Urubamba is a smaller cousin to nearby Cusco and is the jumping off point for people wanting to visit the Sacred Valley region of Peru. Just what we wanted to do. Again, thanks to our friend Ivan in Lima, we found ourselves at the excellent Hotel Amaru Valle. We took a day off for rest, laundry and a private tour of some of the local attractions including the Moray site, and the Salt Mines of Maras. It’s worth clicking on the links to read more about it and see some professional pictures. Ok, here is one Deby took of the Salt Mines, it was pretty cool to see but made me thirsty.

The big event was starting up the Sacred Valley on the motorcycles the next day.  From our hotel in Urubamba at 9,600 feet we immediately climbed to over 14,000 feet in the first 40 miles. I had to stop and take this picture looking back at the road we climbed up on. There are almost no words (at least for me) to describe how amazing this place is.

This is a pass called Abra de Malaga. Amazing. As we climbed closer to the top we approached the cloud layer, we could tell we were going to ride into the fog and loose some of the viewpoints.

We were always amazed at the small communities that manage to survive at these elevations. They mostly seem to tend to flocks of sheep, goats, llamas and alpacas.

At the top we hit the fog. At one point the road was particularly full of pot holes. It is common in these areas for there to be people with shovels filling in the holes with dirt and then asking for a tip. We’ve noticed about half the time people stop to give them a few coins. I had some soles (the local currency) in my pocket so I stopped to contribute.

Here is a short video in the fog.

By 1:30 we dropped into Quillabamba which was at a lowly 4,000 feet in elevation. It had warmed up considerably into the 80’s and sunshine. We were cooking hot in our cold weather riding gear after just being in fog and 40 degrees. We checked into Eco Hotel Villa Suites that had good reviews and was just a little bit outside of the town that was bigger than I expected for such a remote location.

It was a great hotel with a pool that we took advantage of, and our room was a corner room on the cliffside with wall to ceiling windows and a balcony. I snuck a picture of Deby with her morning coffee.

It was a really nice place along a raging river that lulled us to sleep at night. I thought the placement of the shower and tub in the middle of the room was interesting though.

There was a path down to the river where Deby exclaimed this was officially turning into a rock collecting trip! Oh boy….

We had a good nights sleep and were well rested to start the second half of our Sacred Valley journey. We would need it. It was a rough day.

We made a miscalculation, or, more correctly I did. Anxious to get started on our route through the valley we were fed, caffeinated on the bikes and riding by 8:30 AM, an early start for us. It was a cool morning and I assumed we would soon be riding up into the cool mountains so we started with our warmer jackets and shirts on. Wrong. It didn’t take long before we were riding in 80 degree heat along the valley floor. We stopped to peel a layer but it was not enough. We were hot and sweating.

It was a tough day’s ride. The road was “paved” which really meant occasional hard surfaces filled with potholes. More often it was gravel and mud.

It felt almost like we were back in the jungle. The vegetation was close to the road which made it very difficult to see oncoming traffic in the continuous sharp bends in the road.

And, there were water crossings…. dozens of water crossings. Many, many water crossings. In almost every switchback there was one, curving, slippery and rocky. It was hard work which made us hotter in the already hot sun. Here I took a picture at a short rest stop after one particularly hard crossing.

For some reason I don’t like to record going through the difficult places. Sort of like the saying “hold my beer and watch this.” We worked hard through 100 miles and almost 6 hours of hard riding before we started uphill towards a place called Abra de Lares.

As we climbed it cooled off, finally then the clouds came in, then the rain. It was hard rain and the dirt road turned into slippery mud as we tried to maneuver through the mountain switchbacks. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon when we came to the town of Lares and stopped under the overhang at a gas station. We decided we were done for the day.

Lares is a small mountain village of about 5,000 people where over 90% of the inhabitants speak Quechua as their native language. It’s known for the nearby hot springs destination. We considered continuing up a muddy track to the hot springs in the rain but according to Google there was not lodging there. We found out later that there was according to our son Jon who stayed there a few years prior. Darn. Still, we weren’t ready to go any further in the cold rain and mud after the tough day riding.

A Google search (how did our phones even work???) showed a place in town called Hostal Paraiso with good reviews. I punched it into Google maps and we navigated less than a mile to a narrow street where we saw the sign.

I took this picture later in the day after the rain stopped and we were out for a walk checking out the city. You can see the hotel sign on the right and some local traffic.

As we arrived in the downpour I stopped at the door and rang the bell. Our host, Roberto, opened the small person sized door and took one look at us dripping aliens and opened the bigger door and waved us into the courtyard where we parked the bikes.

He then produced a sheet of plastic and helped us cover the motorcycles before showing us to our room.

Second floor, courtyard view and a clothesline for hanging wet socks. 

Spacious interior with, most importantly, hot water in the shower!

Deby’s boots took in some water during some of the many crossings so we thought a hair dryer might help dry them out. It only sort of worked.

After warm showers for us, the rain showers outside stopped so we went out to explore the town. In the hours before sunset it seemed like most of the people (and animals) from the town had the same idea.

We saw this guy walking towards us with his sheep. Deby couldn’t resist and asked in her best Spanish if she could please take a photo. We were glad when he said si and she got this great shot.

We followed these guys down a dead end street where they were stopping to chew grass growing out of the wall before climbing the stairs to visit the main square.

Deby took this picture of some of the many Quechen locals.

We had a great evening walking around taking in the local life. As far as we could tell we were the only English speaking people around.

We ate at a local pollo restaurant before returning to our humble room. The room didn’t have heat, which we found was very normal, but there was a huge pile of thick felted wool blankets that kept us more than warm all night.

The rain came back with a vengeance at night and woke us periodically as we hunkered down under the toasty covers. We were glad for a good nights sleep.

Abra de Lares

The city of Lares was at just over 10,000 feet in elevation so it was cool in the morning while we got dressed in our damp riding gear and loaded up the bikes. We tried to take our time and wait for it to warm up slightly but we were rolling by 9:00 AM heading for Abra de Lares a somewhat famous mountain pass that was nearly 15,000 feet in elevation. Immediately after we found our way out of town the mostly dirt and sometimes paved road started climbing.

The previous night’s rain made the dirt sections muddy and slippery under our tires as we negotiated the many switchbacks up the mountain.

Here I actually made a short video of one of the water crossings. This one was nice because the waterfall was right next to the road. Never mind that if it was slippery and we slid to the left we would go over a cliff. All normal…..

This video was kind of cute riding through a heard of sheep and some llamas.

Below is the route from Google maps. Fun stuff.

And whoo hoo, soon we made it to the summit. I posted a sticker to prove I was there.

And took a few glamor shots with the motorcycles.

Time to continue on!

We dropped off the mountain and out of the clouds. Soon we were on nice paved roads with excellent switchbacks and fun riding. As we got closer to Cusco we came to a region that was very proud of their cuisine of Cuy.  Or, in English – Guinea Pig. There were signs everywhere with cute Guinea Pigs smiling and inviting passers by to stop in and eat them. Wow. I only took one picture.

It was only about 30 miles into the ride when we were at the lower elevations of around 10,000 feet and on wide two lane highways. We made a decision to skip the touristy city of Cusco and continue towards Puno on the shores of lake Titicaca. We had an idea to make the whole distance in one day but the weather had other ideas. As seems to be normal, about 2:00 in the afternoon the clouds started forming and soon we were in a thunderstorm with heavy rain and lightning. Arrg. We decided to call it a day and stopped in the not not not touristy city of Sicuani. The town was a mess in the rain. Many of the unpaved roads were deep mud. There was flooding in the main roadways and traffic was driving all over the place. At one time I went to cross a huge puddle in the road to find there were partially buried railroad tracks under the water grabbing my wheels trying to tip me over in the mud. I yelled to Deby in the helmet to NOT follow me as I managed to maintain control of the loaded down bike.

Google led us down a slick muddy pot hole filled road to Hotel de Turistas. Nobody was there. I walked around in the rain looking for someone when a woman came out and said she had a room. This place we didn’t like, but they had covered parking.

Nothing much to say about that night other than there was hot water and an unfriendly staff. I had to ask for soap and shampoo. Oh…. I can give you a bar of soap but you have to pay for the shampoo. Forget it. We were glad to get out of there the next day and head to Puno. We were hoping for a few rest days at a nice hotel where we could dry out and warm up.

Puno

The normal route from Sicuani would be to take the main highway straight south to Puno. Boring. A little research found an alternative route that paralleled through the mountains and through some nice small towns. That is what we did. It was an almost perfect day riding. We were high enough in elevation that it was cool but not too hot. There were puffy clouds but nothing threatening. The road was narrow, lightly travelled and relatively smooth. The scenery was changing as we moved further south into more wide open country.

There was abundant local industry in every town.

For some reason my Garmin GPS didn’t not want to route us on this road. Good thing I allowed the GURU app on my phone overrule Garmin. It seems like we have these battles every day. Sometimes I let Google maps be the tie breaker but that usually results in problems.

We arrived in Puno around 2:00 PM and started negotiating the crazy dense city traffic. The GPS units were doing battle showing us two different routes through the city to our hotel. Both units failed continuously but again asking us to turn on streets that did not exist or ride up or down stairways. I knew our hotel was on the far end of town so we were behind a line of tour busses and tourist vans going the general direction so we just followed them. It worked.

I have to say something about Puno, purely my opinion…. We’ve been here before, seven years ago when we were riding with our friend Michael. Puno is on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This is the favorite lake of every 10 year old boy and one of my best friends Jeff C,  texted me to say he just likes to say the name. I’m with you Jeff. However at 12,493 feet above sea level it is the highest navigable lake in the world. It has a maximum depth of almost 1,000 feet and an average depth of around 350 feet. It’s also a big lake, ranked as the worlds 24th largest by surface area. There, don’t you feel smarter about Titicaca already? Oh yea, about Puno.

Puno is a big city that is on the steep shore of the western edge of the lake. It’s home to a big university and has a bustling downtown section. That is another way to say it’s crowded with people and dense traffic. When we visited with Michael we battled traffic to the shore looked around and said, meh… and left. For me I would have skipped it except for one thing. Our friend Ivan said there was a really nice hotel on the shore of the lake a little out of town that he thought we would like. Ok, let’s give it a try.

After about a half hour of traffic (it seemed like an hour) we arrived at the Casa Andina Premium Puno hotel. Umm wow. It was an excellent hotel by any US standards and had everything we needed after our long trek in the mountains.

I only have one picture so far… here is the walkway to lake Titicaca from our hotel.

So we’re here for a few days, getting clean, dried, fed and rested. The hotel is at 12,500 feet in elevation and we can feel it walking and exerting ourselves, so evidently we still have some more acclimating to do.

More to come. We have some exciting things planned for the next few weeks as our two sons, Jon and Weston along with Jon’s wife Lindsey and Weston’s girlfriend Alaina are flying to LaPaz Bolivia to meet us.  We are super excited and looking forward to hanging out with them.

Thanks for following and love the comments.

Donn and Deby