November 26, 2015

Okay, that’s misleading. There is no Thanksgiving Day in Peru. At least not the U.S. version. But that’s where my Thanksgiving Day was spent. I set a number of personal records today for this trip:

1. Longest mileage in a day (for this trip): 570km (353 miles)
2. Fastest border crossing
3. Longest mileage in a day with a border crossing included
4. Longest ride on the Pan American Highway

I also broke several of my personal rules today:

1. Don’t ride more than +/- 200 miles in a day
2. Don’t ride after dark (I might have made it before dark if I hadn’t run out of gas five miles before my destination!)
3. Don’t ride the Pan American Highway any more than necessary

There were some highlights to the day as well. So “let me start over” (inside joke….only one person that may or may not read this will get that):

After leaving Vilcabamba I rode a short day to Macará, Ecuador, which sits right on the border with Peru, and checked into a hotel there. Macará is a rough looking border town, but the hotel was a high spot — nice and clean, with a large secure garage. This allowed me an early border crossing the next day.

This morning I left Macará and got to the border by 9:30. I wish all border crossings were a carbon copy of this one. The entire process, including checking myself and my bike out of Ecuador, crossing the bridge, checking myself and my bike into Peru, and purchasing the obligatory SOAT third-party insurance for Peru, took just under one hour. The officials on both sides of the border were very helpful. The guy at Aduana (customs) in Peru even had his own copier!!! Amazing!! I didn’t have to walk down the street to a food vendor to pay to have copies made like in Central America. And he didn’t charge for the copies. Aside from the insurance, the entire border crossing was free. Note that this is not the high-volume border crossing; that one is further west at Huaquillas. There was one other person in line at immigration and I was the only person at customs.

Several miles south of the border, I came upon a checkpoint. The officer asked for my paperwork, and then the fun began. This guy had my sense of sarcasm, and I loved it.

Officer: “Let me guess (insert sarcastic tone)…you are going to Patagonia.”

Me: “Isn’t everybody?”

Officer: “Everybody has to go to the tip of South America to take a photo.”

Me: “It’s a long way just for a photo.”

Officer: “Yes… It is.”

A clear indication that although I was not on the main Gringo Trail, I was still on Gringo Alternate 1.

And with that he handed me my paperwork and wished me a good day.

As I continued south towards Piura, the scenery very quickly changed to desert. For the first time in weeks, I was below 5,000 feet elevation and still dropping, and my surroundings were looking a lot like the high desert of southern California. The quality of life seemed much worse than I had experienced in the mountains of Ecuador and other countries previously. I’m not sure if it’s just the difference between the houses being exposed in the desert, as compared to the lush greenery of Ecuador, or if it is truly that much worse. But when you live in the desert, you are forced to make do with much less in terms of resources and building materials.

Entering Piura, I noticed a couple of things. First, even though I had been warned by Judith, Ian, Mike & Shannon, and others, this was my first real exposure to the “suicide” driving method here in Peru. The thinking seems to be, “Your lane? You don’t have a lane, amigo, you are on a motorcycle. I will go around, over, or through you.” People pull directly out in front of you in an intersection (without even slowing down as they approach it), even if you are on the larger road (highway) and moving at 50mph. They will pull into the opposite lane and come straight for you. And they are not playing chicken. Or if they are, they always win, because they never pull back in. They will pass you on the right shoulder. They will pull off in the dirt to pass (in town) and then turn in front of you. Cars, buses, 18 wheelers, moto-taxis, it doesn’t matter. Which is when I noticed the other thing: there are no traffic lights in Peru. At least not many. I rode through several good-sized cities today, and never once saw a traffic light. Which might explain the suicidal driving, or at least part of it. At one point today, having just survived an 18-wheeler pulling across the intersection directly in front of me and several cars, I began to think that there must be a limitation on driver licenses in Peru: if you have an IQ over 60, you don’t get one. At least they drive like that’s the case.

South of Piura, the desert turned to sand. Pure sand. As in dunes. For close to two hundred miles. If you are familiar with California, think about Highway 395 from Victorville to Mammoth Lakes. The road itself is a lot like that: two lanes, very straight. Now think of driving that same straight, two-lane road through sand dunes the entire way, with a 35mph crosswind blowing sand across the highway. And that’s the Pan American Highway from Piura to Trujillo.

 

I hate to be negative, but I feel I have to in order to give the full picture here. What happened to self-respect? For more than two hundred miles. with few exceptions, it looked like I was driving through a landfill. Plastic trash bags everywhere. Thousands. Tens of thousands. The amount of trash was unfathomable. You could tell when you were within ten miles of a town: the trash suddenly got much thicker. This was definitely different than previous countries. There’s no way you can hide that much trash, even in the mountains. And I didn’t see trash bags piled and blowing around in the mountains.

I kept heading south, thinking “I’ll stop when this gets better.” But it never really did. I know this isn’t representative of all of Peru. I’ve been telling everyone the best is yet to come. And I was thinking of the mountains of Peru and Patagonia. I know Peru won’t disappoint me. I just need to get off the Pan American Highway.

I ended up riding all the way to Trujillo, on the Pacific Coast, which was supposed to be my destination four days from now. It was looking like I was going to make it to the hostel just before dark. And then I ran out of gas. I had been pushing into a strong headwind and crosswind all afternoon, and I knew my mileage was suffering. But that’s why I carry a spare couple of gallons on the rear rack in a Rotopax container. So it was just a minor inconvenience. A few minutes later and I was on my way.

As I pulled into the hostel, I met Les and Catherine from No Agenda World Tour. They are traveling from Canada on their KLR650s. Way back in El Valle de Anton, Panama, a woman who was staying at the hostel there gave me a Post-It note with Catherine’s email address on it. She said she had met them on the road, and that they were also traveling with motorcycles. Her final comment was “But I know you’ll never contact them.”

Well, I did one better: I met them face-to-face!

I plan to spend a couple of days here at the beach, then head into the mountains and do some exploring.

 

November 28, 2015

I was looking at my GPS track on my Delorme Inreach page today, and I realized that if I had ridden the most direct route from Austin, Texas to Chimbote, Peru (where I am now), it would be about 5,000 miles. It has taken me four months to get here.

A year ago I did more miles than that in one month on the Super Tenere from Texas to Canada and back. But I rode more miles per day (over 800 miles one day), stopped less, saw less, and did less (other than sit in the saddle and ride).

Unfortunately many people who decide to ride to the bottom of South America from either the U.S. or Alaska do it similar to my Canada trip: they ride the Pan American Highway for weeks, covering huge distances every day, and never see any of the amazing things along the way. I don’t blame them. Many of them have a limited time to complete the trip, and the only way to make their goal before returning to work or their “real lives” is to spend their days on the highway. It is a shame though. I hope they see enough to decide to return to South America later and spend more time exploring, because there are some amazing places here, and most of them are nowhere near the Pan American Highway.

November 29, 2015

I met up with Ian again on the coast in Huanchaco, and we decided to ride together toward Chimbote and then up the Cañon del Pato to Caraz.

 

 

 

 

Leaving Huanchaco, we rode south on the Pan American Highway for about 80 miles. The surroundings are pretty much entirely sand, although in a few places people have managed to farm.

 

 

Further along the dunes became quite impressive.

 

 

 

 

At Santa, we turned east on Highway 12, which would take us through the canyon.

We met a couple from Scotland on bicycles headed out of the canyon towards the coast, then south toward Ushuaia. They said they traveled six months a year and worked six months a year. Not sure how long it will take them to get to Ushuaia.

 

 

I took some video with my GoPro but as I’ve mentioned before, I can’t edit it on my laptop due to a lack of space. However, one of the videos seemed good enough without editing, so I was able to upload it to YouTube. Here’s a couple of minutes of the paved part of the Cañon del Pato (sorry, I didn’t know the GoPro would pick up my random whistling while riding):

Best if you watch it full screen, and glance off the left side of the road every now and then. I have no idea how far down it was, but it’s a long way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the east end of the canyon we pulled into the town of Caraz for the evening. We had gradually climbed from sea level to a little over 7500 feet elevation in the last half of the canyon route. From town you can look up to the snow covered peaks of the Cordillera Blanca mountain range.

Tomorrow I hope to do a loop up over 12,000 feet again, eventually arriving back here for one more night.

 

November 30, 2015

I found the Andes mountain scenery I was looking for today. And then some. Wow. Unbelievable. I can’t really describe it, so I think I’ll just post some photos and let them speak for themselves. I’ll add a few (very few) words where necessary.

 

 

 

 

I will try to post a few short videos tomorrow as well.

December 1, 2015

Yesterday’s ride:

 

We crossed though the Huascaran National Park twice. The lower (south) road is AN-107, and paved. We took that from PE-3N east. At the summit, instead of passing through the tunnel, we turned off onto the dirt pullout and took a dirt road up over the tunnel. I’m sure at one time you could do this road in a 4×4. Not any more. There are large boulders in the road that restrict the width, and areas where the edge has slid away, also making the road too narrow for more than a motorcycle or mountain bike.

On the east side, before Acochaca on AN-105, the road turns to dirt. We followed this to AN-106 (also dirt) and headed back west across another summit (and more incredible views of mountains, snow and glaciers), past Laguna Llanganuco to PE-3N and back to Caraz. Well, I did anyway. Ian stayed at a mountain lodge that offers some incredible treks not far from the lake.

The first 60 miles of the loop is more or less paved, most of it nicely. The last 100 miles is dirt, rock and shale road.

Here are three short videos of the ride up to the tunnel, over the tunnel, and down from the tunnel on AN-107. Due to the wifi here, it took me about 14 hours to upload this six minutes of video.

December 3, 2015

Another brilliant day that is hard to describe. The sheer scale of everything here in Peru is indescribable. Photos just don’t do it justice.

Ian and I headed south from Huaraz (a bit late…his bike was securely locked in a garage — so securely that nobody could find the gentleman with the key to the garage). We turned into the Huascaran National Park again just south of Catac, and began the climb over the pass near the Pastoruri Glacier. When we turned off the highway, the temperatures were feeling a bit like summer at high elevation; probably in the low 80s. But we could see the snow-capped peaks in the distance.

 

 

 

As we began to climb towards 16,000 feet, the temps dropped of course. The only real complaint I have about my Klim Badlands jacket is that it’s necessary to take it off in order to zip up all the vents. Not terribly difficult, and I suppose it still beats the time it takes to put on a separate rainsuit if it starts raining. The scenery was no less stunning than Monday’s ride through the park further north.

 

I wasn’t expecting quite the temperature change we experienced though: when it began sleeting, I thought it would stop quickly.

When it started snowing, and accumulating on the ground, I knew it was going to be an interesting day. We crossed the pass at just under 16,000 feet, and stayed above 14,000 feet for quite a while. Heated grips are nice, but heated gloves would be much nicer. Heated grips don’t heat the tips of your thumbs, or your forefinger if you have it on the front brake or clutch lever. They also don’t do much to keep the backs of your hands warm. But I’ll certainly take them over not having them on days like this.

 

Eventually we dropped down below the snow and sleet, and hit the pavement for a brief distance. At the end of the pavement at La Union, we didn’t see any hotels that looked like they might have secure bike parking, so we continued on toward Rondos, climbing back up the mountain past some beautiful green fields and farm land.

Which is when it began to hail. Not big; just larger than pea-size. But at 30mph it still hurts. Slowing down helped, but the road quickly became muddy, and the pelting continued for more than 30 minutes. No photos here…it was getting late and I had no desire to stop in this weather.

We pulled into Rondos before dark. Rondos doesn’t even show up on many maps. It’s about five or six blocks long by about six blocks wide, with the typical central plaza. There isn’t really a hotel here. There is a small bodega (store) on one corner of the plaza, and the gentleman there rents out rooms, and has a small room to store the bikes inside (it only holds about three bikes, and there were three inside it when we arrived. He removed two of them so we could park inside. No idea where they went).

Lacking any other choices (we had planned to camp, but it was too wet, and looking like it might continue to get wetter), we took a room.

This was the first town I’ve been in where I felt uncomfortable. Everywhere I’ve been up to now, the locals have been incredibly friendly and curious about me, my bike, my travels, etc. No one in Rondos spoke to us. We definitely felt like outsiders and unwelcome. It was very odd. That said, we didn’t have any problems. It just felt different from the usual welcome I’ve experienced the past few months. To be fair, this is not a town on the typical tourist trail.

The next morning we continued on from Rondos to Huanuco. The first 20km or so was a dirt road used so little that it was mostly covered in grass. This might sound odd or made up, but it’s not: at one tiny village, I literally wasn’t sure if I was still on the road, or on the soccer field. One seamlessly blended into the other.

The unused road eventually joined into a much more traveled dirt road, and we continued on towards Huanuco. Even the road workers patching the potholes on this dirt road were friendly, waving and giving us thumbs-up as we passed.

We arrived early in Huanuco, where we met up with Toby of Around The Block Moto Adventures. Toby leads guided rides throughout Peru, and rents and sells bikes (with a repurchase agreement) to tourists. He is a great source of trail and road information in Peru, and was nice enough to not only sell me a set of Pirelli MT21 tires this afternoon (it’s great to be back on knobbies), but he also led me to a tire shop that installed them for free (an agreement he has with them as he buys his tires there).

I’m planning to spend a couple of days with Toby before heading towards Lima.

December 8, 2015

Before I began this trip, while still in the planning stages, I attended a couple of events where people who had ridden around the world or were in the process of doing so gave presentations. One of these events was Overland Expo in Flagstaff, Arizona; the other was a Horizons Unlimited meet in British Columbia. At both events, I heard a recurring theme from multiple speakers: that of travel burnout. I had noticed this in several blogs I had been reading as well. It seemed like most people hit a lull in their travels somewhere between six months and eighteen months into their trip.

Determined to prevent this, I built some “time off” into my schedule. I told myself in the beginning that I would try not to ride more than 250 kilometers a day, and try not to ride more than four days a week. I haven’t been totally successful in either one of those, but I’ve done a pretty good job overall.

The next leg of my journey ramps up the mileage and reduces the days off: no more taking a week to stay in one place. Beginning in January, I will need to cover just over 9,200 miles in 62 days. That still keeps me just under my 250 km/day limit, but I won’t get many days off unless I can cover more miles in a day. And I want days off between January and March because I will be in Patagonia, with some absolutely gorgeous scenery.

So in preparation for the next leg, I am taking a few weeks off. This will allow me to do some “housekeeping” chores, including obtaining my carnet (“car-nay”) for the bike, which is necessary for Africa. If you’re not familiar with a carnet, it is essentially a posted bond or guarantee that you will take the motorcycle back out of the country and not sell it while there. I also have to obtain a visa for Tanzania, the only country in Africa I will visit that requires a visa application in advance rather than obtaining it at the border.

In addition, I need to add some pages to my passport, as I’m running out of blank pages, and some countries will not allow you into their country unless you have a certain number of blank pages. As with many other aspects of this trip, these rules change as I go. For example, the United States just announced a couple of weeks ago that they will no longer offer extended pages for passports beginning January 1, 2016. The carnet process, which is difficult at best (and expensive), continues to get even more difficult: you can’t obtain a carnet in the United States. Until recently, U.S. citizens had to obtain a carnet through the Canadian Automobile Association. In March the CAA announced that it was no longer issuing carnets. So I applied through the Royal Automobile Club in London. Two weeks ago, the RAC announced it would no longer be issuing carnets.

I also have some medical follow-ups that need to be done before the end of the year, and this will require a return to the States.

The bike will be stored in Peru while I do some alternative traveling. I have a 90 day permit, so I have until February 16, 2016 to get out of Peru. Plenty of time.

Last night I rode a Hatun Pillko “Bus Cama” (literally Bed Bus, or Sleeper Bus) overnight from Huánuco to Lima. It’s a ten hour bus ride. I’m typically not into public transportation, or buses in general, so I was amazed at the comfort of the bus. You see these giant double-decker buses everywhere in Latin America. This is the first time I’ve been on one. It reminded me of riding the Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan. The bus was extremely quiet, and extremely smooth. They served a snack and drinks, had free wi-fi, and showed a movie (oddly, a Korean film with Spanish subtitles). The seats are somewhat like Business First class on international flights: they recline to nearly flat, and have a foot platform that joins to create a full bed, with partitions between seats. I have to say it was the most comfortable I’ve ever been on a form of ground transportation. At least once I got over the fear of riding in a bus in Peru. You have to remember, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been on the other end of these behemoths, staring them down as they flew toward or past me.

 

I arrived in Lima this morning and went to a concert tonight: one of my favorite California bands happened to be playing in Lima tonight. It was worth the experience, to see an audience of around a thousand people, most of whom don’t speak English, singing every word of their songs in English.

Lima is a large city. Miraflores, where I’m staying, is very clean and metropolitan, with a Starbucks about every three blocks. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not much of a city person, but this one feels comfortable, at least for the short term.

So as I head off on intermission, don’t forget to check back here. I may not post much over the next few weeks, but I will hit the road again in Peru on January 8th and the following six or seven months will be a much faster pace, through Patagonia, Africa, Europe and Central Asia.

Stay tuned….and thanks for following along.

December 9, 2015

This morning I visited the US Embassy in Lima, Peru. My passport is running out of blank visa pages, and I needed to add some before heading towards Africa in March. Since I had several days in Lima, I thought I’d try to get it done here. Also, I just learned a few days ago that the United States will no longer allow additional visa pages to be added to a passport beginning January 1, 2016, so I just made it before that deadline. Otherwise, I would have to apply for a new passport, which is difficult time-wise when you’re moving fairly quickly through multiple foreign countries (ie, they keep your old passport until you get the new one, so you can’t cross any borders).

I’d never been to a US Embassy before. Boy am I naive for my age. I had visions of US Marines guarding the entrances, and me being ushered back to sit at a desk before a US government official in a suit with a US flag lapel pin, who would interrogate me, asking me a series of questions about why I was in Peru, where I was going, and why I needed to add pages to my passport, before stamping an official form and sending me through yet another military checkpoint to another building embedded even deeper in the compound.

Uh, nope. When I arrived at 7:30am, there were two lines outside the gates: one for visas, which had about fifty people standing in it, all holding large manila folders of documents. The other line said “American Citizens”, and had about ten people ahead of me. I was clearly the only Gringo present. Anywhere. There were a couple of armed guards, from a private Peruvian security firm. My passport was checked by an Embassy employee, also clearly Peruvian, and I was asked some questions, in Spanish. Then I was ushered through a door to the security checkpoint (a metal detector). Again, all operated by Peruvian nationals, all in Spanish.

Once through the checkpoint, I was instructed (in Spanish) to go to the large doors on the right, and through yet another metal detector, then into a room that looked suspiciously like the DMV. Take a number, have a seat, wait for your number to be called and proceed to one of the four windows. Or rather, “Numero cuarenta tres, a la ventanilla dos”. Yep, no English yet, and not a Gringo in sight, on either side of the windows. Or a Marine, for that matter. My illusions of US force on show was shattered.

In any case, I was able to apply for my additional visa pages for my passport, which should be ready tomorrow afternoon.

While sitting there, I noticed several posters on the walls with large print stating: “Traveling to Cusco in April 2016?” Curious, I got up and wandered over to read one (in English…finally!). The posters advised that Machu Picchu would be closed all of April 2016 for maintenance. My first thought was a sudden flashback to John Candy as the park security guard at Wally World in Family Vacation: “Sorry Folks, park’s closed. The moose out front should’ve told you.”

My second thought was, how did I make it all the way to Lima, only to find out by chance at the US Embassy that Machu Picchu will be closed in April? Shouldn’t this knowledge be more public?

And my third thought was: Maintenance? What maintenance do you do on a thousands-year-old ruin? Is Machu Picchu a scam? (Okay, in reality, I already learned way back in Mexico that most of these “ruins” have been significantly rebuilt over the years.)

Well, by April I hope to be in South Africa and/or Namibia, so it doesn’t affect me.

Now I wish I could get that John Candy scene out of my head.