After Manaco we headed down to Huanchaco, the road was long, boring and dusty so the pool was especially welcoming. In Huanchaco we also celebrated Rands birthday the second birthday on the trip.

Then back on the long Pan Am highway for another dusty hot boring day but finally we made it to Lima, fortunately in the light as no one wants to ride into Lima in the dark. We didn’t get to see much of Lima though but from what I saw it was very modern, but I believe there is a small old city that is worth seeing. I’m looking forward to exploring more of it when I come back to meet up with Joern.

From Lima we had a shortish ride to Nazca where the guys were hoping to hop a plane to see the Nazca lines but sadly there was a sandstorm so the planes were grounded.

        Relaxing in Nazca

After Nazca we were in for a real treat. The road out of Nazca is stunning by far the best landscape we have seen so far.  We started off in a chilly overcast day but soon broke through the clouds to mountains that seemed to go on forever. At the top were some crystal clear lakes and many lamas and alpacas. The roads were pristine and there was no traffic. I really got into the twisties this time and enjoyed them more than any other day, this is all due to them being traffic less 🙂

There are a few tiny flea bitten towns along the way and I cannot figure out what the people in them do. The very remote settlements are farms which is evident from the amount of Lamas and Alpacas and the herdsmen that you see watching over them. However in these tiny towns life seems quite dismal… but who am I to judge. I do know that I would hate to spend a winter up there

. 

Heading out of Abancaya we another story. The group got split in two amongst the windy confusing roads. So Roberto decided to carry on, after trying to find the missing 4 riders,  as he knew Rick (the 2^nd sweeper guide plus the support vehicle were still in town) There is only one road out of Abancaya to Cusco so we thought we’d meet the other riders on the road. When we stopped for a break,  Rand rode up to us to let Roberto know that the reason the second group was not there was because 2 of the riders had had an accident. They were stopped at a red light and a 16 seated white taxi van had simply ploughed straight into them.  Steve was hit by the van and hurt his foot as well as getting a few nasty bruises. His bike then hit Robert who also suffered a few bruises. Fortunately both riders are okay and can carry on riding and the bikes received a lot of superficial damage so are okay to carry on. A very close call and 100% the drivers fault, what can you say the drivers in Peru suck, nothing like in Colombia.

This was the first big accident we have had, other than this we’ve had bikes in ditches on the side of the road 4 times and once in the gravel on the opposite side of the road. We’ve also had 7 flat tires. Let’s hope the bad incidents are behind us as we will soon enter the Amazon 10 days of real challenging roads.