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Published: July 28th 2015
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Distance driven today: 210 miles / 334 km
Cumulative distance driven: 10,915 miles / 17,566 km
Today’s trip: Lima to La Oroya return, Peru
Rode on one the world’s three highest roads: yes
Visited the world's worst polluted place: yes
Those who know me also know that ever since I was 5 years old I was fascinated by the Belgian cartoon character Tintin. No Tintin adventure fascinated me more than the ‘Prisoners of the Sun’. In that album, the young journalist Tintin travels to Peru in search of his good friend professor Calculus. The latter is believed to have been kidnapped by a surviving outpost of the Inca civilization. It turns out that the captors are holding professor Calculus at the Temple of the Sun, which is located deep within the Andes in Eastern Peru. To get to the Peruvian city of Jauja, and from there trek to the Temple of the Sun, Tintin has to board the train from Lima to La Oroya. Today, our goal was to ride along the road that follows the very same train tracks, from Lima to La Oroya, which inspired the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi in 1969 to write
the story about Tintin and his quests in this remote Peruvian part of the Andes.
Even though the railway line is operating still today, regular passenger services were suspended many years ago. Only commercial trains, transporting copper ore from the world’s highest mine, operate along the tracks today. Starting from Lima, the route quickly climbs through the Andes, running pretty much in parallel to the tracks, through very spectacular landscapes of the Peruvian Andes. Our mission today was to ride the road up to the highest point of the railway at the Ticlio junction. For almost 100 years this railway, and the accompanied road, were the highest in the world, reaching an altitude of almost 5.000m/16,000ft in just a few hours! Today they are only surpassed by the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railway on the Tibetan plateau in China in 2006, which reaches about 200m/600ft higher in elevation. The road which we took today has hairy drives sweeping through the Andes, one or two prayer-inducing bends, occasional wild lamas darting out of the scenery, and mountain walls along the road that seem to be reaching to the sky. It is understandable why the author of Tintin chose to send
his main character to this place for an adventure trip, and it should be equally obvious why Zoe and I chose to follow in Tintin’s footsteps.
Zoe and I decided to (wisely as it turned out in retrospect for several reasons) leave Lima very early in the morning. It took us almost three long hours to get out of Lima, due to the heavy and often crazy traffic. Once we were finally on the road climbing in the Andes, Zoe and I were closely monitoring two things on a constant basis. The first was the engine temperature. Based on our learnings from riding north of Medellin in Colombia, we now made regular proactive stops every 1,000m/3,000ft of elevation to cool the engine block by pouring water on it. We had brought several water bottles with us, which we filled at local streams, and poured cold water on the engine to cool it. The second thing we monitored closely was altitude sickness symptoms. I had brought with me altitude sickness pills, which we started taking several days ago, to boost the nitric oxide oxygen level in our blood. It seems that our vigilant symptom monitoring, in combination with the pills
we took, actually did work, as we experienced only minor symptoms due to the altitude. Zoe got fairly lightheaded as we approach the Ticlio pass, and we had to make several resting stops. After taking just a few steps at the Ticlio pass at 5,000m/16,000ft we had to catch our breath and sit down to rest for several minutes.
On the other side of Ticlio, which until recently used to be the highest railway pass in the world, we drove to the mining town of La Oroya. This small town high up in the Andes is almost entirely based on heavy mining operations of copper, lead and zinc, which are then transported to Lima via the railway. The key part of the mining operations at La Oroya is the smelter which produces base metals from the extracted ore in the local mines. As a result of the smelter operation and all the emissions from the electrolytic process, the town of La Oroya has earned the title as the world's worst polluted places; not exactly an envious title to claim.
Our return back to Lima was, literally, what must be considered as the world’s longest downhill ride, with a
descent of a continuous 5,000m/16,000ft. If nothing else, this ride must be one of the most fuel efficient trips ever, since we barely ever had to apply any gas! Everything proceeded well, until we reached the outer suburbs of Lima in the late afternoon, just 30km/19miles from our hotel. That’s when we encountered a major setback, one which currently puts in jeopardy the remainder of our PanAmerican highway riding adventure. Like most true adventures, we currently don’t know how or when we will be able to solve our big problem we hit late yesterday afternoon, but we are both confident that we will be successful in one way or the other (we just don’t know how yet). More on this in the next blog post, as it is way past 2am right now and both Zoe and I need some sleep, after having spent a total of 18 hours on the road today.
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