During our stay in Huanchaco we met an impressive woman who’d been traveling the world for over 20 years…on a bicycle. Annie had many, many stories to tell and it was a pleasure to get to meet someone who had experienced such epic travels.
Annie shared a lot with us, but one thing we wanted to share with you is the Casa de Ciclistas Amistad in Trujillo, Peru.
Lucho D’Angelo and his family have been hosting cyclists in their home since 1985. During this time, they have hosted over 800 cyclists! He is an elite level racer in Peru, helps organize races, and holds cycling education classes for local children year round. While he opens his home and his heart to all cyclists, he was especially excited to receive two racers so that we could swap race stories!
In 2000, his friends and people who had stayed with him in the past put together a fund to send him to the Tour de France. He gave us a page by page play back while we looked through all his photos. What an incredible experience! He was able to ride in team cars and stayed with all sorts of teams throughout the race. At several events, he was Jean-Marie Leblanc’s personal guest. He was even recognized at the “end of the tour banquet” reception as the first Peruvian (that they knew of at least) to have traveled the whole race in the race caravan!
His guest books were amazing and showed people from all over the world who had traveled through Peru on or with bicycles….well cycling machines I supposed I’d have to say to be correct. While most were traditional touring or mountain bikes there were also a few trikes, tandems, modified bikes for people with disabilities, everything! Several people were even hauling their pets along for the trip…and I’m talking large dogs here, not goldfish! It was a very inspiring encounter. Hopefully someday we will be traveling by bike, not just with bikes!
We went with Lucho to one of his bike-ed classes. He holds free classes twice a week, year round for anyone who is interested. Most of the kids were super enthusiastic! Right now he holds them in a local park, which is far from ideal as the kids have to negotiate busy traffic on the streets to cross town and there’s no real open space for them to ride fast. Lucho does the best with what he’s got though and is teaching them some great stupid human tricks — weaving between markers, balancing, etc. One of the kids challenged Ben to a foot-down contest (basically you have to balance and the first to put a foot down looses) and of course Ben accepted. It went well for a while, but the kid was good and Ben was clipped in. They both started to wobble and Ben over corrected, couldn’t unclip fast enough, and came down hard on his knee! Nothing major, but he was sore for a few days.
Our other adventure with Lucho was the day before we left for Lima. Here in Peru, bus companies like to take all of your money. They charge between s/.5 and s/.20 (about $1.50-$6) per bike. In Ecuador it was free… Anyway, they rip you off and this is a heated topic anytime you come across a bike enthusiast in Peru. Lucho races all over Peru and, while he is as close to being a professional cyclist as one can be in Peru, he still has to cover all his own race costs. This being the case, racers in Peru have come up with an ingenious little idea to protect one’s bike and rip off the bus companies at the same time. Basically we made big bags that one can slip a bike into after taking off the wheels. You lock it and then the bus companies will treat it as “luggage” instead of a bicycle. With 10 hours before we had to leave, we decided we wanted one of these contraptions and Lucho set to work to get it done. We bought material and zippers in the market and then spent a half hour finding an upholstery guy who would make them for us on the spot. All in all, they turned out to be about $20 a piece and a funny day of running around Trujillo.
Thank you Lucho and family for the bed, the great stories, and all the help! Hopefully we’ll see you again soon!
Casa de ciclistas en Zhud – Cañar – Ecuador