Seducido por la selva
PerúMy true love has always been the mountains. My senses tingle in thin air, big sky, cool breezes, and scents of pines and aspen. Planning this trip, I thought I’d never have any desire to ride through anything but the highest peaks of the Andes.
But my devotion waned under the endless undulation of Perú’s cordilleras. I didn’t feel the same infatuation towards this part of the Andes as I do towards the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. The barren brown peaks lacked the arboreal scents, the charming meadows, the abundance of clear, crisp water, and the variety of ecosystems that inspire me back home in Colorado and California. Camelids and cattle grazed alongside me all the way to the tops of mountain passes, impeding the sense of wilderness that would otherwise invigorate me.
We shared some precious moments — I swooned before the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, and my heart melted along the cataracts of the Río Cañete. But these diversions couldn’t sooth the overall chafing on our relationship. By the time I arrived in Ayacucho, I had tired of the mountains. I resented the cold, the aridity, the brown shrubs, the afternoon hail, the mine pollution, the poverty, even the llamas. Unfaithful thoughts began to flash through my mind. Should I have a fling with another type of environment?
I biked to the east on a whim, over one last 14,000 foot pass, and plunged downwards on a course of infidelity into the jungle on the fringes of the Amazon rainforest.
At the top of the last pass, I wore every piece of clothing I carried. At the bottom, I sweated through my t-shirt and shorts. Brown puna morphed into thick green forests. Streams appeared at every bend in the road. The smell of the lush flora intoxicated me. By the time I arrived at the Río Apurimac in the town of Kimbiri, I wore the silly grin of arousal.
A sense of mystery with a whiff of danger only added to the intrigue of the affair. Unlike many of the mountains routes I’d traveled, my jungle route had little documentation on the internet. The rainforest was practically virgin, from a bike touring perspective. The region, known as VRAEM (“Valles del Ríos Apurimac, Ene, y Mantaro”), has long been known for cocaine trafficking and as the last hideout for the remaining terrorists of the Sendero Luminoso. After telling my mom of my plans, she wasted no time pointing out these threats to me, based on her internet research. And nothing inspires lust more than a disapproving mother.
But I found no real danger in the jungle, despite passing large army convoys and hillsides covered in coca leaves. The jungle embraced me with its lively locals, fresh fruit juices, colorful birds, swimming holes under waterfalls, and the warmth of camping without a sleeping bag. I gazed longingly over green hills as far as I could see.
I camped on the lawn of a restaurant one night and drank beers with a few men dining there, who worked for a nearby oil pipeline. One of them told me he had grown up in the mountains, but fled to the jungle for work and would never return. Both the warmth and the better economic prospects had seduced him.
Alas, I knew the jungle wasn’t a sustainable companion for me. The heat and humidity felt wonderful after so many cold nights in the sierra, but they made biking difficult. I lucked out and didn’t see much rain, but I knew with enough time in the rainforest, I would suffer from furious downpours. Roads would turn to mud, or they would end altogether, giving way to rivers with ferries, the primary form of transport in the Amazon basin. As much fun as I was having with the jungle, I would have to return to the mountains.
The mountains wouldn’t take me back easily. I would have to climb 10,000 feet up a long, traffic-filled highway. And the mountains would be sure to scold me upon my feeble return, with high winds and freezing rains. I would have to then acclimate myself to the high altitude all over again, as if we hadn’t even known each other before.
But I accepted the punishments as a necessary consequence of my actions. The jungle had made me hot and sweaty, but I emerged reinspired to continue my commitment to the Andes.
