Day 70: Peru to You Too!

Ecuador Add on:
What a day! Hardest day so far. High in the mountains and raining, raining, raining! The rain wasn’t the worst part. It was the fog. We were so high that we were in the clouds and it was like the worst fog imaginable. Visibility at times was under fifty feet. Bruce had on big waterproof neoprene riding gloves and liners and still his hands were freezing!

Back to the hotel to dry out and warm up. Rode all the next day in the rain to get to the hotel we had booked only to find out we had booked for one person instead of two. Twice the price later we were given a wonderful suite with a hot tub. Problem is the hot tub had to be turned on by the proprietors in order to be used. We are waiting right now as we write this to find out the outcome! The process is quite funny. The wife climbed up a big ladder into a dark hole in the ceiling with her nice business suit and all we can see are the soles of her high heeled shoes. ……while the husband is down here pulling boards off the side of the tub and messing with piping and stuff under the floor and spraying water all over the suite. The wife is climbing up and down the ladder while yelling instructions at her husband who is hitting buttons and causing a minor rainstorm in the room. We are having a couple of whiskeys and beers while being entertained, so all is well!
On to crossing the border into Peru…..but before we leave Ecuador and while we are speaking of border crossings, let us detail for you our experience crossing the border from Colombia into Ecuador just to give you a flavor of why we complain about border crossings. When crossing from Colombia into Ecuador, we discovered that there was a line at Colombia Immigration for old farts and people with kids. Yay! So we stood in that line for an hour despite how short it looked. Guess processing all those kids takes time. Right before we got to the front, six dudes looking like they had money were allowed to butt in front. Bruce yells at them so some official switches us over to butt into the front of the line for the window for non-old people. This whole process of getting our passports stamped for leaving Colombia took 2 hours. Next, we leave Colombia and ride down the street to the Ecuador border. We go to Ecuador Immigration office. An Immigration official tells us we must first go to Aduana (customs) at the adjacent building bank window. We go there. The bank Aduana chick sends us to another Aduana office around the corner in another building. That Aduana dude says “no” we have to go to Immigration first (where we started). The Aduana dude says we are to return to him after Immigration. We go back to Immigration and get in a line of 100 people that goes outside, around the corner and down the street….in the heat. We stand there a half hour during which we move ½ block. A woman official comes by, asks our age and tells us to leave that line and go inside to Immigration counter six for old people and people with kids. We go get into the line for counter six. When we are next up in that line, an official tells us to not go to counter 6 but to go to counter 1. We go to counter 1 and finally get our passports stamped. We return to the Aduana dude who told us to return to him. He says he can’t help us and takes us back to the Aduana chick at the bank window. The bank Aduana chick finally does our motorcycle papers but it is interrupted because her stapler runs out of staples. We wait for the stapler to be reloaded. She finally hands us paperwork, mumbles something we can’t hear, gets up out of her chair and walks away. We aren’t sure what to do. Are we done? We hang around and finally get her attention. She says “get out of here you gringo idiots. You are done!”…….in Spanish of course. This process to get into Ecuador, including exiting Colombia, took 4 hours. It’s so much fun!!

Peru:
We left the Ecuadorian rain behind as we descended into the deserts of Northwestern Peru.

The roads were good and the temperature was warming so things seemed to

be looking up. The border crossing was about as simple as they seem to get. A total of 1 1/2 hours for exiting Ecuador and entering Peru. We were feeling pretty good about things right then. While the skies were gray and dreary and the countryside a monochrome brown, void of much vegetation, we were happy to be out of the rain and warm.
As we traveled south through the desert and coast we began to lose our upbeat attitude. The place is completely depressing! Trash is strewn everywhere. People live in hovels. Open mud brick dwellings that look like they are about to collapse standing beside other abandoned structures of like construction that have already fallen. The attitude of the people sorely reflects their environment. These are the least friendly people we have met in our travels on this journey. I don’t know if their environment is the catalyst for their attitude or the attitude creates the environment. Either way it is a part of the world I have no desire to return. You can tell when you are approaching or leaving a city because the garbage is hauled out and dumped along the side of

the highway for miles on the outskirts of the cities. Dogs and vultures compete for scraps among the heaps of human waste. I have seen this on television and movies of places like India but it is the first time I have witnessed anything like it firsthand.

It has an effect on you which is hard to describe. This coupled with the most aggressive and angry drivers we have come across in all of Latin America, who would intentionally cause you physical harm if it could gain them a mere second on their insane pursuit of getting from one corner of this piece of hell on earth to another. We are about drained. It is the only time we felt like bailing on this trip. Put in the anchors and rap off the damn thing. However, we press on. We hear the best is yet to come in Chile and Argentina. Bruce likens it to climbing a major route in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. There is so much good, granite cracks and corners on the route but you have to suffer through some large sections of sketchy pegmatite. This part of our journey is a large pegmatite band that must be endured.

Adding to our frustration are the incredibly damaged roads. A section from the border to Piura, Peru was riddled with potholes the size of bathtubs. MB went down twice on that section and broke the seal on the front right fork leaking out oil. This caused her bike to lurch and lock to the right if she hit too big of a hole or bump. While we thought the problem was fixed in the Mad Max atmosphere of the city of Trujillo, MB realized the issue was still at hand while we were riding up the Canyon del Pato into the Peruvian Andes.

This is an incredibly dramatic canyon of single lane road with numerous blasted out tunnels without light and drop offs along the side with no guard rails. It wasn’t really difficult to ride but was impressive and unnerving to know that no caution had been taken in the engineering of this road to prevent rock fall, landslides or cave-ins at all. Waterfalls appeared out of

nowhere and crossed the road to fall again on the other side. At times the switchbacks were so tight you could not take them in anything but 1st gear.

It was an interesting ride which took us a very long time because of MB’s fork issue. Eventually we emerged high into the Rio Santa Valley alongside of the

Cordillera Blanca range to the town of Huaraz Massive 6000 meter peaks covered in ice and snow. Bruce was fortunate enough to have climbed a few of these in his late twenties guiding a client Doctor, and his son, who came to become a close friend over the years. Being in Huaraz now, which is the starting point for many of these mountaineering endeavors, brings back those great memories of their past adventures and friendship in this range.

Our quest in Huaraz was to get MB’s fork repaired which was a big concern because parts for such a large bike are not available in small places like Huaraz. We garnered advice by phone from Bruce’s cousin on the mechanical problem. We spent another day with another mechanic who informed us that the front fork was really low on oil. Thanks so much to our good friend, Tom, who helped translate for us by phone with our mechanic here in Huaraz and also with the first mechanic in Trujillo. After paying the mechanics bill of 15 soles (which is less than $4 US) MB test drove her bike and all seemed fine. Finally, we think our luck is turning and things are looking up.

We move on the next day to tackle the road to our next Peruvian mountain destination, the town of Huanuco. The road is labeled “all surface” on the map….which means take your chances cause only God knows what condition the road is in. Eleven hours later after we left our hotel we arrive just at dark at our hotel in Huanuco. The “all surface” road was hell for five hours because MB’s bike starting locking up again and she was terrified trying to negotiate what turned out to be a pothole filled dirt road that wound up and down and round for miles and miles. Was someone punishing us??!!!!

Then, we had a breakthrough. Bruce’s bike did the same thing! His handlebar locked for a second. Being the better rider, he immediately knew what the cause was. He had locked up his front brake and it locked his handlebars until he left off the brake! Wow….what a revelation. Problem solved. MB has been jamming on her front brake whenever she hit a big pothole or speedpump. Locking up the front brake resulted in a lockup handlebar. Problem finally solved! Finally, we look forward to emerging from the pegmatite into the smooth, solid, sweeping granite ahead of us on the rest of our route through Peru. We are working our way south through the Peruvian Andes toward Cusco where we hope to do Machu Pichu.