And we´re off....
This trip has certainly started with bang (apart from driving off the road into a hedge there was no pun intended there!) as arriving at Lima airport over 30 Brits had no luggage (lost in Miami) - and I then proceeded to lose my mobile in Lima (genuinely the first time I have ever permanently lost my mobile!) Thus on arriving in Cusco Saturday lunchtime I did little more than dash around urgently buying provisions for the trip and stocking up on warm weather clothing. The district of San Jeronimo in Cusco hosted and they put on a spectacular firework display in our honour. Only in Peru would some poor guy have to hold the catherine wheels above his head, genuinely looking shit scared whilst sparks rained down on him and the wheels flew in all directions.  On the Sunday miraculously I received news that my bag had turned up, so made a mad dash to the airport before the race started. Clearly the most important items were the superhero outfits. If seeing gringos driving a mototaxi is weird enough for the locals seeing them dressed as Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Supergirl is enough to blow them away. The send off was hilarious as the town mayor managed to get some witch doctors in who proceeded to blow conch horns and generally bless us in a number of different ways, followed by a police escort out of town. Never before have I exited a city in such a way with two police cars, flashing lights and clearing the way ahead. It would be nice to think that this was because we are VVÌP´s but more likely they just wanted to see the back of us and rid their streets of our shambolic driving manouevres!  So we are now two days into the trip and it is fair to say our vehicle a bit of a turkey. In two days we have had two punctures and the chain has come off on numerous occasions and we rarely make it more than 50kms without some kind of incident. After failing to start this morning we spent 4 hours at the mechanics where they fixed everything under the sun including the brakes which were decidely faulty (well at least thats my excuse for driving off the road and into a hedge on Day 1) The vehicles are much trickier to drive than a rickshaw as they are heavier and less manouevrable and tend to steer to the right. The driving has been epic so far as most of the way has been at altitudes of 4000 metres with the most amazing scenery. When driving you put all your layers on as with the vehicles being so open it gets pretty cold even in the middle of the day. Other than driving into a bush and having the odd angry dog chasing you down the road we have having such a great time.  Anyway off to bed now (after the customary trip to the mechanics tomorrow morning ) we will be heading to the border with Bolivia. As some teams spent 5 days here last year we could be in for a bit of wait..........
