Cajamarca was pretty charming as far as cities go, and we enjoyed a well-deserved day off the bike, doing a bit of maintenance and wondering around the city centre.
We ascended the steep staircase up to the 'Inca Chair', which is said to be where the last Incan Empire sat to observe his city. It was actually here in Cajamarca that the Empire fell, the place of the leader Atahualpa's last stand in 1572.
Our next destination was the town of Huaraz, known for its incredible scenery and hiking opportunities. But being over 600km away, we had to break the journey up over two days.
We head off from Cajamarca at about 9:30. We tried to leave at nine, but Betty decided she wasn't really up for leaving today, and took over thirty kicks to get going. By the fifteenth attempt we had two local guys trying to 'help' us get her going, which only added to the frustration. Eventually she decided to start, and we set off expecting a ride of 5-6 hours. Boy were we wrong.
The first 200km went smoothly enough, on a small but double-lane paved road through the countryside, meandering over hills and watching the cattle go by. We gradually climbed over a period of three hours, until we looked around and found that we were higher than the rest of our surroundings, slightly out of breath and the bike was running very slowly. We stopped to check our altitude - we were over 4000m above sea level, the highest we have been on the bike so far.
A little time later our GPS told us of a 'short cut', coming off the highway and onto a dirt track. Not having done any off-roading, we thought it would be fun to see what Betty was made off for the next 30km.
We careered across the gravel at a pretty decent speed, and truly were in the middle of nowhere. We had a couple more near misses with trucks, who leave it totally up to you to get out of the way and do not slow down at all, all the while choking you in a cloud of dust. After a couple of hours the novelty was wearing thin, but according to our maps we were coming back to the main road when we reached a little town not far ahead. We approached, with great anticipation for the smooth road ahead, and smiled as we felt the wheels roll onto the smooth surface. But then we turned a corner, and saw the road we were supposed to take onward was also dirt. Our novelty 'short cut' had meant that we missed the last bit of paved road that we would see for the next three hours, and we were kicking ourselves.
Never the less we soldiered on, bumbling along and enjoying the scenery (well, I was enjoying the scenery, Tom couldn't look further than a metre in front of him to make sure we didn't fall off!). We got caught in a hail storm, which was another fun novelty which soon wore off, and also turned the track from firm gravel and dust to a red quagmire. We slipped and slided our way through the mud at an average speed of about 5km an hour, until we came to a group of workmen and machines.
'No pasar' the grumpy man ahead of us said. We looked at him, mouths agape, with a feeling of dread slowly filling us up. There was literally no where else for us to go, and we were still hours away from Pallasca, with just half an hour left of light. A more official man then approached, telling us we just had to wait a few moments and they would get their machines off the road so that we could pass. I wanted to hug him.
So we chatted for a little while, telling them about our trip and asking them about how we get to Pallasca. They said there was just 30km more of dirt track before it turned to asphalt once again, and they reckoned it would take us another two hours to get to Pallasca. So it looked like we would be breaking our 'no riding at night' rule once again.
Eventually we were let through, and luckily the machines had actually made the road much more rideable than the previous mud bath we were trying to traverse. We made reasonably good time, until we reached a little town that appeared to be having a bit of a fiesta. The main road was blocked by a stage, and every other alley we tried to take was either full of market stalls, people dancing, live bands... you name it. We went round and round, the bike stalling every few moments, and started to feel extremely trapped.
This was obviously not a path much taken by tourists, because we got some of the most intense stares we have received so far, and very wary stares at that. It doesn't help that our bike is so obnoxiously loud, roaring over the local music and making it very hard to go unnoticed, particularly when it cuts out and I have to jump off to help with the kickstart while Tom tries 3, 5, 10 times to get it going again. Eventually a friendly local man who noticed our distress pointed us up a street with a few less stalls on it, and told us to just go for it.
So we got out of the scary little fiesta town, and head as fast as we could for Molepata - where the tarmac supposedly returned - trying desperately to get there before the last of the light disappeared.
It was dark by the time we got there, but we cheered as we felt the smooth ground once again. Such was our excitement that we whizzed through the town, and in the low light didn't spot one of the non-painted speed bumps thus hit it at full speed, sending me high into the air and back down in my seat with a crash. While painful it was also a little bit fun and luckily the bike and both of us were fine.
The workmen had told us that both this town and the next weren't really safe for tourists as they have no police presence, so we continued in haste as the full darkness of night folded in.
It's safe to say that riding along in the pitch dark on a single lane road on the edge of a sheer cliff was pretty terrifying. Add in old Betty not having the strongest headlight, and it was a pretty daunting ride. We descended from the top of the mountain right down to the bottom of the valley, crossed the river, and ascended back up even higher than we'd previously been. It took us an hour and a half to do not even 30km. But at 7:30pm we arrived in Pallasca, which was a lot smaller than expected and had almost nothing to it. We managed to find a man who rented out rooms to people passing through, which cost us a grand total of $7. Having not eaten since breakfast, we went out into the street in search of food. We found a lady cooking out of her front room who said she was no longer serving dinner but had a couple of hamburgers left over that she could give us. I don't know if it was the journey or how tired and hungry we were, but they were delicious! There was no hot water in the hospedaje and it was freezing, so we decided to skip showering for a night, and hit the hay, filthy and exhausted.