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After hours of WhatsApping bike shop owners and searching online for weeks, Mark found a bike shop that was willing to order us tires. We are expecting to show up to the shop well before the tires, so we’re taking it easy on our way to Huaraz, Peru.
Our first few days in Peru were challenging: getting eaten by flies, I caught another stomach bug, and we found ourselves in a city overrun by mototaxis. But after getting a little further into the country and the mountains, we have found better food, climates, vistas, and much quieter roads.
In San Ignacio we were excited to try some of the locally grown and roasted coffee, but less excited to try the breakfast ‘tradicional’ which ended up consisting of a marmalade sandwich, a slice of cheese (we have found the cheese to be largely unpalatable since we left Costa Rica) and boiled plantain. At this point my stomach was already on the fritz, and we both decided not to venture beyond the marmalade sandwich.
We left San Ignacio for Jaén where we arrived to the local bike shop in desperate need of new chains and a few other items. We bought the stuff we needed and ended up taking next day off while I was sick. Back on the road after evacuating the contents of my stomach the day prior, we realized that we not only needed new chains, but a new cassette and chain rings as well.
We were too happy to be out of the noise and chaos of the mototaxis in Jaén to turn back to look for more parts, and instead decided to push on in hopes of finding what we needed in Cajamarca.
After some roadside diarrhea, a fair bit of rain, and a few slow days of riding, we arrived in Cajamarca only to discover that none of the bike shops had what we needed. We bought a slew of cranks and other bike parts in the hopes of solving our problems, but quickly discovered that our initial plan would not be effective. As the day rolled to a close, we packed up our several pounds of new parts and pedaled off to our WarmShowers host.
We were greeted by our host en route. He and his friend were heading out on their recumbent bicycles to run some errands, but decided to show us the way to Eddy’s house before heading back out. We were shown to a dry patio in his beautiful property where we could set up our tent and cook dinner. We slept great in the cool night air and were happy to take a day off to contemplate our mechanical dilemas and take advantage of the hot springs in Baños de Inca.
After reading through some tandem forums, we decided on a solution that would not use most of the parts we had bought the day prior. We returned to the city to work on our bike, and were thankful that the shop we had bought the parts from allowed us to return the cranks. Instead of replacing our tandem specific cranks with more modern 4 bolt cranks, we flipped around our synchro plates and front chain ring so that the chain is engaging with the “good”/un-warn side of the teeth. While this solution means that we are using our old warn out parts, and still need to find 5 bolt chain rings, it means we get to keep the high quality cranks that came with our bike, and don’t have to worry about reverse threaded pedals.
We love our tandem, but at times like these we certainly miss the mechanical simplicity of modern single bikes.
With our temporary fix in the works, we have been once again looking ahead to find a bike shop where we can get the parts we need, but we are probably going to try to ship them from the US. For most of this trip we have not pursued this option in order to save time and money, but at this point it seems to be the only way to get the chain rings that will work for us.
We have enjoyed our leisurely pace to not only fret over our bicycle, but also to enjoy lots of good coffee, cake, bread (the best bread we have had on this whole trip!) and fresh vegetables. But the real highlight of Peru has been the alpine riding. For the last week we have been living upwards of 2000 meters and multiple times ridden above 4000 meters into the alpine Sierra of Peru.
With our bike rolling along as well as we can expect, we’re looking forward to visiting some more bike shops and enjoying all that the mountains of Peru have to offer!
Thanks for reading!
– Nic