3N route, Northern highlands of Peru. Cajamarca, Cutervo, Huancabamba.
Country
Cajamarca is a medium size city located at an elevation of 2750. It has many beautiful churches with plenty of influence of the Incan architecture. This city has a lot of Incan history.
Cajamarca is the last important city at the north of Peru and is located about 700km away of the Ecuadorian border. This city is the connection between the northern Amazon region, the central highlands and the three main cities of the northern Peruvian coast: Piura, Chiclayo and Trujillo.
Our plan was to go North and enjoy the roads that are not commonly used by travelers and overlanders, in fact, we did not met anybody on the road. The second part of the plan was to find an uncommon border to get back to Ecuador.
On the first day we took the main road 3N up to the town of Cutervo. Fourty km to the north of Cajamarca there is a place called Granja Porcón, it is a very well-known and interesting communitarian farm with all kinds of agricultural production and touristic facilities. http://www.granjaporcon.org.pe/
Ten kilometer further, there is a gravel deviation to a group of dozens of small lakes, very beautiful scenery, I think this roads takes you out to the same main road, we did not go far enough.
Eight kilometer after Chota there is a 40km gravel road at the right, it is supposed to be 3NC according to OSM, anyway it is a “shortcut” that we enjoyed a lot, there are many deviations and alternate paths on this road, you will enjoy getting partially lost, at the end you will get to Cutervo. The normal paved road is longer and obviously faster.
Cutervo is okay, we found an acceptable hotel (Megadi) with a closed parking with roof and enough height for any rig or overlander truck.
Next day we took the road to Huancabamba, it is very nice… partially paved, two lane up to Hualapampa and then 1 or 1 ½ lane curvy paved road, not recommended at all for people with vertigo.
Lots of fun, in this road and in most of all the roads that we have ridden during this trip, there is almost no traffic but, you never know when and how you are going to find a truck coming in the other direction, we recommend absolute RESPECT TO YOUR LIFE while riding or driving.
Even though, every place and their inhabitants deserve all our respect, I feel a bit sad to tell you that Huancabamba is not a nice town nor a safe town. There are 290km from Cutervo to here, more than enough distance for one day on this type of roads. This should be your place to spend the night.
The northern highlands of Peru are not as high as the central and southern highlands, in this area on the roads you get up to 3500 to 3700m, not more, at the south, crossing Peru will take you above 4.500m for long time, we call it the Altiplano.
