Caraz to Cusco

First off let me warn readers that there will be an excessive amount of photos of mountains in this post. Not because we have taken up climbing, nor due to any new-found enjoyment of the cold but simply because I am an Australian. A place where the highest ‘peak’, and I use this word loosely, barely scratches the atmosphere above 2000m above sea level. Now here I find myself in the Cordillera Blanca, or the White Mountains. It sounds very ‘Lord of the Rings’ like and some of the scenery would give that cinematography a serious run for its money (sorry Kiwi reders). But I will let the pictures speak for themselves……

This area was always marked for a hike or two. Carlie wrote about our warm-up day-hike to Laguna 69 in a previous post. Now it was time for the main attraction, a 4 day unsupported walk along the Santa Cruz route. First up was two days up a monster of a glacial valley passing icy cold and amazingly turquoise blue lakes of snow melt. Take the backdrop of 5000m+ mountains away and you could almost think of a tropical island. Until the wind kicked up and reminded the weary walker that it was time to don the third layer of thermal clothing!

 

The bag weighed 20kgs!

On day 3 we crested the pass at 4750m, surrounded by white mountain monsters (possibly home to the Latin Yeti), unfathomably clear skies and a group of 18 walkers on a tour complete with donkeys carrying their entire luggage, food and bicycles! 

Yea, we climbed around 2kms UP for this photo!

The tourists could have at least carried the bikes themselves! I don't think the donkey knows how to ride.

 Then it was into another valley for one of the coldest nights I care to endure before gratefully completing the walk and hail the next bus back to town. Our driver now sporting the fuzzy, downy moustache of one to whom it is a novelty.  And we were about to descend what is to date one of the most amazing roads I have ever seen!

That's our road just there!

Not sure what to write here apart from the pic simply does no justice!

Back on the bike and it was off now to Huaraz, 80kms down the valley to meet up with Zach, a fellow motorcycle traveller I met online. Our journey appeared to converge for the next 1500km so we thought to join forces with another intrepid soul and share the journey. I have to admit that this was not my first online date. I had dabbled in the dark side of internet dating once before with mixed results, my experience this time was one of pure enjoyment.

Zach proved himself an infectious source of optimism and adventure, not to mention numerous travelling luxuries including travelling slippers, a real folding chair and to my own joy, nutella! For the following 6 days we found our way through the Peruvian Andes along some amazing road through some even more amazing scenery. Again, I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Yup, it's a two way highway!

Traffic jam, Peruvian style

Camping was high on the agenda, however for the first 3 nights we found ourselves unable, terrain, population or climate forcing us into the grittiness of Peruvian city life. Our first night was in the outstanding Huanuco, outstanding in its utter confusion, smog and overabundance of casinos! Next night was Conception, our choice of hotel so inspiring I wrote a story about it! Third time lucky we stumbled across a nice place in Ayacucho and the bikes even managed to evoke some jealousy from both Zach and I by spending the night in a fully stocked liquor store!

We asked if we could sleep here too!

The next day we hit that ever-present scourge of Peruvian trails, road works. This time forcing us to spend a night where I have no hesitation in boasting that we were the first Australians/motorcyclists/white people to call home for the night. Again, enough to evoke a story from me!

We had quite the sizable audience that night!

Due to the road block we had to be up and past the barricade before 7am. This was to prove to be a long day in the saddle. If I was to tell you in kilometres I would lose credibility immediately. However just after lunch the road turned to dirt until 5pm. Then the town we planned to stay in gave ‘decrepit’ a new meaning and we shot for a camp site supposedly 15kms further. 25kms later we were still searching, 40kms later we realised we were now over 4000m high and it was now too cold to camp and to enhance our enjoyment, the sun had set. We ended up camping on a basketball/football court out of sight of the road! 

Camp? Basketball? Football? Hide from locals? This place had it all! And that's Zach on the left.

Next day we made our triumphant entrance into Cusco, our destination, full of our own piss and wind, high fives all-round. We were kings (and queens) of the Peruvian Sierra. There were now pubs to navigate and beer bottles to trade for handlebars.