A pause before a plummet

The La Paz huckster had described the route as ‘fairly technical’ mountain bike trails, a slip-and-slide from a Mont-Blanc altitude far above the town of Sorata down into, days later, the Bolivian Amazon. Our first morning had been spent riding old prospecting tracks across the airless puna plateau, all boulders and rain-made channels, snaking along like the earth’s veins. We toiled through villages with no name, roads or cars. Kids threw stones. Riders came off their bikes, skidding across frozen rocks. The concentration required for even pitifully slow progress was immense. Bruised by tiredness and oxygen deprived, we needed to pause, to find succour.
At noon, we drop our bikes in Achepampa’s village square. Adobe tumbledowns huddle together, meagre crops battle with hardscrabble ground. Ahead is a cliff edge; beyond that, nothing. Thick standing cloud obscures the valley below. Surreally, theatrically, by the drop-off, a table is set: lace tablecloth, doyleys, patterned cushions, and a mountain range of food –guacamole and bread, chicken, salads, quinoa broth, a fruit-bowl worthy of Nero.
We sit. A man and woman greet us, bearing more food. Guilt and gratitude mingle. We attempt conversation. I say I liked La Paz, the couple exchange smiles. I try to read this –scepticism? remembrance? -but cannot. That, I remind myself, is one of travel’s gifts –the mystery, of seeing more than one understands.
Invisible through the white, the man says, a 2000-metre descent awaits, his snaking hand suggesting enough switchbacks for an entire Tour de France. Good there’s cloud, he laughs, if you saw the track below, you’d never want to leave here.
I’m not convinced I want to leave anyway. This is the last village of the Cordillera Real’s ragged crown; these are the final Andean faces we will see. The low-key geniality, the kids playing with the bikes, helmets dipping down over their noses. We take it in, dining above clouds, a heavenly lunch. Perhaps it’s tiredness, but there’s something reverential to the meal. A quiet descends, as if we all come to feel this solemn contentment at once, a reminder that exploration is about the pause, the moment, about allowing for as much un-travel as travel during days on the road.
I stop at the first bend and look back. Shaded from the mountain’s white light, our hosts stand statue-still, framed in their doorway’s darkness, solitary and separate. I wave then turn; we descend into the clouds.