CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
867 km from La Unión to La Unión, about 14 h 57 of riding. It goes by way of Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata, Chavin, Segment Cajay - Huaritambo and Huascarán National Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,400 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Three and a half thousand metres up, on the cold grass plateau of the Peruvian Andes, the Incas built a city that was never meant to be a home. Huánuco Pampa was an administrative centre, a stop on the great road between Cusco and Quito, with a vast central plaza, an ushnu platform from which officials presided over ceremonies, rows of long halls for visitors and hundreds of storehouses lined up on the hillsides. The people who staffed it were moved in from elsewhere, and the labour they owed was paid in cloth, maize and llama wool that fed the road and the army.
Read the complete Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash is where the day begins. Next is Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata.
The Qhapaq Ñan, the great road network of the Inca Empire, ran for thousands of kilometres along the Andes, linking the capital Cusco with the far corners of an empire that stretched from Colombia to Chile. In the department of Huánuco, in central Peru, one of its best preserved sections crosses the high puna between the administrative centre of Huánuco Pampa and the valleys to the north, and the segment between Taparaku and the Tambo de Llata is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 2014.
Read the complete Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata comes up about 99 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chavin.
Three thousand years ago, priests at Chavín de Huántar led pilgrims into a labyrinth of dark stone galleries beneath a temple, where at the heart of the maze stood a carved granite pillar, the Lanzón, depicting a fanged deity. The Chavín culture, flourishing between roughly 1200 and 500 BC, spread its art and religious ideas across much of the Andes, and its temple complex in the Mosna valley is one of the most important archaeological sites in South America, inscribed by UNESCO in 1985. Look out for the cabezas clavas, carved stone heads that once projected from the temple walls, showing a transformation from human to jaguar or bird.
Read the complete Chavin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 193 km into the recorded legs you reach Chavin. Next is Segment Cajay - Huaritambo.
Few riders ever get this far into the Conchucos, the deep valleys on the eastern side of Peru's Cordillera Blanca, and that is half the reason to come. The label refers to a stretch of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road network that ran for thousands of kilometres along the Andes, here crossing between the hamlet of Cajay and Huaritambo, whose name preserves the word tambo, the waystation where runners and travellers on imperial business could rest, eat and change loads. Parts of the paving, retaining walls and drainage channels still survive on slopes where it is hard to imagine anyone building anything at all.
Read the complete Segment Cajay - Huaritambo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Cajay - Huaritambo, about halfway. Next is Huascarán National Park.
The Cordillera Blanca is the highest tropical mountain range on earth, and Huascarán National Park protects most of it: dozens of peaks over six thousand metres, hundreds of glaciers and glacial lakes, and high valleys of grass and rock. Huascarán itself, at 6,768 metres, is the highest mountain in Peru, a twin-summited giant of ice and snow that dominates the Callejón de Huaylas, the long valley of the Santa river below. The park was listed by UNESCO in 1985, and it is one of the great mountain landscapes of the world.
Read the complete Huascarán National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Huascarán National Park sits at 435 km, about halfway. Next is back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Cajay - Huaritambo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo comes up about 537 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Chavin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chavin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 672 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Chavin. Next is back through Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata, late in the day. Next is Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 867 km.
Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash → Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata is 99 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata → Chavin is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chavín → Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → Huascarán National Park is 105 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Huascarán National Park → back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 105 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → back through Chavin is 135 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chavin → back through Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata → Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash is 99 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.