Peru! We made it!!

It's been a while since we've posted anything, so here's a big batch of photos and stories from our last few weeks.

We entered Peru from Ecuador at a nice, quiet border crossing first thing in the morning.  It was smooth sailing and corruption-free!  A great welcome to Peru.  It turns out there have been unusually heavy rains in most of this part of South America for the last few weeks and we found out right away that we couldn't just assume a road on the map was passable.  After three tries, we finally made it to Piura and headed for the coastal desert.  And what a desert it is!  We had no idea we would be riding for days through completely barren, empty desert.  It looked like another planet and it went on for thousands of kilometers.

We stopped for the night in Chiclayo, where a 15 minute lunch resulted in the theft of all of Marion's stuff (minus the moto and what she was wearing at the time).  A parked car had forced us to park the bikes slightly to the side of the restaurant and someone just unstrapped her duffel and made off with it.  It was a bummer, but Marion handled it extremely well and we headed towards Lima to try to buy her a couple of articles of clothing.

I wish we had pictures of Marion shopping in extremely fancy Lima wearing my jeans and her motorcycle boots.  Needless to say, she got some looks from the done-up latin women.  We were able to replace most of the lost chargers but could not find a camera battery charger that would work.  Every day we are reminded of something else that was stolen in the bag.  The power goes out and you go for the head lamp.  Oops!  Gone!  We were able to get Marion a pair of jeans and some underwear in Lima and we headed for Joaquin's home - Ollantaytambo!

The roads from Lima to Cusco / Ollantay had been closed off and on due to the rock slides and flooding caused by the record rains.  We rode for 3 hard days through desert, flooded mountain rivers, rock slides and freezing cold high altitude plateaus.  Marion's bike did great at 15,000 feet!  We had modified the air filter cover to let more air in and it seemed to greatly improve the bike's manners above 11k feet.

We arrived at Joaquin's family hotel - El Albergue Ollantaytambo - and received a warm welcome.  Joaquin has added quite a bit of luxury to the historic hotel on the train platform - and we were not expecting the amazing room and fine dining restaurant.  Joaquin, Aima, Mayu and Wendy were awesome and we could have stayed for months.  Thank you all so much for your generous hospitality!

We did the tourist thing and boarded a train for Machu Picchu a few days later.  The train leaves right from El Albergue and is a beautiful ride through the canyons next to the raging Urubamba river.  You can see countless Inca terraces and the Inca Trail along the way.  Machu Picchu itself was awe inspiring and quite majestic in the heavy fog up on the mountain.  Unfortunately, near the end of our time there, I turned to see a man fall from the very top of one of the terraced sections and tumble head over heels for a considerable distance - probably over 50 feet.  He survived, but it was pretty scary and he was in pretty bad shape.  They finally got him on a stretcher and hopefully to a hospital.

We spent a couple days in Cusco with Joaquin and friends and had a great time eating way too much and learning maybe 15 different ways to play darts in a bar.  Great times and plenty of beer!

The morning we were leaving Ollantaytambo to head back to Lima, Bono - the lead singer of U2 - showed up at Joaquin's hotel on his way to Machu Picchu with his family.  We missed the photo-op, but saw him in his sprinter van transport on our way out of town.  The last picture is Joaquin's mother Wendy Weeks with Bono in the restaurant of the hotel!

We're now 2/3 of the way back to Lima, in the town of Nazca.  Tomorrow we'll be back in Lima to figure out how to ship the motorcycles back to the United States and we're headed home ourselves!!!  Probably to Miami, where we will clear the motos through "homeland security" and ride them back to New Orleans.

I can't wait to be back in our house and my own bed!  Thanks for watching our blog -
peace and love,
Chris and Marion

Our last day in Ecuador - stunning beauty and GREEN!

glamor shot of Davis surveying the Ecuadoran countryside

Mountain sides used for farming in Ecuador

La Fronterra!  The Peru side of the border

Our second try at a road to Piura...  3rd try was better

The desert in the north of Peru

Marion loving the desert in full riding gear.  Notice her moto is now light as a feather without a duffel!

After Lima, we headed inland towards the Andes.  A day in, we finally left the desert!

The Andes!  High altitudes and cold fingers!

I try to dress exactly as the locals do - I think I blend in pretty well...

This was our pic commemorating 15,000 feet and Marion's bike still working!

One of the many rock slides in the roadway.  This is a long distance bicyclist - doing what we are doing on A BICYCLE!

Between Chalhuanca and Nazca

Joaquin and his home town - Ollantaytambo ruins and the village in the background

Aima, Joaquin and Mayu in the narrow streets of Ollantaytambo

Joaquin and Mayu with Mayu's friend Abril

El Albergue from the train window

The rushing river from the train window

We took Peru Rail - here you can see the front from the window

The view from Machu Picchu - Dramatic fog this day

Marion in rain gear and an Incan storehouse

This is where the guy fell - from the very top, landing where the crowd of people are tending to him.  Elderly gringo around 65 years old.  I hope he turns out OK.

Just a normal day at El Albergue - Bono and Wendy (Joaquin's Mother)

Theft

Marion is going to need some extra special Birthday wishes this year, someone in Chiclayo, Peru just stole virtually everything she has with her on this trip, minus the Motorcycle.  She's literally just with the clothes on her back at this point, so we're going to have to do some emergency shopping.

Booooo Chiclayo!

Ecuador, YEY

We hit the Colombian/Ecuadorian border about mid-day after our visit to Ipiales.  As seems to be the norm recently with our border crossings, it immediately started to drizzle.  The Colombian side of the border, checking out, was a breeze.  It probably took less than ten minutes, including haggling with the money changers that were seriously trying to rip us off.

The Ecuadorian side was a little bit different but as borders go, quite a pleasant experience.  The only truly memorable part was running through the rain looking for a copy place that was open.  We finally found one, in a small corner store selling sodas and candy that barely worked.  If fact, the owner of the establishment had initially told us that he didn't really have enough toner left but after figuring out that it was either him or waiting another hour and a half until the customs copy people got back from lunch we decided on shitty copies.  The customs official that required the copies didn't even blink at our light copies so two hours after arriving we were on the road again, in the rain.  Lots of rain.  Yuck!  Our ride from the border to Otavalo was quite cold and rainy but we were very happy to check into a hotel with hot water.  Otavalo is perhaps best known for it's huge Saturday crafts market.  The city has a very interesting feel as most of the inhabitants continue to dress in traditional clothing and uphold the traditional culture.  The women wear brightly colored skirts, beautiful embroidered white blouses and awesome fedora type hats.  Truly stylish. Unfortunately (collective groan) I was too shy to take pictures although I did get perhaps one or two in Cuenca from afar.

We spent the next night in Quito at "Vibes" a hostel in "gringolandia" a part of Quito where we splurged on sushi.  Quito is the capital and second largest city in Ecuador after Guayaquil.  On our ride out of Quito the next morning I was shocked by the shear amount of fumes coming from all of the buses.  We are talking black near constant smoke coming out of some of these bad boys.  It made the hour or so of rush hour traffic difficult to endure.  After we got out of the city, we climbed and climbed and climbed.  We passed the entrance to the park of Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano on Earth, totally snow covered and a few other snow capped mountains.  While it was extremely beautiful, it was also over 11,000 ft and my poor bike was not liking a second of it.  Basically, I can now say with some confidence whether D and I have passed the 9,500 ft elevation mark based on how my bike is responding.  The effect is quite immediate.   It was also COLD.  Davis and I were immediately grateful to have used the cold weather gloves that morning.

Unfortunately for us a few hours into our seven hour ride it started to rain.  As we climbed higher into the mountains we had intermittent rain and bad visibility as we road through the clouds.  As we would traverse a mountain and start down the other side we would often times come out of the cloud and rain for short blessed periods but eventually it was just rain.  The mountainous roads were quite treacherous in these conditions and we finally found a gas station to pull into after 100+ KM of desolate landscape.  Davis's visor had become completely useless due to the combination of oily grime on the inside of the plastic from the truck fumes of that morning and water vapor so he had been riding the last 50 kilometers with his visor open and me leading the way with the hopes that he would at least be able to see my tail light in the pouring rain.  There hadn't been anywhere else to stop on the windy mountain road for fear of getting hit by other traffic because of the near zero visibility.  As we stopped under the gas station overhang we were drenched, freezing and at very low morale.  As I nearly fell off the bike in my frozen dripping state to go clean D's visor, a man approached Davis and asked how far we were going today.  When Davis replied Cuenca, still 180 kilometers away, the man assured us that the way was very dangerous because there was solid rain between here and there.  WONDERFUL.

After refueling and coming to the inevitable conclusion that there was nothing for it but to continue (there wasn't much between us and Cuenca in terms of places to stop for the night plus we still had plenty of daylight left), we made tracks.  With D's visor situation cleared up and the cloud dissipating after a while we were able to speed up a bit from our previous 40 km/h even though it was still raining.   Eventually we even got to dry weather!  Even though we were still soaked and freezing we at least had good driving conditions again and could theoretically make good time.  Unfortunately, my bike had other ideas.

Perhaps it was the cold (definitely the elevation), but my bike was coughing and sputtering at 70 km/hr.  I was intent on my goal though, we still had another 100 km to make before Cuenca and so I pushed her hard.  Well, she had other ideas.  At the tail end of a pass, sputtering and coughing like crazy, I suddenly lost power and felt a fierce pop on my left ankle.  Frantically signaling to the car behind that I had just passed I eased off the road to inspect the damage with a sinking heart and D right behind me.  SHIT!  All I had been thinking about for the last four hours was a hot shower and something to eat (we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast at 7:30 am) and now my bike had given it up!  I was sure it was something horrible.   My bike had basically exploded.  I had felt a piece of it fly off.

D got out the tools and we inspected the bike.   As D removed the exploded plastic casing that protects the front sprocket and chain (a piece of which had been catapulted into my ankle) we were surprised to see that no harm had been done.  The only explanation that we have been able to come up with is that an engine cough caused my worn-out, stiff chain to jump off the front sprocket and get lodged in between the sprocket and the plastic protector piece - blowing the plastic piece to pieces.  Then as I freaked and pulled the clutch the chain, with nowhere else to go, fell back onto the sprocket - avoiding a rear wheel lock-up.  The bike must have stalled at the same time because of the coughing altitude problem and the sudden decrease in power.  Or at least that's all we can come up with.

A guy who had been waiting for a bus came over just as D was finishing putting the tools away and very dramatically told us of an Englishman who had died on the road and emphatically tried to get us to go to his mechanic friend.  At this point though, D and I were only focused on one thing: Cuenca.  Get there, get a hot shower and get some food.  We were both shivering uncontrollably at this point and were not in the mood to wait while some guy tried to figure out what was wrong with my bike.  We knew what was wrong - I needed a new chain - but I could make it to Cuenca. (One of the many wonderful aspects of using the bike that I have is that it is so very simple.  It's not like staring into the depths of a car engine and wondering just what in the hell is going on in there.)

The hotel in Cuenca has an amazing shower.  D and I spent some quality time getting warmed up and then went out for a celebratory meal of great pasta and copious amounts of red wine.  We had earned it.  It was by far the hardest riding day I've ever had.

The next day we spent riding through the streets of Cuenca trying to find the correct chain for my bike (size 428C por favor!).  After three or four places we finally found what we needed and even got the shop there to cut off the extra four links that I didn't need.  The rest of the day D spend changing out my chain and doing other bike maintenance.  I was truly lazy and got to read for that part, D really spoils me sometimes.   The culmination of the day was spent at Cuenca's best restaurant, Tiesto's.  This ranks in the top food experiences of my life.  We had a wonderful time and I am salivating just thinking about it.  On the walk there, we decided that we had better spend one more day in Cuenca since we hadn't really gotten to do any looking around yet.  About eleven years prior I had spent three weeks during the summer living with a family in Cuenca and was eager to have a look about and see what had changed.

Well,  I either have a horrible memory or the city has changed a lot.  A bit of both I think.  Cuenca seems so much more cosmopolitan than I remember it.  I'm sure part of it is my age but D has told me that he read something about an influx of expats in the last couple of years and so that makes sense.  At any rate, it's an amazingly beautiful city with tons of old colonial architecture and a lovely charm to it.  I'm sad to be leaving so soon but time is ticking and Peru beckons.  Tomorrow we're off to the border town of Macara for the night, with a crossing early the next morning and a target of Chiclayo, Peru for our first night.

A protest for better working conditions in the central square in Cuenca 

Curry, macadamia nut Chicken with tons of different sauces was just one of the magnificent dishes at Tiesto's - the best restaurant in Ecuador and, quite possibly, of our lives!

The small kitchen was a few feet away from our table.  The chef continually comes to your table and even takes sauces and puts them on your food without asking!  "You have to try this with this!"

The police in Cuenca drive new KLRs.

¡Colombia!

D and I were very lucky to have our friend Stephanie in Panama City to visit with while we waited through the weekend so that we could drop our bikes off on Monday and ship to Colombia.  She had just moved there to work for a few months with the Smithsonian Institute digging up fossils beside the canal and so we got to explore the city together.

After an amazing weekend of beaching it, eating and drinking we headed for the cargo terminal to drop off the bikes before our evening flight into Bogota.  (As I'm sure you are aware, there are no roads between Panama and Colombia - the Darien Gap looms between the two - and the only options are to either fly or go by boat.  As D is not so fond of boats and we were in a bit of a rush we opted for the cargo flight.)  Unfortunately, our bikes were MIA for a few days once we got to Bogota and we were told that "maybe" the plane was broken.  I'm more inclined to believe that the shipping company was simply waiting for the plane to fill up before making the trip.  We have read others' accounts of the same problem with this company, but no matter.   The bikes finally did arrive, only a few days late, and all in one piece.  We left the next day with much excitement for Cali.

The trip was long and a bit difficult in places but all in all we had a great ride.  The road is one of the major arteries for shipping even though the road conditions are a bit ludicrous in some areas.  There was quite a bit of construction going on, both to shore up the road from the many washouts that had occurred as well as a huge project of giant bridges being built over plunging chasms (none of these are complete and it looks as though the new part of the road will be years and years in the making but it is desperately needed).  The current situation involves people standing in the middle of blind switch backs directing truck traffic for tips - many of the tractor trailers are unable to make the tight curves while still staying in their lanes.  This was one instance where it was much safer to be on a moto and be able to dodge over to the side when confronted with a semi roaring around a bend in the middle of the lane, there were a few times when I swear we would have been in a head on collision if we were in an SUV or similar vehicle.  It was actually a great experience though, with lots of lovely views and fun riding.

There was a military van that we kept running into on the road over the course several hours - they were faster than we were on the open road but we had the advantage of moto driving and thus being able to overtake slow buses and traffic more easily... I mention this because a bizarre camaraderie developed between us.  After a couple of passes, the military vehicle started honking and waving every time they passed.  At one point, D and I stopped for lunch at a small road side restaurant in the mountains and the military van passed just in time to see us getting off the motos and taking off our helmets.  There were merry shouts of Vamos! Vamos! as they hung out the windows and waved us on.  We grinned and waved but were definitely stopping for lunch.  In the end, we actually ended up catching up to them on the steep and windy road where they had been stuck in truck traffic.  As we made our way more southward, there were more and more military/police on the road sides probably because we had heard that the southern regions have had a harder time with FARC and paramilitary groups.  We felt totally safe, however, and the weird and constant thumbs up that we received from these police and military men convinced us that they had been briefed in how to deal with foreign motorcyclists.  This was just one example of the warm welcome that we received.  I really adored Colombia and was a bit sad that we didn't have more time to spend getting to know the place and the people.

We stopped in Cali for two nights so that D could get his front forks looked at again.  We had them fixed in Guatemala but the mechanic hadn't changed the seal, only added more fork oil so now it was time to get the job done completely since D's forks had been leaking again since our wild rides on the super rough and rocky roads on the island of Ometepe in Nicaragua.  D had the seal and a great shop put it in early on a Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, about half an hour into our ride from Cali to Pasto, D's ABS warning light came on and as we pulled over into a Mobil station to check it out we were greeted by the very uncomfortable sight of D's ABS brake cable being ground up by the disk brake.  The people at the moto shop had reassembled things incorrectly after the fork job.  After a bit of electrical tape to keep the cable from shorting out again (and of course reassembling the cable and fender correctly) we were ready to go.  Crisis mostly averted.  It's amazing how even reputable places (the moto shop that we had used had come highly recommend by locals) can really screw stuff up.  Every one of our moto problems has been the result of letting someone else work on the bikes.

The countryside in Colombia is the most beautiful that I have ever seen in my life.  The mountain views from the roads were simply breathtaking and I had to constantly remind myself to stop staring at the view and to keep my eyes on the next switch back.  We do have a few pictures but unfortunately, none that truly grasp the magnificence of it because there was never any place to pull off and neither D nor I have the guts to try photography while riding (especially on roads like these).  If we ever have the opportunity to ride in Colombia again, we'll be sure to have figured out a way to take photographs while riding.

Our last stop in Colombia was in the border town of Ipiales where the Virgin Mary was supposedly spotted not too terribly long go and a church was built over the gorge where she appeared.  It's really quite magnificent and D and I had an enjoyable two hours checking it out.  Everyone must walk the last bit to the church and due to the high altitude we were huffing and puffing coming back up the steps to the car park.

Then it was off to the border with Ecuador in the pouring rain..

We didn't get any pictures that captured Colombia's beauty, unfortunately

Chicken Bus passing while we took a rest

Davis disassembling the ABS sensor and front fender to survey the damage

The mechanic had routed the anti-lock brake system's sensor wire against the brake disc!

Luckily, the wire caused a short (and a warning light) as soon as it wore through the insulation - but before it cut the entire wire.  Wrap it in electrical tape and continue on.

Llama with a hat on, Ipiales Colombia

Las Lajas cathedral in Colombia, built over a huge gorge, completed around 50 years ago.