Peru

guess where¿?¿?¿

May 25th - After a combination of a bike ride, train ride and hike we arrived at Machu Picchu at 6 in the morning and enjoyed a gorgeous sun rise over the old Inca ruins without the hordes that arrived around 11. By then we had hiked to the top of Wayna Picchu (you can see the mountain behind Machu Picchu in our photo)..a good workout and we ended the day by hiking back down the mountain. Checked out a few more Inca ruins (in other words piles of square rocks!) before bidding Cusco and its hordes of tourists (and mega grease chicken and fries meals for about $1.50 US) goodbye. Its on the road Sur and onto the high Pampas plains en route to Canyon del Colca. An overnight "bush camp" at over 4300 m was a little cold (our 2 lit water container froze solid!) and the crusty Hondogs decided not to start in the morning until I tossed the camp stove under their motors and got that Peruvian Crude 20-50 lightened up! Some spectacular scenery en route to the Canyon del Colca which is supposed to be the second deepest canyon in the world (the deepest is app. 10 KM south of Colca and is 25 m deeper) It sure doesn't look that deep but after 22 km of switchbacks dropping into the canyon bottom its pretty fair to describe it as a pretty deep crack in the world! Onto some pretty chewed up dirt roads (and one interesting tunnel as using a match would throw more light than our headlights combined) to Cruz de Condors, supposedly the best place in S America to view wild Condors. We are treated to a good air show by the Condors in the evening and decided to camp on site to get a "pre-tourist" view of these splendid birds in the morning. Up at 6 and I managed to crawl within about 20 m of one juvenile and watched about 6 adults fly around before they grounded themselves for the day.
Out next stop was the city of Puna on the Peruvian side of Lake (lago) Titicaca. After a police escort to our hotel (no map, no signs=2 lost touristo's in one hectic city!) we headed out for a visit to the famous reed islands and Orus tribe. Total commercialization is the best way to describe the day...but I guess that is what it takes to survive these days as the Peruvian government wants the Orus to give up their life on the lake (pollution etc.) The next stop was a 2 hr boat ride away to another tribe that lives on Isla Taquile. These folks know how to entertain the hordes of tourists and still have a good time!!!...lots of Cherveza, coca and Pisco (a type of alcoholic drink) had them dancing and playing in the streets with a smile on their faces! Lots of color and action for sure!
That pretty much wrapped up Peru for us. Just over 5000 km's on the motos and we pretty much covered the country with the exception of the Amazon (which we will spent lots of time in when we cross Brazil).
Oh yeah...forgot about the mad-cow episode! While camping at Cruz de Condor some wild cows decided to invade our camp...quick action was called for and I figured pepper spray was the answer. Unfortunately a good wind was blowing (toward our tent!) and not only did the cows get a face full of spray but we got our sinuses cleaned out as well! No more cow problems that night!

cooking on the reed islands, Lago Titticaca

too cute

rocks rocks and more on the road to Colca Valley

long dark tunnel riding - a new experience

riding the southern Cordillera Blanca

graveyard - Wari people south of Nasca

the country so dry here that all the buried bodies just mummified - 1000´s of years old

camping in the desert at Nasca -yes!!

Old Cathedral made of Inca Ruins - Plaza de Armes - Cusco, Peru

Peruvian lady spinning and her llama

Suri Alpacas - Shari this ones for you!!!

look what I found in my soup .... wonder where those feet have been ¿?¿

May 24th - Feels great to be back on the road heading south! The road is straight and fast...not the hot ticket on Hondogs that we ride at 80KMPH (sure get a good look at the country!)! Our road days have taken on a routine...up at 7 and on the road by 8 for a couple of hours...stop for cafe negro and a breakfast of arroz and huevos (rice and eggs) with aji (chile)...taste great and costs about 6 soles (2 bucks). Strange thing is that we are eating rice every meal...more than we ever ate in Vietnam, China etc.!. Ride for a few more hours (lots of the old photo stops) and stop for a gaseosos (pop) and continue until 5 or so and grab a place to stay. The Nazca Lines would probably be kind of cool if some fool with a 4 X 4 hadn´t chewed the crap out of them...some new Toyota lines I guess. We skipped on the flight as I have seen photos from the air and for the most part they are ruined because of recent human activity...none the less the air looks like a WW1 dogfight with all the small planes twisting and turning about! (We did check out the lines from two Miradors (lookouts) so we did see them first hand. South of Nasca we checked out an important Inca archeological site some 25 very dusty km´s off the main road then hit the Nazca Cemetary..pretty neat as the place is full of mumified dead humans still wrapped in their clothes after some 1000 years in the desert. Definitely got our fill of skulls and human bones as the entire desert is covered in chunks of bone and old pottery. We spent a fantastic night in the desert and even the area we camped in had old pottery scattered all over it! When we camp we are up at 6 and on the road by 7. Today our first stop was the tallest sand dune in the world..some 2750 m tall..yup she is big but I think about 20 countries in Africa lay claim to the biggest, tallest, hugest, baddest sand dunes in the world so who knows! The road east of Nazca is fantastic on a MC...major ¨snake road¨that climbs through some of the most desolate, barren country that we have ever seen! The big surprise of my day was finding a group of Andean Condors...they truly are magnificent creatures! Over 4000m we hit pampas grasslands and there a hundred of wild Vicano (relatives of the llama and alpaca) everywhere. Some absolutely gorgeous high Andean country with amazingly green hillsides and cold weather to match. We bush camped again (just love camping!) and after a long second day of climbing and dropping over mountain ranges we arrived in Cusco...home to Machu Picchu AND about a million tourists! More tourists here than we have seen on our entire trip but the town (well, city of 330,000) is really beautiful. The amazing cathedrals that cover the Plaza de Armes are made from ransacked Inca Ruins and really add to the atmosphere of this tourist oriented city!

sorting through the corn

Cordillera Negra

Still Smilin´

Backroads to Huarez in the Cordillera Blanca - 130km took 10 hours!!

May 16th - So rode the coast for while, then turned inland to the Cordillera Blanca at Casma and what a difference - gorgeous snow capped mountains, small villages and a rough dirt road through from Huarez to Huanaco, Cerro de Pasco, and back out to the coast at Lima. Took over two full days of riding to do what we figured from our map would take a couple of hours. 1st and 2nd gear forever. Up and down - Went from 4818 meters to sea level at Lima in a couple of hours. What a gorgeous canyon - amazing - llamas everywhere at elevation. Slept in a small village high in the mountains one night at about 4600 meters and I was so out of breath from the elevation that by the time I climbed up the three flights of stairs to ask about rooms, I could hardly talk.... The following day the weather cleared and we passed across barren high elevation grasslands which are beautiful and the people oh so friendly! Just when we thought the road could not climb any more we started to climb into colorful snow (fresh) covered mountains and over a 4818 m pass. Mining activity everywhere has really chewed up these mountains but the mining towns are really neat looking with rusty tin roofs set against the colorful mtns. and blue sky. We were following some train tracks while we decended this most amazing canyon and I could not wait to see a Peruvian train climb these rails...the grade is about 3X what we have in BC. Sure enough here comes a train..with about 6 cars (probably the max they can haul up these grades) but what is amazing is the smoke coming out of the engine...a solid plume of jet black smoke taints the sky for hundreds of meters!!! (and I missed a picture!) Lima was surprisingly easy to get though although it extends for about 100 kms and contains a majority of Peru´s 28 million souls. Just checked out some fantastic sea bird rookeries with hundreds of thousands of comorants, boobies, terns, gulls, sea lions etc. in Isla de Balletas and tomorrow we head South to Nazca. We are loving the trip...every day is like a new page in a novel that you just cannot put down!!

Riding in Northern Peru along the coast

more northern Peru - miles and hours of blowing sand...

Pre Inca wall carvings - ruins in northern Peru

Okay, here goes with first impressions on our second night in Peru. Northern Peru looks a lot like Mexico (the dry, dirty, dusty, not nice part of Mexico).The first 500 kms or so along the coast are mostly sand dunes, small poor villages with few people and lots of garbage all over. Crossed the border at a smaller crossing east of the main one on the Pan American Hwy and once again no problems – just took time and cost nothing unlike all the Central America crossings. First night we camped off the road down a sand track – had the best sleep we’ve had in awhile – warm, no fly on the tent and a panorama of stars to look at. Today was a boring day of riding – flat, straight roads through brush and sand. I actually put on my MP3 player for the first time this trip to try and stay awake!
So now we are settled in for the night in a beautiful place for 10 soles ( about 3.50US$-the cheapest place so far this trip) and get this – it is a Love Hotel… more about these later. They are just building it and it is not quite finished so that is why the good deal I think. No TV in the room yet, but the mirror is in place…..So now about the ‘Love Hotels’ in South America – they are places where you pay by the hour to rent the room. You drive into them and each room has their own private parking area, blocked off from the outside. So what you can do if trying to be discrete is drive right into the garage, close the door, go into the room and there is another door in the room with a sliding window thing that you can put things through. You can use the phone in the room to order room service and it is delivered through the door slot where you can also pay for the room etc – in other words no one has to have ever seen you….. They have names like Venus, Amor, Fantasia, Las Vegas, Delilah, etc. and usually the only channel on TV that is in English is the porn channel! We have stayed in a few now as sometimes they are desperate and have no transient customers so will rent out the room for the night for a reasonable rate – they are always clean, cozy, and Chris likes to use the covered garage area for working on the bikes and you never know what might happen in a ‘Love Hotel’…..
Hoping by the end of tomorrows riding we will be heading into the mountains and a more scenic part of Peru. The people have been great as usual and we are back in a moto country where a lot of people ride and they are all interested in the bikes (especially the 3 new tires we have strapped on the back. Bought them in Ecuador, but now Chris is going to see how many flats he can get with the old tires can get before he really needs to change them..)