I say this a lot but truly and honestly this road was the most epic road of our entire journey so far.
From Chachapoyas it was a single track road, firstly along a lovely little river through various tiny settlements, until it wound up and up into the hills. At this point we were already rather blown away, looking across the vast valley whilst trying not to look down at the extremely steep drop below. We reached the top after snaking through the highlands, and saw the most incredible expanse of mountains, red and dry, as far as the eye could see. Little did we know at this point that this was just the first of three crests that we would summit!
From the first freezing mountain top we followed the narrow, single lane (but thankfully, paved) road, hugging the mountainside with an unimaginable drop below us. The blind corners were terrifying as we were unable to know if another vehicle was coming our way, so we honked furiously at every turn. We came close to head-on collisions on two occasions, one with a minibus and one with a big blue coach (how it got up there God only knows) but thankfully a combo of our honking warnings, the nimbleness of the bike and Tom's great driving saved us from certain death on both occasions.
After three and a half hours we had only covered 150km, but the view was worth it. It was like nothing we'd ever seen. Hairpin bend after hairpin bend we descended slowly back into the desert heat until we reached a tiny town, where we refuelled (ourselves, not the bike - there was no gas for another few hundred kilometres) then crossed the river to ascend our next mountain range.
However at the end of the bridge was a lady with a stop sign, who told us they were building a new bridge and we weren't allowed through. The designated time to pass was 12-1:30 and 6-7pm. It was 1:45. If we'd head off fifteen minutes earlier we'd have made it through. At a loss for what to do we sat on the side of the road as a number of other disgruntled local motorists and motorcyclists encountered the same problem. One was particularly erratic, and managed to negotiate an earlier crossing time of 4pm, so we now had just 2 hours to wait before we commenced another three hours riding.
Knowing there was nothing we could do, we took our gear off and chilled out by the river, which really wasn't all that bad. Of all this places to be stuck, this was rather a beautiful one (albeit a very hot one) and I paddled in the water and made friends with a family of pigs on the riverbank as we munched on local mangoes.
At 3:15 a man came in a truck and said we could cross now if we went right away, so we scrambled back into our gear and sped off through the construction. With only a couple of hours of light left we had no time to lose, so found a delicate balance of speed and safety as we wound back up the mountains, bending and beeping all the way. Having shed our layers, by the time we got to the top we were cold to the bone again, so had to stop to re-layer.
Then it was down again, but not so far, where we found a fuel station in the nick of time, and back up to our third and final mountain summit of the day. By this point the light was fading, and the setting sun basked the mountains in a rose-gold glow. As the last of the light left the day we rounded a peak to see the lights of Cajamarca below.
To finish our longest and most epic day of riding we had to navigate through hectic Saturday night city traffic and eventually crashed out at Hospedaje Los Jasmines. Hands down this was the most amazing day of our three and a half month trip and we were pretty excited to see what else Peru had to offer.