This is a long post with a lot of pictures and adventure but I think it captures the essence of adventure travel in Peru. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to Ivan in Lima we had the route planned for the first few days, mostly. We loaded up our new looking motorcycles and spent most of an hour negotiating traffic getting out of Lima. We were getting to be experts at weaving between busses, trucks, tuk-tuks and other motorcycles. Eventually we were on the four lane super highway leading south away from the city. Ivan recommended travelling south until we could connect with PE-24 that turned up into the mountains. He didn’t lead us astray, the road was a beautiful narrow paved path climbing up to the 10,000 foot range.

We were following a wild river the whole route that was swollen from recent rains and flowing so fast we thought it would wash out the road in a few places.

As we climbed we were chasing the river through narrower and narrower canyons.

Again, amazing scenery as we climbed. The temperate started cooling which was a nice relief from the coastal heat. The more we climbed the cooler it got and we were gradually approaching the cloud layer that was starting to drip on our face shields.

The river was wild, I took a short video to show the force.

Another amazing road through the local geology.

Ivan recommended a place to stay on a bend in the road along the river Hotel Villarma. It’s worth clicking on the hotel link just to see their opening video of the area. Thanks Ivan, I don’t think we would ever have found this place without your recommendation.

We parked just as the rain started getting serious for the evening. We were at 10,000 feet ASL, as we looked up at the surrounding peaks we could see Condors soaring above us. They are these huge pre-historic looking birds.

We had a second floor suite with a balcony to watch the scenery while being out of the rain. Dinner was fresh fish….

The hotel had a small flock of Llamas that kept the grass trim and watched over the motorcycles.

We noticed Llama was also on the menu which is why we opted for the fish… In the morning Deby had one last goodbye before we were back on the road.

We must be acclimating to the elevation because we felt fine as we started the day at over 10,000 feet but the road just climbed higher from there. This time I took a bunch of pictures of the road and the canyon as we kept climbing and climbing.

We went through small towns hanging between the canyon walls.

Finally climbing out of the canyon and above the tree line almost into the cloud layer.

We came across this sign: Abra Negro Bueno….

Technically is translates to “Open, Black, Good.’ I needed to look it up in Mapcarta.com.

Abra Negro Bueno is a mountain pass in Yanacancha District , Chupaca Province , Junín Department and has an altitude of 4,640 meters.

Yep, we were way up there. 4,640 meters is 15,223 feet! Wow, that is really high up. I mean for comparison, our local mountain, Mt. Rainier is 14,410 feet. What’s even more amazing is that there are small villages at this altitude.

Higher and higher, soon the green was gone and we saw snow capped peaks.

We finally reached the top at 15,503 feet and we were both feeling light headed. It’s weird, like riding a motorcycle after a couple of beers, just a little bit happy and carefree. Probably we weren’t using our best judgement. That is why when we got to the top I thought I needed to remove one of my panniers to stand on tippy toed so I could put a sticker on the elevation sign.

It was all kinds of wobbly and Deby tried to brace me as I reached up to place the sticker just under the number 7.

Mission accomplished! From there it was another 50 miles downhill back to a more reasonable elevation of 10,000 feet for the night at Hotel Presidente in  Huancayo, another suggestion from Ivan. Thanks Ivan!

So far things were going according to plan following Ivan’s route and hotel suggestions until, well, stuff happens.

The next city recommended by Ivan was Ayacucho where he recommended a nice hotel. Looking at the map it looked like a long day so we looked online and found something that was a little closer,  the QURI WASI EcoLodge. Ummm, the pictures were nice but while it was on Google Maps, they didn’t have a website, they were not on any booking sites, they didn’t even have an address posted. All they had was a WhatsApp number so I sent a message. It seemed complicated, maybe because of the language barrier but they wanted 50% down to hold our reservation and it had to be a bank transfer, no credit cards. Ok, was this whole thing sounding flakey? I told him no. He replied that that was ok and he would have our room waiting. Hmmm, I suppose. He said to message him when we got to the city of Huanta.

I entered the city of Huanta into both my Garmin GPS and the Guru mapping app on my phone and they both agreed on “the shortest” route so off we went following the purple line.

In this case the shortest route followed a river through another valley. It was not too bad a road but the pavement ended and soon we were off and on gravel, mud and a little pavement. The river was maybe a little too close to the road.

Traffic was light which can often be a bad sign. Why are there no busses on this road? Were are the trucks? How long since we’ve seen a collectivo? Then when you see this in the middle of nowhere it is a bad sign.

Cars stopped is a bad sign. I rode ahead to see what was going on…. Nope, this wasn’t good.

We talked to some of the truck drivers, they weren’t going. We were told that we should wait for about two hours then the water would recede enough for us to get through. It was about noon so we sat and thought about it. Finally one of the bigger trucks decided to go for it while we watched. He made it but we could see how deep and long the flooded section was.

Hmmm, it was 40 miles back to the main highway that traversed over the top of the mountains. We turned around for what became a 80 mile detour.

Back to the main highway we spiraled up steep switchbacks to nearly 15,000 feet for the second day in a row.

This was the road in real life, you can see the river below and the road we started following into the flood.

Back into the cool and clouds.

Nice views.

The local industry.

Occasional long sections of loose or muddy roads.

Then we would round a summit and there was green, sun and nice pavement. Some of everything.

Up and down, round and round. It was a long way and we were getting tired.

So much for the nice clean motorcycles….

We were tired and finally arrived in Huanta at 5:30 PM after riding for almost 10 hours and 240 hard earned miles. I messaged our host at the Quri Wasi Lodge to let him know we were in Huanta like he asked us to do. I sent this picture so he knew where we were.

His response….

Forty minutes to the lodge??? Arrrrg. He sent a link to the location on Google maps. Reluctantly we were back on the bikes as it was starting to get dark. We arrived in near dark at the location and there was…… nothing. Not even a cell signal. We turned around and rode a short distance until I had enough signal for a WhatsApp message.

I mean really? Is this a hoax? Is this a real hotel? Arrg. I shot off a WhatsApp message and he asked where we were. I looked up and saw a huge white statue of Jesus above the roadway. I’m sure it’s a landmark and everyone knows it’s there. I responded “bajo el cristo blanco.” He asked if I could send a picture. What? I barely had enough signal for texting. It was really dark by now and we were ready to bag it and ride into town to stay somewhere else. Just then a guy pulls up in a nice SUV and said he was from Quri Wasi and to follow him. We were tired and not happy.

I took pictures on the way out that I will show in a bit but not into the lodge because it was dark. We followed him down the road a few hundred feet and he stopped to open a gate into a small parking area. Nothing looked close like a “lodge” or anything else just some old buildings. Is this for real? Where are we going? He said to park there and grab our stuff to follow him. “solo tres minutos.” Yea right.

He helped with one bag but Deby and I, in full riding gear were lugging our helmets, heavy seatback bags and we each had a pannier bag. We left the gate, walked down the highway, crossed a bridge where the road turned into a rutted single person path. Down the path that turned to mud, further down past some mud huts in total darkness. I had the foresight to grab my headlamp so we could see where we were going. Then we started lugging our stuff uphill on a cobblestone path. We were exhausted after the 10 hour day and now this. Not happy…..

Finally we came to an area that looked really nice as much as we could see in the dark and he showed us to our room on the second floor of a A-frame type cabin. It looked nice enough and we were glad to be there. Was there a restaurant??? Yes… but it’s closed. Deby and I looked at our host like we were ready to strangle him and now it was his turn to be afraid. He said we could order carryout from the nearby town. Oh no… no no no. We made it clear that HE could order carry out and have it delivered to our room. An hour later we had cold fried chicken with soggy French fries delivered. We ate some and threw most of it away. There was no cell signal and while they had wifi it didn’t actually work so we settled into reading our books before calling it an early night.

We slept well enough but really just wanted to get some breakfast and continue on. I took just a few pictures in the morning. We did have a nice second floor deck with a view but the wooden furniture was extremely uncomfortable to actually sit in.

We appeared to be the only guests at the lodge so they asked what time we would want breakfast so they could arrange with the staff. No problem, this was common in many places we stayed. So with an 8:00 breakfast call we made it to the restaurant.

Nobody was there when we arrived but they thoughtfully lowered the chairs at just one of the tables just for us.

We just were not very impressed and glad to pack up and leave. Here is the load out process with all of our junk. This time at least we had help with a wheel barrow.

Down the path…

Over rocks and what was mud the night before.

Through the neighborhood…

Onto the bridge.

Up to the highway… I mean really, how did they build a resort hotel without even a road???

Don’t worry, not much further… only three minutes!

Finally, inside the parking area we see the sign for the hotel laying on the ground.

They must really not want many customers. Why did we stay there??? All part of the adventure I suppose.

An even longer detour

We were just getting tired. Ivan recommended our next stop in the city of Andahuaylas and stay at the nice sounding Lux Boutique hotel. Ahhh, yes. Just what we needed.  Of course, with no cell signal or WiFi at the Quri Wasi Lodge I needed to depend on my Garmin and Guru offline maps for the route. Bad idea. Anxious to get going I plugged in the destination and both navigation devices agreed on the route so we blindly rode off. Unbeknownst to us both units had the same idea that we should take some back roads. With no cell signal or wifi I didn’t have a chance to double check the route on Google maps. Well, not that Google is all that smart but between three data bases usually we can figure something out.

After riding for three hours and 80 miles of narrow mountain roads we came to the small city of Vilcashuamán. Very odd place. We stopped in the main square and took pictures of this place.

I checked Google and there is no mention of this church or any history about it. We walked around a bit looking for a restaurant or somewhere to get some food. The best we could find was a snack stand for bottles of Coke and some stale chips that we mostly threw away. Then we checked the road going forward…. there wasn’t one.

Really? I should have took a picture but the road devolved into a two track rutted steep hill climb behind the church. We were just to tired….. We both were thinking about our friend Kevin after our Canada hill climb that almost did us in. He asked me why I didn’t turn around? Every instinct told us to turn around, wisely we did. This would be another 40 mile detour back to the main road.

Another sign of how tired we were getting is the lack of pictures. At one point before the turn around we needed to cross a pretty dangerous water crossing. I didn’t take a picture or video because somehow it seems like bad luck. It probably doesn’t really matter but so far so good. This crossing was bad. The water was deep and rushing really fast across a concrete slab put in place for just this purpose. I went through first and the water was flowing so hard that it was pushing my bike sideways towards the waterfall drop off only a few feet away. When it was Deby’s turn I told her to start up stream and aim for where I was standing knowing she would also drift with the water. It was tense but we both made it. There was a group of people standing around enjoying the entertainment of people trying to cross the river. Safely across I stopped and took two pictures of cars crossing to give an idea of what it was like.

It’s hard to get the idea of how fast this water was flowing.

Then, 80 miles later after the turn around we had to cross again. Uggg. This time I made a near fatal mistake. Notice the space between slabs of concrete? When I crossed the second time somehow both tires slid into that crack. Now, I was no longer being pushed sideways with a slide on the concrete but rather, my tires were stuck in the groove and the water was trying to knock me over! Some kind of instinct took over along with the saying, “when in doubt give it gas!” I gassed it, stood up on the pegs, and even more spray was kicking up and leaning me over. I made it across just in time and stopped to catch my breath. Deby was behind me listening to the whole thing and my running commentary and flurry of bad words. Then it was her turn. Not wanting to jinx her I left my camera off and suggested she avoid the rut and just let her bike gently slide towards the drop off. Hopefully she would get across before being pushed over the edge. She did and I thought I heard the local crowd cheering. Always glad to entertain.

Did I say we were tired? Clearly we weren’t going to make it to the nice sounding Lux Boutique hotel. We didn’t know where we were going to end up. We continued back up to 14,000 feet. Climbing on switchbacks up, dropping on switchbacks down. Pavement, dirt, rocks, busses, cows, sheep. Riding on constant high alert for any type of danger including oncoming suicide busses, rockslides, river crossings and washed out roads. My daily trip odometer was just shy of 200 miles and 8 hours since we started when we entered the non-descript town of Chincheros. Here is what Wikipedia says about it.

Chincheros is a town in southern Peru, capital of the province of the same name in the Apurímac Region. As of the last Census in 2012, Chincheros has a total population of 51,583. The inhabitants are mainly indigenous citizen of Chanka descent, primarily speaking Quechuan languages.Wikipedia

We were done for the day. There must be a hotel. We rode to the main square and looked around… nothing. We checked Google and there was mention of something on the main street. We stopped in front of a hotel that was locked up. I walked to another and that was closed and locked as well. Deby waited as I wandered the street in my helmet and riding gear like an astronaut from the moon. Dejected and starting to walk back to the bikes I looked across the street and saw this.

You have to have the experience to know what to look for…. in pink, “Hotel IBETH.’

Hey, and that looked like a gate and parking area. Oh yea that was it. I walked in with full body armor and helmet still on and without speaking actual words a kind woman ran over and opened the gate for us. She showed us to a second floor room with a private bath. There was a common area with a super comfortable lounge style sofas and even a posh recliner that I took advantage of. The shower had blasting hot water. We were really happy after that. One more thing. Wow, the iBeth hotel was CLEAN. When we arrived a crew was mopping, scrubbing and wiping down all the furniture. The tile floor was so clean it squeaked. A really nice hotel for a total cost of about $15USD.

After getting cleaned up we found a chicken shack restaurant nearby for some fried chicken and fries.

Here was our track for the day, another long day in the saddle with nearly 200 miles. We could really use a day off…

Showered and refreshed we took advantage of hotel iBeth’s excellent WiFi and worked on our plan. Ivan recommended what sounded like an excellent place in Urubamba just outside of Cusco. According to the navigation artificial wizards available to us it was too far to make in one day so we picked Abancay as the destination for the day.

Five hours and 144 miles later we arrived in Abancay. I sort of randomly picked a hotel that sounded good, Hotel Turistas de Abancay. I read some good reviews on Booking.com and decided to reserve a room. When it came time to confirm the program tried to upsell me, do I want to book the Presidential Suite for a price of $44 USD. Heck yea!

We arrived full of dirt and mud with filthy motorcycles and were shown the back gate for secure parking and escorted to the third floor presidential suite. It was pure luxury, with a huge bathroom, balcony with city view, sitting room with comfy overstuffed chairs and a soft king sized bed. Now we’re talking. I didn’t even take off my riding gear before walking back down the three flights of stairs and reserving a second night. Just what we needed a day off……

I can say I highly recommend Hotel Turistas de Abancay. Two days of rest and exploring the town, a nice break.

Next, more slowing down as we enter the more touristy areas around Cusco. We finally get caught up with Ivan’s recommendations and find ourselves at the Hotel Aranwa Valle Sagrado in Urubamba.

Whew! Glad to get caught up and more to come. Thanks for following!

Donn and Deby