Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

I am dropped off in Pozuzo after dark, dump my bags on the corner and reassemble in front of a vaguely curious audience. I cruised around the center which took all of 10 minutes to do twice. I was silly exhausted jacked up on sugar and just needed a place to crash. The Hotel Chela with a 10 soles room, adjacent store and restaurant did the trick - access to cold beer, food, and soap. What does Pozuzo look like? Who cares . . . I hobble around town for the first two days to find food then return to my room for a nap. When I talk with locals some inevitably ask, "sprechen sie Deutsch?," and seem vaguely disappointed especially after explaining my family heritage is actually Scottish, Finnish, Quebecois - to them a typical American mutt. To me it is weird they seem so German . . . after all they arrived here 150 years ago. Definitely not like the Spaniards who shacked up upon arrival . . . much to the chagrin of the Spanish crown that kept losing its conquistadors to the local ladies. . . . but give them another 300 years I suppose. The next question is, "why are you here?" Hard not to be existential, "por que no"? I am just a tourist on a bike that is not prospecting for gold or looking for land to start a cattle ranch. However, I am told there are pretty young ladies, cheap land, and you can buy a young bull for $100. I get the distinct impression if I said hook me up - my woman and I would be in the middle of the selva with a chainsaw and attending the next cattle auction. Evidently, if you continue downriver farther into the selva towards Codogo del Pozuzo land is very available tothe industrious.Next is, "how did you get here"? This one I always have to explain two or three times. Evidently, nobody arrives via Panao, Pampa Wasi, Piura, Buena Vista and I have a pretty good idea why, but once understood they are impressed and call my crazy . . . fair enough.
The ladies running Chela are kind and flirty, I just adore confident flirty older woman, and they let me use the basin on the roof to clean my clothes. However, with the weekend arrives a horde of youth from Lima and I have to move (for sanity) and relocate to a room in El Mango (10 soles). The owners are quite Germanic and also have tourists from Lima but they are not drunk 16 year olds. While there I finished reading all the critical essays in the back of Anna Karenina and left the book for the next book starved English reader. The owner is an older gentleman that lets me use his tools on my bike and his taciturn sons eventually warm up. During a lunch of German inspired cuisine he entertains the guests on a concertina playing traditional Tirolean songs, then all the ladies line up to have their pictures taken with him. I feel much less the tourist all of a sudden . . . actually some Limenos think the guy writing on his lap top beer in hand is a Pozuzino and I freely dispense directions around town. I am glad to see Pozuzo and it is a different place that still feels like a frontier where with a little hard work you can cut out something of your own - obviously the residents of Pozuzo feel the same way.
Top of my errand list after the sleeping and eating is to find a good cobbler and there is only one. Thankfully he is very good. I have the sole and rand of my shoes reattached, the inside of my heel cups relined with leather, and he repairs a tear in the toe box from the inside that caused one hell of a bloody blister. Later, on my way to Satipo the buckle on my cycling shoe blew as well and there is no replacing that but zip ties are amazing things!


I should note that many of the photos in the post are from the local museum and people actually wear jeans and t shirts. Pozuzo has a small tourist contingent that appears on weekends from Lima and tourist groups from Germany. They seem to stick around for two days to see the museum, the church, and sample the excellent German inspired food - the only thing Pozuzo lacks is a decent German brewery.

After four days of relative inactivity I was getting bored and ready to move on. I packed my things up and headed out of town. I stopped on the edge of town to fill my gas bottle and was immediately approached by a couple middle aged guys. The usual questions and when I explained my route to Pozuzo they were positively convinced that I was the first to do such a thing. He made a point of recording my name, age, route etc. . . and said he would enter it into the annals of Pozuzo. They convinced me to stick around for the local fiesta with rodeo. I am easily swayed by more weinerschnitzel, I still felt tapped out, and any river crossings promised to be high from the previous days deluge.

So i checked back into my old room at the Mango. The fiesta is in celebration of cattle and this new statue was erected in the main square for the occasion. I actually watched the statue get trucked into town a couple days earlier while I was sitting around with other curious folks. The statue pretty much says it all . . . cattle and hard work clearing land. The rodeo itself was men and boys on horses trying to spear ribbons onto a small hand held peg at a gallop. Interesting for a short while but I noticed that most people were taking the time to get drunk and visit with their neighbors while the rodeo was incidental. However, they were playing country music in English which was refreshing if only because I actually knew the songs and understood all the words.









Somehow when I received attention for the route I took my bike through - stretching it to say ride - I feel a little sheepish. I just followed a dotted line on a map that intrigued me for a decade. Not something many are going to want to repeat . . . except me, of course, but next time on my rigid single speed 29'er with a light pack and more food.

In the end I am just passing through.