Days 143 and 144: Ayachucho, PER to Cusco, PER

Day 143: Ayacucho, PER to Abancay, PER (390 km)

The day started off with some high speed hard packed dirt roads. 

Then we hit a long stretch of road under construction. The next 100 km was pretty crap, lots of waiting after heavy machinery, traffic and clouds of dust. It got pretty hot too.

The road eventually got good for a while.

We were actually making good time, until we ran into this:

There was a land slide on the road, and the crews were working at cleaning it up. It was gonna take a while, so I just laid down next to the bike and took a nap. An hour and a half later, we were again on our way.

Waiting for the road crew to clean up the land slide.

Loader at work. Almost done, here.

Because of all the delays, we got to Abancayo after dark. Sometimes you just can't avoid it. We had some pretty cool scenery towards the end of the day. Some places reminded me of Utah.

Day 144: Abancay, PER to Cusco (200 km)

Riding the peruvian mountains, especially in the rain season, is very unpredictable. You never know how long it will take you to get to your destination. The maps (paper and gps) are not very accurate, so not only you can get lost easily, you also never know (when it comes to secondary roads), whether the next stretch will be pavement or a rough and muddy two track. On top of that, throw in other elements such as daily rain, wash outs, mud slides and bridges under construction, and this adds up to what can be called real 'adventure' riding.

Day 144 was supposed to be an easy 200 km of pavement all the way to Cusco. The first 100 km were good: all asphalt, as expected.

This what I call ''twisities''

Then, as we rode over a bridge, we ran into a line up of trucks, buses and cars. Not good. We made our way all the way to the front of the queue (about 1 km long...), only to find this:

The picture doesn't do it justice, but it was a very large mud slide. I went to do some recon up front, and there was no way we could get the bikes across. There was up to 2 meters deep of mud and huge rocks blocking a good 100 m of the road. My guess is it would have taken a few hours to a large bulldozer to open the way, and there was no heavy equipment in sight yet. 


We talked to a few people there, and someone mentioned that there is an alternate path we could try. We followed a few cars into the two track dirt road. It didn't take long before all of them get stuck, but we managed to get by and to continue on. However, the track became  increasingly worse, and  eventually it almost disappeared into the vegetation. I was starting to get a little skeptical whether it would take us somewhere, or if we would come to a dead end and have to turn back. 

The trail wasn't too bad at first, but it was very slippery.

Yes, this is a road, at least according to the GPS...

Eventually, we ran into this abandoned hacienda. We were getting a little tired from plowing through the mud and vegetation for the past few kilometers, so we took a break and snapped some photos.

About 1 km later, we ran into this Toyota Land Cruiser.

The driver owns a farm in the area. Very nice guy, he gave us pointers how to get out of there,  and also told us a little about the hacienda we have seen just a moment ago. Apparently it was build in the 1500's and it was the birthplace of Peru's national alcohol, pisco.

Half an hour later, we finally reached the secondary road that would take us back to the main road.  We saw this from above:

Another mud slide on the main road! Fortunately, the two hour 20-something kilometer detour we took brought us past these obstacles, and we were able to continue all the way to Cusco without further problems.

There are definitely no easy riding days in Peru... We struggled quite a bit over the past week and a half or so, but it's tough days like these that you end up remembering many years from now as the epic ones. I'm really glad we took the road less traveled in this country.

Next up, Cusco and Machu Picchu.