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I last left off describing my ride in Abancay when I was on my way to Yacca. Yacca was a very small town and we had a quiet campsite overlooking the mountains - a good place to be camping before the hardest two days of riding on the whole trip. This was one of the first tropical nights we had in a while where it wasn't cold to be out at night. The two days were all uphill and were both over 100 km.
The first day took us to what we called ‘tollbooth camp.’ At camp I got involved in a game of volleyball with some of the locals working there. The funny thing was that every few points we had to take the net down so that we could allow cars to pass through the tollbooth. Volleyball is a fun game and seems to be the second-most popular game played around here (soccer being the game of choice).
The next day was a 100 km ride up to our ultimate summit that took us to our highest point of the tour. We camped at an Altiplano lake camp that was very cold. The last half of that day was the hardest part. We sat at lunch and the leader was saying how this should be the hardest day of the tour because it contained every challenge. Natasha, a rider from South Africa, said, “but we haven't had wind yet.” Right after she said that, the wind showed up - hitting us head on and adding to the challenge of all the climbing we had do. By the end, it was just so cold. It was a rewarding feeling to be done though.
From lake camp we rode to a campsite that we set up outside a truck stop. That day, we passed through the town of Pequeno. It was an up and down day the whole way through starting with the descent into the town. Now we are the in the desert again and it’s very hot during the day. I used internet when we got into the town, got money and got batteries for my camera. I figured it would be a relatively short day, but I didn't properly anticipate how tough the end would be. Once we got to the place we were supposed to be camping at, one of the staff members said that we still had another hour of climbing to get to our new campsite because they wouldn't let us camp in the original location. That was tough.
The next day was only downhill though to Nazca. Roughly a 100 km descent which was great, except that by the end it didn't feel like a descent given the strong headwind. The leaders didn't have an address for us for the place we were supposed to be staying. They just said try to find the ‘Walk On Inn.’ However, when we got to Nazca, no one understood “walk on inn.”
And now for my tangent…
Language can sometimes be a barrier in places we go. Sometimes the challenge is not necessarily in finding the right words, but in understanding the accent. For example, in Chile I stopped someone on the street to ask a very simple question: “Donde es ruta cinqo?” They looked at me confused. Then I wrote it on a piece of paper and she says, “oh, ruta cinqo!!” I can’t necessarily pick up where I mispronounced “ruta” or “cinqo” because it’s very subtle, but that subtlety can sometimes be the difference between understanding and not understanding. Overall though, I have been pretty happy with the amount of spanish I’ve been able to get by with.
The reverse is true as well; people from South America mispronounce words in English. Those mispronunciations though seem to be the same across people. For example, when I was in Aguas Caliente I wanted to find my hostel, the Joe Inn. When I’d ask people where the Joe Inn was, they would be confused. Then I heard the person at the desk pronounce Joe Inn, noticing that he’d say the words together really fast. The next day when I wanted to ask how far between the bus stop and the Joe Inn, I was able to do it without a problem. What I learned is that successful travel incorporates learning proper accents in Spanish and sometimes incorrect ones in English.
When I got to Nazca, I was with another rider and we tried asking for the Walk On Inn. No one understood. Then I tried a sequence of variations of pronunciations, but still no one understood. My friend suggested that we just sit outside the main church and wait for someone we knew to pass by, but then the simple solution hit me. I walked in to the internet cafe next door and googled ‘walk on inn nazca’ and found the name of the street. I showed it to the lady working there and discovered we were only a couple of blocks away. In this case, it wasn’t the accent that was preventing getting information, just the fact that not everyone had heard of the Walk On Inn!