We rode up to Macchupicchu in a train, but not after Enric tried to find a way for us to go on motorcycle. Still, as our one car "vagon" was cutting its zigzag path up through the rising sun and the sleepy valley, Enric was lamenting, "I am sure that the motorcycle could make it up. The girl in the tourist office just wanted us to pay the money and take the train. There are buses at the top of this mountain that take us from the train to the entrance of Macchupicchu. How did the buses get there?" He challenges. There is silence until our tour guide saved the day. "The buses were brought up by train." Ah, so there really was no road for the motorcycle to take. Our dollars spent were now justified. The motorcycle stayed in Cusco, resting in the courtyard of our hotel. The owner of the hotel was so excited to have us stay, that she offered to store the bike in the downstairs bedroom. We were taken aback; you mean that the city is that dangerous, that we need to keep the bike in a bedroom. I was beginning to think that we should not be visiting this city after all. "Oh no, it is very safe here," she assured, "we lock the gate at night too." The bike stayed in the courtyard. I think she was attempting to provide 5 star service to the flashy tourists - or trying to fill empty bedrooms.
We picked Cusco (Macchupicchu) in the southeast and Huaras in the northwest of Peru to spend time. The rest we would cover as fast as we could. There is a lot of land to cover: the better part of a country that is equivalent in size of France, Germany, Italy and Austria combined. The asphalt is a nice change from Bolivia, Enric rocks back and forth on the motorcycle, happy to role over good pavement and I relax on the back, liberated beneath the trees.
Sometimes towns and cities get in the way of really stunning nature. That is what happened with Chalhuanca. We had met a Norwegian motorcyclist who had told us that this particular stretch of road between Cusco and Lima would be particularly bad, that there was one town that had a hotel that was questionably habitable. Even with the warning I was still surprised when I walked around the dank unpainted courtyard surrounded by humid rooms without electricity that opened up onto cracked asphalt. Doors hung from broken hinges - the porcelain of a public toilet peaked decrepitly from another drooping door. Wasn't there a nice safe place to camp? A policeman told us about a room at the hot springs located just 5km up the road. The sun sank behind the mountains as we risked the journey up a dirt obstacle course. When we arrived, two little men were screwing in the first light bulb since they put electricity in at the hot springs. Installing plumbing would be their next project; they did not yet have a toilet. Fluorescent light bounced off peeling blue paint cracked walls and onto the gray concrete square sunken tub in the middle of the floor. It seemed questionably similar to the hotel in town. A local family had come to the hot springs to wash their laundry, and had littered the stretch of lawn in front with their wet clothes. We felt bleak. The motorcycle leaned over and fell under the strain of the travel weary bags. The men installing the light bulb laughed, and ran over to lift the bike.
Bleak first appearance can turn out for the better. The mineral rich 50°C 130°F water flows continuously down the mountain and through the baths like a river. People come from all over for healing and cleansing treatment. Some even come to do their laundry. When the town doctor arrived with his family, the little man ran off to attend to him as if her were a celebrity, and later we hear them talking; the little man tells him that his father is sick - perhaps the doctor can help.
Later, he shares with us the plight of his country. "Did you know that we have no government?" He, like the long line of Peruvians we have already spoken with, is frustrated with the lack of government. Fujimori, the last president, ran off to Japan, after unsuccessfully trying to elect himself to a third term. "We can't even elect another president," he refers to the unresolved tie between presidents. He tells us that crime has risen, that neighbors steal each others sheep, that there are murders, that Fujimori wasn't really that bad. He paved the roads and got rid of the guerilla. I visited the garden several times that night, thanks to the lack of toilet, and at every outing, I hear the footsteps of the little man, and see his face in the window looking out - checking to see who is out there - watching the motorcycle - allowing Enric to sleep without worry.
I read that Peru is one of the most geographically diverse places in the earth. I did not know that we would experience all of that diversity in one day. In the morning, the air is warm, the trees fragrant. We wind down through the valley back through the town of Chalhuanca, and slowly we begin to climb. The GPS reads 4000 meters and the earth spreads out flat in a directions. The trees have become bushes, and packs of llamas are running all over the place. I look around. There is no going down. We reach the altiplano and it is freezing. We shiver and take pictures. I can think of little else than getting somewhere warm, but at the same time, I have never seen anything quite like the orchestra of packs of llamas crisscrossing across the plains, white ones with pursed lips, and big doe eyes, and pink ribbons tied to their ears, like a mark of a doting mother. Andean homes and farms made of adobe bricks and formed in circles and ovals across the green exterior look like mystical forms left for the centuries. The women contrast with the shocking green and pale blue sky with their bright oranges and reds and pinks - traditional Andean costume. x My eyes strain to find a bend in the horizon, a sign we are going down in altitude. Instead I pick up a lone headlight moving towards us. It slows down as it passes us, and we pull over. The little figure climbs off his bike and pulls off his helmet! A gray buzz explodes on top of his tend weathered face. "Wow! Where are your from?" He wears no gloves, his shirt is unbuttoned. We are smiling; we are hugging and shaking hands. He wears a camera around his neck. "This photograph is going to be HISTORY!" he cries as he sets up the shot. We shake hands some more and look at each other's bike. He has a BMW logo sewn onto the back duffel and has embroidered the name of his hometown - Abancay (Ah-bahn-cahe), the name sounds as mystical as Casablanca. Sympathy for the cold move us quickly in opposite directions, but not before more hugs and handshakes, and warnings for a few potholes up ahead.
Thirty minutes later we are 1000 meters lower, 20 degrees warmer, and eating our second breakfast of 2 egg sandwiches and hot chocolate. There is nothing like shivering for one hour to fuel the appetite. We kept winding down the valley, curving and winding, until one last bend brings us face to face with barren, yellow sand. The desert hits us like a blast from a hot furnace. We were instantly sweating, and it was barely noon.
In Nasca, a town with a name that sounds like some famous auto race, we seek out the mysterious lines inscribed in the desert floor 1000 years ago by the Nasca people. They supposedly used them for tracing the movements of the stars, and modern man has not been able to erase them. We climb a lone tower that appears along the highway, and look down upon a pair of hands and a tree - squiggly lines that one could make with a shovel in the sand. And they have really been here for 1000 years? There was a museum nearby of the German woman who dedicated her life to investigating the lines, to measuring rocks and deriving theories of how they were made - the figures are immense, and from the tower, we can only see two. But that is enough.
Our day is still not through. We buy water and Popsicles; our once voracious appetite are now eliminated by the heat. The desert finally empties us in a small fishing village on the coast. A dozen restaurant owners flock after us waving their menus in our faces. All of the other tourists have returned home after Easter, and we are the only ones left. After a day of ascents and descents in temperature and altitude, we settle down the Peruvian specialty of ceviche (fresh strips of fish "cooked" in lemon juice). In Spanish, the v is pronounced like b, and the c in South America sounds like an S to the Spanish, the world ceviche can be written as Seviche and cebiche and everyone can understand.
We tried to pass through Lima quickly, to avoid getting caught in the dirty city of chaos and crime. Instead, we got stuck in traffic, catching an occasional glimpse of a colonial building buried in a stench of smog and engulfed by a ceaseless cacophony of honking horns.
We are riding up into the mountain again, when I feel a sudden jerking between my legs - it is Enric, gyrating back and forth in his seat. I turn on the communicator to hear if he is OK. Strange whooping sounds come from his helmet. I look in front of us to see dozens and dozens of pyramids and domes covered in snow. We have just reached the Cordillera Blanca, and Enric is dancing for joy (not leaving the seat of the bike). We had finally reached our next "destination".
We saw a poster of the Alpamayo two months earlier in a tourist office in Mendoza, Argentina. Where is that? We asked. Peru, we were told. It is supposed to be one of the most photographed mountains in the world. And here we were, staring at a dozen different peaks, trying to figure out which one was the Alpamayo. We could not find a single local who could identify which peak was the Alpamayo. Everyone we asked would point to the brightest whitest mountain on the horizon, and say, "that is the Alpamayo." We zigzagged across the valley two times, climbing high into the Cordillera Negra to catch a view of the Cordillera Blanca and hopefully a view of the Alpamayo. Countless testimony from well-intentioned and misinformed locals made me realize that it really did not matter which mountain it was, they were all pretty and impressive to look at.
We exchanged our motorcycle clothes for backpacks and headed down one of countless valleys that are creviced in the Cordillera. We hiked alongside hundreds of sheep cows and horses that were grazing in the valley and became confused between the trails for the cows and the trail for the one we were supposed to follow. And in the morning, when the sound of cows munching grass woke us up, we were privy to a tent side view of half a dozen snow-capped peaks. The sight was exceptional, as were the two dozen bulls that stood in a circle around us eating their grass; I was so happy that the big beasts that were thrusting their curvy horns in my direction were vegetarians, and that our tent is blue and not red.
As we descend the mountain, a woman of the village looks over at us. "Nice auto," she says. I suppose a bike like ours is not a common sight. Cute little kids run up and try to touch us and cry, "Give me a candy. Tourism is common here, and we imagine the frustration of watching people with all their needs taken care of, on a red bike or in a bus or car, taking pictures of the beautiful land, the snowy peaks, that are not enough to provide for these people that live here breathing the fresh air, and living below the peaks that are the places we dream of.
We never see the Alpamayo. It requires a 5-day trek through taller peaks and longer valleys, and we do not have the time. There are things we miss on this trip that we don't have time to see, that begin to form the dreams we will pursue - adventures for the future.
A hundred and fifty kilometers now separate us from the coast. The government decided to lie out a really bad road for us to follow. We moved as fast as we could over the undulating potholed road, bouncing over prominent tire eating rocks, but we could not go faster than 30 kmh. Sitting on the back of the bike, when the bike is going slow, I can't help but fall into the bad habit of calculating just how long it is going to take us at this velocity to make it to the "other side". I turn on the communicator to start a little conversation, but I interrupt another one of Enric's cacophonies: "Oooh. Ehhh. Ahhh. Oh. Shit. Ooooh. Ehhh. Ahhh…." He is suffering for the motorcycle. For each bump we encounter, he is imagining the two of us, on the side of the road, digging out the tools to repair a popped tire. He is suffering for all of the screws that he has just tightened now dancing in their holes. He is not nearly as worried about the suffering for our backs that are acting like shock absorbers being put through strenuous functionality tests on this brutal road.
"Honey," I say because someone has to look for a bright side in this situation, "This is like being given the gift of a once in a lifetime motorcycle ride down across and up a canyon that could be very well the Grand Canyon (for that is what it looks like). Not many people can have such an experience." The condolence lasts for about 5 minutes, and we have barely progressed 5 km in the boiling sun. There wasn't supposed to be a gas station on this road, but we ended up finding one anyway, and a little man serves us a gallon of 95 Octane from a little plastic bottle. And then he made magic happen. "Do you see this?" he asks, and sticks out his long bony finger. "Follow the road 10 more minutes." He traces an imaginary line on the table at our side. "At the first bridge, turn right. At the gate will be a guard. Ask him to let you through. It is a private road. It is much better than the road you are on now." He draws a long line and a short line with his finger to show how much distance we will save. We drive away and he turns back to his minimart - griping about the shitty lack of government and the good roads that they keep hidden from the people.
We find the bridge and the shiny metallic fence. I greet the guard with a big smile. Two years of living in Mexico taught me a thing or two about persistence and patience in negotiation. I let a 5 sol piece ($1.50) twinkle in the sunlight, and the guard soon let us through. The wheels touched town on the most beautiful dirt road of the entire trip - as smooth as asphalt and the motorcycle hummed along for half an hour longer as the entire 150 km disappeared and we rejoined northbound traffic on the Pan American.
Our minds and maps are leaping ahead to Ecuador and contemplating the Colombian crossing, while our wheels are still burning over the Peruvian Pan-American, whizzing passed countless Toyota Pathfinders parked on the side of the road. We wave and smile and slow down as we pass the laid-back highway patrol officers, that don't seem to react as we accelerate on.
Just as we are supposed to leave Peru and enter Ecuador, we find ourselves pulling over in front of a beachfront bungalow in the town of Mancora, Peru. Spanish tiled patio, a hammock hanging from the balcony, an ocean view and a private beach. No sheep, or cows or goats. Only crabs running on the sand, waves crashing on the shore, and a couple of days of rest and sun for the two of us and the motorcycle. x We have only been in Peru a few days, but it has already made a strong impression on us, with its amazing countryside and Maccu Piccu.
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