Monday March 11, 2013, Cusco Peru. Casa SanBlas Hotel, elevation 11,200 feet MSL.

Deby and I arrived in Cusco Saturday the 9th of March after a 304 mile ride through some of the highest points in the Andes. I know from my days as a licensed pilot that supplemental oxygen is required for pilots in non-pressurized cabins above 12,500 feet. I was thinking of that as we rode for hours at elevations above 14,000 feet. What were the symptoms I learned about in my “high altitude training” class? I was’t thinking clearly enough to remember them all….. let’s see….. a sense of euphoria? Check. Confusion? Check. Impaired visual acuity?  Check. Mild headache? Check. Perfect for riding on super twisty roads while enjoying the scenery and dodging cows, goats, llamas, and pigs and the normal road debris including potholes that would swallow a front wheel and sections where the road was just washed away. We had water crossings, washouts, mudslides to maneuver around and intermittent light showers to keep the road just a little slippery. It was a great day!

First, let me backtrack a little to fill in what we did since Lima. We left Lima on Thursday the 7th without the rest of the group. Dave, Keith and Jim decided they didn’t want to go to Cusco because they’ve been there already and they heard reports of rain and thunder showers. Deby and I had reservations to hike the Inca Trail on the 12th and needed to be there or loose a sizable deposit. We had been keeping in touch with Michael and he was on his way to Cusco to meet his fiance’ Dee Dee. Michael was a day ahead of us and had his own adventure that I will describe in a separate post, it was that good.

Alone for the first time, Deby and I headed south out of Lima back into a vast stretch of hot,  straight desert. I called it the Zona de Billboardas.

Huge billboards cluttered the road for about 50 miles, it was almost surreal.

Finally, the billboard frequency dropped off until we were back to the long, hot and straight road….. boring. 

As we neared out destination of Nazca we saw a lone tree with a couple of chairs and a small shack. We stopped to re-hydrate and had a great conversation with the family that lived there. They only spoke Spanish us only English, it was comical but enjoyable. 

Nazca is one of the famous tourist places to visit in Peru, it’s known for the famous Nazca lines. You can read about it HERE in Wikipedia. Some people think the lines were made by ancient aliens, you can read more about that HERE. Remember, the truth is out there……

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:

” The extremely dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well. The Nazca desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature around 25 °C (77 °F) all year round. The lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered and visible to the present day.”

What? Really? When we went through it was 95 degrees F with some of the strongest winds we’ve had on the trip. If that keeps up the Nazca lines will be blown away in no time.

Just outside of Nazca there is a spot where we climbed a tower to see some of the ancient patterns. 

It’s hard to tell from my pictures but here is a petroglyph of a bird. 

Probably instead of my pictures you will get a better idea by clicking HERE

We stayed in Nazca at a really nice hotel that was recommended by our Touratech Peru friend Ivan. We were extremely grateful for air conditioning that night.

In the morning we arranged a flight with a local tour operator to see the Nazca lines from the air. 

I took a bunch of pictures of the lines but none really turned out that well. Deby took a good one of me. 

Here is the surrounding countryside. 

The city of Nazca from above. 

The flight was 30 minutes in a Cessna 207, we had a pilot, co-pilot and four passengers so it was pretty full. As you might expect the flight consisted of a non-stop series of steep bank turns so passengers on each side of the plane could see the images. It seemed that women can’t stomach the turns as well as men. Deby was woozy all day after that flight.

Back on the ground we took a cab to the hotel for a late checkout and headed into the mountains. Immediately we started climbing out of the desert heat. Ahhhhh, the cool air felt  fantastic and the scenery almost instantly got more interesting. That’s the road in this picture winding up into the hills,

It’s a little hard to tell in the picture but that is a mountain completely covered with sand. 

We climbed from 2,000 feet in Nazca to 13,000 feet in the first 60 miles. After a relatively short 95 miles we arrived in the small town of Puquio about 3:30 in the afternoon. The sky was threatening rain and according to my map we were heading into a relatively remote area of Peru so we decided to stop for the night. The elevation at Puquio was 10,400 feet. Would my altitude sickness return?

Our hotel on the main square. Nothing to write home about but it only cost the equivalent of about $20.00 USD. 

This picture pretty much covers the whole room. 

We went for a short walk around the not very crowded town, found a bite to eat and called it a night. 

Friday we woke up at 6:00 AM, there was no coffee to be found so we took showers, that were thankfully hot, and packed up the bikes for an early departure, we were on the road by 7:15.

Immediately the road climbed still higher into the Andes. I took this picture looking back at the city of Puquio. 

The road kept climbing higher and higher, well into the 14,000 foot range before leveling off and winding eastward through remote high tundra. After an hour or so we came to this shack, the only thing for miles so we stopped to see about desayuno, preferably with huevos and cafe. 

I took this picture on the way out looking back to show how remote this outpost was. See it along the road?

When we stopped I recognized a few semi trucks that we had been passing off and on for the past two days parked in the parking lot. When we entered the door we were greeted with a chorus of Buenoss Dias amigos from the truck drivers. They were totally entertained that two motorcycles were traversing the mountain range and one of them was a woman! Even though they didn’t speak English we sensed that we were part of a special club of intrepid adventurers. They were really excited about our journey and the bikes and on the way out pulled out cameras for pictures of us. 

I felt a little better knowing these guys were behind us in their big trucks, I’m sure they would have stopped and done anything needed if we had a problem.

After paying our tab for a huge breakfast of rice, eggs and chicken the owner signaled for us to follow her to the kitchen. Hmmmm, what’s this about? She wanted to show off her baby llama.

And a pet falcon who had his own room!Wow, what a great stop. We left full of coffee and food and climbed even higher into the mountains with a great feeling about the day.

By 11:00 AM, we were at the highest point of the day. 

This breaks a record elevation for me on the motorcycle, previously held at Mt. Evans last summer in Colorado. This time we climbed to that elevation and stayed there! I checked my GPS log and we were over 10,000 feet for over 100 miles before dropping briefly into a 8,000 foot valley. The scenery was stunning, we rode past a series of high lakes. 

We found out later that Michael rode through this area the evening before as it was getting dark, while low on gas, broke because he lost his wallet and on a low tire that he had to fix along the road with a plug. Oh, and about here it started snowing.

We had a much better ride, Llamas were everywhere. 

One of the few small villages we rode through. 

Pictures really don’t do the beauty justice. 

As we neared Cusco there were dozens of water crossings, waterfalls, and evidence of many landslides across the road from the heavy rains over the past few weeks. 

Finally, towards the end of the day on the outskirts of Cusco we stop to check the map and make a plan to navigate the crazy city traffic. 

We dropped into the maze of roads and got close before finding a cab to lead us the last half mile through the narrow streets to the hotel. Best $10 Soles ever spent (about $4.00). I fell back in a section with not much traffic to take a picture of Deby up ahead. 

What you can’t tell from this picture his how steep an downhill grade it was. You can get a little feel by looking at the rooftops in the distance. Deby stopped at the point where we turn left into our hotel. Here is the view looking to the left towards the hotel lobby. This young girl was posing for pictures, awww, it was worth uno sol. 

Ahhh, a really nice place to call home for three nights. 

With a view of the city off our patio. 

Whew, finally in Cusco, we reconnected with Michael and Dee Dee and settled in for a couple of days to acclimate to the altitude, see the city and prepare for our four day hike to Machu Picchu.

Not all was perfect however, somewhere while riding into Cusco my rear shock blew a seal and leaked all the fluid out making it somewhat useless. Everything was closed on Sunday in Cusco so this morning (Monday) Michael and I set out to find a fix for my shock and a repair for his tire. I sent a couple of e-mails to our friend Ivan from Touratech in Lima to see if he had a shock. No, he could order one and it would be here in about 3 weeks. Hmmm, that wouldn’t work. (Thanks again Ivan, you really helped us out).

Fortunately, Cusco is home to Peru Moto Tours that is run by a well known rider in the ADV world, Alex. I found out his shop was only a few blocks from our hotel so this morning Michael and I walked over to see what Alex recommended. No problem, Alex said as he called his mechanic. We made an appointment to return with the bikes at 11:00 to meet with his mechanic and see what could be done. The mechanic, Richard, looked at the shock and seemed to think he could repair it. I told him we were leaving on a 4 day hike and would be back late Friday night. Not a problem, he would ride it to his shop and have it ready when I return.  I felt slightly strange giving him my keys and walking back to the hotel but I have complete confidence in the reputation of Peru Moto Tours and it’s owner. Alex sensed my slight apprehension and assured me that my bike was in good hands. That was good enough for me.

Michael’s bike was easier, all he had was a slow leak where he had plugged the tire on the side of the road (more later on that). The mechanic pulled off the tire and applied a patch to the inside. Good as new! Hopefully….

Tomorrow we leave for our four day hike up the the sacred site of Machu Picchu. I’ll blog about it when I get back and let you know what happens to my bike.  I’ll try to have time to convey Michael’s story before we leave.

Whew, long post today. Hope you enjoyed it.

Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂

Wednesday March 6th 2013, Lima Peru, Hotel Senorial

Tuesday was a leisurely start for the short ride into Lima. We immediately were back in the mountainous desert. On the way into Lima we rode past this encampment that we learned was basically a squatters camp on some ex-military property. 

It was a great road into the city. 

Before we knew it we were getting into famous Lima traffic. 

We managed to find the hotel on after about an hour of crazy riding through thick traffic with only a minimum of diversion (getting lost). At one point we saw what looked like a freeway going our direction and eagerly took the on ramp to get out of the gridlock. Somehow we missed the sign that motorcycles were not allowed on this road. We wondered why the cab drivers were all frantically waving at us. Eventually we came upon a traffic cop directing traffic who forcefully waved to us signally us to pull over. We have a rule…. we don’t stop for cops unless we see a gun…. so we kept going. Dave even waved back. I think we might now be wanted by the Lima police for evading arrest.

Shortly after checking into the hotel, we were met by Ivan Guerrero who owns the local Touratech franchise. Dave knew him through a connection and made arrangements for him to assist us getting tires on four of the bikes. Check his shop out on Facebook HERE. Ivan was over the top with his help coordinating new tires including letting us follow him through the crazy streets of Lima to the shop. If you are ever adventure riding in Lima be sure to look him up.

One of the things we needed to do was get a dent fixed in David’s rim, Ivan to the rescue. He made arrangements with a local wheel shop to repair the bend. Ivan drove us  to the shop which was behind a door in an unmarked blue wall. 

No problem, it can be fixed…. come on in!

Back at the hotel the group got together for some drinks and riding stories, Ivan is on the left. We were joined by his motorcycle-riding friend Ignacio (Nacho) who had a Mercy Corps connection with Dave. Thanks to them they strongly recommended we take the southern route into Cuzco because of heavy rain and muddy roads in the mountains.

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Wednesday Deby and I signed up for a double decker bus tour on the Turibus !El Bus de Lima! on Ivan’s recommendation. The most amazing thing was a stop at the convent of San Francisco and it’s Catacombs. Take a minute to check out the Wikipedia link, pretty amazing.

Under the church are the catacombs where it is estimated 70,000 people were buried. The bones were dismantled and arranged in “bins” in geometric formations. We weren’t allowed to take pictures so here are a few I found online.

A well with skulls and bones.

It was pretty creepy ducking through the dark catacombs under the church with stale air and low ceilings and then seeing row after row after row of bones organized in patterns.

In a previous blog comment, my friend Sal asked, “when was the last time you did something for the first time?”. That was yet another first for me!

Somebody from the bus took a picture of us. 

More ancient ruins in the heart of Lima.

I’m not sure how this bus maneuvered the traffic but the driver managed. 

We happened to be at the capitol for the changing of the guard. 

One last picture for today…. having fun. 

Tomorrow Deby and I are leaving the group to get a jump on the ride to Cuzco where we are meeting Michael and his fiance’ Dee Dee. The four of us have an appointment with a guide for a 3 day hike up Machu Picchu Dave, Keith and Jim will linger a little longer in Lima and meet us in Cuzco on the 15th.

New tires and ready to roll!

Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂

Tuesday March 5, 2013, Chancay Peru, Hostal Villa de Arneda

The driver arrived Saturday morning at 10:00 to take us on a day long tour of the Huaca del Sol temple and then to the ruins of Chan Chan, both of which were pre-Inca civilizations in Peru.  I took a bunch of pictures which are on my SmugMug Peru page. It was an amazing day.

Here is one of the temples at the Hauca del Sol site that has yet to be excavated because of lack of funds.

Everything was made of these mud bricks. 

Carved and painted. 

The hole in the wall is where Spanish grave robbers broke in and looted in the 1500’s.

Shards of ancient ruins still exist!

This hairless Peruvian dog was greeting tourists at the visitor center. 

Next we went to Chan Chan, this place was HUGE!

Only a small part of the ancient city has been excavated. The Trans-american Highway bisects the site and only the southern half is protected. On the northern half of the site we saw crops, a garbage dump and some houses being built.

We enjoyed the day at the ruins and learned and experienced way more than I have time to write about here. Take a few minutes to click on the links above, pretty interesting  stuff.

Back to the ride!

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Sunday morning we saddled up the moto’s and had a plan to explore Canyon del Pato. Do a search on You Tube for Canyon del Pato to see why we wanted to go there.

The day started with more desert riding. 

Then, after some difficulty finding the road because the two maps and the GPS did not agree if the road even existed, we headed into the canyon. 

After about 50 miles we stopped for a snack at the point where the pavement ends and the road heads up into the mountains through the difficult section of Duck Canyon. 

Into the canyon. 

This road was totally amazing, the views were larger than life and stunning. 

Sturdy bridges.

The rushing water of Rio Santa was nearly black.

My wimpy camera doesn’t even come close to capturing the majesty of this canyon. I almost just stopped taking pictures. 

Traffic was light with the occasional bus. Think about that bus going over that bridge….

Roughly 20 miles into the dirt section we see an adventure bike riding towards us. I can tell from the distance it’s a big BMW with panniers, as it gets closer I notice it’s yellow and as it gets even closer the rider has a red helmet. Could it be?????  Sure enough it’s our 6th rider Michael riding towards us! Michael left us a few days earlier to get to Cusco a few days before us.

What was he doing here? Why was he going the wrong direction? We found out that he got an early start into the canyon and rode almost to the end where it connects with the main road (3) and a bridge had been washed out so he had to turn around. Bummer! The good news was that his misadventure probably saved us 4 hours of riding the dirt road in and out. The bad news was that we missed the best part of Duck Canyon that was beyond the bridge. Personally, I was really disappointed because Canyon del Pato was high on my list of things not to miss in Peru.

Dejected we rode with Michael to the port town of Chimbote where he had stayed the night before and checked into the same hotel. 

It was an interesting building that was easily 100 years old, I tried to find some history of the structure but came up blank. Pretty basic room. 

Had a nice view of the sunset out the window. 

We took advantage of the open window to dry some laundry. 

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Monday we needed to make tracks towards Lima where we had appointments to get new tires on the bikes. After a leisurely start we left the port city and were back in the desert. I was expecting another relatively boring stretch of desert road but was surprised to discover some of the best riding of the trip through sand covered technicolor mountains. Again, I took pictures but my wimpy camera absolutely did not come close to capturing the colors. There was SAND of every color in the rainbow, how can that be?

Ok, I just went back to look at my pictures, none capture the true beauty so I only picked two to post here. I would go back and ride that road anytime.

We ended the night in the small town of Chancay at the Hostal Villa De Arnedo. A nice place right on the town square. We went for an evening walk and I was kicking myself for not bringing my camera. They have a street market that was one of the most amazing I’ve seen, blocks and blocks of booths with everything you could imagine for sale.  Seriously, WalMart has nothing on this place.

Today, off to Lima!

Thanks for reading. Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂

Monday March 4th, 2013, Chimbote, Peru, Hotel Gran Chimu

Why does this seem to be a familiar picture from all my rides? Our plan for Friday was to make a run south through more desert and stop near the ruins of Chan Chan. We planned on an 8:00 AM launch and met on time at the garage under the hotel where we securely parked the bikes. I looked at mine and the front tire was flat! It was so low that the tire came off the rim. I looked carefully and couldn’t find any nails or punctures so I considered just pumping it up and going. Then I remembered we had a day of more hot, straight, fast riding through the Peruvian desert and decided not to chance having another flat along the road so I put in a new inner tube I had been carrying. The whole process took about 45 minutes and we were on our way.

Back on the road with Deby close behind.

For some reason the desert cities in Peru reminded me of the scene from Star Wars when the were in the rough city looking for transport. I kept hearing the words “these aren’t the drones you are looking for” running through my head.

Long, straight, hot, fast….

Here’s Keith passing two cars and a overloaded truck tucked behind another truck he was about to pass. All Normal.

Here’s Deby going around the truck. 

Every so often we came to a town that was full of these little put put cart/motorcycle things. We eventually found ourselves in the beach resort town of  Huanchaco, at the Hotel Cabalito de Totora.

Deby and I immediately stripped off our hot riding gear and walked across the street to the beach. 

Like beaches anywhere there were plenty of people and kids playing in the water. 

Did something wash ashore? No, it’s our riding partner Jim soaking up some rays. 

Back at the hotel, Jim had arranged a van and driver to take us to the nearby ruins of Chan Chan for the next day so we decided to stay a second night to allow the complete day for exploring. More on that next…..

Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂

Saturday, March 3, 2013, Huanchaco, Peru, Hotel Cabalito de Totora

Did I mention that premium gas in Ecuador was $2.00 USD per gallon? Regular was around $1.50, when was the last time you saw that? The currency is the US dollar so we were in familiar territory with the money. We have to go back. Ecuador seemed clean without trash scattered all over the roads, was beautiful, the people were exceedingly friendly and cheap gas! We stopped at two gas stations to fill be bikes with cheap gas before the border and they were both closed down, hmmm, wonder why.

The first order of business was to traverse the border. Again, it seemed to take longer than it should of but we were getting used to it. It took about 3 hours to process the 5 motorcycles, I suppose that is roughly about on half hour per bike which wouldn’t be bad but we have to wait for the whole group to get processed. It was about 95 degrees and we were standing in the direct sun waiting our turn with the Aduana man. One person at a time was allowed in the air conditioned room where we were processed. I was too hot to take any pictures.

It was a different experience at this crossing, there were no “fixers”, money changers or other pests to swarm around us, it was all business. The aduana office was actually a converted shipping container. We had gotten used to utilizing the money changers to get local currency and without those we entered Peru with no money. It wasn’t long before we came to a toll booth, great, no cash. I slowed down to put David in the front to negotiate our dilemma since he speaks reasonable Spanish. We arrived at the booth to find it vacant, whew! As it turns out all the toll booths we’ve come to so far were closed. I’m not sure why but I’m glad.

Northern Peru is night and day different from Ecuador. Without seeing prices we knew gas was much more expensive because of the amount of motorcycles everywhere. Trash and garbage dumps lined the roads and horse/donkey drawn carts re-appeared. We dropped into the planes of the Peruvian desert and it got hot, flat and sticky. In each town we tried to locate a bank with an ATM with no luck. Most of the towns didn’t seem very inviting and we immediately drew crowds whenever we stopped.

Finally it was getting late in the day and we came to the farming town of Sullana. Click on the link for the Wikipedia entry for the city, not much to talk about. With no cash and low on fuel we stopped and three different stations to see if they accepted charge cards, the answer each time was no. The funny thing is each station told us the next station accepted charge cards which of course they didn’t.

Giving up on gas, and being that it was late in the day we then started asking about hotels. Yes, there is a good on across the street. Ahem….

Here is a picture of the hotel, looks nice right?

We turned our heads and saw this.

Zoomed out it looked like this.

We all knew immediately what was going on and started laughing. It had to happen eventually, we were tired, hungry, hot, broke and it was getting dark. What better time to check into an Auto Hotel.

What is an Auto Hotel you may ask???? Look at the pictures again and I’ll attempt to explain. An automobile pulls into a large walled compound and is greeted by an armed guard. The guard tells the driver which “garage” to pull into and the door is shut behind him for total privacy. Nobody can see the driver or car and it’s hidden from view for the duration of the stay. The garage connects directly to the room entrance. The rooms are typically rented by the hour and evidently (here’s where I have no direct experience) accompaniment can be arranged.

Now, having explained all that, it’s well known in the Adventure Motorcycle community that Auto Hotels are some of the best places to stay because they are usually very clean, have secure parking and are pretty inexpensive. In our case that was all true and there was even hot water in the shower. I’m guessing the hotel we were at had around 30 rooms and it was hard to gauge how full they were but there seemed to be a relatively steady stream of traffic. We paid for a complete nights lodging and jumped on our bikes for a trip into downtown Sullana looking for a bank.

We maneuvered in the chaotic rush hour traffic (isn’t it always rush hour?) and somehow I found a main street with banks on either side. I was about to pull over when a motorcycle cop was behind me with his lights on waving me over. Yikes.

Somehow I neglected to notice that I was on a street that was off limits to motorcycles. Really? In my pathetic Spanish I managed a lo siento and told him we needed some dinero. About that time the rest of the group pulled up compounding our lawlessness and parked. The cop gave up and ended up having a good laugh about our haphazard group and let us park for a while.

Flush with Peruvian Sol’s we found a restaurant near the town square and had an excellent night enjoying the activities in the town center. It’s so hot that during the day that it seemed like whole town came out in the cool evening to enjoy the town square activities. Well after dark we found our way back to the Auto Hotel on the edge of town and turned in for a good night’s sleep.

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Thursday the 28th, into the desert.

Flat, hot, windy, sand, hot, straight, hot and long stretches dodging trucks, that pretty much summed up Thursday.

I took a few pictures. 

It was pretty impressive in it’s own way, what a change from Ecuador! 

Deby close behind. 

Eventually we found ourselves in Pimentel Peru. We picked Pimentel because it’s on the beach and we thought we would find a nice hotel.

Here it is, Pimentel’s finest, up the dirt road to the right. 

The cost was about $35 USD so I suppose we got what we paid for. It was pretty basic but seemed clean and even had hot water! Deby and I splurged for a “vista” room on the corner. That is our room on the corner just under the wire. 

Hey, not every place we stay is a luxury hotel. 

We were there early enough for a walk on the beach which was really fun. The whole beach was surrounded by fog which seemed odd until we put our feet in the water, burrrrr, it was freezing cold. I wouldn’t have expected that! We learned there is a cold current from the antarctic that runs up the northern coast of Peru and keeps the water cold all year round. The cool water clashes with the hot air inland and forms a constant cloud of cool fog along the beach. The water and cool air attracts masses of people from the nearby city to escape the heat. Walking the beach it was clear this was a local’s beach and everyone was down for the day. Must be, there was only one hotel to the best of our knowledge and it didn’t seem very full.

We got our first look at these Peruvian boats, they were everywhere.

Here are a few more pictures from the beach.

Kids harassing a pelican. 

Local catch. 

A very popular spot for sure. 

After dinner and some time in the lobby of the hotel posting my last ride report I took one last picture and fell asleep with hopes that my sweat soaked socks would be dry in the morning.

I started a SmugMug gallery for my Peru Pictures, the link is HERE. Click it to see the latest pictures.

You can follow us real time on SpotWalla HERE.

I’ll try to get another post in later tonight or maybe tomorrow. Thanks for following and we love the comments even if I don’t get back to everyone.

Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂