Bike-packing Peru: From Salida, CO to Cusco Sweetbreads

Tuesday morning, Reilly, Kimberly and I said our final farewells and drove to Denver with our good friend Roland; he would drive Reilly´s van back to Salida.  After lunch at Denver´s oldest pub, My Brother´s Bar and a stop at REI(last minute camping gear purchases), Roland dropped us at Denver International Airport for the beginning of our 24hour odyssey.

The flight to Los Angeles, CA was  short and uneventful; two things travellers always hope for when flying.  That said, watching our boxed bicycles get wheeled away by the airline staff did make us a bit nervous; what sort of shape would they be in by the time they reached Lima, Peru…assuming they got there at all.  For the record, we were eached charged $200 per bike!!

At LA´s LAX airport, we soon checked-in with Peru´s LAN airlines; we were even able to get Kimberly´s ticket corrected.  For some reason her return flights had been changed to a day later.

The flight from LA to Lima was a long one, nearly nine hours.  Fortunately, leaving at 00.15 we all managed to sleep most of the trip.  Otherwise, it was just another long haul on a plane. Oh ya, the coffee on this flight was some of the worst I´ve ever suffered through in my life and the food wasn´t much better.

As we descended into Lima, the mountains were on our left, the tanker-filled Pacific coast was to our right.  Despite these views, I still didn´t feel like we were actually in a strange new land ready for grand adventure.  It was simply another stop on an otherwise boring series of flights.

Collecting our bikes in Lima, we breezed through customs, re-checked our bikes–no extra charge–then continued on to Cusco.  In Lima, I saw some of the most beautiful women I´ve ever laid eyes on….¨need to come back here one day for sure¨, I thought with a devilish grin.

Within a few hours, we were airborne  again.  This time, however, the feeling was noticably different.  Soaring above those huge Andean mountains, the excitement took hold of me.  Huge snowy peaks, never-ending rugged brown mountains and roads snaking their way over and around kept my mouth agape.  It was spectacular.  It seemed the guy in the seat in front of me felt the same way.

We both snapped pictures through the window as we smiled and giggled in awe.  It turns out, Fernand (from Brazil) was looking at both snow and mountains for the first time! He and three friends would be spending 10days in Peru.  Only 10 days, I thought, how can that possibly be enough to even begin to get a taste of this incredible place?

Arriving in Cusco, the van that was to collect us and our bikes–which had made the trip seemingly unscathed(I would later find my front brake rotor to be quite bent)–was far too small.  A second vehicle soon arrived.  Reilly drove in that vehicle with the bikes, Kimberly and I in the first.
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The streets are all narrow and mostly cobbled.  The cars are tiny and speed along just barely inches from one another.  People everywhere, the hustle and bustle dizzying…and I wasn´t even yet walking along those super-narrow sidewalks.  Soon enough, we arrived at the Pirwa Colonial Hostel on Plaza San Francisco, checked-in and went in search of dinner.  Now THAT would be an adventure.

We wandered about the city centre, past huge stone cathedrals, tiny shops and the many dogs that seem to wander about the streets with an air of carefree dominion.  Eventually, we found a restaurant that looked okay.  We went in and Kimberly enquired if there was anything vegetarian on the menu.  The waiter pointed to a dish and so we decided we give the place a try.

You should have seen the looks on our faces when the meals arrived.  Kimberly´s and Reilly´s were basically a mound of thinly sliced hot-dogs(not sausages, but hot-dogs) heaped upon a pile of french fries.(salchipapa)  Mine had a bit of salad, a few slivers of hot-dog and some sort of dark unidentifiable meat.(mollejitas a la parrilla)

Now, you need to remember that excepting 2-3 small bites of meat, I´ve been a vegetarian for about 8 years.  Well, when in Rome do like the Romans, as they say.  I grabbed my fork, squirted some spicy mustard on the plate and dug-in.

Honestly, I couldn´t tell what the heck it was I was eating, though it was rather tough and sort of had the texture of beef, but it wasn´t any beef I´d ever eaten.  Turns out these ¨sweetbreads¨are actually animal innards including throat, gullet,  stomach…even heart.  I have no idea what it was I ate, but I did eat about half my plate´s worth.  Then I just finished Kimberly´s french fries and washed it down with a glass of dark beer.

Fortunately, despite eating this ¨meat¨dish, my stomach did not protest and I have not been sick whatsoever…yet.  That said, I think I´ll keep away from the sweatbreads from now on.

After dinner and a bit more time spent wandering around town nearly being run-over and constantly being asked by young women if we wanted a ¨massage¨the three of us returned to the hostel and quickly fell asleep, it was just 8pm but we were exhausted.

(sorry, unable to get pictures loaded at the moment)