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.
From Puños it runs 999 km to Puños; allow about 17 h 14 of riding. It goes by way of Chavin, Segment Cajay - Huaritambo, Huascarán National Park and Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana. 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.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 47 km this is Peru Huascaran Circuit, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 is where the day begins. 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.
Chavín comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 245 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment Cajay - Huaritambo. 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, about halfway. 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.
Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana sits at 500 km, about halfway. Next is back through Huascarán National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Huascarán National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Huascarán National Park comes up about 635 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 748 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo. 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.
back through Chavin, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 999 km.
Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata → Chavin is 100 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 112 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Huascarán National Park → Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana is 139 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment QÑ-HH-051 - Inca Misana → back through Huascarán National Park is 139 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Huascarán National Park → back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo is 112 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Cajay - Huaritambo → back through Chavin is 145 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chavin → Segment Taparaku - Tambo de Llata is 100 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.