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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From La Unión it runs 511 km to La Unión; allow about 10 h 43 of riding. The stops in between: Segment Ayash - Taulli, Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana and back through Segment Ayash - Taulli. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 Ayash - Taulli.
East of the Cordillera Blanca, the Andes break into a jumble of high plateaus and deep valleys draining toward the Marañón and the Amazon, and the Inca road ran through this country on its way from Cusco to Quito. The Ayash to Taulli segment is a stretch of the Qhapaq Ñan in the highlands of Huánuco, near the town of Llata, part of the UNESCO-listed Andean road system. It runs through the puna, the high grassland above the tree line, where the wind blows cold and the views stretch for miles over ridges and valleys. In places, the original road survives, with stone paving, retaining walls, steps and drainage channels, and walking a section of it is the best way to understand how the Incas moved people and goods across this vertical landscape.
Read the complete Segment Ayash - Taulli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Ayash - Taulli comes up about 96 km into the recorded legs. Next is Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana.
Five hundred years ago a runner could have passed this spot carrying a knotted quipu or a message for the governor in Huánuco Pampa, handing it on at the next post in a relay that crossed the Andes faster than a horse. This short stretch, catalogued as segment QÑ-HH-051 near Inca Misana, is a fragment of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road system that linked an empire from southern Colombia to central Chile. The whole network was listed by UNESCO in 2014 across six countries, and what you find on the ground here in Ancash is often modest: a line of stone paving, a retaining wall, a set of steps cut into a slope, running across high grassland with the mountains standing all around.
Read the complete Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 254 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana. Next is back through Segment Ayash - Taulli.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Ayash - Taulli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Ayash - Taulli, 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.
Back at Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash. That is the ride.
Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash → Segment Ayash - Taulli is 96 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Ayash - Taulli → Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana is 158 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana → back through Segment Ayash - Taulli is 143 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Segment Ayash - Taulli → Segment Huánuco Pampa - Huaricashash is 113 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.