It's all Going Downhill...

After a few weeks living in the Cusco apartment and doing spanish school, I was getting more than a bit stir crazy. Back at home, I went mountain biking almost every day, rain or shine, and being cooped up in the tiny apartment was driving me nuts. So, I asked my dad if I could go biking. He said ¨ok why not, there's supposed to be some good biking in Cusco.¨

We found a rental agency and asked them to take us mountain biking. A few days later, we walked down to their building and they loaded us into their van and drove us up a mountain partway. We got out and they gave us our bikes and a guide. I got a Santa Cruz nomad, and a fairly modern one at that. My dad got a Scott Genius ST.

Both are pretty nice and modern bikes, but they hadn't been serviced ever, and my shocks had never been tuned properly. Even with some fiddling on my part, I couldn't get them to absorb any hits. On both our bikes, the droppers didn't work. They also padded us as much as possible, because we were stupid gringos and couldn't possibly know anything about mountain biking. Only after I explained that I have to buy all of my own mountain biking gear and I am too poor to buy pads and therefore could not bike with them on, did he allow me to take them off. Also, they gave me a full face helmet that was way too big.

We started out on our ride and first thing a few steps down the first obstacle, which was a giant natural stone staircase, I ate dirt for the first time in months. After that we went on to a dirt access road for awhile and then we got on to a small uneven and very steep and technical dirt single track trail that the locals had built themselves. Eventually we arrived at a place that we would later learn was called Temple of the Moon which was an Incan site. My dad and the guide took a break while I rode up onto the site itself and played around on my bike for a little while. We did not learn that it was an Incan site until later when we visited with the whole family. After that we rode on for awhile on a fairly easy trail that had some jumps that for no apparent reason the locals had dug gigantic holes behind, one of which sent my dad over the handlebars for the first time. I had to skip all the jumps because the bike was so weird that I couldn't get it to work properly.

Towards the end of the first ride, we rode down a staircase (I rode down twice because my dad wanted a video) that the guide later explained was a staircase that the Incas had built and used. At one point my dad took a picture of me because my friend had requested it. Upon further inspection of the picture, we found out that the whole background of the picture was full of ancient Incan ruins. Our second ride was relatively uneventful but still lots of fun. At the end we rode down through the upper portion of Cusco in front of our apartment back down to the agency to return our bikes. 

If you ever visit peru, go mountain biking.

can you see the ruins behind me?