Motorcycle Diaries + More Mountains - Peru

Learning to Ride - Ariquipa

Every trip has its firsts.  (Mum, it would probably be better if you stopped reading here, just skip half way down this page to where I talk about doing a nice treck in the mountains.)  In Ariquipa I had a first, first time riding a motorbike.    Really though, you couldn.t pick a more suitable place to learn.  Right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of downtown Ariquipa, on roads with no markings, or discernable road rules, and without so much as a single lesson before hand.  But I better back up slightly and give you some context. 

We had been talking about renting some bikes for a while, so when we saw them being offered in Ariquipa we jumped on the chance.  I didn.t exactly lie when they asked if I had any experience on a motorcycle.  I said yes, but omitted to tell them that that experience consisted solely of being a passenger on the back of a motorcycle taxi two weeks earlier in Bolivia.  Good enough though I thought, so we paid our money, and 10am the next morning were standing in Eddie.s (our guide.s) patio, as he asked us whether we wanted to ride the 250cc 2 stroke trail bikes or the larger 650cc beasts.  I didn.t want to do anything stupid, so opted for the former.  He took the bikes out onto the street, jumped on his, started it up, and shouted ´´follow me!´´

Sweet Ride

Now when I say I have had no meaningful prior motorbike experience I really mean it.  And sitting on top of a hundred odd kilos of metal, I was packing myself, big time.  But I had been doing a lot of visualising the night before, after asking Brett all the motorcycle questions I could think of ´´do the bikes have gears? how do you change them? where are the brakes, clutch, where is the accelerator?´´   Unfortunately the visualising didn.t include starting the bike, so after looking like a complete idiot trying to turn the key on a kick start bike, Brett pointed the kickstarter out to me.  After mashing my shins on the foot rests while attempting to kickstart the bike, we were finally running.  The visualisation was paying dividends as I held in the clutch, kicked the gears into first, and slowly pushed the revs up on the accelerator.  We will not mention stalling the bike 5 times before finally getting moving, but in no time I was riding.  So stoked with myself I was that I went straight through the first intersection oblivious to the fact that there was even an intersection there.  Shit.  Resolved to do better on the second intersection comming up, but that plan went by the wayside when I realised I hadn.t quite mastered stopping.  The only way through saw me on the wrong side of the road passing an oncoming truck.  The next intersection I made sure I mastered stopping.

Ariquipa, a choice place to ride.

We had about 5min of inner city driving before Eddie informed us we were about to go offroad.  Sweet, street riding was getting too easy anyway.  The next 4 hours I was introduced to soft sand hill starts, steep downhill descents, open road highway riding, and navigating through villages, cars, trucks, goats, locals all while trying to give the impression that I knew what I was doing.  All of that and only one minor skid, coming off the bike while turning a corner on the tarmac (in a patch of loose gravel).  The wingmirror smashed when the bike fell, which cost me $12 to replace.  I didn.t tell eddie that I had noticed a little oil leak after the spill, or that the bike seemed to be skipping a bit post bail either.  Doing so would have probably cost me more than $12.

Ica - Sandboarding

We signed up to do some sandboarding (snowboarding on sand dunes) just outside Ica in Peru.  It shouldn.t really be billed as sandboarding though, as the ride out over the dunes in our modified toyota land cruiser was definately the highlight.  Our driver was a flat out madman behind the wheel, regularly getting all 4 wheels off the ground, travelling at stupid speeds, and hitting blind lips at full bore.  Bloody awesome.

Our modified Land Cruiser.  SUPER quick.

I gave up on the sandboarding after our first downhill (as it was far too slow), and opted instead for running down the dunes as fast as I could, which I regretted about half way down when I realised there was no way my legs could keep up with my body.  Also randomly, on the streets of Ica, I bumped into my brother Scott, neither of us having any clue that the other was in the city.  Hilarious, but good, as we then spent the next three weeks travelling together.

Dunes:  Steep

As quick as it takes to run down the dunes, it takes approximately 85times longer to walk up the dunes.  Lucky we didn.t have to walk up them as our land cruiser met us at the bottom, but we did do a night mission to the top of the dunes, which paid off by catching some awesome photos messing around on the way back down.

Our mate Steve, part way through travelling overland from Rio, Brasil to NY, USA

Santa Cruz Treck (mum you can start reading here)

Wow.  What a place to go for a walk.  With 22 mountains in the region with peaks exceeding 6,000m (mount cook is only 3,700m), Hauraz is undoubtably visually stunning.  We had a 3 day treck planned which took us at its highest point up to 4,700m.  Probably the best way to describe our treck though is to talk to a couple of the photos taken.

Any time you looked up, your gaze was either greeted by snow capped peaks, or giant glaciers gouging their way and shaping the landscape around us.  If you look really closely, you can see a waterfall on the very right hand side of this photo, 2/3 of the way up.  The water runs straight off the snow and into any of the many lakes that we passed, like the one pictured.

Glacial run off does make for cold water though.  That is why Scott is avoiding getting wet here and simply opting to make like Jesus and walk, or run, on top of the water.

Here we are, at our 4,700m pass.  The first couple days we had cloud cover, and a bit of drizzle every now and then which the others didn.t like so much, but it definately made for some justice photos like this one, and the one at the very start of this blog.

This was our crew.  Our guide Dario, on the left is probably the fittest person I have ever met in my life.  While we were struggling with our day packs, walking at what can best be described as pedestrian pace, Dario was carrying three packs, and telling us how just last week he did a 70km run over a 5,000m pass in 11 hours.  It normally takes most trampers 5 days.  He was good value.

The obligatory donkey shot.  This one is for you Chia.

At such altitudes the force of gravity is noticably weaker.  Candace demonstrates.

It doesn.t take much to stop me from writing my diary.  While sitting down to write it in the evening, I looked up and was blown away by the valley ahead.  If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you should be able to count 7 ridges on the mountain in the background, which were illuminated ever so fleetingly just before the sun dissappeared for the day.  I haven.t written my diary since.

Even the cold crisp early morning kicks your ass with its awesomeness.

Until next time, Mark.