Day 979
AN-1251
By late morning we had left the glacier behind and were back on the road. Maybe it was two days at this height, combined with the road not being as steep as we feared, but I was not struggling too much with my breathing. To start with the road was quite badly damaged, with short, sharp muddy climbs that the mountain biker in me relished. My tourer rose to the challenge, and I was loving it. The views just got better and better. Small glaciers covering the tops of mountains all around us, herds of curious alpaca roaming close by, a few hardy Peruvians making a living by collecting their wool. The local people appeared to live in small thatched stone buildings which we normally see in museums. Hard to believe that people still live like that.
On we rode, hardly able to believe the views we were seeing. We were so high, reaching our highest cycling point, 15,952 feet. We could see for miles and miles. A particularly bad rock fall had clearly blocked this road to traffic so we had it all to ourselves. It was pure joy, cycle touring at its finest, and Tom and I knew we had a new number 1 for our list of top ten roads. We slowly left the snow capped mountains behind, but not the views. Stunning cliff formations, strange colours, it just seemed to get better and better, we simply didn't want it to end.
