Category: Motorcycle – NY to SP

Calm day riding… easy road… no traffic… soothing scenery… frequent gas stations… all good.
Puno is on Lake Titicaca – the highest navigable lake in the world at 4000 meters (12,000 feet)!
Puno itself is not very pretty – the lake is quite nice but we didn’t get to explore much because as we were driving to the hotel the guide book recommended my RPM gauge and speed indicators went to zero and the bike lost power and died.
Tried to start it again and nothing…
We push/bump started it and it fired back up but shortly after it lost power – no gas was being sent to the engine.
Marc went to look for a mechanic while I took it apart to see if I found any loose connection hoping to find something obvious and praying that it was not the electronic fuel injection system itself.
When Marc came back the bike was completely “naked” and I had found nothing… and the mechanic found nothing either… well… it was the first time he saw so much electronics on a bike.
I then went with a cab to this other guy who they recommended – he knew how to deal with these “electronic” cars and all… he was not there.
So we left the bike in a gas station and came to the hotel.
I called some dealers in the US who gave me some more suggestions like checking the battery connectors themselves (duh!!) which is what I am going to do right now… 9pm… got to get this bike working again… the closest dealers are in Lima, Santa Cruz (Bolivia), and Santiago
(Chile) – all about 4 days driving away… yikes!!
Will update soon…
So… went to the bike and the connectors to the battery were fine but found another set of wires that were broken.
The mud and dust that has accumulated on the wires dried some of them out and broke them. 
The good news is that it is electrical – the bad news is that I was not able to fix it – will have to get an electrician tomorrow… let’s see.

From Motorcycle NY to SP

WOW – Machu Picchu was definitely worth the trip.
The geographical setting of the place, the train ride, the energy there and the mystery that shrouds that place is phenomenal.
This is how it went down: we woke up early to catch the train from Ollantaytanbo to Aguas Calientes, aka Machu Picchu. The train ride lasted 1hour and 45 minutes through a deep valley of lush vegetation.
Arriving in Aguas Calientes you purchase the ticket to enter Machu Picchu as well a ticket for the bus that takes you there in about 20 minutes. Nothing is cheap here but all worth the while.
The mini-bus climbs about 1000 meters through a dirt road that grabs the mountain and twists up and up. The cliffs on the side give you vertigo. Once we got up there we got a guide who gave us detailed information about the entire city.
For me what stood out was the level of sophistication of the agriculture there – they even had a staging or experimentation area to test new crops.
Another very interesting thing was to see how the split the rocks open. They would look for a vein on the rock – a small crack – dig some holes along this line to stick a piece of wood in it – then get the wood wet – the water expands the wood and cracks the big rock open!
After about 2 hours we get the bus back down and the train back to the hotel where we hopped back on the bikes and came to Cuzco.
Beautiful main square.
As we were parked I heard say “You beat me here!” in Portuguese! It was a Brazilian cyclist we saw on the way to Ollantaytanbo yesterday.
We saw him on the road but completely missed that he was Brazilian so we didn’t even stop. In any case, he has been on the road for 2 years and 7 months carrying about 80 kilos on his bike! This is the second trip he’s doing – the first was in 94 where he went from Brazil to the
USA and back! He’s going with NO money so we contributed a little with his trip… very little but that’s all the cash we had at the moment.
He is from Sergipe…

From Motorcycle NY to SP

Wow – for me it was a majestic day of riding! Finally the scenery changed into something more dramatic and interesting.
At the start of the day we ran into Jessie, a New Yorker riding a KLR who told us that Peru has been great so far for him – that’s because he did the mountain route, where we did the coastal/desert route.
There were a couple of points where the road was being repaved and the traffic was being held up. For some odd reason Marc asked how long it would take to let us through – odd because it was the first time that it has occurred to us to ever ask –
it usually is pretty fast. This time we were informed that it would take about 2 to 3 HOURS!! After some whining we convinced them to let us through! Uff!!
Up and down mountains, through valleys, amazing turns, lots of llamas and very little traffic.

Funnily enough I was noticing smells today – pleasant smells – the rain water vaporizing up from the asphalt, apple being baked in some hut, flowers, freshly cut grass, and some other smells I’d never encountered before… 
We didn’t make it all the way to Cuzco but got pretty close to a town called Abancay where we had some very good pizza while sharing travel stories with Jessie – very cool guy 🙂

From Motorcycle NY to SP

Mood is getting better but started out pretty bad today… the road was straight and dull… no colors… no distractions… but then arriving at Nazca everything changed… some turns on the road, we could see the sky again and the colors came out!
I think the video and the photos (or lack of them) says it all…

From Motorcycle NY to SP

Wow – I can’t believe it’s day 60!
Wierd day today. Was still not 100% this morning. The altitude, cold, fog, and potholes on the road did not help. Down from the mountains we got more desert until Lima… Got pulled over by some cops who caught us speeding 🙁
Lima is not pretty – well at least from the little I’ve seen – not realy fair but so far Peru is my lest favorite country so far. So barren. Very poor. Not too pretty.
Hoping Nazca and Machu Pichu will be worth it and change my opinion of the country.

And today’s video is almost not worth posting… the battery was low and I didn’t notice it throughout the day so I only got the first few seconds of each comment I’ve made… I decided to post just to get some of the scenery:

All day in bed but feeling better now. Took some Amodium and hydrated
oursleves well with Inka Kola – a nurse from the hotel came to see us
and said it has good amounts of electrolytes 🙂 At night we had some
consome and some more Inka Cola…
I think tomorrow we'll be fine to get back on the bikes and he's
towards Lima.

So the excellent food in Peru backfired – Marc and I are both with diarrhea 🙁
We are both exhausted from yesterday’s ride and beat up from this slight food poisoning… we figure it was some “carne seca” we both ate a couple of nights ago…
In bed watching TV.
No riding today…

Oh my god – absolutely exhausted, drained, but very happy!

Started at 11am and drove till 5pm through the desert with tiring
cross winds. We stopped for lunch in Trujillo where I ate too much.
Not good because we passed through a port town called Chimbote that
had an unbelievable stench that turned my stomach inside out, as well
as it’s contents 🙁
Around 5pm we took a left to start climbing up to Huaraz. The road was
absolutely stunning. Then The asphalt disappeared. Fun! 30 miles to
the town – no problem!
3 hours later, dark, exhausted, dizzy from the altitude (4,000m –
12,000ft), we arrived. We seriously considered camping on the side of
the road. As we entered town a cop pulled us over but didn’t even
bother asking for documents when he saw how tired we were 🙂
Now at the Andino Club hotel having dinner 🙂
Ufff!!