Bike trip Cuzco - Abancay

After four days of hard but amazing biking we have yesterday reached Abancay, a noisy and non-touristy city of about 100 000 inhabitants. The Lonely Planet writes that the county of Abancay was quite closed off until the 1990s because of guerilla activity. Although we have been greeted by nearly all the bus and taxi drivers along the road and met very nice people (among those the family on which ground we camped last and the man saving our camera) we have the feeling that we are less welcome and have to watch our stuff much better than other places we`ve visited. We got more cheeky "gringo!" yells and some children were even running after Eirik to pull at the bands of his backpack while he was biking uphill. To make it clear, this does not account for the majority. I am wondering if our bikes play a role because they can give cause to jealousness. On the other hand we have seen lots of other nice bikes here as well, much nicer ones than in the south and quite equal to ours.

The camera-incident was shocking for us. After biking uphill for four hours we had finally reached a middle-sized town and drained of energy we headed for a place to eat. We chose a table next to the overdimensional windows so we could see our bikes standing right outside. I had a bad feeling because of two boys that were sitting near the bikes and gave them certain looks. Only after a man came pointing in after one minute did we discover that there was a dead angle to one of the bikepockets and a boy had managed to nestle the camera out of it. He had already run away with it when the man caught him.

Enough of the negative parts, the positive ones are much more mentionable. Biking here is a own world for itself. It was interesting seeing the first part of the trip which we had traveled before by bus on our way to Mollepata. In no way had it been possible to see the beauty and changes of the landscape from the bus. Going down from 3600 m into a valley of 1800 m, feeling the air getting warmer, smelling suddenly the scent of flowers and trees (and noticing the small biting flies again). It was more difficult again to find a campingspot, so we took advantage of a hostel we passed. There were no other guest (who stays usually in places like that?) but the hostel had a small pool with riverwater and a roof terrace.

It got a little bit spooky after dawn as there was no electricity (they didn`t tell us but we found out soon). When we went to have some dinner the lack of electricity was used as an explanation that it was not possible to order anything vegetarian (vegetables, pasta, potatoes...? Please!!) but Eirik could order some chicken. (Fried with a stick over fire? We were speculating.) I hope you understand my frustration when 10 minutes later Eirik got a huge plate not only with chicken but with rice, home-made french fries and salad while Anita was stuck with bread and butter from lunch (after a day of biking!). Why don`t you understand? Vegetarian! I felt like being from outerspace. We ended up cooking some vegetable soup for me on our stove on the roof terrace. Maybe that`s why they turned off the water in our room the next morning.

We didn`t mind that there was no breakfast available after finding out that fresh mangos were being sold right up the street. They were delicious!! And they were just the start of our day in mango-heaven. We savoured pure mange, mango ice cream and mango juice. Mmmmh!!

The lack of more mangos was the only thing we regreted when climbing up to 4000 m again.

P.S. Current injuries:
Eirik suffers from a sunburn with blisters on both his shinbones which was so bad that he had to but a bandage on.
Anita cut herself into her tongue being eager to safe all the mango juice through licking off the knife. It wasn`t a big cut though.

P.P.S. Bicycle problems so far:
Anitas rack fell off the first day.
Eiriks front tire was flat.
And worst of all: The tent was pressed down on the wheel, and four layers of tent canvas has been burned through. We can hopefully ductape it.

NB: More pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/eirik.sunde/CuzcoAbancayOct2008#