Ecuador, whole different country and high up in the Andes again!

Day 11 (348 Km)

     Left early Sullana to get to Ecuador and an hour later we were there already, but ended up being on the wrong border! Eventhou my GPS said more or less we were going the right way, on the end we were not and this beautiful paved road went basically to an isolated border post "Alomar". The custom guy said it is between 12 and 16 hours on terrible road to Loja, the town I wanted to go to, but I could not believe him and on the end I ignored him eventhou the young guy looked "smart"

  After finishing our Sol's on a ceviche breakfast, we continued to the Peruvian immigration to check out and he was making up a story the border of Ecuador had no system and told us, we had to go all the way back to Sullane and then take the "right" road to Macara, where Ecuador had system.  I told him I was not going back and reenter the bikes into Peru again and told him I will deal with the Ecuador immigration and customs, just give me my exit stamp. After arguing a while he gave me the stamp and we left full blast on a perfect road into Ecuador. No police, immigration or customs insight and after about 20 km finally we saw a police and he said: don't worry just drive through Ecuador to the other border place and do your paperwork over there and around noon we reached Macara and within the hour, we had all paperwork done and were legally in Ecuador.

   The road from Macara to Loja was 200 km but it was a beautiful one and soon we hit 2500 meters again, but it started to drizzle and thick fog was all around, but on the other side of the mountain pass it started to clear up and descended into the first valley to 1200 meters and after leaving, we climbed again to 2600 meter and leveled of in Loja @ 2000 meters. Loja is an old colonial town and was quite big and a lot of people on the street. Soon found an Hotel in the center and had a few beers for only $ 1.50 a medio liter! and a good meal to celebrate we left Peru. In Ecuador there local currency is the US Dollar, but you can not spend notes bigger as $ 20.00 and they do not use one dollar bills, but use one dollar coins and there local coins!

Gas only $ 1.48 a gallon, I start to like this country more and more.

Day 9 & 10 (487 Km)

     After spending 3 nights in this downtown hotel, Scotty was ready to go more or less, because we had to be out of Peru on the 13th, otherwise we were risking that the customs will confiscate our bikes for being to long in the country, so we took off @ 9 am and hit the Panamerican highway again north and all we saw this day was new pavement, but very boring strait roads with only sand and garbage of both sides of the pavement, but @ 6:30 pm we reached Sullana 500 km north of Trujillo and only 2 hours away from the border with Ecuador. Both bikes were doing great, so hopefully that will continue and the mechanics 2 days ago must have done a good job. Scotty started to limp around again and probably will get better in the near future.

  Peruvian drivers are the worst of all Latin America and never saw saw so many hostal encounters in traffic, they really out to kill you and especially if you on a motorcycle, they want to push you of the road, especially if you try to overtake them.

Trujillo, spending a day in a "Taller"

Day 8 (0 Km)

      Today was the day to fix motorcycles and started with a taxi in front of me looking for one. Soon found one decent one and told him all our problems. We wanted to change tires, correct the handle bar, change chain, & sprockets and get Scotty's swing arm fixed, which was severely damaged, more as I thought after inspecting this yesterday.

  So left with another taxi back to the hotel, to pick Scotty's bike and all the spareparts we had and returned back to the work shop, where I found spend the next 12 hours to oversee that all was done how I wanted it, and without leaving so that everyone stayed there attending to our 2 bikes

  To make the story short, my headlights is working again, changed my oil and filter and changed my rear tire to a Pirelli for $ 65.00. Scotty's bike they had to take the bar handle to a laid/press to straighten it out, take the swing-arm off and solder the missing aluminum back in, make new bushings and hand-make the rubber protecting the aluminum, change the sprockets and chain and also a new rear tire. All this while Scotty was in the room resting his leg and still is not able to walk on, will see what happens tomorrow.

Going Noth to Trujillo on the"Panamericana" highway.

Day 7 (487 km)

  Early start, because we wanted to go as far as possible north, using the nice paved coastal road. So 7:30 am we left and were going through a desert with on both sides sand and some high dunes here there and hardly any people living here. The first 200 km went smooth and gassed up and took a cold drink, because outside was hot and humid. 
Scotty started to hear some rattling in the engine/clutch area since yesterday and it started to get worse every km. Soon we found out that the chain was eating up the aluminum of the swingarm and had to readjust the chain again and this seemed to solve the problem for right now.

             The road was very nice paved and winded through the desert and even sometimes boring, the scenery was like you could expect on the moon, but eventually shit happened, Scotty overtaking a truck in a curve, another truck behind that truck decided to do this at the same time, pushing Scotty more to the left and  he hit an oil spot and wiped out , riding over an 100 km an hour and Scotty and bike crashed and were sliding over the asfalt for more as 100 meters . Looking at this right in front of me as it happens, I thought this is it, bye bye Scotty, but after sliding and rolling, Scotty got up and walked to the side of the road  fast and luckily there was no other traffic coming to hit him front on. None of the trucks or cars stopped and after having quickly accessed the damaged, we had to unload his bike and found out his handlebar was a little bend and the bike received some additional souvenirs! Scotty said he was not hurt-ed, but on the end of the day he could not walk anymore because of some problem with his ankle, probably leggements stretched or worse. We decided to make some changes and stay 2 days in Trujillo to rest and look for a mechanical work shop to do some maintenance on our bikes.

Once arrived in Trujillo, 

Bound for Lima and maybe further!

Day 6 ( 326 Km)

 The music stopped last night @ 4 am so we had about a 3 hour sleep and got an early breakfast to get on time for the speedboat tour to the islands in front of Paracas. The boats could hold 45 people each and about 30 of them took off to these islands, where supposed to be the biggest sea lion colonies in the world, as well as an enormously bird population of pelicans, bobo's, ducks and seagulls, even a few pin-quins. Actually it was amazing to see this abundant wildlife so up close and it was very impressive that with so many people and boats around it was not chaos, it was a good experience. 10 am back in the hotel, picked up our bags and took of around 11 am for Lima.

 

     The first 60 km was slow with a lot of traffic, but soon there was an "Autopiste" 4 lanes and no]]harfly any traffic and we were hauling ass to get to Lima another 200 km away. Drizzle started, just enough to get a little wet and soon we hit traffic about 30 km before Lima. Lima is a disorganized city of 10 million people and traffic is a chaos and took us 2 full hours to get from south to north and of course there are no road signs to tell you were you going. One big mess but eventually out of town and soon traffic was doable. 

     Around 5 pm I saw a fairly new motel on the main road and decided to call it a day, because next town was 100 km away and I still do not have headlights, due to a short in my wiring! Surprisingly the hotel was nice and very cheap, had hot water and very good WIFI, then to my own surprise playing with my laptop. I heard something rattling inside and after opening it up, I found the hard drive sitting loose and after connecting it, I was able to boot again and continue my blog again, so overtime for me tonight!

Early flight to see the "Lines" in Nasca

Day 5 (218 Km)

   Started 5 am to use the internet to update my blog after the computer failing on me yesterday.

Last night we arranged a flight tour to see the Lines, carved in the desert rock and it supposed to be good visible from an altitude of 600 meters. They picked us up 8 am and brought us to the small airport to board the small Cessna 207  During the 40 minutes the flight, we saw most off the images clearly and soon after that we were back in the hotel and checked 
out around 10 am, then we left for Paracas. 

      No more mountains this time and all from here is flat and dry and very hot and a lot of head breeze, what reminded to Patagonia. Had lunch in Ica, where we met 3 Frenchman on bicycles from Alaska to Ushuaia and felt sorry for them. On a motorcycle is hard enough and saw many of them walk the bicycle uphill in the mountains for hours. 

      Soon after we arrived in Paracas and checked into an hotel near the beach. We parked the moto's next to our room and the owner mentioned something about there is a fiesta starting and probably noisy.  The place was laid back and had a nice beach promenade with lots of ceviche restaurants and all had cold beer! Little later, I found out my laptop didn't work again and gave up on that. will use Scotty IPad from now on, but it will have some restrictions, such as no more photo's  and GPS maps! But will still be able to post to Facebook the photo's and after the trip will update each daily blog. After a great Paella dinner, we went to the hotel, because the music noise was too loud and once back in the room, the noise  sounded even louder. So no sleep tonight!

Downhill to Nasca, where the famous "Lines" are!

Day 4 (342 Km)

    All night I heard it rain, but towards morning it stopped and around 6 am I went out of the room to fix Scotty’s chain, what was to lose. After having it fixed, we had breakfast and left the hotel around 8 am and soon hit the 4000 + meter altitude and stayed there most of the day and sometimes reached 4700 meters. The scenery was incredible with lots of twistbacks. Our luck ran out and rain came and soon we were soaked and cold and on top of that the fog became so thick, we couldn’t see anything anymore.

  Towards the end of the day we descended to Nasca, which had an altitude of 600 meter and the sun came out again and most of our stuff was dry again before we reached the hostal down town. They let us parked our bikes in the reception area and were hassled immediately about the tours available in Nasca,

      Nasca is famous about the lines only visible from the air, who the old inhabitants carved in the desert and up to today the meaning of these lines has different explanations why they were made. After a few beers we decided to take a plane the next day to see the lines from higher altitude, expensive but probably worthwhile.

Test drive through the mountains to Chalhuanca.

Day 3 (316 km)

       Woke up in a cold room and still had an headache of the altitude and to make things worse, it started to drizzle, but the coffee was ready and soon the drizzle stopped and we packed the bikes, started them again and surprisingly both ran right away and nine o'clock we left towards the first town named Abancay. Quickly we reached 4100 meters and the bikes were still running great  and a little later we went downhill to 1900 meters and the sun came out , the headache disappeared.

                                                        

       Soon we climbed again to 4000 meter and around 2 pm we reached Abancay, but it was to early to stop, so decided to go to the next place called Chalhuanca, another 120 km away, but the road winded through a narrow canyon with a big river next to us and we were making good time on this beautiful sloped road that went from 2200 meters to 2900 meters gradually over the next 2 hours, following the river and 4 pm we reached. Found an Hostal with an inside parking patio and decided to stay after we found out there was internet. Dinner sucked, because there was nowhere in town cold beer available, just room temperature on the shelf! Will never understand Bolivia and Peru, why there is no cold beer and most of them having a refridge plugged in for the soft drinks!

Back to Peru, to pick up our bikes and ride them home!

Day 1 & 2 (0 km)

    Monday was the day, we had to go back to Peru, to see if we can make the last phase of our South America trip back to Utila, Honduras. So we took the Yate to La Ceiba,  Bus to San Pedro airport and arund 2 pm we checked in with Copa all the way to Cusco, but with 4 different flights to go, we had to do a lot of airport hopping. As usual Copa asked for a ticket to show them that we had an onward or return ticket out of Peru and I showed,  my home made fake ticket from Lima to Atlanta for the end of March with our names on it and all the other crap on it and as usual they excepted it and later I threw the ticket away after we left Honduras airspace.

     Next morning around 7 am we reached Cusco and half an hour later we had breakfast in the hostal, where our bikes were parked. Tried to start the bikes little later and with some starting fluid we got the bikes going on the very last juices of our batteries. We arranged all our equipment, rested a little bit to get used of the 24 hour no sleep and went in the afternoon town to see, if we can buy insurance somewhere, what is obligated and it seems  to be an hassle, if we go without it, passing police road blocks in Peru.

  Can not get the insurance after walking around for an hour or so and decided to go without it tomorrow and see what will happen and if stopped show them something in another language and tell them " this is our insurance"

   Went back to the hostal to rest for later this evening.