[14.02.2024 – 21.02.2024[

Interlude

A lot has happened, since you last read. Culture, riding, some rain and my body did not what I was expecting of him. And we need to go shopping, but to be honest, the only one doing some shopping will be me, as we will not find anything here that might fit Stefan, being 1,90m and all. We have been to some rather remote areas, but everywhere we went thus far we got thumbs up, and people asking where we are from (well our motorcycles, lets be honest) and rather astouned, when they hear Germany. Currently we are in Lima and even here people are very friendly and interested. Let´s start from the beginning though.

Machupicchu

We left of at Santa Teresa, close to Machupicchu. and as we more or less went there to go to that most famous site, well go on then.

TL;DR
For Stefan he would have loved to have a little more explanation, in form of Infoboards within the site. For me I walked through there like i walk through museums, running my own fantasies as to how this came about and being awestruck by all the work and ideas people put in a place like this. Ah and the hiking was fun, and we only had a little rain.

Getting there was not that easy, as there are quite some options, but booking all that online is a bit of a hazzle. To be honest usually I ignore Stefan when he is moaning about “the internet is broken” – which it is – but this time the timeframe in which curse words left his mouth was alarmingly long. He ended up booking two tickets for the 10 – 11 timeslot and we made the decision to walk from Hydroelectrica to Machupicchu and then up the mountain and the site itself. Oh yeah and Waynupicchu. Making this less of a walk and more of a hike of about 24km and 1200m in ascent and descent.

On Instagram a while back a reel scrolled by where a guy was complaining about spending 200 bucks to get to Machupicchu and then the couple did not have a view, poor bastard. Of course if it would have been all sunshine and blue skies the view would have been amazing, but with the weather we had – during rain season – fog hiding some of the site, but then opening up again, after that some drizzle, in my mind it adds to the mysticism of the place. And to be honest i still cannot fathom how this place came to be. Did some day a hunting party stumbling upon the mountains telling themselves, uh this seems to be a great place, lets build something up there. Then they invited their families friends and acquaintances to come and live with them? Anyway the amount of work they have put in is incredible.

Stefan and myself are a bit of different opinions about Machupicchu, in my mind it was worth being there in the midst of such a place, and hiking it added to the experience. However, and this is where Stefan is at odds with the experience. You have to decide for a route, when booking your tickets. In Machupicchu itself these routes are not really shown. In general there are little to none descriptions, where in the city you are. Most probably because the tour guides need to be booked. And yes for every little extra thing you need to pay. The guard at the exit even joked that exiting is free, after I asked him if we need to sign out. A yes the tickets for route 4 where ~100.-€ for the both of us. And our calves needed about 4 days to recover from all the steps we went up and down.

Santa Teresa – Amaybamba

After the hike we need to get to Lima to get new tires for our motorcycles. Instead of retracing our steps over Abra Malaga, we opted to follow the 100 to Andahuaylas. Are about 340 km and with the exception of the 20km towards Santa Teresa everything was paved so should be doable in about a day. No it was not. While the paved road was about 10km after we left Santa Teresa it then became a dirt road and later it became more a “feldweg” – google translate says dirt road, but that does not do it justice, in Germany we use that word to describe a pathway that is mostly used by farmers to get to their fields or forests, with heavy machinery, and the paths are not necessarily well maintained. At the beginning it was, but the further we went the less well maintained the path became, in addition it started raining, the path became muddy and the day went by with an average velocity of 25 – 30 km/h. In addition the idiots did not really plan for a plcae to sleep or a gas station, usually we are meticulous about these sort of things, especially the gasoline, but not then. Oh yeah and we already had a batch of subpar gasoline in our tanks.

The landscape was quite amazing though and really remote.

After about 160km and at 17:00 hrs (sunset is at 18:20), we had a last look at the map and decided to try our luck in Amaybamba and the only accomodation known in that village. We reached there at exactly 18:20 hrs ;-).

Amaybamba – Andahuaylas

Breakfast and getting Gasoline. Well we did not really trust the what we got there which is why we just filled up our canister. However that thing is a sad excuse of a canister, even though it looks fancy. It leaks, so twenty kilometers in we filled in our tanks, oh and behold some of the motor noises we had since Santa Teresa got less severe. And besides that, no rain on that day, not that it did do much to our average but at least it was dry. The countryside though was well worth the drive, aside the first landslide we had to cross. And eventually we reached Andahuaylas. The last 10 kilometers where even properly paved.

Andahuaylas – Puquio

All paved road, easy going and quite wonderful and divers landscape, crossing over a high plateau and at the end we actually had some fun down a windy mountain road.

The easy going may have been a bit premature, as we did get into a real rainstorm, the thunder and lightning and hail we missed, happily. However we had to cross a spontaneously coming to existing river, where already two local cars waited and thought long and hard about crossing. Well the third one in his Hilux pushed everyone and even though we do not need to do that much more oftend (but will) it was not as bad as we initially thought.

Reached Puquio unscathed and enjoyed an asian peruvian fusion dinner. It was quite good and quite unexpected to be honest. But there is a huge Asian influence here. You can even see very, very old Datsun running on the roads and streets.

Puquio – Ica

Now that was interesting. We started out at a lush mountainous landscape at 3200m, went over a high plateau at 4200m, down towards where the desert meets the pacific ocean at about 500m. Temperatures ranged from 15°C – 10°C – 30°C.

Crossed through Nazca where some of those famous desert ground drawings can be seen. And there were quite a few small planes that flew nice maneuvers to show there passengers those drawings. Mango plantations, desert, Chicken farms in the desert. And my body started to rebel at the sudden influx of heat. While my gear is very good for windy and cold weather up to medium temperatures, it is definitely no good for temperatures exceeding 30°C. I knew that, but when i initially packed I did not find space for my summer jacket. Do not know yet how to deal with that but anyway.

So we reached Ica, got a room and i was out of order. And i should stay out of order for the next day. Stefan and I had an eye on the 105 from Ica to Pisco, but we as well knew, that this is not going to be a paved road and in the desert. So the decision was done fairly quick to stay one more day and give my body time to adjust to the heat. I really hate it when that thing acts up. Especially if I cannot put a finger on the cause of it. Well I was bed and Spa bound (Spa is my personal euphemism for the bathroom) for the next day. Oh and by the way dear pharma industry, could you please add some citrus into the electrolytes, just because it helps your body under certain circumstance does not mean it has to taste absolutely disgusting.

Stefan was quite a big help, seriously, up until that moment where he told me that he had found a rooftop bar. Well it was not intelligent to go out and join him, but I did it anyway. And yes the next morning was actually very good. Let´s go see the desert.

Ica – Pisco

There is a lagoon in the desert close by Ica, but to be honest it is not even worth the visit. It is a little lake and fully surrounded by buildings. So we quickly turned around and followed the 105 towards the ocean. Strange that, basically you can see a lot of developments in the desert. What is supposed to become gated communities. And then you have again the chicken farms. Very long tents with plastic sheeting in the middle of the desert. Some of them are not in use anymore, but they are not removed they just stand there, with some of the plastic sheeting missing. There is a lot of waste and plastic in the desert. But also sheer beauty.

Well desert, so the road was covered in dunes and idiots that we are we planted our motorcycle in those dunes. Getting them out looks very dignified – NOT – but see for yourself. Regardless playing in the sandbox was fun, and definitely added to our skillset.

And it was all worth it, as we reached Pisco, had a wonderful sunset, ah very good meal at the beach and just enjoyed.

And this concludes our week
till next time
Happy Hacking everyone