The thrilling Olleros Descent in Peru is one of the longest mountain bike downhills in the world, if not the longest. The day starts with a 3-hour drive from Lima into the Andes Mountains, ascending 11,000 feet on a remote, one-lane dirt road carved into the side of a mountain.
This descent certainly qualifies as one of the more unique days of mountain biking in the world. We start the day off with an ascent in the van to the town of San Pedro de Casta, about 7,000 feet up into the Andes from Lima. In San Pedro we switch our van for other, more traditional steeds: local horses. We hand off our bikes to a group of local teenagers who will push our bikes up the last 1,000 vertical feet while we take the horses on a thrilling, technical ascent to the Marcahuasi Stone Forest. The Stone Forest is an ancient geological formation where the rock has morphed over time into human-like formations, a place revered by locals for its spiritual powers.
This is one of the highest altitude descents in Peru, starting at 14,500 feet above sea level. You’ll notice the thin air when you first get out of the van, but you’ll soon acclimatize as you descend. The trail is fast and fun, with lots of little jumps and trail features that will get you airborne should you choose.
Some time in the 16th century as the Spanish were closing in, the Inca emperor Pachacutec retreated to this fortress town in the Sacred Valley, where he and his men managed to bravely hold off the Spanish before succumbing. Now, this village of 2000 is a quaint little town that hosts invaders of a different sort, bearing cameras instead of armour and speaking languages from around the planet. Last night, after dinner, we piled into our van and headed down a narrow dirt road to our hotel. Within minutes, we encountered a large bus reversing down the road straight at us. Our driver Edgar honked his horn. A man jumped out of the bus to aid the driver. Edgar put our van into reverse and floored it. Still the bus bore down on us. More honking, then... crunch. The sound of metal on metal as the giant behemoth of a bus slammed into our front end. 
Edgar jumped out of the van, yelling and screaming profanities in Spanish. The driver of the giant bus jumped out screaming his own profanities. Soon people started filtering out of the large red bus, prompting our group to follow suit. Stephen, our intrepid photojournalist, started snapping flash pictures right in people´s faces. Havoc followed suit, followed by cervesas from the back of our van. This calmed things down enough to allow the police time to come.
Yesterday we had a fantastic day of riding in the Sacred Valley, visiting Maras, the Inca site of Moray and the Inca salt mines. I got a flat halfway down the trail - my 6th so far, definitely a sign that it´s time for new tires - and had to walk out in the dark, which would have been a drag were it not for the billion stars and 20,000 foot mountains all around me.
