December 1, 2015
Yesterday’s ride:
We crossed though the Huascaran National Park twice. The lower (south) road is AN-107, and paved. We took that from PE-3N east. At the summit, instead of passing through the tunnel, we turned off onto the dirt pullout and took a dirt road up over the tunnel. I’m sure at one time you could do this road in a 4×4. Not any more. There are large boulders in the road that restrict the width, and areas where the edge has slid away, also making the road too narrow for more than a motorcycle or mountain bike.
On the east side, before Acochaca on AN-105, the road turns to dirt. We followed this to AN-106 (also dirt) and headed back west across another summit (and more incredible views of mountains, snow and glaciers), past Laguna Llanganuco to PE-3N and back to Caraz. Well, I did anyway. Ian stayed at a mountain lodge that offers some incredible treks not far from the lake.
The first 60 miles of the loop is more or less paved, most of it nicely. The last 100 miles is dirt, rock and shale road.
Here are three short videos of the ride up to the tunnel, over the tunnel, and down from the tunnel on AN-107. Due to the wifi here, it took me about 14 hours to upload this six minutes of video.
Thanks! Incredible views! Any wildlife around?
Surprisingly, other than one fox, all I saw all day was a lot of cows, sheep, chickens…and dogs chasing me at every little village (I’ve decided that you can tell how “wealthy” the locals are by whether or not their dogs chase you. The poorest people have malnourished dogs that just lie in the road when you ride by; the people who are doing better feed their dogs, and these healthy dogs don’t mind expending the energy to chase motorcycles).
There are supposedly lots of puma, white-tailed deer and spectacled bear in the Huascaran National Park. I saw a couple of locations that I would have loved to have camped, and probably could have seen more wildlife if I had stayed there.
Holy shit. That gravel road in Part 2 looks very narrow. And then in Part 3 it appears you are ridding way too fast. But I’m sure you are having a ball.
Take care,
Rick and Linda Schunk
Video makes it look like we were riding faster than we were. 😉
And yes, definitely having a ball, the whole time. Even through the stomach bugs, the hail and sleet (yesterday — story coming), and the crazy drivers.