Snow to Sand: Our Journey from Cusco to Trujillo and Bike Movements in Peru
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Claire Stoscheck
May 9, 2008, 10:22:42 PM5/9/08
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Hello! There are quite a few new entries in the blog...and photos too! Check it out, and take care!
Best,
Claire
Snow to Sand: Our Journey from Cusco to Trujillo
Well, here I am, dedicated to finally holing myself up in a computer café todo el dia to get some blog entries out to ya´ll. I want to apologize to those who have been loyally checking our blog, but finding nothing new for nearly a month. Wow! So sorry. We have been busily riding, investigating, surviving, etc…and we wanted to do it in Lima but were too busy bike investigating (which was awesome in Lima!). Now we are in Trujillo, Peru the major northern coastal city, and are staying with the famous Lucho who has a casa de ciclista (cyclist house) called "La Casa de Amistad" (friendship house http://www.geocities.com/casadeciclistasperutrujillo/). It truly is that! When we arrived a few days ago we were met by Lucho and Carlos, a cyclist from Argentina who is also heading north. The next day Tyson (from the U.S.) came up, also heading north. Wow, we thought we were the only locos who go South to North (the majority do the opposite). It´s awesome, it´s a party, hanging out with 2 other rocking cyclists and Lucho who is so energetic and so amazingly passionate about all aspects of the bicycle it´s contagious! It feels so awesome to be with other touring cyclists, to feel that we aren´t the only ones, but rather part of something bigger. Lucho told us about a German who has travelled about one million kilometors on his bicycle throughout his life… he is a living legend, he has bike toured just about everywhere in the world! Over 900 cyclists have visited Lucho since he started his casa de ciclista the year I was born, 1985. What do we do there? Well, we hang out and fix our bikes together, chat about bike movements worldwide, ride our bikes together, and yesterday we went to his family´s house for gaunabana juice, the best juice I´ve had in my life! Lucho and his family are so awesome and generous and I certainly understand why they are famous and why every single cyclist we met going south recommended that we go there. So we are here for a bit in Trujillo blogging, fixing our bikes, taking care of errands and trying to get in a little rest in before we start the final leg of the trip: the northern coast of Peru and ECUADOR! We are so close really… probably about 1,700km left to go. And we want to do it in a month. Wow! It´ll be some hard work…but si se puede!
But of course, I haven´t written since Cusco! So I´ll give you a brief summary of our journey from the southern sierra to the northern coast.
Peru is, compared to most other South American countries, quite large and amazingly diverse. We have biked in frost-bite, teeth-chattering, llama munching, hail falling, mountain looming sierras and also in sweat-inducing, sand-blowing (in mouth, eyes, ears), easy rolling, ocean staring, flies buzzing coastal desert. We were curious about the people in Peru, because 2 different cyclists we met near La Paz told us they were treated badly by Peruvians. But our experience has been quite the opposite… Peruvians have been some of the most open and friendly folks we've met on this trip. We are especially in-debt to the some odd 17 different fire-stations (estacion de bombero) we have stayed in throughout our tour in Peru. The bomberos in Peru are awesome, well-organized and always welcome us with open arms to spend the night, take a shower, cook up some food and rest so we can continue the next day. They have been utter life savers for us, and we are indebted to their kindness… We have also stayed in Churches, schools, and community centers. We have generally been able to pick up our pace here in Peru, now that we are more accustomed to the life-style and in better shape. We have also, in a sense, become accustomed to being bone-tired and feeling un-rested even after sleeping 8 or even 9 hours. I guess that´s what the accumulation of 5,300 kilometers in 5 months can do to you… I think I´ll sleep 2 weeks straight when I get back to Quito!
We headed out from Cusco on April 5th heading to the coast. We chose the Nazca route as we heard it was all paved and less hilly that the road to Ayacucho. We had some surprisingly big climbs in the first few days, and at one point had to hitch-hike in order to not be stuck on the top of a mountain without water one night. We also biked to the lowest elevation that we had been at since Argentina, or maybe even Chile, where bananas and papayas grew. What a treat to eat tropical fruit up in the sierra! We spent a day resting in Abancay (the bomberos begged us to stay more, they were so kind), and headed off to Chalhuanca to meet up with Andrea Mosher, a woman from MN who found our web-site in the fall and decided to come bike with us a bit as she is interested in a lot of the themes that we are addressing in this trip. She found us en route as she passed in a taxi while we were bathing and clothes-washing in a rushing river close to Chalhuanca—and we were so confused at first, thinking some crazy gringa wanted to take a photo of us in the river! But it was Andrea! And we decided to meet up in the town. (Chalhuanca is where we first briefly met Carlos in fact, but who sped ahead as he hitched a ride up the major climb (7 vueltas) right outside of town.) It is a town full of ninos running around the streets, playing, and very curious about the 3 cyclists who just came into town. We stayed at the bomberos and tackled the 7 vueltas the next day… and just as we reached the top of this 12km, very steep climb it started down pouring and hailing, but luckily there was a small town and we were able to stay in a classroom. About 10 people watched us through the windows as we vainly attempted to light our stove, but we had been sold bad kerosene that doesn´t work (we thought it was the altitude but we tried it on the coast and no luck either). So we starved a little, amused by our giant audience, and went to bed early. We spent a good 5 days up in these mountains, subiendo y bajando many times… it was wicked cold up there, and the "altiplano" wasn´t exactly "plano" (flat). There was a layer of snow on the hills right next to us and in the ditches by the side of the road. But it was exciting because we knew in just a few days we´d be out of the cold mountains and down on the "flat" warm coast. In Puquio we stayed with a Priest named Rueben who was a cyclist and we had a great time with him, chatting about the German priests who come to Puquio and teach all the priests to ride in bici. We loved Puquio, it has to be one of the friendliest towns we´ve been in, and also very beautiful with trees and flowers and green things (something we haven´t seen a lot of lately).
In a town called Vado we stopped early (2pm) because I was feeling awful, and some kind folks in a store and their relatives from Cusco took us in, gave me tea, and let us camp in their house across the street. It is people like these who touch my heart and inspire me to, in the future, give more, be more generous, and be more open to strangers. From Vado we reached Nazca in just one day… we did 115.34km, our new record! It included, of course, a 72 km downhill from 3,800+ meters above sea level to less than a few hundred. It was fast, exciting, exhilarating, and we saw one of the biggest sand dunes in the world. In Nazca the bomberos took me around in their ambulance to various doctors and testing clinics and finally got me in to see a head doctor at the hospital and bought me medication. Wow, I felt so cared for, 5 men running around trying to make me feel better. We cooked them pancakes in the morning and took off to the north…Lima! We zoomed up the coast, hitting 100+ km a few days in a row. As we had hoped, it really was faster on the coast (*note: on this specific part of the coast, it´s not true for the entire coast! Up north it´s mountainous…) We got a chance to see some of the Nazca lines by climbing up a little tower, el mirador. We also saw the effects of the earthquake and how some cities, like Chincha, are still suffering a great deal. In fact, neither the bomberos or the churches could take us in as they were still in reconstruction from the earthquake. It was night and we couldn´t find a cheap hostel, and we were walking around the city nervously with the captain of the firestation looking for something when we decided to ask the highway police. They very kindly took us in, and not only that but the boss took a liking to us and gave us free dinner and the next day breakfast as well (!) from their own personal restaurant. He took photos of us with his little girl, and ate breakfast with us. How kind! And later, when we asked him to sign our letter of recommendation (that we started with the bomberos in Abancay so we are more legitimate to the folks we ask to stay with—it now has about 10 signatures) he informed us that it was actually illegal what he was doing for us (for "security reasons") so he couldn´t do us that favor. Wow, that the "corrupt" police in Peru do! Hehe. Anyway, needless to say we didn´t mind his corruptness…and I really wish I felt I could get that kind of help from police in the U.S. (Highway police have been nice to us, they helped me hitchhike when I was too sick to bike up a climb, and others gifted us crackers they had bribed out of a truck driver J) Well, we made it to Mala and Cristhian was feeling bad, hurting from his bike seat and needing to go slow, so we decided for that reason (and the reason we heard it was highly dangerous to bike into Lima), to take a bus from Mala (which, like Chalhuanca, has a woman as the boss of the firestation!) to the centro de Lima where we met up with someone that Andrea knew from Couchsurfer.com to stay in his house.
Lima was fun, we met up with Brendan again (whom we stayed with in Cochabomba, Bolivia) and had a grand old time. We spend many days doing the bici investigation (read about it in the other blog entry)—interviewing, observing classes and participating in critical mass. I got to go visit a friend of a friend/ex-professor (Paul Dosh) named Jesus Valencia Silva in his invasion city of Villa el Salvador. This city is growing very fast, and it´s a group of invasions (meaning the people organize together and put up houses on un-used government property and then work together to get titles, water, electricity and create their new community) with communities as young as 1 year old (there is city now where 4 years ago there was just a sand dune!) The community consists of immigrants from all over Peru (the majority from the sierra) who have come to live near the capital looking for work. The people there have very good organization (each community has volunteer delegates...and Jesus is the president of a community of 40,000 people) and are fighting so that each neighbourhood has water and electricity and a decent life. It was very amazing to visit the communities, and I thank Jesus for being so generous with his time and showing us around. After 5 days of "rest" in Lima (but we were actually running around like crazy, or biking around like crazy rather) Cristhian and I said goodbye to Brendan, and Andrea (who took off to Arequipa) and headed up the coast.
North of Lima got tougher, the coast wasn´t so flat anymore (in fact there are quite a lot of small mountains to climb!) We had the luck to meet 3 very nice ladies (Erika, Nayra and Ana) in the street in Ancon who made instant friends with us, took us down to the beach to take photos and then invited us in to eat popcorn, tea and sandwiches and chat about our lives. Very lovely ladies, wonderful memories. After Ancon we stayed in bomberos in Chancay, Huacho, Pampamonga, Huarmey, Casma, y Chimbote. In Casma we were met on the highway by 3 road-bikers from Casma. They accompanied us about 30 km as we both headed to Casma. One of them, Alejandro, was a guide at some local ruins called Sechin, and invited us to come see the ruins the next day. We took him up on the offer, and had a very interesting experience. It´s always interesting to learn about the past cultures of a certain place, and I´ve always thought super important so we don´t forget the way of life of those who came before us, usually so we can strive to be more like them. However, this particular culture was… gruesome, cruel, violent. The entire ruins was a temple with pictures of decapitated bodies, bodiless heads, arms, legs, spinal cords and intestines, all with blood spurting out of it. Shocked? I was a little too…more so when our guide showed us this all with pride and told us he´s happy to know about the great Sechin and know that he has some of their strong warrior blood. Hmm. It sounds like not such a wonderful culture, they just liked to chop up bodies. They send buses full of school children to this site. Is this the cultural history the young generations should be learning… to be proud of their ancestors who were even more violent than our current culture? Which culture roots should we claim and be proud of, and which should we learn about in order to reject, and which are better to just not get too involved in learning about? The experience confused and disconcerted me, and if anyone has ideas please write me on this one… We do appreciate Alejandro for taking the time to show us around Sechin.
This stretch of desert has caused me to seriously try to cut all meat out of my diet (I was a vegetarian 10 years before this trip but I gave it up to be flexible to all situations in this journey) and Cristhian to consider becoming a vegetarian (Impressive!! Since he´s grown up being a major meat eater…). Why? The barren desert (it´s not like Argentina… there are absolutely no plants pure sand and sand and sand) is full of chicken farms which attract a million houseflies which land our your bike and you can pass right by the chicken farms and see them all squished together and chirping helplessly and each time a chicken truck drives by it leaves the stench of death and excrement in your nose… and to make it worse each port town has fish factories, Chimbote was the worse… I couldn´t breath when we entered the stench of dead fish was so strong, the smoke so thick, choking choking on this death, and the stench is every where you cannot escape it in that city, and imagine, people live there right under the smoke stacks every hour of everyday they breath the dead fish smoke… it´s a nightmare. So after these experiences the idea of eating dead flesh is more revolting than ever. And these experiences have reminded me of the politics of the meat industry, the fact that besides torturing and killing animals they pollute and contribute to global warming and make it so less humans can get the food they need (because the food that goes to feed animals to feed humans could go directly to feed more humans) and the list goes on. So! One more month of this tour and I will return to being a vegetarian, that is my promise. It is a very important personal choice that can affect the larger world greatly. If anyone reading this would like to talk about vegetarianism please write to me, I´d be happy to chat! In addition to the chicken and fish farms, I also noticed the intense use of industrial agriculture that seems to be growing here on the Peruvian desert coast. It´s disconcerting… you´ll be in the middle of sand dunes and then all of a sudden there is a valley covered toe to toe in green asparagus or sugar cane where there should be sand. My question is… where does the water come from? Does this use of land and water (and pesticides and herbicides) endanger people and ecosystem´s lives? It seems very probable. As Cristhian said, it´s like the mines we saw in the sierra, but more "pretty". Speaking of mines, we were told by the bomberos in Paramonga when we asked why seafood was so expensive in this area that there is a mine down the coast a bit, and for that reason fish are scarce as the mine is killing them off. In addition, there are people who just won´t eat the fish anymore for fear of contamination. We learn these facts of death and with a heavy heart we pedal on, hoping hoping, always hoping… From Chimbote we biked to Chau and then to Trujillo where Lucho met us in the plaza and took us to La Casa de Amistad, and we´ve been here ever since enjoying thoroughly the casa de la ciclista! We will take off again on Monday with Tyson and Carlos and all 4 of us will have 2 or so days together until they split off to the mountains and we continue up the coast. We hope to be in Ecuador in less than 10 days! Here we come, Ecuador!!!
But of course, I haven´t written since Cusco! So I´ll give you a brief summary of our journey from the southern sierra to the northern coast.
Peru is, compared to most other South American countries, quite large and amazingly diverse. We have biked in frost-bite, teeth-chattering, llama munching, hail falling, mountain looming sierras and also in sweat-inducing, sand-blowing (in mouth, eyes, ears), easy rolling, ocean staring, flies buzzing coastal desert. We were curious about the people in Peru, because 2 different cyclists we met near La Paz told us they were treated badly by Peruvians. But our experience has been quite the opposite… Peruvians have been some of the most open and friendly folks we've met on this trip. We are especially in-debt to the some odd 17 different fire-stations (estacion de bombero) we have stayed in throughout our tour in Peru. The bomberos in Peru are awesome, well-organized and always welcome us with open arms to spend the night, take a shower, cook up some food and rest so we can continue the next day. They have been utter life savers for us, and we are indebted to their kindness… We have also stayed in Churches, schools, and community centers. We have generally been able to pick up our pace here in Peru, now that we are more accustomed to the life-style and in better shape. We have also, in a sense, become accustomed to being bone-tired and feeling un-rested even after sleeping 8 or even 9 hours. I guess that´s what the accumulation of 5,300 kilometers in 5 months can do to you… I think I´ll sleep 2 weeks straight when I get back to Quito!
We headed out from Cusco on April 5th heading to the coast. We chose the Nazca route as we heard it was all paved and less hilly that the road to Ayacucho. We had some surprisingly big climbs in the first few days, and at one point had to hitch-hike in order to not be stuck on the top of a mountain without water one night. We also biked to the lowest elevation that we had been at since Argentina, or maybe even Chile, where bananas and papayas grew. What a treat to eat tropical fruit up in the sierra! We spent a day resting in Abancay (the bomberos begged us to stay more, they were so kind), and headed off to Chalhuanca to meet up with Andrea Mosher, a woman from MN who found our web-site in the fall and decided to come bike with us a bit as she is interested in a lot of the themes that we are addressing in this trip. She found us en route as she passed in a taxi while we were bathing and clothes-washing in a rushing river close to Chalhuanca—and we were so confused at first, thinking some crazy gringa wanted to take a photo of us in the river! But it was Andrea! And we decided to meet up in the town. (Chalhuanca is where we first briefly met Carlos in fact, but who sped ahead as he hitched a ride up the major climb (7 vueltas) right outside of town.) It is a town full of ninos running around the streets, playing, and very curious about the 3 cyclists who just came into town. We stayed at the bomberos and tackled the 7 vueltas the next day… and just as we reached the top of this 12km, very steep climb it started down pouring and hailing, but luckily there was a small town and we were able to stay in a classroom. About 10 people watched us through the windows as we vainly attempted to light our stove, but we had been sold bad kerosene that doesn´t work (we thought it was the altitude but we tried it on the coast and no luck either). So we starved a little, amused by our giant audience, and went to bed early. We spent a good 5 days up in these mountains, subiendo y bajando many times… it was wicked cold up there, and the "altiplano" wasn´t exactly "plano" (flat). There was a layer of snow on the hills right next to us and in the ditches by the side of the road. But it was exciting because we knew in just a few days we´d be out of the cold mountains and down on the "flat" warm coast. In Puquio we stayed with a Priest named Rueben who was a cyclist and we had a great time with him, chatting about the German priests who come to Puquio and teach all the priests to ride in bici. We loved Puquio, it has to be one of the friendliest towns we´ve been in, and also very beautiful with trees and flowers and green things (something we haven´t seen a lot of lately).
In a town called Vado we stopped early (2pm) because I was feeling awful, and some kind folks in a store and their relatives from Cusco took us in, gave me tea, and let us camp in their house across the street. It is people like these who touch my heart and inspire me to, in the future, give more, be more generous, and be more open to strangers. From Vado we reached Nazca in just one day… we did 115.34km, our new record! It included, of course, a 72 km downhill from 3,800+ meters above sea level to less than a few hundred. It was fast, exciting, exhilarating, and we saw one of the biggest sand dunes in the world. In Nazca the bomberos took me around in their ambulance to various doctors and testing clinics and finally got me in to see a head doctor at the hospital and bought me medication. Wow, I felt so cared for, 5 men running around trying to make me feel better. We cooked them pancakes in the morning and took off to the north…Lima! We zoomed up the coast, hitting 100+ km a few days in a row. As we had hoped, it really was faster on the coast (*note: on this specific part of the coast, it´s not true for the entire coast! Up north it´s mountainous…) We got a chance to see some of the Nazca lines by climbing up a little tower, el mirador. We also saw the effects of the earthquake and how some cities, like Chincha, are still suffering a great deal. In fact, neither the bomberos or the churches could take us in as they were still in reconstruction from the earthquake. It was night and we couldn´t find a cheap hostel, and we were walking around the city nervously with the captain of the firestation looking for something when we decided to ask the highway police. They very kindly took us in, and not only that but the boss took a liking to us and gave us free dinner and the next day breakfast as well (!) from their own personal restaurant. He took photos of us with his little girl, and ate breakfast with us. How kind! And later, when we asked him to sign our letter of recommendation (that we started with the bomberos in Abancay so we are more legitimate to the folks we ask to stay with—it now has about 10 signatures) he informed us that it was actually illegal what he was doing for us (for "security reasons") so he couldn´t do us that favor. Wow, that the "corrupt" police in Peru do! Hehe. Anyway, needless to say we didn´t mind his corruptness…and I really wish I felt I could get that kind of help from police in the U.S. (Highway police have been nice to us, they helped me hitchhike when I was too sick to bike up a climb, and others gifted us crackers they had bribed out of a truck driver J) Well, we made it to Mala and Cristhian was feeling bad, hurting from his bike seat and needing to go slow, so we decided for that reason (and the reason we heard it was highly dangerous to bike into Lima), to take a bus from Mala (which, like Chalhuanca, has a woman as the boss of the firestation!) to the centro de Lima where we met up with someone that Andrea knew from Couchsurfer.com to stay in his house.
Lima was fun, we met up with Brendan again (whom we stayed with in Cochabomba, Bolivia) and had a grand old time. We spend many days doing the bici investigation (read about it in the other blog entry)—interviewing, observing classes and participating in critical mass. I got to go visit a friend of a friend/ex-professor (Paul Dosh) named Jesus Valencia Silva in his invasion city of Villa el Salvador. This city is growing very fast, and it´s a group of invasions (meaning the people organize together and put up houses on un-used government property and then work together to get titles, water, electricity and create their new community) with communities as young as 1 year old (there is city now where 4 years ago there was just a sand dune!) The community consists of immigrants from all over Peru (the majority from the sierra) who have come to live near the capital looking for work. The people there have very good organization (each community has volunteer delegates...and Jesus is the president of a community of 40,000 people) and are fighting so that each neighbourhood has water and electricity and a decent life. It was very amazing to visit the communities, and I thank Jesus for being so generous with his time and showing us around. After 5 days of "rest" in Lima (but we were actually running around like crazy, or biking around like crazy rather) Cristhian and I said goodbye to Brendan, and Andrea (who took off to Arequipa) and headed up the coast.
North of Lima got tougher, the coast wasn´t so flat anymore (in fact there are quite a lot of small mountains to climb!) We had the luck to meet 3 very nice ladies (Erika, Nayra and Ana) in the street in Ancon who made instant friends with us, took us down to the beach to take photos and then invited us in to eat popcorn, tea and sandwiches and chat about our lives. Very lovely ladies, wonderful memories. After Ancon we stayed in bomberos in Chancay, Huacho, Pampamonga, Huarmey, Casma, y Chimbote. In Casma we were met on the highway by 3 road-bikers from Casma. They accompanied us about 30 km as we both headed to Casma. One of them, Alejandro, was a guide at some local ruins called Sechin, and invited us to come see the ruins the next day. We took him up on the offer, and had a very interesting experience. It´s always interesting to learn about the past cultures of a certain place, and I´ve always thought super important so we don´t forget the way of life of those who came before us, usually so we can strive to be more like them. However, this particular culture was… gruesome, cruel, violent. The entire ruins was a temple with pictures of decapitated bodies, bodiless heads, arms, legs, spinal cords and intestines, all with blood spurting out of it. Shocked? I was a little too…more so when our guide showed us this all with pride and told us he´s happy to know about the great Sechin and know that he has some of their strong warrior blood. Hmm. It sounds like not such a wonderful culture, they just liked to chop up bodies. They send buses full of school children to this site. Is this the cultural history the young generations should be learning… to be proud of their ancestors who were even more violent than our current culture? Which culture roots should we claim and be proud of, and which should we learn about in order to reject, and which are better to just not get too involved in learning about? The experience confused and disconcerted me, and if anyone has ideas please write me on this one… We do appreciate Alejandro for taking the time to show us around Sechin.
This stretch of desert has caused me to seriously try to cut all meat out of my diet (I was a vegetarian 10 years before this trip but I gave it up to be flexible to all situations in this journey) and Cristhian to consider becoming a vegetarian (Impressive!! Since he´s grown up being a major meat eater…). Why? The barren desert (it´s not like Argentina… there are absolutely no plants pure sand and sand and sand) is full of chicken farms which attract a million houseflies which land our your bike and you can pass right by the chicken farms and see them all squished together and chirping helplessly and each time a chicken truck drives by it leaves the stench of death and excrement in your nose… and to make it worse each port town has fish factories, Chimbote was the worse… I couldn´t breath when we entered the stench of dead fish was so strong, the smoke so thick, choking choking on this death, and the stench is every where you cannot escape it in that city, and imagine, people live there right under the smoke stacks every hour of everyday they breath the dead fish smoke… it´s a nightmare. So after these experiences the idea of eating dead flesh is more revolting than ever. And these experiences have reminded me of the politics of the meat industry, the fact that besides torturing and killing animals they pollute and contribute to global warming and make it so less humans can get the food they need (because the food that goes to feed animals to feed humans could go directly to feed more humans) and the list goes on. So! One more month of this tour and I will return to being a vegetarian, that is my promise. It is a very important personal choice that can affect the larger world greatly. If anyone reading this would like to talk about vegetarianism please write to me, I´d be happy to chat! In addition to the chicken and fish farms, I also noticed the intense use of industrial agriculture that seems to be growing here on the Peruvian desert coast. It´s disconcerting… you´ll be in the middle of sand dunes and then all of a sudden there is a valley covered toe to toe in green asparagus or sugar cane where there should be sand. My question is… where does the water come from? Does this use of land and water (and pesticides and herbicides) endanger people and ecosystem´s lives? It seems very probable. As Cristhian said, it´s like the mines we saw in the sierra, but more "pretty". Speaking of mines, we were told by the bomberos in Paramonga when we asked why seafood was so expensive in this area that there is a mine down the coast a bit, and for that reason fish are scarce as the mine is killing them off. In addition, there are people who just won´t eat the fish anymore for fear of contamination. We learn these facts of death and with a heavy heart we pedal on, hoping hoping, always hoping… From Chimbote we biked to Chau and then to Trujillo where Lucho met us in the plaza and took us to La Casa de Amistad, and we´ve been here ever since enjoying thoroughly the casa de la ciclista! We will take off again on Monday with Tyson and Carlos and all 4 of us will have 2 or so days together until they split off to the mountains and we continue up the coast. We hope to be in Ecuador in less than 10 days! Here we come, Ecuador!!!
Bike Movements in Peru:
We have run into some very interesting bike cultures and movements here in Peru. Besides Puno and Juliaca, we have investigated in Puquio, Nazca, Ica, Lima, Chimbote and Trujillo. Here is a summary:
Puquio: We had the pleasure of staying with Father Rueben in Puquio. We asked for his help in the church and he said "Of course!" and hopped on his bike to guide us to a house of the church where we could stay. He´s a small stout man but beat us up the hills on his mountain bike. The next day we got a chance to interview him, and you can hear it too! (Enter our Google Group and click on: "Entrevista a Sr. misionero de sagrado Corazon Ruben"). He absolutely loves the bicycle, and wishes more folks biked. He learned thanks to German priests who came to Puquio and taught all the priests how to ride and the benefits of the bicycle. Now he bikes all the time, everyday, and the church runs a school outside of Puquio where almost every single student has a bike and they teach biking within the school as well. He thinks people don´t bike much in Puquio because they prefer to be lazy and use motorcycles instead. He is an excellent example for the rest of the town, since not only is he a priest (someone people look up to) but also an older man and can be an inspiration to others to start biking even in their older years. If you are passing through Puquio and want to meet a biker, go to the main church in the Plaza and ask for father Ruben.
Nazca: On the coast we noticed that on average the towns have more cyclists than an average mountain village. This most likely has to do with the terrain, since the coastal towns are much more flat. In Nazca we saw some trici-taxis as well. Leaving the city, near the peaje (tollbooth) we ran into a cyclists with a tube with a junk valve. We gifted him a tube so he could get home to Nazca. We interviewed him and it turns out he has dreams of doing a long bike tour as well and wondered if he could do it on his bike. We told him, of course! Si se puede! Write us if you need any ideas or advice! (Google Groups: "Entrevista a ciclista -Luis- en Nazca -Peru-")
Ica: I needed air in my tire as we were leaving Ica, and to the rescue came 2 cyclists, Jorge Bellido Melgour and Abraham Jimenez. Jorge is part of a successful cycling club (competitive sport) in Ica (can be contacted at patan...@hotmail.com) and Abraham is a long time cyclist. Jorge gifted me a valve adaptor for my presta valves and gave us an interview (Google Groups: "Entrevista a Jorge en Ica-Peru"). He talked about the love of cycling people in Ica have and his desire to do a long tour like us. Abraham accompanied us about 12km until the outside of the city (it was impressive, as he is over 60 and bikes hard, with his machete strapped to his frame!), and told us about his desires to work with other cyclists and the city to build bike paths and other bike infrastructure in Ica. Ica has a lot of potential to have an awesome bike movement!
Lima: Arriving in Lima, we biked about 20 blocks and thought we´d die it felt so dangerous to bike there. However, by the end of our stay we felt much more comfortable biking there, especially knowing that there are various movements starting and growing to promote the bicycle there as transportation. Andrea told us about a web site called Zoom (http://www.proyectozoom.org/), and we checked it out. It led us to many contacts both in the city and in project Zoom. That same day we got an interview with Stefany and Jenny who work with the city´s Proyecto Especial de Transporte No Motorizado (special project on non-motorized transport http://www.munlima.gob.pe/programas/tnm/index.htm). They explained to us the history of their project, why it started, and what they are doing to promote biking as transportation in Lima (Google Groups: "Entrevista a Jenifer y Estefany -coordinadoras Proyecto Zoom- Lima Peru"). They invited us to observe project Zoom´s (a project of the city as well as an NGO called FONAM and funded by the World Bank) classes in schools the next day, as well as a bunch of other events they were putting on all week long. So the next day we woke up at 6am to go to school! At first we went to an all girls school where Zoom promoter (as they call the teachers) Maria Torres was teaching young girls how to ride bikes. She teaches all day long, everyday, hundreds of young girls how to bike. Once they know how to bike, they are taught how to bike in traffic safely with hand singles, more advanced bike handling, basic mechanics, and more. You can hear about Maria´s experiences as a promoter here: (Google Groups: "Entrevista a Maria Isabel _promotora proyecto Zoom en Lima Peru"). Later, Sofia (who´s one of the school coordinators for Zoom) took us to another school (mixed) where we watched 2 other promoters teach a group of boys and later a group of girls how to do a quick break and turn on their bikes. I got a chance to talk to a student about biking: Google Groups "Entrevista a Marcela -alumna proyecto zoom". There are kids who learn how to ride in 20 minutes to 3 hours thanks to Zoom´s very practical and intelligent technique (see it at: http://www.proyectozoom.org/contenidos/multimedia.php?cod=aprendiendo). Once a school has many proficient cyclists project Zoom organizes Zoom caravans where a group of students bikes to school together with chaperones. Zoom´s projects in schools are impressive and should be replicated in other cities all over the world. They told us they are working on the teacher´s (promoter´s) manual and that once they have finished they will distribute it. We look forward to using their example of in-school bike education to our own cities!
Later in the day we went to the offices of FONAM (Fundo Nacional de Medio Ambiente Peru http://www.fonamperu.org/) to meet and interview Paulo, the director of Proyect Zoom. He gave us a powerpoint that describes project Zoom (you can hear part of it here Google Groups: "Entrevista a -Paolo- director proyecto zoom Lima Peru", and the other part is too big to upload but if you´d like to hear it just write me an email). It turns out Project Zoom is a World Bank funded project (I´ve never seen such a positive one!) and for that reason funding will run out next year, which is a huge bummer. Project Zoom works in infrastructure (bike paths) and outreach/communication and their strength is really their communication. Their school program is very successful, they have a program in universities as well, their materials are all well designed, etc. Cities that think they just need to put in a bunch of bike paths and the cyclists will come have a lot to learn from Project Zoom in Lima where the idea is that at the same time you create the safe bike infrastructure you are creating knowledgeable and confidant urban cyclists, women as well as men, by teaching ninas y ninos in school when they are still young and can learn faster.
That evening we were invited to go to Lima´s Critical Mass (our first of the trip!), organized by Lima´s only citizen-community run bike organization, Cicloaxcion (the rest is connected to the government). The mass is young—it only started a few months ago so they are still in the stage of recruiting participants (there were only about 14 of us). But they have abundant fliers with good information and we were able to get those out to thousands of people in a few hours. I spoke to the Cicloaxion (http://www.cicloaxion.org/) activist who was kind of heading up the ride (not exactly anarchist organizing as it is in other cities) Google Groups: "Entrevista a promoter org. Cicloazion Lima Peru" and he spoke with hope about the future of Lima´s bike culture. He thinks its strength is not necessarily the government connected projects but the citizen groups and he hopes more and more groups like Cicloaxion spring up. As of now, they are the only ones, which makes Lima very distinct. Unlike other cities like Quito or Minneapolis, and especially Santiago, Lima´s primary bike as transport promoting comes from above (the World Bank, the city) whereas elsewhere it comes from the grassroots (NGOS, critical mass, community organizations). It seems that Lima desperately needs those grassroots organizations in order to have a healthy, sustainable and thriving bike culture. When it comes from the top, any project can be swept aside if the mayor doesn´t like biking for example or when the World Bank grant runs out—basically it makes the movement much more fragile and also one-dimensional when it comes from above. That´s not to say that the projects the city and FONAM are doing right now in Lima aren´t really good successful projects. They are! But for a sustainable movement diversity is needed, and what Lima lacks is grassroots organization. Perhaps Cicloaxion is just the start of many …
Women and Biking Conferece: September in Quito... Join us!
One rad aspect of Zoom is that there are many women working in it, both on the organizational end and on the teaching-action end (the critical mass, by the way, was only men besides Andrea and I). I invited them to come up to Quito, Ecuador where in September Todas en Bici (a project of Ciclopolis) will have a conference on gender and biking. I want to use this opportunity to invite any and all feminist bike activists (meaning you are working or want to work to get more women and other marginalized groups out biking and you want equality in the bike movement) to come to Quito in September to participate in this conference! For more information, write to Fernanda at todas...@gmail.com.
Chimbote: Stopping to buy some pan, a man selling flour approached us asking about our bikes and excitingly telling us about his own bike with his own home-made rack. We gifted him a Zoom leg band and asked for an interview. He told us about why he loves biking and that Chimbote is a great place to bike. A primary reason that he bikes is because it is the most economical form of transportation. After the interview he gifted us honey and a smile… how sweet! (Google Groups: "Entrevista Ipolito Arquero Chimbote Peru")
Trujillo: We´re still working on this one…
All agree that biking is the best form of transportation: it´s cheap, it´s healthy, it´s fun, relaxing, fast, and liberating. They look for help from the authorities and grassroots organizations to be able to promote biking as transportation. The bicycle unites people from all over the world from all different backgrounds.
Puquio: We had the pleasure of staying with Father Rueben in Puquio. We asked for his help in the church and he said "Of course!" and hopped on his bike to guide us to a house of the church where we could stay. He´s a small stout man but beat us up the hills on his mountain bike. The next day we got a chance to interview him, and you can hear it too! (Enter our Google Group and click on: "Entrevista a Sr. misionero de sagrado Corazon Ruben"). He absolutely loves the bicycle, and wishes more folks biked. He learned thanks to German priests who came to Puquio and taught all the priests how to ride and the benefits of the bicycle. Now he bikes all the time, everyday, and the church runs a school outside of Puquio where almost every single student has a bike and they teach biking within the school as well. He thinks people don´t bike much in Puquio because they prefer to be lazy and use motorcycles instead. He is an excellent example for the rest of the town, since not only is he a priest (someone people look up to) but also an older man and can be an inspiration to others to start biking even in their older years. If you are passing through Puquio and want to meet a biker, go to the main church in the Plaza and ask for father Ruben.
Nazca: On the coast we noticed that on average the towns have more cyclists than an average mountain village. This most likely has to do with the terrain, since the coastal towns are much more flat. In Nazca we saw some trici-taxis as well. Leaving the city, near the peaje (tollbooth) we ran into a cyclists with a tube with a junk valve. We gifted him a tube so he could get home to Nazca. We interviewed him and it turns out he has dreams of doing a long bike tour as well and wondered if he could do it on his bike. We told him, of course! Si se puede! Write us if you need any ideas or advice! (Google Groups: "Entrevista a ciclista -Luis- en Nazca -Peru-")
Ica: I needed air in my tire as we were leaving Ica, and to the rescue came 2 cyclists, Jorge Bellido Melgour and Abraham Jimenez. Jorge is part of a successful cycling club (competitive sport) in Ica (can be contacted at patan...@hotmail.com) and Abraham is a long time cyclist. Jorge gifted me a valve adaptor for my presta valves and gave us an interview (Google Groups: "Entrevista a Jorge en Ica-Peru"). He talked about the love of cycling people in Ica have and his desire to do a long tour like us. Abraham accompanied us about 12km until the outside of the city (it was impressive, as he is over 60 and bikes hard, with his machete strapped to his frame!), and told us about his desires to work with other cyclists and the city to build bike paths and other bike infrastructure in Ica. Ica has a lot of potential to have an awesome bike movement!
Lima: Arriving in Lima, we biked about 20 blocks and thought we´d die it felt so dangerous to bike there. However, by the end of our stay we felt much more comfortable biking there, especially knowing that there are various movements starting and growing to promote the bicycle there as transportation. Andrea told us about a web site called Zoom (http://www.proyectozoom.org/), and we checked it out. It led us to many contacts both in the city and in project Zoom. That same day we got an interview with Stefany and Jenny who work with the city´s Proyecto Especial de Transporte No Motorizado (special project on non-motorized transport http://www.munlima.gob.pe/programas/tnm/index.htm). They explained to us the history of their project, why it started, and what they are doing to promote biking as transportation in Lima (Google Groups: "Entrevista a Jenifer y Estefany -coordinadoras Proyecto Zoom- Lima Peru"). They invited us to observe project Zoom´s (a project of the city as well as an NGO called FONAM and funded by the World Bank) classes in schools the next day, as well as a bunch of other events they were putting on all week long. So the next day we woke up at 6am to go to school! At first we went to an all girls school where Zoom promoter (as they call the teachers) Maria Torres was teaching young girls how to ride bikes. She teaches all day long, everyday, hundreds of young girls how to bike. Once they know how to bike, they are taught how to bike in traffic safely with hand singles, more advanced bike handling, basic mechanics, and more. You can hear about Maria´s experiences as a promoter here: (Google Groups: "Entrevista a Maria Isabel _promotora proyecto Zoom en Lima Peru"). Later, Sofia (who´s one of the school coordinators for Zoom) took us to another school (mixed) where we watched 2 other promoters teach a group of boys and later a group of girls how to do a quick break and turn on their bikes. I got a chance to talk to a student about biking: Google Groups "Entrevista a Marcela -alumna proyecto zoom". There are kids who learn how to ride in 20 minutes to 3 hours thanks to Zoom´s very practical and intelligent technique (see it at: http://www.proyectozoom.org/contenidos/multimedia.php?cod=aprendiendo). Once a school has many proficient cyclists project Zoom organizes Zoom caravans where a group of students bikes to school together with chaperones. Zoom´s projects in schools are impressive and should be replicated in other cities all over the world. They told us they are working on the teacher´s (promoter´s) manual and that once they have finished they will distribute it. We look forward to using their example of in-school bike education to our own cities!
Later in the day we went to the offices of FONAM (Fundo Nacional de Medio Ambiente Peru http://www.fonamperu.org/) to meet and interview Paulo, the director of Proyect Zoom. He gave us a powerpoint that describes project Zoom (you can hear part of it here Google Groups: "Entrevista a -Paolo- director proyecto zoom Lima Peru", and the other part is too big to upload but if you´d like to hear it just write me an email). It turns out Project Zoom is a World Bank funded project (I´ve never seen such a positive one!) and for that reason funding will run out next year, which is a huge bummer. Project Zoom works in infrastructure (bike paths) and outreach/communication and their strength is really their communication. Their school program is very successful, they have a program in universities as well, their materials are all well designed, etc. Cities that think they just need to put in a bunch of bike paths and the cyclists will come have a lot to learn from Project Zoom in Lima where the idea is that at the same time you create the safe bike infrastructure you are creating knowledgeable and confidant urban cyclists, women as well as men, by teaching ninas y ninos in school when they are still young and can learn faster.
That evening we were invited to go to Lima´s Critical Mass (our first of the trip!), organized by Lima´s only citizen-community run bike organization, Cicloaxcion (the rest is connected to the government). The mass is young—it only started a few months ago so they are still in the stage of recruiting participants (there were only about 14 of us). But they have abundant fliers with good information and we were able to get those out to thousands of people in a few hours. I spoke to the Cicloaxion (http://www.cicloaxion.org/) activist who was kind of heading up the ride (not exactly anarchist organizing as it is in other cities) Google Groups: "Entrevista a promoter org. Cicloazion Lima Peru" and he spoke with hope about the future of Lima´s bike culture. He thinks its strength is not necessarily the government connected projects but the citizen groups and he hopes more and more groups like Cicloaxion spring up. As of now, they are the only ones, which makes Lima very distinct. Unlike other cities like Quito or Minneapolis, and especially Santiago, Lima´s primary bike as transport promoting comes from above (the World Bank, the city) whereas elsewhere it comes from the grassroots (NGOS, critical mass, community organizations). It seems that Lima desperately needs those grassroots organizations in order to have a healthy, sustainable and thriving bike culture. When it comes from the top, any project can be swept aside if the mayor doesn´t like biking for example or when the World Bank grant runs out—basically it makes the movement much more fragile and also one-dimensional when it comes from above. That´s not to say that the projects the city and FONAM are doing right now in Lima aren´t really good successful projects. They are! But for a sustainable movement diversity is needed, and what Lima lacks is grassroots organization. Perhaps Cicloaxion is just the start of many …
Women and Biking Conferece: September in Quito... Join us!
One rad aspect of Zoom is that there are many women working in it, both on the organizational end and on the teaching-action end (the critical mass, by the way, was only men besides Andrea and I). I invited them to come up to Quito, Ecuador where in September Todas en Bici (a project of Ciclopolis) will have a conference on gender and biking. I want to use this opportunity to invite any and all feminist bike activists (meaning you are working or want to work to get more women and other marginalized groups out biking and you want equality in the bike movement) to come to Quito in September to participate in this conference! For more information, write to Fernanda at todas...@gmail.com.
Chimbote: Stopping to buy some pan, a man selling flour approached us asking about our bikes and excitingly telling us about his own bike with his own home-made rack. We gifted him a Zoom leg band and asked for an interview. He told us about why he loves biking and that Chimbote is a great place to bike. A primary reason that he bikes is because it is the most economical form of transportation. After the interview he gifted us honey and a smile… how sweet! (Google Groups: "Entrevista Ipolito Arquero Chimbote Peru")
Trujillo: We´re still working on this one…
All agree that biking is the best form of transportation: it´s cheap, it´s healthy, it´s fun, relaxing, fast, and liberating. They look for help from the authorities and grassroots organizations to be able to promote biking as transportation. The bicycle unites people from all over the world from all different backgrounds.
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