From Desert To Darkness!

Day 127-128

In the northern reaches of Peru we interspersed our rather tedious desert rising with a bit of historical culture. The treasures from the tombs around Cliclayo were impressive and the old ruins of Chan Chan and the even older temples of the sun and moon near Trujillo were all worthy distractions.

Days 129-130

From the coast we decided to take a rough dirt road through the Canon del Pato to Huaraz, rather than opt for the wimps' tarmac route. It was a tough ride, but the canyon was stunning and it was definitely worth it – a wonderful variety of hues as we snaked our way up through rough-hewn tunnels carved out of the rock. While we managed the journey without dropping the bikes, the route did claim two victims: the windscreen-dangling turtle that Emily bought Ric for his birthday in the Galapagos took a leap for freedom somewhere; and the bumpy rocky road put cracks in one of Emily's Touratech (Touratrash?) panniers, and more cracks in the one of Ric's that we had fixed at Jorge's in Merida.

Huaraz is apparently backed by an enormous mountain range of crisp white peaks – one of the most beautiful in the world – which remained hidden for our entire stay there. We hung around nonetheless as there happened to be a metal worker round the corner from the hostel and we thought it best to take the time to reinforce all the panniers before taking them any further. They now all weigh about twice what they used to but are seriously strong! The delay also gave us a chance to do some serious re-planning, the conclusion of which was that we need to make haste to fit in everything we want to before the end of the trip.

Days 131-132

Our very friendly hostel owner in Huaraz gave us the address of his parent's place in Lima, suggesting we drop by and stay with them. As we just wanted to pass through the capital and not have to negotiate our way through the more touristy centre this worked out very nicely for us, and the delightful old couple were great hosts.

The desert didn't stop at Lima, and we rode through more and more of it all the way to the Oasis at Huacachina. It's a bit of a touristy spot (more gringos than we'd seen in a long time) but we'd heard good things about buggy and sandboarding trips into the neighbouring sand dunes. Indeed, the trip didn't disappoint and was brilliant on all fronts: being driven round the sand dunes by a near maniac was scream-inducing fun much like being on a rollercoaster; the sandboarding was tricky but worth it (although in the end Ric gave up on the slow and difficult standing-up approach to join in with Emily's faster and easier lying-face-down method); and the scenery of never-ending dunes was spectacular, especially when after a fun few hours the trip ended with watching the sun setting over the rolling sand – awww.

Days 133-134

The following morning we got up very bright and early and headed straight for Nazca aerodrome to get an early flight over the famous Nazca Lines for Ric (not Emily as she did the flight when she was in Peru eight years ago and so decided to save her dollars for something else – a handbag in Cuzco as it turns out...). The flight was great – perfect weather for it and Ric got to sit in the co-pilot seat so had the best view – and he managed to get onto a flight within 5 minutes of arriving which meant, we thought, that we had plenty of time to get to the next stop before dark.

The next stop was the biggest town on the way up to Cuzco, Abancay (Cuzco being too far to realistically make it in one go). As soon as we started out, leaving the dunes and climbing into the mountains we realised we were going to need a long time for the journey: road works all over the road were causing regular 15-minute waits along the road. At one of these we got chatting with the car at the front of the queue (having obviously driven straight to the front ourselves – bikers' privilege!) who told us that the road to Abancay had been closed for the last eight days! They were also hoping to get there though so we got the sense that it might not be entirely closed, but had no idea what the problem actually was. If our Spanish had been better, maybe we would have gotten the full story...

After climbing through roadworks for a good few hours we stopped for lunch. Then, the roadworks stopped and the rain came. We were on a plateau of over 4,500m and it was bitterly cold as well as wet so we made pretty slow progress. We'd asked about the road closure at a petrol station and had been told that the problem was around the next major town on the way to Abancay but that we should hopefully be able to get by on the bikes. There was no other way to go except back, so onward we went. As we dropped off the plateau and the temperature rose a little we started coming across a lot of rocks in the road – piles here and there which looked to be mini landslides.

We got pretty close to the town where we'd heard the main problem was and there were a few lorries waiting there. We went to the front, but with no officials and nobody volunteering any kind of explanation as to why people were waiting we just carried on down the road. This is when the piles of rocks started to get really bad. We figured there must have been an earthquake or something and that was the cause of the closure, though we couldn't fathom why they hadn't been able to clear more than one lane through the rubble in eight days. We then started to see lots of lorries and trucks coming the other way so figured we must be able to carefully pick our way through. We eventually caught up with the lorries going our way and were in the middle of their convey when we started to enter the town. As we got closer we became more perplexed. Here there were other things in the road: bits of lorry, cut down trees, burnt piles of rubble... and then we saw a mass of people at the town entrance, baying for blood, spray painting graffiti on lorries and buses as they slowly crawled through. We were pretty relieved when they cheered us and our bikes on but still didn't want to hang around in the death-mob-town for long so reckoned we'd better brave the impending darkness and carry on to Abancay, well beyond what was supposedly the epicentre of the problems, rather than lodge here as we'd been hoping to after losing so much time.

So we carried on straight out of town, noticing quickly that the piles of rocks in the road were not always near where land could have slid – these were man-made landslides / rock piles presumably put there by the townspeople who were protesting. The piles seemed to subside and the rain took over. Would this nightmare ride ever end?! Not for a while: the piles of stones got worse! We were going slowly because of the rain and as it started to get dark we could see even less of the road and the rocks in our way. As we entered Abancay there were lit pyres in the road with people sitting around them. We were “allowed” into the town itself by the people stopping the rest of the traffic, so we made our way towards the centre, through the throngs of people and under the wires strung across the road, and straight up to the safest place we could find – a police station with some motorcycle police outside! The cop we spoke to was a very friendly guy who explained what was going on (el paro – the strike) and asked us where we were going tonight. “Here?” we replied. We were then hit with the news that even more protesters were arriving that night and all the roads would be blocked again in the morning! The policeman suggested we leave immediately to get out while we could, but there was no way we were embarking on a five hour journey to Cuzco wet and cold at 7pm in the dark, so we decided we would have to leave first thing in the morning to avoid the new road blocks. The policeman suggested 4am and we suggested 5am (dawn, as a policy we don't ride in the dark) and he thought this would be OK. He then led us to a hotel, through more throngs of people – it was a huge relief to park up in the safe car park and get inside!!

It was also quite a relief for an American family who had been holed up for a few days having had quite a bad experience on their way in two days previously. They had joined with around six lorry drivers to clear a huge landslide so they could get through – apparently the lorry drivers had definitely done it before though and made reasonably short work (a few hours) of it. They'd also driven past a group of children brandishing machetes, and had rocks thrown at their Land Rover... The policeman suggested we all left together for Cuzco first thing in the morning, so we agreed to leave at 5am. Then decided to be on the safe side and say 4am. At 2.30am Dirk knocked on our door to say that someone had just arrived from Cuzco, said the road was clear and we should leave now! So at 3am we pulled out of the hotel...

Two minutes down the road we were stopped by a group of drunk men who didn't want to let us past, but after Dirk and Danielle's careful negotiation Dirk just had to accept a shot of their grog and we were allowed through. From there it was slow but sure progress around the various obstructions to the border of the region a couple of hours later, just as the new day was on us. The strikes were just within that one region – due, we gathered, to their regional leader being ousted for some reason – so once we cleared Apurimac boundaries we knew we were free and clear! At that point we bade farewell to the Land Rover (nice vehicle, but not a fast mover) and sped on to Cuzco.