Big Fellas Make Big Rides…!!

Our first order of business for the day was getting through the glass doors of the hotel without shattering them…

Riding through a set of glass doors is not my idea of a good start to the day...

This task was not without it’s stresses, as to mount the step in front outside the doors, I had to give the throttle a quick burst while still inside the reception…!!

The staff gathered on the sidewalk to bid me goodbye shouting “Viaje seguro…!!” as I rode away… I had enjoyed taking the mickey out of them, until they turned the tables on me one day and switched my laundry with that of a German lady’s across the courtyard, apparently “by mistake”…!!

When I opened the bag in my room, and jumped back in fright at the sight of a large pair of pink panties, the girls at reception were at my door, laughing fit to burst…!! We called it quits after that…!!

I was soon out of Cuzco and riding up into the mountains towards Abancay…

Although it had been dry in Cuzco, up in the first range of mountains, it was raining…!! I decided to ride through it and not stop to put on my rain gear, hoping that it would soon pass over…. And it did…!!

After just a few kilometres I rode out into a patch of sunshine, and looking back I saw the outskirts of Cuzco melting away in the mist that was headed towards the town…

Recent rains had damaged parts of the road, and made things a little tricky...

Not the place you want to be in the event of a rockfall...!!

The road then dipped down to a narrow valley, running between some impressive mountains… Parts of the road had either been torn up to be re-surfaced, or had been damaged by the recent rains…

Short stretches of the road were made up of loose gravel, and in other places, wide shallow streams ran across it…

I saw all the things my friends had warned me about, and slowed down in the places I recalled them mentioning that danger lurked…

The wide bends with thin layers of gravel on them, the sharp, hairpin curves where there were no guard railings to stop one from plunging hundreds of metres down to the river below…

All their warnings actually allowed me to cover the distance to Abancay much quicker than they probably had…

At times I felt that I could almost see the road ahead, knew which direction the next few turns would take us, and I don’t mean just a few hundred metres ahead of us, but much further than that…!! It was almost as if I had ridden the road before…!!

Perhaps it was just that I was so focused on what I was doing that allowed me to “see” what was coming before I actually got there…!! Perhaps it was because I rode without any fear at all, taking every obstacle in my stride and not letting anything faze me…

The wide Pachachaca river cuts it's way through the mountains on it's way to Abancay...

Cresting one of the passes, I saw the cloud covered Altiplano ahead of me.... The area ahead was some of the wildest places I had ever ridden through...

I often remind myself that I am riding alone, without any backup, and usually slow down and take a few deep breaths… I think “winding my neck in” would be a good way to describe it…!! Today, I never once thought of being out there alone, and this maybe gave me the confidence to ride as well as I did…

Then we were up into the clouds, where the temperature dropped and the cold wind whistled through the gaps in my helmet...

We climbed three of the steepest passes since my ride to San Pedro de Atacama, before we reached Abancay… It took three hours to cover the 190 km, and after I had refueled, I sat drinking coffee at a small roadside stall while I tried to visualise the next part of the ride to Puquio, 300 km away….

The last few kilometres into town had been a bit of a nightmare…!! The road surface was coated in mud from the many landslides, and the trucks that were carrying the mud away down the hill… On one long section, I practically had to “walk” the bike, as my back tyre kept threatening to overtake the front one…!! It was almost impossible to tell the difference between the tarred road and the verges, so thick were they both coated with loose gravel and mud…!!

There was a collective groan from the "team" when we passed this signboard... "We're not REALLY going to try and make it to Nazca, are we...??"

One of the dozens of rockfalls that blocked either part of the road, or all of it...!!

Abancay is actually more than a 1000 m below Cuzco, and the dizzying climbs over the mountains were easily matched by the long steep descents to the town…

I left Abancay and began the climb into the yet another range of mountains…

The recent rains had softened the shoulders of these mountains, and the unstable slopes were shedding rocks and debris…

In some places, the road had to be diverted to get around the larger rockfalls…

Did I mention the rockfalls...??

Are you sure...??

The weather was still perfect for riding, and with mostly blue skies overhead, we made good time as we climbed higher… There was the occasional obstacle besides the rockfalls that we had to slow down for…

Nearly every concrete drift was overflowing onto the road... On one of them, the water was almost a foot deep...!!

Water seemed to pour from every crevice on every hillside, adding to the already fast flowing Rio Ortesim… This river cuts through the mountains, and the I-26 follows the path that the Ortesim has taken centuries to cut…

Perfect weather, amazing scenery, and a great surface made riding through this area a bikers dream...

With more than half the day's ride behind me, I figured a 15 minute break was in order...!! Although the sun was shining, a cold wind whistled across the plateau...

The weather is these parts can be rather fickle…!! The higher we climbed, the colder it got, despite the sunshine…

We passed through the little towns of Soraya and Chalhuanca, and then climbed up onto the Altiplano, where a completely different kind of weather was waiting…!!

I stopped at 4 000 m to take a breather and bask in what was to be the last of the sunshine for some time…!!

I was able to look back on yet another steep mountain pass that we had just climbed… Up ahead I could see a thick bank of clouds that covered the higher elevations we still had to climb to…

I had by now lost count of the many ridges that the Andes had put in our path, but was enjoying the ride immensely…!!

A few hawks drifted over on the air-currents to see what I was doing… The place I had stopped at was a wide shoulder of the road, where tour buses stopped to let passengers stretch their legs and take photos… I think the hawks had become accustomed to being fed, or picking up scraps of food that the tourists left behind for them…

Taking a break and drinking enough water to keep a camel happy...!!

Just in case I was confused as to where I was, this sign was there to help out...!! And as for "Pronto Returno"... Well, after the icy cold conditions, I was rather looking forward to the desert along the coast, thank you very much...!!

Puquino was still over 150 km away, and decided to push hard to get there before 3.30 pm, which was the cut-off time I had allowed to make the final push to Nazca…

I figured that if I arrived in Puquino any later than that, I would be running the risk of riding the steep descents to Nazca in the dark…

The roads leading up to the Altiplano here in Peru, and Chile and Bolivia for that matter, are using fulls of twists and turns, but once you are up on the high plateau, between 3 600 m and 4 500 m, they level out and become a series of long straights, broken by gentle bends…

Very conducive to high speeds…!! I was able to crank the Big Fella up to 140 km/h with ease, only slowing down marginally for the corners and the odd herd of Alpacas grazing on the roadside…

These animals seem to thrive at the higher altitudes, and farmers spend the drier parts of the year, herding the animals onto the Altiplano to graze…

In the winter months, they take the herds back down to lower altitudes, where they are relieved of their woolen jackets…!!

Alpacas have similar road sense to that of goats... They move smartly out of the way, and hardly ever dash about in confusion when vehicles approach... I have yet to see a carcass of one that has been knocked down...

The road beyond Iscahuaca climbed even higher, towards the clouds ahead...

We zoomed through Pampamarca and climbed to 4 600 m, where the many of the hills were coated in a thin layer of snow… My heated grips came in very handy at this point…!!

A large black chicken committed suicide under the wheels of the Big Fella as we roared through Condorccocha… There wasn’t a soul out on the only street that passes through it… Needless to say, I did not stop to offer my condolences to whoever the owner was…!!

And then we were up into the clouds, where conditions forced us to slow down to 120 km/h.... Only kidding..!! It was actually about 115....!!

We passed a series of small alpine lakes, before the rain came down in earnest…!! The road became a slick black ribbon, that wound it’s way up into the cloud cover and back out again when it dipped into valleys…

Bigger than your average boulder, this one blocked the entire road... !! The two guys on the rock were drilling holes so that they could dynamite it into smaller pieces...!!

Pedro discovers to his intense embarrassment, that his parking brakes no longer work...

I could understand why GiGi got herself into a bit of a tizz...!! On this pass, I didn't know my left from my right either...!!

I stopped on a steep hillside to watch a gang of guys, trying to pull a truck up a slope… Using a much larger tractor-trailer, they managed to extricate the stricken vehicles, but not without much cursing and arm-waving…!!

I reached Puquino at exactly 3.30 pm, and despite the foul weather, decided to make the push through to Nazca…

I have discovered that at high altitude, the Big Fella is very fuel efficient… This despite my being a little heavy on the throttle on the long open stretches of road on the Altiplano…

Usually, by the time I have covered about 300 km on a tank, the reserve light comes on…

On the ride to Nazca, the reserve light only came on after 380 km…!! I at first thought that the Fuel Management System must have gone on the blink, but I was proved wrong when we made it all the way to Nazca, and covered a record 458 km on a single tank…!!

Did I mention the foul weather...?? I did...?? Well, this is just in case you thought I was joking...!!

Pilot's view of the road ahead...!! You need a bit of "bottle" to overtake in these conditions...!!

Over the next 90 km, the road would drop from an altitude of 4 150 m to just 800 m.... We were in for a dizzy ride...!!

With just over 100 km to go to Nazca, I began to wonder if I had not bitten off more than I could chew…!!

Nazca lies at 800 m.a.s.l., and I was cruising along, still on the Altiplano at 4 152 m…!!

It did not take a genius to figure out that there must be a few VERY steep descents ahead of us…!!

I poked a gloved finger at her “screen minimize” button a few times, and saw that we had an 80 km stretch of the twistiest roads imaginable, lying in wait for us…!!

The countdown to sunset was well underway, and mercifully, we came out of the clouds just before the descent to the desert far below began…

At least I was going to be able to see the corners and hairpin bends clearly…!!

And so it began...!!

Chased by "The Shadow"...!! This time wearing a bush for camouflage...!!

Short straights cut into the shoulders of the mountains we rode through, before plunging down the slightly gentler slopes in a series of hairpins bends and switchbacks...

There are many of these leading down to Nazca...!!

The road plunged down into a barren landscape… Hardly any vegetation was able to grow on the rocky slopes of these the western parts of the Andes…

The rain and wet conditions of the Altiplano were left behind, making way for the dry and dusty lower slopes leading to the desert beyond…

Thankfully, the road surface was smooth and perfectly cambered, and mostly free of traffic, which allowed us to treat the descent like a race track, cutting corners and making use of every inch of the road…

I stopped thinking about the amount of light left, and concentrated rather on taking the best lines through the corners, and hugging the inside of the hairpin bends, just in case there was a vehicle coming the other way…!!

It was one of the most invigorating rides that I had made in a long time, made so not only by the excitement of a road that tested my abilities to the fullest, but also by the fact that I realised I would be making a successful ride that many people had advised me not to attempt in the first place…!!

Chasing the sunset into Nazca.... We had cut it fine, but made it safely all the same...!!

Nightfall in Nazca, and the Big Fella's begging for fuel as usual...!! It would be another 7 km of sphincter-tightening riding before we found fuel...!!

I rode into the outskirts of town, frantically looking for service station, hardly believing that we had ridden over 450 km since last refueling in Abancay…!!

I found a service station just as the Big Fella said, “That’s it, I quit…!!”…

He perked up after taking on 5.83 gallons of 90 Octane, (over 22 litres…!!) and we were able to make our way happily into the ever darkening town to look for a place to stay for the night…

The first place I chose was full, and rather than spend more time searching, I rode back to the flashy looking Nazca Lines Hotel that I had passed a few minutes before, to see if I could “make a deal”…

Turns out I wasn’t too tired to drive a hard bargain, even thought the $50 a night was much more than I would have liked to pay…!!

There was a large guarded internal parking area, where I knew the bike would be safe from prying eyes and sticky fingers…!! After having my Leatherman stolen in Paraguay, and a few flags stolen off my panniers in Cusco, I was beginning to believe my luck in this regard was running out…

My spacious and comfortable room at the Nazca Line Hotel, was a God-send after the 11 hour, 665 km ride from Cusco...

From now on, I had resolved to park only in places that I felt the bike would be safe in…

A porter wheeled a large trolley out to the parking lot to collect all my gear, and for the first time in a long while, I only had to make one trip to and from my hotel room…!! Bonus…!!

I walked past the huge swimming pool in the central courtyard, too tired to take advantage of it, and choosing instead to stand under a hot shower for ten minutes to ease the ache in my shoulders and back…!!

I made arrangements to have a taxi collect me early the following morning to take me to the airport for the flight I wanted to make to see the Geoglyphs that Nazca is famous for…

I then ordered dinner from room service and after wolfing down a huge salad and a bowl of pasta, flopped into bed and slept like the dead…

©GBWT 2012