Day 8 (3/29)

After the overcast skies and rain of yesterday, we awoke to bright sunshine this morning at our hospidaje in the town of Laraos (pronounced la-roust…without the ‘t’). When we arrived last night in the waning light we observed that we had arrived someplace different than the villages we’d visited thus far and we were further struck when we were guided on a walk after dinner by the daughter of the woman managing the hotel. 

For lack of a better way of putting it has the feel of an alpine village, which is to say that is very orderly and clean and there is very real sense of pride on the part of the people that live there. Start with the setting… it sits on at 12,000 feet on a hillside overlooking a lake looking up a narrow valley towards a set of mountain peaks. As you walk around, the first thing that strikes you is the quality of the stonework of the streets and walkways throughout the town. Beyond that is simply the cleanliness and attention to detail as you walk around, qualities that are unfortunately lacking in most of the towns we’ve visited thus far. I could go on, but we were both thoroughly impressed as we walked around after breakfast… (yes, it was nice enough to that we actually took the time to take a walk 🙂 ). The first set of photo’s are all dedicated to Laraos and so hopefully will give you a sense.

We finally got under way around 10:45 and continued our northward trajectory. We had originally hoped to be able to continue on the bikepacking route we’d so enjoyed the day before, but as it turns out that wasn’t possible as the road we wanted to take was closed. If you watch the “Relive” video tracing our course, you’ll notice a segment early on where we yo-yo’d up and back on a section. This was our attempt to make it up that ‘closed’ road. Those of you that know me well (and Claudio, for that matter) will laugh at this, I’m sure, but we were told the closure was only 16Km ahead and so we wanted to see for ourselves. When we got there… it was really closed… locked gate and unambiguous signage… and so we had to turn around, but we had to see for ourselves. 

The next portion of ride took us up a spectacular, narrow river gorge. Again, I am hoping the photo’s will do some justice to just how steep and narrow it was. Beyond that we picked a dirt road that once again took us up and over a 15,000 foot pass and high plateau where we rode for a several hours before gradually descending back down to 12,000 feet and the final 50 mile segment of pavement to our final destination of Chucchis, which couldn’t be more opposite from Laraos…noisy, dirty, industrial. We had no choice though. By the time we reached Chucchis it was going on 5:30 and we simply needed to find a place to sleep. 

That said, I did my best to capture the scenery during the several hours we spent at altitude. As you will see, it was a combination of remarkable geology (Chip, if you’re reading this, I wish you’d been along to explain), broad green vistas, pristine river valleys, an occasional waterfall, a brief patch of snow/hale and rich agriculture. Sound good… it truly was.

I’ll leave with you another passage from Claudio. This time his observations regarding the countless stone walls we’ve seen.

“Low, long, Goldworthian stone walls run from nowhere to nowhere, delineating a dream, a possibility, a design distilled from  landscape, space and abundance of granite. These stone walls, overgrown with moss, built without mortar, built on steep slopes above 10,000 feet, display mastery of time and will. Curious, some of them want to be circles, as if they were meant to contain, but not one of these sheep-pen holds animals. They hold space. Time has slowly absorbed them until becoming a gesture, a footprint of humans dwelling on a land that, even harsh and unforgiving, allows for beauty.”

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Group 1 – Laraos (tap/click on an image to see it enlarged)

Group 2 – Closed Road and Gorge

Group 3 – The Climb

Group 4 – High Plateau