W
e knew when we reached the "famous" tourist lake (laguna Sausacocha) we needed
to takea left at the intersection. Everything appeared to be going well, the intersection was
obvious, but only a few hundred meters down the road there was a traffic lineup. Then there was
a sign stating that the road was closed for construction between 7am and 6pm. We asked the
guys sitting around waiting what the deal was, and yes indeed they were waiting a few more
hours for the road to open. We asked the traffic control officer if a bike could pass, sadly we could
not because there was blasting activity taking place. We parked up to discuss our options.
This road was our last hope to get to Pataz.
After careful consideration we decided that driving at night was a bad idea (and it would be
dark at 6pm) so we agreed to look for a camping spot nearby so we could get on the road
early tomorrow while it was open. We talked to a restaurant owner about camping by the
lake. The lady said it would be fine, and that she had seen gringos doing it in the past. We
decided on an early night, which is easy in Peru because the sun sets pretty early (by our
Canadian standards). We had set our alarm to make sure we were up and ready to go so we
could get through the road construction while the road was open. As it turns out this may not
have been necessary since, at that same early hour in the pitch dark, a garbage truck was
making his rounds. We did not realise it was a garbage truck at first because all we could
hear, far on the other side of town, was extremly loud music of the icecream truck variety. We
knew this was a tourist town of sorts, but ice cream trucks at 5am seemed a bit of a stretch.
When the truck eventually passed our section of town the music must have been blasting at
175 decibels. We just laughed at the cultural strangeness of the situation, then fired up the
Keeways and hit the road in early twilight.
The road was open, and there wasn’t much traffic, and most importantly we were heading
East again. We saw construction workers walking, biking, and busing to their work sites and
knew we needed to keep moving. We were worried some bizarre Peruvian moment would
happen where they closed the exit of the construction zone and we would be trapped until
noon. Stranger things have happened to us in this country. What is up is down, and what is
down is up. The road had some tricky narrow muddy sections, made a little more intense by
oncoming traffic of large buses, but overall was not too bad. Too much action for our tastes
though, we prefer the open roads that we have all to ourselves. One of the best things about
riding in Peru is the luxury of very little traffic on the roads (if you know how to pick ‘em).
After reaching the end of the construction zone we needed to stop to do a map and GPS
check. There was a road on either side of the river, that according to our map and GPS
seemed doable however we decided to play it safe and go with the thick red line on the map
instead of the skinny red line. So we crossed the bridge and took a left. Having camped in a
public place the previous night this was our first chance to get away from civilization so we
stopped for a comfort break. Just as we’d finished a man and a women walked by with their
donkey. I guess we hadn’t quite made it to the boonies yet.