The journey has changed in so many ways since we first started on this adventure. From being young saplings in the desert sun to having tree trunk legs climbing the Andes. It’s been some weird and wild times. We couldn’t have foreseen the ebb and flow of this crazy world. It’s been a while since we sent an update and it’s been a symbolic procrastination of a sense closure. We find ourselves back in the US of A, regaining our bearings from the ever spinning gyroscope of life. I guess what we’re trying to say is: there is a sadness in the way things were left. The end was so abrupt it left us with a hollow feeling, unable to process but at the same time the end opened a door to a whole other dimension of reality. So we hope everyone is safe and doing their best to understand and survive these confusing times, where the media instigates and attacks and the people are left to sort through the mountains of bullshit. It’s interesting how we are all more connected and united through this time of not knowing. It’s a lesson in how everything we learn and work for can change inevitably in one quick swift breeeze. Here’s to life in whichever way you live it. Get ready for a lot of photos!!!
This will probably be the last update for a little while but that doesn’t mean we have to lose contact, just that we’ll be focusing on other projects and adventures off of the bicycles. Also if you’d like to stay in contact send us your address for mail!
But first, where were we... oh yes! We left off somewhere in the pits of the Amazon river; rocked by our boating experience in the cargo ship of gnar gnar. Little did we know that Back on the mainland we would be pedaling for what soon became the last few weeks of cycling. We landed in the river port town of Yurimaguas where we stayed at a Bomberos station. We walked to the local market getting our last taste of all the weird jungle fruits and delicacies. The next day we rode off into the hills to be greeted by an early rain so we took refuge in a small village where they let us stay in their meeting hall for the night. We biked through sweat -heavy towns in the jungle and, during a downpour, took a detour to camp near a hot spring. We had to ford over a rushing brown river, carrying our bikes with the help of a local guy who happened to be crossing at that moment. The road tested our wits as we struggled to push our bikes up slippery mud hills. Exhausted and triumphant, we arrived to the camping spot to find it flooded so we set up to sleep in the unexpectedly nice and clean tiled changing room. After a morning hot springs bath refresher we we went back the way we came to the main road onwards.
We wanted to get to the mountains in time to enjoy them before we had to meet with Annina’s dear mother in the coast of Lima. At this point we also had a parallel story unfolding that involved the haunting of the ghost of the Amazon. Unable to release us from its clenching moist grip it left us with one last parting gift, a skin infection. Annina had accidentally nicked her finger with a rusty knife onboard the boat and her index finger had begun to swell up. Ernesto had been ravaged by bug bites and had scratched a bit too heavily so they had become festering wounds. (Warning: gross photos included)
So we made the decision to take a daylong winding bus to Huanuco which would also allow us to get to a clinic for some advice.
Immediately after getting off the bus, we realized we left our coveted horse jaw musical instrument in the top storage compartment of the bus. Noooooo. But so it goes. The people who found it were probably quite confused. So after arriving in this town, late into the night, we directed ourselves toward the local fire station but they unfortunately couldn’t host us but told us we could camp on the sidewalk in front. So we did. The next morning we found a clinic that could asses Annina’s finger. The verdict was that it was an abscess and it would need to be drained of fluid. After the procedure, while the doctor was prescribing medication, Ernesto asked about his leg infection and the doctor just doubled the prescription of antibiotics. We went to a nearby pharmacy to pick up the meds and this is where we started noticing that the corona virus was beginning its status as the main new story.
We quickly got out of the town and headed for the hills. In the outskirts of the town we stayed with a nice lady who let us camp on her synthetic soccer field. Her guard dogs had just given birth to a litter of puppies and she was very protective of them.
She said if we crossed the river that ran by her house we could take trails to sneak into an archaeological site. We walked through farm fields and ran into a local farmer who guided us to the back entrance of the site. He pointed out that the people were just getting off their shift so we should wait to enter the ruins. After walking amid cactus and brush we realized the workers weren’t going anywhere soon and we were getting hungry for dinner so our plan to sneak in was thwarted. We came back just before the rains started.
The next day our traverse into the mountains began. This journey was interspersed with lots of major road work and constructions. Lots of the hillside were undergoing major reconstruction and clearing. We were helped through many of the security stopping points but sometimes we had to wait for hours alongside anxious drivers.
The camping spots for the nights were always in dusty hillside villages, where the people were growing increasingly weary of outsiders. We camped in an abandoned two story cob house school and in a local sporting field.
One lady seeing us on her way back from working the potato fields asked us if we needed water and she brought us back a pitcher of herbal tea. The next day after we returned her pitcher she invited us in to her house for breakfast of cancha (a type of local pop corn that is very dense and filling), homemade soy milk, and potatoes, all from her farm. Our friend wished us well in the journey and we exchanged contact information.
We finally made it to the downhill section after days of climbing and we ended the day in a small town by the roadside where we started getting the outsider vibes pretty heavy. As soon as we touched ground a group of kids ran away all covering their mouths yelling: corona! We felt very strange and unwelcome but a local elder said we could camp in front of the church. The townspeople were genuinely concerned about our presence, mind you this was a week before any governmental measures were being taken anywhere in the continents of the Americas. The children gathered to watch the spectacle of our camp stove setup and as we began to cook the people warmed up with our stories and antics. They brought us boiled potatoes and many ears of cancha corn. We felt grateful for this kindness even amidst their fear and suspicions.
The next day we rode into the city of La Union where we had plans to access an Internet cafe and work on some computer stuffs. The night we got there, there was a town carnaval happening where people were dancing around a pole decorated with plastic wares. We had seen this plastic trees all through out our ride once entered Peru. It’s a tradition during carnaval season to have these emblematic poles in every town.
We danced the night away and made a lot of people laugh. The next day at the market we stocked up on produce and got our first taste of the much talked about ancestral medicinal food of tokush. Basically, it’s fermented potatoes that are kept underground in a bed of hay.
It’s a widely accepted medicine in Peru from the Incan tradition that has natural occurring penicillin from the fermented molds thriving on them. It’s prepared in a type of porridge that tastes somewhere in between a goats ass and a dirty potato but mainly closer to a goats ass. Needless to say Ernesto had to eat most of it as Annina withheld her gag reflex from the lady who made it.
Immune to all disease and burping like a billy goat we split outta town and into the mountains. On our stop for lunch we heard the tv news announce the beginning of the state of emergency announcement for mandatory quarantine in the whole country. It announced fifteen days of mandated lockdown that was to be enforced by the police starting tomorrow. We didn’t know how it was going to play out but we left town and on our pit stop at a gas station Annina casually asked for a ride from a pick-up that was heading up the mountain. They agreed and we loaded our bikes on the back. They dropped us off at the exact location of the trailhead to the national park we were going to be exploring for the next few days. This serendipitous encounter proved to be most valuable as we spent the next three days completely isolated in the majestic mountains of the cordillera blanca.
Up at this elevation (15,000 ft! On a road!) we stopped not only to take in the stunning views but also to catch our breath every 5 minutes due to lack of oxygen. Our saving grace was that we had stocked up on coca leaves to help with altitude sickness and we drank it in a tea we kept in our thermos. We camped next to a small pond and we were quickly enshrouded in clouds as nightfall came.
This was the coldest and windiest night we spent. We awoke to fog and frost covering our tent and waited until the mid morning for the clouds to clear. We made our way through the mountain roads of the national park, stopping to fill our water in glacial melt rivers.
We saw a lady picking hill side plants and she said she was picking wild valerian roots for anxiety. After making lunch at an intersection the rains picked up which soon turned to hail. Our hands were painfully numbing and we trudged along searching for any sign of respite.
We found a natural dugout structure made out of the trunks of an endemic plant species and waited it out for sometime while we reassessed and warmed our hands. This was the more visited section of the park and there was a roofed lookout structure for the surrounding marshland that was nearby.
We decided to set up there for the night, hanging all our wet clothes on the railings. We left the next day, late in the morning, after the sun had peaked out of the clouds and had allowed enough time for our clothes and tent to dry.
We bid farewell to this majestic landscape and bumped along on the corrugated gravel road.
We saw some wild grazing alpaca near a red lake before exiting the park parameters. Their faces unphased as we rolled by. Once we hit the pavement, the world was drastically different.
Not only because of the comparison from where we had been but also because it was a ghost town everywhere we looked. Every town we passed almost all business were closed and no cars were on the roads except for police and military. It was a feeling of gradual realization of the current situation. We saw people darting hurriedly into their doorways as they saw us foreign-neon-vest-clad cyclists pass by. We stopped in a town in hopes of finding a place for lunch. Nothing. We were told by a security guard that the local market was open so we bought produce and set up in the square to cook lunch. No sooner had we set up that a cop came by to warn us about the dangers of Covid and we told him we knew but we needed a place to eat lunch before we made our way. The local police squad car pulled up and took our info and asked where we were going. They said as soon as we finished we should leave. Weird vibes. So we continued on our way to the city of Huaraz where we had half-baked plans about whether to stay or to just pass through the town. But as soon as we entered the city there were multiple military and police checkpoints and we were followed till we were able to tell them where we were going. We had gotten a tip from a cyclist we had met on the way up who told us about a hostal so we made our way there, not knowing whether they were accepting people at the time. The whole experience was surreal. We rang the buzzer and someone came down to the door without opening it. We asked if they were accepting people, telling them the police were putting a lot of pressure on us to find a place to stay. They let us in and we were fully sanitized. Nobody at the hostal had left for three days so new people garnered a lot of attention. We felt a little spooked but after settling into our room we decompressed a bit and made dinner. This is where we would stay for the foreseeable future it seemed. At first we had dreams of escaping & going out into the wild, into the mountains and camping again but slowly we came to realize the situation in Peru was being handled very strictly and very seriously. There were about 30 of us all together at this hostal all quarantined together from 17 different nationalities. We soon became a family that learned to coexist together under the Peruvian lockdown. We had to organize together as the restrictions progressed. The police were told they could shoot anyone disobeying curfew. Those ignoring curfew would also be imprisoned. Curfew was from 8pm to 5am, then later changed to 6pm, to 4pm. Then then food market was only open from 6am to 11am. Then curfew changed to alternating days based on gender. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday only men were allowed out, then on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday it was women. We were told that the hostal we were at could only have 2 people assigned as permitted grocery shoppers. So we started buying groceries collectively in large groups and cooking communal dinners.
We made cooking schedules and also a class schedule, teaching skills that people knew from yoga and jiujitsu to sewing and dancing. Amidst the restrictions we found ways to keep each other in good spirits. The shared experience was a valuable connection and support.
We danced and wall twerked on an hourly basis in the kitchen, on the rooftops, & in the hallways. We heard each other’s stories, we laughed and we were weird.
Slowly people would catch wind from their embassies and people had to make the decision to stay or return home. So groups of people would leave by country. First two Germans, then the Brazilians, the Canadians, the French, the Swiss, & the Australians. Meanwhile we had heard absolutely nothing from our embassy for over two weeks. Then suddenly we were contacted by the embassy that repatriation flights were leaving the next day and that it was unclear as to when the next chance to leave the country would be. Basically, it was the last chance we had to return back to the US for awhile. A bus had been organized to go to Lima and get us on a flight by the pressure of a concerned persistent loving mother in Massachusetts whose son was stuck in the same city we were in (Thank you Debbie!). We got a little under 24 hours notice to confirm. Wide eyed, we struggled to make a decision. At first they told us we couldn’t bring the bikes on the plane, then they said we could if we packaged them properly but we had heard of people having to make the choice to ditch their bikes at the airbase or having to forgo their flight home. We were frazzled to say the least. We assessed our options and decided it was best, in this time of uncertainty, to take the flight home and leave the bikes behind to save us the trouble (cue sad violin music and soft nostalgic tears). I’m not crying... you’re crying. So we had one final night with the homies, shared one final meal. We said our goodbyes and packed our stuff and waved goodbye -for now- to our trusty companions, our pedaling two-wheeled steeds. Our hearts go out to the friendships made during quarantine.
Although our time was brief, it was filled with warmth. And we give a big shout out to the homies still there taking it day by day. We left in the pitch darkness of the morning to catch our bus. This was another surreal moment as we hadn’t left the hostal building in over two weeks. We hadn’t even touched the doorknob to the outside world. We had to have a permit to travel handy in case we were questioned by law enforcement. We boarded our bus and embarked towards Lima. The roads were barren and quiet. We were being escorted by police and, as we reached each delineation limit of municipalities, police would pass on the baton to the next squadron. We reached the capitol of Lima which was congested with people, lines all over the place, police questioning pedestrians. We reached the military base where all airplanes were landing and taking off from as the commercial airlines were shutdown and borders were officially closed. We got a briefing by military personnel and were processed in a hangar. We signed a promissory note that stated we would reimburse the government for our flight, we think it’s going to cost us $1,000 each. We waited around a bit till we were filed back into a bus for a brief time while awaiting takeoff. Finally we were given a slip with our seat assignment and were directed to board the aircraft. It was a relative haze flying back to Washington D.C. and being processed by immigration. The thing that caught us off guard was the general relaxedness at the airports. No temperature checks, no mandatory distancing, just a bunch of people gathered together with some with masks & some not. Weirdness. We got our bags, we passed through the sliding doors and met up with Annina’s mom Deane. We drove back to the humble abode where our reintroduction the the states began. We ate like it was thanksgiving everyday, plus some. We watched that tiger king series. We drank the booch and baked and baked and baked. We walked in the nearby forest and foraged for garlic mustard, wild onions, and chickweed.
We played home made board games and dressed up in characters.
Luckily, chilling is pretty chill. We are grateful for this time to process, to unravel, & to feel welcomed. Also we were introduced to the newest addition to the Dougherty household: Stella Bella, a yung puppy gurl German Shepherd, so mischievous and cantankerous.
She’s currently discovering the world through biting. She’s also a constant source of distress for her older brother, the tubby black cat: Blackster.
We enjoyed feeling at home and staying in a familial place.
After our self quarantine in Maryland we boarded a plane for the west coast where we reunited with Ernesto’s family after a year and a half of travel.
We’re laying low and making up for lost weight through intermittent snacking.
As our lifestyle pace has taken a significant shift we’re finding new ways to breathe with all this space for creativity and also trying not to get consumed by our phones and social media.
We’d love to stay connected with y’all and also support the Postal Service so hit us up with your address so we can pen pal it up or send you a postcard or a weird surprise package.
Here is the video update:
