16 February, 2016 We have now been on the road for 63 days. Kalil and I unanimously agreed that the previous 3 days have been by far the best riding of the trip up until this point. That has brought a feeling of rejuvenation to both of us. With a bit of reluctance we now have to leave the mountains of Peru and head towards Lima. Lima is a necessary stop however, since that is where we will need to go to get our tires replaced. After enjoying the cool climate of the mountains, the heat, traffic, desert, and population of 10 million people in Lima seems overwhelming.

It seems that each day spent on the road, there are countless great photo opportunities of the most bizarre things. Unfortunately the opportunities pass by long before I can get my hands on my camera. However, every once in a great while I get lucky!


That is a truck loaded (some might consider it overloaded) with corn stalks! The most fascinating part is that these trucks are loaded by hand…

Lima was a struggle. 20 miles of stop and go traffic, and at one point, Kalil’s oil/air cooled motor started to overheat and we had to pull over in traffic for 20 minutes to let it cool down. The relief of finally reaching our destination was significant! When we arrived at Touratech, we immediately recognized the two KTM 690’s ridden by our friends Chris and Zoe! They stopped in to change their oil. So it was an enjoyable afternoon, catching up and getting our bikes serviced with new tires.

Later in the day, a fellow F800gs rider from Germany stopped in. Olaf was also on a tour of the Americas and was having several issues with his motorcycle and stopped in at Touratech to get some issues sorted out. To make a long story short, one of the issues is quite common to the F800GS, and you can buy an aftermarket part in order to prevent this issue from happened. It just so happens that I have installed that part on my motorcycle. As much as I wanted to leave Lima the next morning, I realized it was a good opportunity to try and get a little extra karma on my side before the last leg of the trip. So I offered to take apart my bike in order to take the aftermarket brace to a machine shop to have it replicated so that Olaf would not have any more issues with his rear suspension.

So we had a little extra time to get a birds eye view of the southern part of Lima:


There are some advantages to taking a little extra time in these big cities, and that is that you get to witness some situations that seem like a disaster waiting to happen:


After 2 nights in Lima, the anxiety to get out of town was growing. However, at the machine shop they were still trying to properly replicate my shock brace:


So while the machine shop was hard at work and needing one more day to finish the job, I decided to get some other issues taken care of. First and foremost was fixing my GPS. I have been using my phone as my GPS for the whole trip, downloading the maps to use without needing any signal or WiFi. It was working great until it was left out in the sun too long in the sun and the heat of Lima traffic. One of the best parts of the culture in central and south America is that they will always try and repair things before they go out and buy something to replace it. So within no time I had found a cell phone repair kiosk in the market. I returned a few hours later to find this:


The lady felt terrible that my phone was a complete loss. The heat had actually melted different parts of the phone together and so it was completely destroyed. No worries, it is what it is, onto the next project:


When you have time, just start taking parts off of your bike and find more small issues! So there I was servicing my steering head bearings.

Finally that evening I got my part back, put my suspension all back together again, and Kalil and I were excited to finally get out of Lima!

The following day we got up early and got out of Lima before traffic could slow us down. Our destination was Cusco, a 2 day ride from Lima heading back up into the mountains. Once the road headed inland from the coast, we quickly gained elevation.


Barren desert hills, but there was something quite serene about the landscape. As we continued to gain elevation, the temperature dropped significantly and the clouds began to darken. And then, this:


Time to put on all the cold weather and rain gear! In the next few hours we encountered some of the most extreme weather on the trip. Downpours, hail, and at one point at elevations above 15,000 feet there was snow on the ground:


That night we stopped in a little town called Puquio, which had absolutely no significance other than it was about halfway from Lima to Cusco. After experiencing a couple thunderstorms while riding, including some fierce lightning, we decided to check into a hotel. As we checked in, we noticed another large motorcycle packed up heading towards us. Turns out, David was heading north from Argentina with the intentions of making it home to San Diego, California. So we spent the evening swapping stories while trying to find a restaurant that served s!

In the morning we said our goodbyes and continued our journey to Cusco. Not long after, we caught up to what looked like a decent sized bike loaded up. As we passed, we realized it wasn’t a big bike at all, but instead a little vespa! We had to immediately stop and see what this guy was all about!


This dude actually spoke no English, but we were able to carry on a decent conversation with him and found out he was headed to Bolivia. He was from Quito, which is where he had started his journey. His days were spent going no more than 60 kmh (36 mph) and usually tried to accomplish 300km a day (180 miles). Quite impressive!

That night we pulled into Cusco, slightly wet from the non stop drizzle, a bit chilly, and most definitely tired. Checked into our hostel, snapped a photo of the town square from the 3rd floor and headed into town to book a tour of Machu Picchu.


The next morning a van picked us up at 7:30 and we began the long 7+ hour van ride. Long story short, getting to Machu Picchu is VERY EXPENSIVE! The only way to get to the town of Aquas Caliente (which is at the base of the mountain that Machu Picchu is built on) is by train or by walking. The train costs $140 USD, the entrance fee to Machu Picchu is $50, the bus to take you up to the site and back down is $24. The total cost of taking van to a town near there, lunch, dinner, hostel, breakfast and the entrance fee was $85. The only issue with this scenario is it involved walking 10 km to Aquas Caliente along the train tracks, hiking for an hour and ten minutes straight up the hillside to the site at 5 in the morning, and then walking all the way back to where we started.

The bus ride wasn’t so bad since the scenery was quite good:


All was going well until we encountered a mudslide which included a van like ours planted in the middle of it:


After an hour of messing around, the van was pulled out, rocks thrown into the ruts and traffic was flowing again on this crazy, single lane road that hugged the mountain sides. This could have been another road of death but the traffic wasn’t so bad! At one point we crossed this very unsafe looking bridge with a packed van. It was barely wide enough,and to add to that, it was a hairpin turn to get onto the bridge. Luckily, the driver was a pro and we crossed safely.


Once we reached the end of the road for the bus, we began the 2 and a half hour walk to Aquas Caliente. The advantages of the walk are that it gets us exercising as well as a break from the bikes for 2 days. Not to mention the train tracks followed a raging river for the entire 10km and some of the views from the train tracks were quite stellar:


The following morning, breakfast was served at 4:30 and we started hiking up at 5am in order to get to the top in time for our scheduled tour at 6:30. Machu Picchu is stunning to say the least. I’d put up more photos, but I’m not a professional and it is too easy to find much better photos by searching on google. But here are a few anyway:


A llama (pronounced djama for all your english speaking folks!) hanging out with one of the tour groups:


After the tour, we had a few hours to walk around the site and came across this Incan bridge built into the mountain side leaving the site:


The path was barely shoulder wide with a big drop and extremely steep side hill. These Inca’s were amazing architects! Ok, one more picture, this one you won’t find on google:


The following day we remained in Cusco to sort out our Bolivian visas. This was a bit of a difficult process for US citizens. It involved online forms, photos, re-sizing photo’s, paying $160 dollars, and a few other hoops to jump through. Thanks Mer’Ka! Luckily, only Argentina and Bolivia have the reciprocity rules in effect where they make US citizens go through the same process and payments as their citizens have to do in order to get into the USA.

That night we yet again met up with Chris and Zoe who were in Cusco where they met up with a couple friends who had flown in from California to visit Machu Picchu. This was Chris’s birthday dinner and we found a really nice restaurant to celebrate! Cheers!


Until next time! If you’re curious as to how far behind I am on the blog, just click this: SPOT Shared Page