There’s No Air Up Here

October 7, 2011

There was celebrating out on the streets this morning. I’m still not exactly sure why, but the local school children were dressed up and parading around the block. Fun way to start the day!

Yesterday an all-day mountain biking tour of the Sacred Valley sounded like a great idea. When the tour guide picked us up this morning with the skies threatening rain and I saw four dismantled bikes in the back of a station wagon in various state of disrepair, I began rethinking my decision.  As I’d already paid for it, I went along. After a 45 minute ride to where our tour began, at 3,400 meters above sea level no less, it started to rain, and fairly heavily. Fortunately, the deluge subsided to a safe biking shower only a few minutes after our guide and driver had reassembled the bikes, and we headed off.

Waiting for the rain to slow.

The rains eventually stopped and the day turned into a nice one.

It felt great to be on a bike as I started the 40 km ride toward the Inca ruins. And then I turned around to join the other two riders who were still getting their bikes set up. The return was such a small incline that normally I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but it turns out, there’s no air up there! Really, less than a month after completing a half ironman, I was puffing after riding 300 meters on a slight uphill grade. I began to doubt my decision to do this tour once again. However, it turned out that the ride was a nice balance of uphill (which I managed to do with lots of heavy breathing) and downhill (which was much more technical than I had ever ridden), and I only had to walk my bike uphill when the chain fell off (which happened several times).

Look carefully--my front tire is there somewhere.

No wonder I was having a difficult time shifting and pedaling. 

Riding through the Sacred Valley was like going back in time--animals lined the paths, women in traditional Peruvian clothes were herding sheep, adobe bricks for building houses were drying on the ground.

Our first stop was to a city where the Inca had built what looked like a giant amphitheater, but was actually a terraced field used to test how crops grew at different temperatures. (The crops were planted on each level and the Inca observed where they best thrived.)

See the people at the top to get perspective on their size. 

The terraces.

 After seeing the terraces, we biked a bit longer to a small town for lunch.

Our lunch: arroz a la Cubana

My view during lunch

Our final stop was at the salt ponds, over a thousand ponds 30-40 centimeters deep where the Inca produced salt. They are still used today by agricultural families in the area.  

The salt ponds

An old man working at the salt ponds

Tomorrow we tour more of the Sacred Valley (by car this time), and then on Sunday I begin my three day trek on the Lares Valley Trail. On Wednesday I’ll visit Machu Picchu. I don’t think I’ll have internet access until after that, so, family, please don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. But even though you won't hear from me for a while, I’d love to hear from you! Please write. J