Some Peru!

Getting into Peru was super easy!  Immigration took about a minute and the bikes took maybe 15.  On our way out we got pulled to be searched.  We waited about 15 more minutes, without ever being searched, and then they said we were free to go!

The cities here are pretty hit or miss.  The first beach town we stayed in was beautiful.  The cities in between are covered in a surprising amount of trash.  Many of the beach communities don't even really have usable beaches.  They are behind walls and also covered in trash!

I took my obligatory walk to the beach.  The beaches here are very popular with surfers. 

Ceviche!

Pacasmayo, the next nice beach town!  This hostel came with a Rola Bola!

And another obligatory beach shot!

And I went surfing.......

Moving inland, meaning, to the mountains.  The roads deteriorated very quickly but the beautiful views were worth the effort.  We spent the next three days on everything but tarmac.  It was frustrating at times to be working through so much mud but they roads were never really a danger once we got off of PE3N.  And it seemed like around every turn you were surprised by the beauty around here all over again.

In the Canyon Del Pato.

The infamous Canyon Del Pato!  Peru's highway PE3N was intense.  Sections of it were once a railway.  The cliffside roads went through dozens of tunnels.  It was full of intense and narrow one lane roads.

This video is the entire run of the Canyon.  It took several hours but here you can see it in 5 minutes.

This video is at normal speed but features some of the more interesting things that we saw.

We took a "shortcut" through a national park.  At the onset there was quite a bit of loose gravel and we discussed whether or not we actually wanted to ride this road since we did so much gravel the day before.  We eventually decided that it would be worth the time savings so we took it.  This was the most intense road we did so far on this trip.  These weird plants in the photo are between 40 and 100 years old!

At 16,000 feet everything is exhausting.  I had to catch my breath every time I stood the bike up.  In one place I had parked it and walked about 30 yards to get some pictures of Ryan.  I was so winded that I had to sit down for a couple of minutes to catch my breath.

Ryan is in this photo!

16,000 feet!  The road had ice on it and the mountainside had snow.

We get a lot of attention everywhere we go but bike shops especially love us.  Whenever we have to stop by one they call come out and take pictures. It's also amazing how well they handle the large bikes.  I feel like it takes so much effort for me to push this thing around and I'm used to it.  They push it around no problem!

Our first, but not our last, Pisco Sours!

July 21, Day three of driving the dirt roads.  I wanted so badly to have highway that I went so far as to check the google satellite photos to make sure there was pavement.  Somehow, we got mud instead.  And snow!  But it's hard to complain, the scenery was amazingly beautiful and it just kept getting better.

We had a wild bull delay.  They were in the road and a local said that it was too dangerous to pass them.   Ranchers eventually came by and ushered them down the road using a slingshot.  Total delay, about 30 minutes.

Three days of these roads caked on a lot of mud.  Later we will find out that my forks are leaking because I didn't clean it off fast enough.

July 22nd, we had set course to Nazca, completely forgetting that it is the same Nazca as the Nazca Lines.  We happened to come across a viewing tower.  It was really fascinating to see the lines. I was curious about how they maintain the lines so I tried to do some research.  Evidently, it just never rains here and the lines stay intact.  Earlier this year somebody was arrested for accidentally driving through a field of lines and you can still see the tire marks. 

More Pisco Sours.  Our bartender took pictures of the drinks, which I thought was funny.  Turns out he is a Venezuelan refugee and this was the first time he made them.

Too little too late.  Finally got the bikes washed.  We found a Yamaha dealer in Nazca that said he could help but that it would take three days to get my fork seals in.  He said the city of Arequipa would be large enough to have parts for my bike.  So we got them washed to try to help the problem and we hit the road again.  We found out that, though Arequipa is in fact a large city, they also needed three days to get the parts.  We ended up finding a nice hotel and settling in instead of risking to drive any further with the forks losing oil and dripping all over my brake pads.

Peru has very interesting terrain.  We used the word "bizarre" to describe it several times.  We would drive through a vast desert for a while, then it would be a coastline.  Then it would be a coastline and a desert.  Then we would be in the mountains.  And there would be thick, thick fog.  And then it would all repeat.  And in maybe 50 minute cycles.  The roads here are all over the place.  Often times it was like driving on an alien planet.

More Pisco Sours!  Celebrating a successful road day for sure!

While driving through Lima, on a busy three lane highway without shoulders, my left pannier randomly fell off.  It skidded a few hundred yards down the highway and came to rest in the middle of one of the lanes of traffic.  I pulled over to the shoulder, and Ryan joined me, effectively blocking a second lane of traffic.  I jogged back down the highway to retrieve the box, which was surprisingly easy because we were already blocking two lanes of traffic, and then I lugged it back to the bike.  Some guy on a bicycle cart stopped short of us to help block traffic.  The whole thing was stupid.  The skittering down the highway did some superficial damage to the box, but my camping gear was strapped to the top.  I wore some holes in my tarp and tent.

I had to replace the tarp and, wouldn't you know it, Arequipa has a tarp store.  For 20 Nuevo Soles I was able to get a 2 meter x 2 meter orange tarp.

OMG YES.  The hotel we picked has both hot water in the shower and coffee!  I haven't had coffee since we left Cartegena and I haven't had a hot shower in more than a month.  It's like being in heaven!

Having down time has allowed us to take care of some other maintenance issues.  My windshield bracket broke again on the gnarly mountain roads. 

Heading into the weekend the bike shop has not yet fixed the bike.  There is a lot of confusion as to whether the parts are even in the mail.  Though Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, it is still isolated enough that best case scenario the parts would have been here in three days.  With the weekend, we are already looking at five.  For most travelers this is no big deal, but most Pan-American travelers are spending two to three years on the trip while we are looking at 100 days.  It's so frustrating, all we want is to be on the road.  Hopefully soon there will be a followup post showing you that we've made it out of this town.