The End of the Road

After Two and a half weeks of wrestling our tricycle across Peru we can now sitback, Relax and be driven about by someone else in a motortaxi whilst making disparaging remarks about their engine revs, overtaking technique or anything else we now feel qualified to comment on.

The day after we left Pimentel we headed off into the scrubby bush of the Sechura desert. after an hour or so Jonno, slumped on the back seat, looked up at Ollie who was slouched over left elbow on the bikes handlebars left hand supporting his chin, we were horribly bored, it was time to call it a day. We decided to go straight through the middle of the Sechura and get to Piura a day early, hand over the keys, have a shower then try and buy some trousers that weren't covered in mud, engine oil and with a massive crotch failure.

We had lunch in a desert restaurant and were served a sort of duck stew, it was a pretty tough old duck, Jonno finished plucking his piece then got all hands and teeth on it, until it became too much and he gave up. Ollie's piece was so unique that after trying to find a part that was edible he stuck his fork into it as a sign of protest and ate the rice with a spoon.

We continued through the desert, dodging the occasional Trucks and Coaches, taking shelter on the hardshoulder if necessary. The strange white lizards that live on the road scattered before us as we rattled on. we came to the delightfully named village of 'New Dark Hole, a strip of makeshift shacks that line this stretch of the Pan-American and completely ran out of Petrol, we poured the last dregs of sludgy petrol from the Jerry can through a makeshift sieve and managed to get about 100meters up the road before the final vapours escaped the leaking fuel tank and the engine died. Luckily the residents of New Dark Hole are very keen on selling Honey, Algorrabina and Petrol and we had stopped right in front of a wild west style shop that sold all three. a man came out with a sieve and a glass Gallon jar filled with petrol which he poured into the tank for 15soles and we headed the final distance to Piura.

 The People of Piura say they are not Peruvian and they proved this by giving directions which made sense, we found the finish line easily, dropped the taxi dragged our filthy bags and selves into the hotel, hit the showers then the pool.

It turns out that drinking cocktails all afternoon in celebration after two weeks of only aniseed tea is not such a great idea, although it is a good way to let off much built up steam. The next day a slightly more subdued group waited by the pool drinking fanta and congratulating the incoming teams.

The evening dinner was excellent, the need to unwind and come together after the whole thing was pretty big, we ate, drank, chatted, and swapped stories of what had happened on the trip. We had a moments reflection for the late Peter Buckley and one of the teams gave a touching Blessing in Gaelic which helped us all give a communal farewell to him. Prizes were given to various teams and revelry continued until the early hours. 

The next day we decided to go the surf town of Mancor spend a few days relaxing then head to Lima for a couple of days before going home.

It has been an absolutely amazing experience, we have driven, eaten and slept in all sorts of strange but exciting places, met all sorts of people and seen many different but breathtaking types of scenery. We have also far exceeded our original target of fund raising and would like to thank all our sponsors for their generosity All together the event raised almost 50,000GBP which will go a long way improving the quality of life of the the Llama and Alpaca farmers of the high mountain and their families.

Thank you for all Your messages of support throughout the event see you when we get back!

 

Sand Boarding sans sunglasses

We left Casma and carried on up the Pan-American, happy that we had ski goggles and shemaghs as everytime traffic went in the other direction we got a rightous sand blasting in the face. We reached Huanchaco a small surf town next to Trujillo home of the UNESCO Adobe city of Chanchan, which we made absolutely no attempt to see. we wondered around the town trying to get food to replace Jonno's flagging energy levels and find sunglasses for Ollie. Even though Huanchaca is a surf town on the edge of a desert in peru no shops sold sunglasses , the only sunglasses that where for sale where two people strolling about vaguely trying to sell them.The Peruvian selling technique is pretty unusual, the seller will generally not come up to you to sell you stuff you need to go to them, they will then offer you an outrageoulsy high price and refuse to budge from it when you point out that it is more expense thatn europe they say "so?" or maybe drop a tiny amount in price if you walk away they don't seem to care at all and carry on. This clash of negotiating styles meant that no sunglasses where bought. on the plus side we did find a street meat center of excellence and had stuffed potatoes, chicken kebabs, beef heart kebabs, chicken foot kebabs (wierdly three feet on one kebab), and a sort of sweet fried thing with a plummmy fruit in syrup. The next day we took a break from driving and whent sand boarding, this was really fun but desperatly hard as you spend about 15minutes walking up a sandune to have 30 secounds of riding down it. on his first go Jonno snapped the board in half which the instructor said he had never seen in the 5 years he had been doingt this, Jonno was unsurpsied that he would perform such an act of unheard of clumsyness, but we carried whizzing down the burning hot sand then, more slowly everytime trudging up again. The rest of the day we hung out drinking lots of home made lemonade and the epic strawberry juice. Today we got up and drove to Pimentel where we ate stingray Tortiallas rotten shellfish which the waitress claimed were totally fresh and ok to eat as she had m,icrowaved them first. It also smells of poo so we are going to head deep into the Sechura tomorrow on our last night before the finish.

A filthy bike on the open road.

After Anchon the plan was to Jet up the Coast to Casma bed down there then head to Trujillo. It turns out the Pan-American is the only road up the coast and Moto-Taxi's are not allowed on it. we drove down the highway until we got to the first payage where the attendant refused to let us through and angrily waved us away. in an attempt to find an alternative rout we spent the next 40 minutes driving around the dirt roads of a shanty town, pushing the bike out of soft sand and breaking then remaking the chain using a penknife when it came off the sprocket. Eventually we realised that the payage was the only way and made an attempt to run through without anyone noticing, this plan totally failed but we did get into a conversation with the payage Boss who was amazed by how far we had come and how far we still had to go, he rang his boss asking if he could let us through. The conversation went on a bit but the deal maker seemed to be when he said

"They say they have come from Cusco, I think they are telling the truth as their bike is filthy and the tyres are covered in Mud"

In the end we were let through on the grounds that if we were stopped by any highway engineers or police we would say that we had jumped the Barrier.

Once on the the highway the situation was much simpler, police didn't care the other payages more or less waved us through and the road was so smooth that we could travel at the dizzying speed of 50km/h, we had a rocking breakfast of chicken stew and tres leches at a petrol station and blazed through the barren rocky desert. As a general rule the Lorries and the Coaches acknowledged our existence driving round us although the seemed to feel our rightful place was the hard shoulder and would cut it a bit fine on some of the overtakes forcing us half onto the hard shoulders they tried to avoid having a head on with the traffic coming in the other direction. Coaches seem the worst doing the most eyebrowing raising special moves a particular favourite is overtake a lorry whilst going up a hill when we are coming down the other side, once whilst we skidded along the hard shoulder the bus driver was talking on the the phone and looking into the cab of the lorry he was trying to overtake, completely unconcerned about the mototaxi bouncing passed him. We may be out of the mountains, but we are not yet out of the woods. 

Coming down the mountains

Having seen quite a lot of mountain passes, avoided quite a lot of trucks coming round blind corners on cliffs, and spent a lot of time being very wet, we realised we were running a bit low on time and so decided to drop down from Tarma and blaze it through Lima and out the other side in a day, this would put on the Panamerican Highway/Alternative small roads and would allow us to go up the coast eat Ceviche and not have to wear thermal underwear all day.

We headed from Tarma to a copper/lead refining town called La Oroya which was pretty quiet as everybody was in Lima protesting at the refinery being shut down. We talked our way through a couple of roadblocks had breakfast and headed off we climbed 2000m from Tarma to the highest point of 4800m which was just below the snow level, the area was full of mines, mining trucks and buses, luckily this meant the road was very good quality and we got down with very little incident apart from a pretty good (but not good enough) effort by a pickup load of police to get money out of us, and a moment in a tunnel when we realised all our lights had failed and the only solution was to hold the bike steady between the break lights of the Lorry ahead and hope the Lorry behind kept it's distance.

We stopped off in a suburb of Lima and got the lights repaired in a weird sort of Garage where Motortaxi drivers turned up fixed their own bikes and left apparently without paying anything. The Taxi driver who was fixing our bike and the mechanic himself advised us a good way to avoid a large part of Lima, unfortunately we still needed to spend about an hour getting through the humid, dirty, insane capital city traffic, Ollie used his London driving skills to avoid the totally bananas private buses which streak around the city streets overtaking undertaking, and suddenly stopping to pick up passengers. We lost the panamerican, found it again and headed out of the city. At one set of lights we had double decker coaches on every side, the driver of one opened his window and shouted at us until the lights turned green. Later we were stuck in the middle of a Hornhonking fight between a coach undertaking a lorry on the hard shoulder and the Lorry trying not to be undertaken. With daylight disappearing we did our best to get away from Lima and to somewhere with a hotel. We ended up in a 'tourist town' called Ancon which had almost no places to stay, no maps, and almost no food or drink after 7pm. Eventually we paid a mototaxi to lead us to a Hostal, the Owner was really helpful and sat in our taxi to show us the way back to the Pan-American gave us tips on how to deal with the motorway and then showed us to a place where we could lock up the bike for the night.

Actual Road

We left pampas in the morning planning on jetting through Huancayo and on to Tarma, we made excellent time working a similar rythm to Pampa technique used the day before, we had an unscheduled stop early on as it turned out the the mechanics who had fixed our bike the evening before had also stolen all of our petrol out the tank.

Our first real break was for breakfast at a roadside place outside Huancayo, the people inside thought we were very interesting and and asked us where we were from "England" they told us that they new some words in English and that once some Russians had come to thier restaurant and they had taught them some Russian which was a bit like english wasn"t it. As we left they came out to admire our mototaxi wich they pointed out was easier to drive across Peru in than a bicycle as it had an engine so we didn"t have to peddle. The conversation was a bit topo wierd so we thanked them agian and left.

After breaking for a lunch of Guinea pig and another meat possibly Goat, we came across another Police block into tarma they felt that they needed some Gringo tax aswell but were outclassed by the Gringo"s they were dealing with and ended up shaking hands and waving us on our way.

Once in Tarma we realised we still had a lot of ground to cover by the 14th and so went into some deep route replanning...

Into the clouds

There is no good road to Huancayo from Ayacucho, but there is a choice.

The fast route which runs along a crevass with a huge drop onto a river, this is the road the cement trucks and the busses take.

The mountain route which is considerably longer but winds along the high mountain Pampa.

All the Peruvians who we spoke to told us the the road along the river was in terrible condition due the rainy season and that the potholes had been joined by rock and mud slides. Jonno who doesn"t like hieghts at the besty of times was keen to translate the state of the road to Ollie. With no trucks around to take us iut weas agreed we would do the Pampa Drive. The only catch, apart from its length, was that the high pampa roads had a probloem with bandits so we would have to tryu and do the whole drive in one stretch during the daytime when it was safe.

Leaving Ayacucho we were aware tyhat we had to steer clear of police as since the loss of the bag we had no documentation for the bike. However Ayacucho was previously the home of the maoist guerrilas the shining path and so still has a heavy policve presence, we were stopped barely out of town, we quickly jumped out of the bike and made for a charm offensive with the police there. It worked and they gave us tips on where to get ourt bike fixed, told us to take the high road through the pampa to Huancayo, shook our hands and waved us on our way. The next police blockade we were wqaved straight through, the third hopwever we were stopped again, here the lead police man was younger and tried to pin anything and everything on us; we were driving with our lights off, we didn{t have any documentation, we weren"t allowed on the motorway in a mototaxi. and a couple of other infractions. After a while of explanation and discussion we negotiated him and his Ak45 weilding friend, down to just the lights. After some more discussion it was clear he wanted Gringo tax, saying that the fine was 300Soles that we could pay in cash to him. We both claimed not to have any money which he amazingly believed, in a lucky stroke of comic timing ollie pulled a loose 20soles note out of his pocket and shrugged, the police man  unhappy with this demanded to know if we had anything else we managed to produce 15euros which he took off us before letting us go. once we were out of sight we pulleed up the bike and rearranged our cash to make a more belñievable lack of money if stopped again.

We spent most of the Day of the drive to Pampas our target night stop just before Huancayo jump starting the mototaxi, pulling it out of mud, and shift driving 20Km stints over easily the worst road we have driven, it aim was to drive at 20KM and hour and so reach Pampas (on the other side of the pampa) by dusk. it was two tiring to drive more than an hour and we couldn" overheat the bike, however the road was so bad that sitting in the back you spent the entire hour bouncing around and holding onto the luggage in the backseat to stop it from flying out. By the time we reched Pampas we were totally shattered and just about made it to 8pm before going to bed.

The Highs, The Lows, The Pampas

We left Andahuaylas arriving in Chicheronnas at dusk, finding a hotel that advertised both internet, hot showers and a place to park the bike, we spoker to the manager

"Has this hotel rfeally got hot showers?"

"Hot showers, hot woman, everything" Jonno turned to Ollie

"it¨s a brothel but whatever" the owner understanding burst out luagghing and starting to open the Garage door asked about the bike

"te la vas a meter?" which means are you goinng to put it in? and also are you going to have sex with her?

"yes, but only the bike"

It turned out that the hotel only had internet when it didn´t rain

, which it did all night, and that the hot water was off, however the three days of constant driving ment showering in cold water was preferable to being disgusted at your own ripeness.

 

The next day we left early to try and reach Ayacucho by nightfall.  It was a pretty long drive along some pretty terrrible tracks we only had biscuits to eat that we had bought the night before, but a nice lady gave us some oranges when we stopped at the side of the road to let the bike cool down. The next section of road was a huge ascent on to the pampas which was was mostly (in from jonns point of view anyway) on a tiny scratch in the side of the mountain with a horrifying drop on one side, with all the traffice coming by Jonno reliquished the driving seat and retreated to the back where he looked fixedly at the wall of the cliff while his knucles turned progressivley whiter.

 Eventually we reached a platuae at about 4100M it got colder and damper but because we were so high the ponds and the road had steam coming off them, we drove into a cloud which then started raining. the pampa was a pretty desolate place of fog, small shacks and the herders with their cattle or sheep. we followed the red earth road across the pampa the rain never ending and the cloud vutting visability. we stopped for a moment at a split ion the road, We were soaked to the skin and blue to the balls, Ollie offered to drive Jonno looked at his finger tips which had turned blue and realised how much he was shivering and agreed it was a good idea.

When we finallly hit tarmac we celebratged, when the sun came out we ate a biscuit and wamred up in it. Ollie, who by this time couldnt feel his toes dried/warmed up his socks on the radiator.

We spent the night in Ayacucho in a very strange B&B decorated in the style of a baronial hall. we spent far too much time in Ayercucho as we had to sort out with the police Jonno"s stuff which had vaporised on route and also attemptyed to find a truck which could carry the Mototaxi to Huancayo and so save us a day of boring slog. when no Truck could be found we drove to Huanta and haad the brakes re-calibrated.

Revolutionary Cock Off Disgusts Peru

Having had some OK dinners in the Historic center of Cuzco we decided that it would be good to try and get a bit more of a local experience by going outside and trying some of the small room type restaurants we had seen. On the way to the test ground we walked passed a set of double doors then opened into a small hall about 10 meters wide and twenty meters long, at lunchtime it was full of Peruvians eating lunch so on the way back we had another look by this time it was chock full of people and had a large piece of card sellotaped outside advertising "Una Pollada" which to Peruvians means `Chicken Dinner` but to Spaniards it`s unclear whether it is to do with Chicken or men's willies. Deciding that a Cock-off was a good idea for a nights entertainment we went back to the hotel the made the fatal error of taking ages to get back to the restaurant. By the time we did the revellers there were pretty much totally wasted on large bottles of Beer and had begun dancing to Andean music which was all techno beats, panpipes and the call of the Andean Condor.

Our entrance didn't go unnoticed but the people running the night thought it was really fun that we were there sold us the dinner for 10 soles and showed us to a table without chairs, once we had found chairs and settled in, the man on the table behind us started talking to Jonno asking him where he was from in broken English (which over the course of the evening he asked about 15 times), he was off his face drunk and couldn't really speak English so the conversation carried on in Spanish, he gave Jonno a small plastic glass filled it with Beer with instructions to drink, this pleased him so he did it again and handing the bottle to Ollie told us both to drink, Ollie from the bottle and Jonno from the glass. This however annoyed him and turning to Jonno and pointing at Ollie he said "In Peru that is disgusting!" apparently drinking from the bottle is not done here.

"But you gave him the bottle and told him to drink"

"I know but in Peru that is disgusting!" There didn't seem to be any sensible thing to do apart from apologise.

"I am Sorry" said Jonno "It is cultural differences"

"In know that is why I will tolerate it"

He seemed to cheer up and at that moment a stewed chicken thigh with a potato was put in front of Jonno and a plate of stewed leather with a potato in front of Ollie, the done thing was to eat with your hands.

"THIS IS INCA!" said the drunk man behind us gesturing happily at the place we were in " We are the Inca" he had cheered up by now and carried on asking us where we were from. Jonno had decided that this was one of those times when it may be a good idea not to be British had said Caribbean (no more specific) and Ollie was English. Looking around the bar it was clear that the Inca here were having a very good time, middle aged men were staggering around holding bottles of beer, others were dancing wildy by the stereo, two woman in the corner were having a stand up argument, and another two  were having a good natured wrestle.

Two men in front of us turned around to talk, they were drunk but not as much as the mess who was behind us. They started asking us where we were from, hearing Jonno was `Caribbean` they asked if it was Cuba he said no but didn't go into specifics. They insisted in speaking in Brazilian Portuguese refusing to accept he wasn't Brazilian and kept repeating what seemed to be the only English word they knew to Ollie which was pickpockets.

Suddenly there was a tap on the shoulder from behind the very drunk man was there again, "where you from?"  he asked with a massive unfocused smile and then with out warning reached out grabbed the entire chicken thigh off Jonno`s plate and started eating it. After some protests from Jonno the gnawed leg was returned, At this point there was a call for attention from the men in front, they had now decided that Jonno wasn't Brazilian and spoke to him in Spanish instructing him to translate for Ollie. They explained that in Peru the education system taught only Spanish and Quechua so most people couldn't speak English, he then went on to explain that about Quechua being the language of the people and it`s role in Peruvian society. He then began explaining that foreigners coming in to Peru were stopping the people from speaking Quechua and only Spanish which was a covert form of racism, He looked unhappy saying to Jonno that the sad thing was that racism existed in all countries which Jonno would know about coming from Cuba. Although what he was saying certainly was true in parts and was definitely a interesting discussion point, there was an edge to what he was saying, so Jonno decided to take on Cuban nationality.

There was another tap on the Shoulder "where you from" the drunk man had become filled with regret about the chicken incident and began apologizing profusely, trying to pay 12 soles for the 10 sol dinner in order to cover both the food and the insult. Jonno explained that no money  was required as that man had given us Beer and we in return gave him chicken, this seemed to be acceptable to him and so he turned to Ollie "Where you from?" shaking his hand and being generally friendly. Jonno tried to take advantage of the drop in conversation by finishing his chicken.

"Jonno!" Ollie said he was still shaking the drunk mans hand but was pressed back against the wall with the drunk man wobbling towards him "I think this man is trying to kiss me!" Jonno had absolutely nothing helpful to say and just looked on as Ollie extracted himself.

 "Hey" the other men were back and wanted to talk. "You are from Cuba, an island, you know how it is to be marginalised, the Americans will never let you succeed." He spoke how the people of South America supported the Cubans in there struggle against the Americans and instructed Jonno translate this to Ollie. He then went on to explain how the whole of South America was being oppressed and the struggle against American Hegemony was ongoing. He then explained how Hugo Chavez and the president of Argentina (unnamed but we assumed Kristina Kirchner) were making a special virus to kill the American leadership so the south could flourish, Jonno translated this to Ollie and trying not to look awkward. The man then began to describe the values of the South American people and Jonno feeling the situation was getting a bit out of control joined in so the man felt that they were in it together. The two men turned away and continued a muttered conversation together

Ollie looked at Jonno and said in the most relaxed way possible "erm, should we go?"

"Yeah it is getting pretty intense" we discussed the best way to get out without arousing any passions from either our drunk or revolutionary friends. A moment appeared when the drunk had gone off to dance. we made to go Jonno giving a half salute to the revolutionaries. The lead one half rose and took Jonno`s hand 

"I am sorry. I didn't mean any offence"

"Not at all it is always interesting talking politics with people from other countries"

He pulled Jonno closer embracing him

"Papi, the Peruvian people will always stand with the Cubans."

With a voice filled with affection he stroked Jonno`s hair.

"You are Cuban, You are my Brother." he flicked a gesture in Ollie`s direction "Not like this Bastard."

Jonno Looked at Ollie "OK Let`s go now"  

Laid back and Taxi free

Yesterday we got the list of suggested equipment for the trip ahead, we pretty much assumed that maintenance is not an issue over a two week trip and that the things we have to watch out for are sudden mechanical failure of various bits of the bike. with this in mind we crossed off most of the list and went to Wayna Capac street aka Mototaxi alley. a load of Junketeers had already been down the street and jacked a quite a lot of equipment from the shops who weren`t really expecting a sudden rush as 38 groups of foreigners came in to buy the worst equipment they had. Luckily we could get the essentials we were concentraing on and in a spur of the moment idea we also got two motocross tires to put on the back wheels to try and gain traction on the muddy mountain roads. The guys in the shop were a bit worried at first telling us that these tyres would wear out very quickly if used on regular tarmac, after we told them they only needed to last two weeks we got big smiles and a "Perfecto!"

 

Two get the non bike related equipment we were told to go to a shopping center, which was more like a covered market a few blocks away, here we got everything else we needed including 20L jerry can, Thick rubber gloves (from a woman half asleep on a pile of them) and cord. Whilst there a toddler drinking some sort of juice hit Ollie on the bum said "Gringo! Gringo!" and seemed pretty happy with herself.


In the afternoon we headed down to the test ground to get our bike and have a quick check over before receiving the obligatory mechanical briefing. Unfortunately when we got there we hadn`t been assigned a bike and most of the bikes that had been assigned were in a bit of a state anyway. after an hour or so we were given the choice of a bike that had been ignored on the grounds it looked a bit rubbish and had bee missing keys (now found) or some other bikes which may or may not turn up later in the evening. We chose the one we could see and were happy to find out that the engine and gear box worked really well, sadly after a couple of circuits we ground to a halt the back right wheel  had fallen off as the bolt holding it on had been cannibalized by another team, Luckily the wheel wasn`t bent and we pushed it back to the start Jonno complaining about how hard it was and Ollie pointing out that he was actually doing all the pushing. The rest of the day was spent doing the small changes we could and trying to find out as many problems with the bike as possible without actually being able to drive it and fighting off other teams who thought our bike was scrap and wanted to take it`s parts. in the end we wrote a list of all the major problems see bellow

 

Back right wheel not attached

Front right indicator not working

Speedo and rev counter not attached 

Baack Brake not calibrated 

Neither back nor base of passenger seat connected to bike also the frame is bent out of shape 

No roof also metal plate needed to attach roof has fallen off. 

 

Hoxton Hipsters Happen upon Hostal Tu Hogar

 

After about 24hrs travelling we have arrived at `Casa Tu Hogar`. The Journey didn`t quite go as planned, after a very boring few hours in Madrid Barajas we went to board the plane to discover not only were we not sitting together but Jonno was on a completly differnt flight that left at the same time but from the other end of the airport, after legging it to the gate the flight turned out to be delayed anyway. Eventually both planes got airborne and we both slept for most of the journey. In lima we had to collect our baggage and check in again for the domestic flight, Ollie arrived first and the baggage handlers insisted on him taking a bag which wasn`t his, luckily when jonno turned up it was his and the baggage had just been checked in under the wrong name.

Ollies connecting flight had been cancelled but this meant that we could fly to cusco on the same plane, and so we whiled away the next few hours wandering around Lima airport (which is much better than Madrid`s) and eating a huge breakfast/lunch in `Brown Hands` Cafè, Ollie suffering from jet lag confusion ordered a beer despite the fact it was 8:30 in the morning, but the waiter seemed pretty normal about it. Jonno had purple corn juice, whatever that is.

 

After stepping of the plane at Cusco Ollie Immediatly got a headache from the ludicrously thing air and Jonno felt like he might be about to float away. We have sorted out our stuff and now, looking like two horrendous hipsters, are about to go out hit the coca tea and engage in some very light exercise.