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It was 2am. I couldn't sleep anymore, but I stayed in bed until about 3:30am. I'd already finished packing before I went to sleep at 11pm the night before. I did the morning rituals necessary to escape my Peruvian family, since they were terrified of what might happen to me. When I finished, I got on my Chinese, 200cc, enduro motorcycle and starting driving out of the
city into the dark, Andes mountains.
There isn't a single person that I talked to about the road from Arequipa to Chivay who said it wasn't dangerous. I gathered as much information as I could, from as many people as I could about what the trip would be like. As usual, the people who warned me the most, had the least experience; they had never done the trip, and were not licensed to drive any vehicle either. The few people who had driven to Chivay from Arequipa, I got the best information from, though far from complete.
My final semi-solid pieces of information from my sleuthing were: Very little chance of bandits on the roads. The roads would be very wet, winding, and dangerous. My fellow drivers would be crazy, and quite often try to pass at high speed around blind curves. It would be cold. The gas in my tank would have to make it to Chivay, because there were no gas stations in between. There would be no cellular service until arriving in Chivay. By bus, one way, the trip takes three and a half hours. It would be an awesome trip.
Arequipa was pretty quiet around 4:15am. I felt considerably safer as a motorcyclist, in Arequipa, driving at 4:30am, than riding in one of the local buses at 4:30pm, despite the numerous assertions from inexperienced people, otherwise. I passed the movie theater and airport, and quickly exited the parts of town that were familiar to me. The new parts looked a lot like the Brazilian favelas that my World Geography teacher so often described, and pined about in class. At the time, I didn't share her same love for their cute, poor person, down for the struggle, ethnic minority, esthetic; maybe because I was driving through them on my motorcycle, in the dark, and if
something happened to me there, no one would probably hear from me again. I did, however love the danger and the freedom.
In the morning darkness of February 11th, the moon had only waned for about 26 hours. Most people couldn't have told the difference between a full moon, and the moon that was shining on the landscape that I was now looking at. It was clear, with my night vision and I drove without my headlight for quite awhile.
I cannot accurately describe what it looks like to see rocky desert, with thousands of cactuses, and thousand foot valleys, while driving a motorcycle on the edge of a cliff, with nothing but the moon peaking out from behind the clouds to light up the road. I can say, that it's beautiful. In visual contrast, but exciting and still beautiful, was driving in the same location, after the moon got covered by clouds, and having only a single headlamp to light up the infinite darkness in front of me.
I drove in darkness for about an hour; longer than I had expected, and it was cold. When the sun started coming up, it only illuminated the grey clouds covering the mountain sky, and I didn't feel any warmer.
When I realized that the sun wasn't warming me up faster than the altitude was cooling me down, I stopped on the side of the road. I took my jacket and wool sweater off.
I put on two more t-shirts, a long sleeve shirt, my sweater back on, as well as my wool poncho over the top, and finally my jacket over my poncho. I wrapped two scarves around my neck and drove on.
I had driven past the cliffside road, to a mixed, cliff, plains, and plateau section, between large snowcapped volcanos and mountains. The sky remained grey and cloudy, with more frequent breaks of sunshine shattering though as the morning continued on. I stopped to take a picture, as a cloud with a few drops of shivering drizzle moved closer.
Because I was so cold, I was a little worried that the rain would continue and strengthen, but it didn't. I did start to notice a little warmth as I continued, and reached a toll road.
It was a single check point toll, I think, or perhaps I was exiting a toll road that I didn't know I was on. Since I was a motorcycle, I thought that I wouldn't have to pay, so I drove right on though, without stopping, and nobody stopped me until about a half a mile down the road. It was a police officer. He said something in Spanish, and I said, in Spanish, that I didn't understand much Spanish. He asked me, "Puno, o Chivay." I said, "Chivay," and he pointed me to the road that veered left. I already knew which way I was going because I had my GPS, but I said, "Gracias," and veered onto the left road. Apparently, the police officer was being friendly and helpful, so naturally, I was nervous.
After veering on to that left road, I realized rather quickly that I hadn't appreciated the road I was previously driving on, as much as I could have. This is where it started to get more than beautiful; it got exciting.
The road was wet and muddy, so my bike was instantly splattered with mud. The road had potholes everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I had a difficult time finding a smooth spot even for the two, inline, off-road tires of my motorcycle to squeeze through. It was even hard for me to get into second gear for most spots, because if I
risked hitting the potholes at more than about 10mph, I might get a flat tire, or worse, have something important break loose on my Chinese motorcycle. I tried weaving in between as much as I could, but it was very hard because of the muddy and slippery conditions. At least the weather had started to warm up and the sky had cleared.
I looked on my GPS and it said I had about another 80 kilometers left to Chivay, on this road. I was thinking, oh my god, 80 more kilometers on this road . . . well . . . I better start hitting most of these potholes in at least 2nd gear. Even worse than the road, were the dogs.
I'd come down a little hill and there would be some ram-shackled hut, with two dogs lying down, waiting for their next vehicular prey to drive by. In a car, the situation is laughable, but on a motorcycle, in slippery, wet, conditions, with foot deep potholes everywhere . . . rabid dogs are a little more disconcerting. The four legged dogs seemed to do better with the potholes and slippery conditions than I, however, they lacked one thing, technique.
Three times, on this section of road, dogs chased me. Many didn't try to bite my leg, but many did try. All of them snarled like they were going to eat me alive. I've developed a particular strategy to repel dog attacks on my motorcycle, especially on my left side. As they came in to intercept, I would raise and bunch my leg close to my body, so that the sole of my shoe was facing the face of the dog. When the dog came in close to bite my retracted leg, I extended my leg as hard as I could manage, into the dog's face. The great thing, is that it was just as effective on front intercepting dogs as rear intercepting dogs, and only slightly less effective at side intercepting dogs. One particular dog, on this section of road, I got square in the face, which stopped him dead in his tracks. This boosted my dog repelling moral quite a bit, I feared moderate to serious injury from most dogs, either from laying down my motorcycle trying to escape, or from being bitten from a crazy, diseased, wasteland dog, or both.
Despite the difficulties of this road, it did have one particularly nice part, a moss river, with steamy water. Pretty cool.
After about 17 miles, the road forked. Chivay was straight, Cusco was to the right. Thank god, the road to Chivay became paved again. The crappy road continued on to Cusco; poor souls. I stopped at the fork, took some pictures, warmed up, and rode on.
I was very much relieved to be on a normal road again, and with the warmer weather, it was nice. Realize, when I say warm, I mean about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. This section was the high altitude plateau section, The Altiplano. Mostly flat, with mountains and volcanos in the far distance. This part was cool.
I came around a bend and saw this road and mountain laid out in front of me, while being surrounded by wild alpacas and vicuñas, which are like smaller alpacas, but with a more arrogant and prissy demeanor. The valley marsh had lots of water, greenery. I stopped, took some pictures, and warmed up again with my hands on the muffler.
Once warm, with not another vehicle on the road, I throttled my bike to the max, and headed into the clouds. At the top I stopped to take a few more pictures.
I continued to the mountains in the distance and into the clouds, until making it around the next mountain curve, where the clouds cleared into a wondrous display of colorful, natural beauty. I'd never seen this diversity of color in real life before, and I hope it won't be the last.
Despite the beautiful colors, and topographic diversity, I felt a little cold, perhaps because the snow I was seeing wasn't on a distant mountaintop anymore; it was on this mountaintop. I was thinking, "Wow, I didn't know I would get so close to the snow on this trip . . . ." It was a pleasant and exciting surprise.
After driving up and around a few more bends, it became clear that the snow I saw, was going to become a bit more personal. There are no pictures of me driving with snow on both sides of the road. Why, because I was way too cold to manipulate the functions of my camera with my hands, and because stopping for very
long wasn't very comfortable. I just wanted to get back down where is was warmer, as soon as possible. Another reason I didn't take any pictures, is because my motorcycle didn't seem to like this particular altitude. It started running rather irradically and sputtering, even at 6,000
Rpm. With my GPS telling me I was at 15,921ft, I felt it best not to stop.
After this mountain peak, it was pretty much a direct, 3,000 foot, downward, meandering spiral, to Chivay. I could see the town in the distance, and enjoyed the warming journey back to lower altitude. On the way down, I passed a couple of small waterfalls, and snapped a shot of one.
Lucia was going to meet me in Chivay, and her bus actually passed me on the way down, while I was taking pictures, so I caught up with it, and followed it to the bus station.
When I arrived, it was actually sunny, and warm. It felt great. Unfortunately, Lucia wasn't on that bus, because she had missed it. With cell service restored, I called her and she said she would be on the next one, 5 hours later, at 3pm. I checked out a few hotels, snapped some pictures of the town, and because I didn't want to pick a hotel without her, I fell asleep on a park bench in the central park of the town.
Insert town pics
I woke up around 2:30pm and went to the bus station. Her bus arrived at 3:30pm. It was great to see her. We went to the hotels that I'd narrowed the search down to, previously. We agreed on the more expensive hotel, with a great view in the center of town, which was 25 soles a night.
We found out later that the guy had lied about the price, charged us 5 soles more, and used the extra money to buy some weed, which he didn't want us to tell his boss about. We convinced him to charge us 15 soles for the last night, which almost entirely made up for the overcharges the other nights.
We didn't do much that first night, since I was super tired from getting only 3 hours of sleep the night before, and the motorcycle journey.
Pretty much, we just planned the drive to the Colca Canyon for the next day. Apparently, Chivay was on the Colca Valley, not the Colca Canyon, meaning, to see the deep part, we would have to drive for another couple of hours, to another town.
We woke up semi-early, around 8am. If we woke up too early, it would be a cold drive there. If we woke up too late, it would be a cold drive back. The semi-paved road from Chivay, quickly turned into a yellow, muddy, dirt road. The GPS said it was only about 40km to Chivay. Once we started driving on the dirt road, I knew why everyone said it was a two hour drive . . . because it was.
We passed several small towns. Yanque, the first, is the only one that I remember the name of. Down the road, there were cows, horses, and dogs. I really don't like kicking dogs in the face from dirt roads, and the horse that chased us, I decided I'd better not try. The horse gave up quicker than most of the dogs, which was a very good thing.
Some of the bulls were quite intimidating. One of them mooed at us while staring us down. We motored by very slowly, in a low gear, with my hand ready to flick on the torque in a moments notice.
We came to little tourist town, where I paid two soles to put an eagle on my head, and pet an alpaca. It was a good deal. It would cost you at least $20 or more in the US, if it is even legal anymore, with all the crazy "save the" planet-whales-polarbears-chickens people everywhere. It's probably classified as animal slavery, or something. Did I mention that I ate grilled Alpaca on this trip?
We continued on, and came to a cliffside tunnel, with Andean Condors gliding on the updrafts of this sheer cliff. They are big birds and taste like chicken. Just kidding.
So we start driving though this tunnel. It was big mistake for me not to swap my sunglasses for my goggles. It was pitch black and filled with limestone silt, like a very fine powder, everywhere. It was on the ground, and in the air. It was kind of hard to breath and it was like driving in sand ruts. I was wondering if the engine of the motorcycle would stay running, because the powder might clog the intake. It didn't and we were through in a couple of minutes. Kind of an interesting tunnel though.
Some more driving, some more cows, donkeys, bulls, and dogs. Then, it started to get a bit colder. Dark clouds were appearing here and there. We pulled our warmer clothes out of our bags, and bundled up to the max. Lucia was warm, but being in the front, I was still a little chilly, but not cold.
Finally, we can see Cobanaconde. Before we get there, we stop at this Mirador, which means "overlook" in Spanish. It was a great view and we weren't even in Cabanaconde yet. It was so deep, it didn't even look real. The colors fade over a distance, and even with your own eyes, it looks a lot like a backdrop. It was breathtaking.
On the way back to the bike, we saw a dung beetle, doing what dung beetles do, rolling dung, with his girlfriend hanging on and along for the ride; typical.
We arrived in Cabanaconde, and realized that there weren't any great places to eat and the market was closed. From the town, we didn't really see a better view of the canyon than we did coming into the town. We asked some people if there was a good view, but most didn't know. Finally someone said there's an ok view from this little hill down the road. We followed their directions, waded across a huge, practically impassable mud lake that took up the whole road, got chased by two dogs that followd us for nearly half a mile, and made it to the hill. We parked, jumped a fence, talked to an unpleasant farmer and checked out the view. It was worth it.
Walking back down the hill, I realized that we would have to drive by those two dogs we passed coming to the hill. I didn't like the idea of that, but it was a dead end road and there was no other way out, except for the way we came. I started the bike, instructed Lucia to have her pepper spray in hand, and then we headed back towards the dogs. This time, they saw us from a quarter mile away, and bolted straight towards us. As we drove towards them, they came directly at us, both on the forward left flank. They whirled around fast, so they could continue to chase us, and the smaller, black dog was the fastest. For some reason, that dog decided to cut in front of the motorcycle, from the left side, to the right. It made it most of the way, but one or both of it's back legs didn't quite make it, and we drove over them. It caused a solid 'bump' in the bike, and a lot of dog squealing. I hope that will prevent the dog from chasing the next motorcycle.
After leaving Cabanaconde, we headed back to Chivay. I was dreading the dark clouds that had been looming as we arrived in Cabanaconde. Now, they were darker, and it was a bit colder. The ride back was pretty much the same, except for two things: we almost got impaled by an albino bull, and we ran over another dog. Certainly, the second dog didn't survive.
The bull was mostly uneventful, since we were easily able to outrun it once we passed it. The dog however, we didn't outrun. We were driving along at about 30kph, along the edge of the road, where the smoother dirt was, as a van approached from a short distance on the opposite side. Apparently, the dog spotted the van and was focused entirely on that, instead of us. The dog was lying down in the brush on our side of the road, waiting till the last second to rush the van. It shot out about three feet right in front of us, snarling, as usual. Within half a second, those snarls turning to cries, as we hit it square in the middle and it bounced off to the left. It never knew what hit it. I evenly slammed on the brakes, locking up the back just a bit. Thankfully, the impact of the dog slowed us down very quickly, so I had no loss of control. We kept driving about a half a mile away, and got of the motorcycle to check for damage.
There was no damage, and the dog was out of sight. I would have liked to drive back to see how the dog fared, but at the moment, I felt we were vulnerable to other dogs, and the risk of getting us getting bitten by a dog wasn't worth the risk of seeing the injured or dead one we hit. We drove on.
We made it back to Chivay, just as the rain started coming down.
That afternoon and evening, it rained for several hours. It was wonderful. We went to the Hot Springs in the town, which were quite elaborate, and spent a few hours enjoying the rain and warm spring water nestled by the river. They normally charge a ridiculous $10 per person, but we refused to pay that. They allowed us in for half that amount, which was still ridiculous, but was the maximum that we were willing to pay.
Later that night, in the cold mountain rain, Lucia and I huddled under an anticucho seller's tent, in the market section of town. The anticuchos were of great quality alpaca meat; not the usual organ anticuchos you find in Arequipa. After seeing the Colca Canyon, and just coming from the relaxing hot springs, the smell of the fresh Andean rain and grilled alpaca, was unforgettable.
The next morning was somewhat overcast, but still warm. We had already done the main thing we planned on doing, so we decided to go adventuring down another road. I looked at the dots on my GPS and saw that the next town down the road we were traveling on, was Tuti. Using the GPS, I figured we'd have enough gas to make it there and back, which is a requirement since you never know if any of the other towns will have gas or not, and most don't. The little town of Chivay was the capital city for the whole province of Caylloma, that we were in, and they had only two gas stations.
We drove between the open areas of the mountains, until reaching the entrance arch of the little town of Tuti. It looked very old, and very worn. There were very few people; I think we only saw about 8 people the whole time we were in the town. There were two boys playing silently near the church.
We walked to the old church. It was dark and cold inside and looked to be in some combination of collapse and construction. I'm not sure which was the overcoming force. There was an old woman sitting in the church entrance that spoke to Lucia in a Quechua accent. She mentioned that some of the gold jewelry of the church was stolen by visiting priests.
We asked if there was a restaurant in town, and found only one. We shared some choclo and cheese, and each got some hot tea. I tried chewing some coca left that I'd bought earlier in Chivay. It was like drinking a really strong cup of coffee, but with none of the crashing after effects. We watched a short documentary about Tuti, that the lady at the restaurant was very proud of, since it was shown on National Geographic Television or something similar, decades ago.
After warming up and learning a bit about Tuti, we headed back to Chivay for out last night. This was the night of some town celebration, unknown to us. Something like a farmers market anniversary. The towns folk created piles of burnable garbage on the street near the market and set them ablaze. They handed out cacao drinks and danced around the bonfires. It was cool.
During the celebration, there were some dogs having a dispute near the people. There was one particular pit-bull that stood out, since he was bulling the other dogs. At one point he very ferociously attacked another smaller dog and a mix of snarls and yelps leapt out of the fray. The people in the crowd stepped away from the melee as it swirled near them, resembling The Tasmanian Devil's cartoon whirlwind. At some point, a seemingly random, adolescent girl, around 14 years old, steps into the middle of the melee, and grabs the pit-bull by one of it's back legs and starts dragging it away from the other dogs, as if it were a misplaced stick laying on the ground which needed to be thrown aside. Immediately, the sounds and melee stopped, and the pit-bull's face went flat and silent. She dragged the dog several more feet, then kicked it in the butt and said something scolding in Quechua. Obviously, she knew the dog somehow, or it knew her, and knew not to press the issue. It was still an amazing sight. I had reservations about getting near the dog as it wandered around previously, let alone dragging it away by one of it's legs.
We finished up the night we more hot spring relaxation, grilled alpaca, and Andean rain.
The last morning, we got up early, and together, started driving the long way back to Arequipa, on the other side of the Misti Volcano. The motorcycle was definitely slower with the both of us on it, but we still made it back to Arequipa before dark.
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