Resting and eating chocolate hearts in Huanuco until the bugs start biting and the itch is back to keep going......(Huanuco - Junin, Sunday 11th - Tuesday 13th of August 2013)
I had a bit of a hang over from the chocolate hearts...one too many, I guess, but it really isn't a bad thing at all. There was a bakery right around the corner from the hotel and those hearts were only discovered a day and a half after our arrival and from then on it was three hearts a day - sometimes three in one sitting - sometimes spread out over the course of the day.
We got a supply for the way and left heavy hearted in sunny weather and paved roads. South, of course towards the Alto Plano- up some 4300m in two days. No sweat (no, really, it's so damn dry....) and gentle, paved roads. Somewhere -not too far from the Plato we meet a swiss family with two adorable young kids...cycling with a trailer! They left in June from Quito (Ecuador) and we caught up with them shortly after having had lunch in San Rafael!
So fun to meet other cyclist on the road and chat a while and have an excuse to sit in the sun admiring each other's bikes and what not...
We kept going - we still had quite some climbing to do...they caught up with us while we snacked ...and then we caught up with them again when they snacked. At the end of the day we had climbed all the way up to the plato, though we thought of camping mid way, but there just wasn't a good place to spend the night and so we inched our way through the thin air, past Cerro de Pasco to the Junin area at 4300m and found (of all things...) a private school where Indre ask for all of us to spend the night "no" was the first answer, but there really wasn't a place to go and WAY TO COLD and windy to pitch a tent - persistent and somewhat insistent with a whole bunch of friendliness the guards and chiefs changed their minds and gave in. We had to wait - first it was an hour and then two and a half hours later they had cleared the teachers room for us to camp in. In the mean time......the family showed up!! Quite surprised....those guys hauled all their stuff - kids, trailer and all, up the mountain without knowing where we were ..they found us. The gate keeper opened the gate for them without hesitation....Now we felt like they "gave us a finger and we took the whole hand". The staff ask how many more will be coming but we insured them that this is it!
While we waited for the room we were served crackers with jelly and coffee. What a friendly crew as soon as they had decided to help us out they "bend ofer backwards". One of the teachers showed up with a pot full of some kind of concoction - who cares what it was...it smelled good and the guy looked friendly enough ...(we've really "come a long way" when I think of it.....we almost eat everything now...I think it was egg, potatoes with some cheese and spices..really yummy....), forks and spoons and we all ate out of that one pot while trying to set up camp. They even put little heaters in the room.......unbelievable!!!
There was just enough floor space for all of us to spread out - A real slumber party.
Mom Melinda read stories to her kids and sang for them to go to sleep...and we all settled for the night.
In the morning - early and cold the students showed up and had some kind of warm up exercise in the school yard right in front of our window...strange sight...looked more like a military practice.
The family and us four split ways..they went around the west side of lake Junin while we decided to stay on the main paved road on the east side. We had just a little too much of the dirt road experience lately - not even a flat unpaved road seemed appealing to us at this time. We said our "good byes" heading down through the beautiful icy air surrounded by the surreal looking landscape of the Plato with the snowy peaks - mostly in the north.
There was a surprising amount of little villages along our route.....a bit strange in character..they felt like government buildings for the surrounding mines ...hard to tell! Some plazas with right out weird statues ...
We cycled to Junin, it was early in the day and it was a good time to stop. The market was still in full swing.The search for dinner wasn't quite as easy as we thought: This town does not have one restaurant! We wound up near the market eating Tamales in a little Juiceria. A little girl - maybe 10 years old -was watching while our orange juice was being squeezed. Her eyes were big, reflecting her empty stomach as she stood there, staring......her face dirty, her clothes hadn't been washed in a while either. We ordered another orange juice for her......she was too shy to direct a "thank you" in our direction and had to be prompted by our host. I didn't need the thank you, I only saw her eyes, her face calming down, slurping the healthy fresh substance. A gesture like this seems more effective than handing out money. She wasn't even begging......
This town feels a little more "real" then the strange little ghosty villages we past before. After the sun went down the only place to hang was in bed since there are no heaters in any of the hotel rooms. iPad, cookies and a pile of warm blankets after a cold stroll through town where the local women at the market had fun with us and us with them.....
A good day and now it's all done.
