#piquio

Today was epic. It started in lush green hills in the mountains, and ended in the hot desert near the coast.

  Another day in Peru, another 2000m climb.

This was too be the last, before I headed all the way down to sea level. Once again I rode up to a high altitude plateau, this one around 4300m. Like the last one, it was pretty foreboding up there.

This area is a protected park, so there was almost nothing from humans, other than rows of power lines. There were lots of vicuñas up there, a really beautiful dear/llama like animal. They make a really unique sound that I don't know how to describe. They seemed to be a lot of heated discussion amongst them on what I person on a bike was doing in their hood.

Right before the descent I stopped at this tiny restaurant to eat some choclo, jumbo corn on a cob. They lady was very impressed that I ate three of them.

After that started the long descent to Nasca. It was 84km of straight downhill riding, from 4300m to 600m. At the beginning I had every layer of clothing on, complete with big winter gloves. There was some snow on the ground. But as I made the landscape gradually shifted to tones of yellow and brown, and the desert climate of the coast emerged.

The contrast was really stunning.

The snaking road is pretty much the only thing disrupting the scenery, and I loved staring down at the lines it created in the mountains.