of absolutes, of high altitude poverty ground into distressed faces and cold charred bare feet walking on freezing dirt and wind blasted plains. Bright blue US Aid toilets and telegraph poles sat in baron landscapes dotted with thatched shepherd huts and collapsed walls.



As Condors wheels rolled onto the summit of another pass, hot from the climb and obliviously giddy with the joy of it all, one may catch site of a cactus in blossom or a small bird fluttering on a soft Sierra wind.





A friendly sun and surprise splash of colour easily caressing malleable optimism with false (and marginally dangerous) comfortability until one glances past the altimeter to see Condors front wheel crunch into ice. In only the briefest moments hidden from the sun, in some steep sided gorge or under cloud there came an instant very chilling reminder of where one actually was as temperatures would plummet twenty or thirty degrees. A bright welcoming world with a bitterly capricious nature, suffusing a mood upon the land that manifested in the colour and cheer of the people and the eyes that daily greeted a knackered cyclist. Up into stark, unreadable expressions down into plump faced smiles and happy children. Up again past thin dogs vicious with hunger then down to villages buoyant from a kinder climate and richer soil.
Into the high mountains. Cycling up and above ten thousand feet into some unified way of life, repeatedly cycling amongst small villages sitting exposed and high and instantly feeling the edgy disjointed heart of the place, filled with harshness and disconcerting eyes.



Over lunch on top of the tenth or eleventh mountain pass on the tenth or eleventh day considerations were being made as to what kind of down there may be before the next up. Then the little confused sigh and partial defeat as thick inked lines merged into another converging unfathomable inky mass. Dense contours so completely crowding out latitudes and longitudes, roads and rivers that one had no real sense of what (on earth) one was actually looking at! It was this particular cryptographically challenged lunchtime that I noticed my (now) habitual glance at the altimeter, more specifically the noticing of what an enormous relief this interruption gave in ones attempt to decipher Peruvian Geographic Institute charts and take a good measure of those faithful lines of longitude that conventionally secure ones place in the world.



A peak at 4 digits on an altimeter (the presence of which I had had concerns over for its possible interference with one appreciation and patience) and the realisation that I was quite content to simply know how high I was and cared much less for lefts and rights in days wholly dominated by ups and downs. East and west superseded by up and down. How close was I to the clouds? How far down was it to the next source of water? How far down before the up? How far up to the next village? Camp here or cycle up and over before dark? A newly treasured gizmo, powered by the sun and with a daunting memory for figures that daily informed one of the extent to each days knee jerking ascent and on arriving at the Sacred (Inca) valley some twenty days out of Lima proclaimed that Condor had been precariously hoisted up a total of sixty five thousand feet! The slowest paced twenty days of cycling imaginable. Strengthened by a world much richer at 2.5mph than at 10mph it had been an amble through greatness to arrive at huge ancient stepped Inca terraces and the capital of the Inca empire. WOW!







In a fit of self congratulatory pomp dry cracked lips were wetted with fine wine and cheers hoisted to the equivalent of cycling from sea level to the top of mount Everest, twice in twenty days. Well done! It had been a massive introduction to the mountains. Melting into white bed sheets rosy from wine how thankful I now was for negating the urge in Lima to earnestly count the number of passes I was about to endure over those first weeks of cycling in the Andes. Drifting off to sleep I wondered if I would have heeded such a monstrous count and steered another course away from the sacred valley of the Incas.