Deer Park

I’ve been doing some reading about Chile’s native plants and came across something interesting.

Back on November 8 in Peru I saw this on the altiplano and guessed incorrectly it was Raoulia. I’m sure you caught my error.

On November 25, on the way to Colca Canyon, I took this pic at about 16,000 feet of what I thought was a monster Raoulia and mentioned I’d never seen a picture anywhere of one so huge

It isn’t Raoulia at all. This fellow may be over 3000 years old. It’s one of the longest lived plant species in the world. It’s Azorella compacta.

Before we leave Peru we want to cross the altiplano once more. To do this we have to head south and look for the last entry point east.

But first, to Moquegua. The days track

And because the ride turns out to be so interesting, even though it’s down a highway before the real ride begins the next day, the google earth that matches

And because we haven’t been close to sea-level for a while, the elevation profile

We start through a broken landscape. A straw ghetto in the valley

The mountains ahead are brown and white

We pass the last settlement for a long while

The brown and white contrast becomes more interesting

When you ride to the margin you see strange things

As white as snow, as fine as dust

There’s a 50 mile plain between the brown-and-white. A long abandoned rest-stop on pink sand

The brown and white mountains fade away and we ride through low grey hills following a lazy road that’s in no hurry to head anyplace

Then, just in time, a tiny village with 3 or 4 lunch spots just waiting for judgement and selection

I got a couple of emails about the lunch-stop post a while ago, so here’s the selection. Option A

Option B, the winner

Then back onto the highway. This is the road riders doing the PanAmerican take into Chile. They get nice sections too, like this

The colours

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Then suddenly into Moquegua. Nothing here at all except a half hour of riding around looking for somewhere to stay and to keep Lucinda safe. The green surrounds a small river and it’s not somewhere to be

The handling of Lucinda’s two major problems by BMW Lima wasn’t the greatest. Repeated fails have caused them embarrassment and me frustration. So they’re coming down to Arequipa to fix her once and for all at their cost. We hope it’s the end of the issues.

Alvaro stays another day to watch what’s going on and to help with the more advanced Spanish bike discussions. Not only this but Alvaro has set up plan B with an outstanding mechanic that he knows in Antofagasta , Chili, which is just down the road a bit. After a few hours he heads off back to Lima. We’ll be riding together soon. We have a great deal in common, share similar visions and are both solo riders. He swears he’s going to join me for a leg. The one that appeals to him most is Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq. But maybe something sooner. Anyway amigo, thanks for everything.

Poor Lucinda

Soon she’s in pieces

For the next two days they work for a few hours, then I test ride her for a few hours. One time I take her for a tour of one of the many huge mining operations around here. As big as a city and surrounded by whorehouses

Tour the burbs

And after a few days we’re 50% confident that things are well. I won’t go into the details because there’s still some controversy. I’m doubting a coincidence that needs to be overlooked for this to be over. Lucinda is not convinced either. I like it that she always agrees with me. So we’re going to cast off knowing that there’s someone excellent not so far away. But it will change the plan. Let’s see how it goes.

Two days.
The first day’s track to the canyon

On the track you’ll see an upper leg. That was me sending us off in the wrong direction. I had used the ‘go to’ function on the GPS and it picked a  goat track. I should have checked the path on the unit before we left.

Anyway, off we go in the right direction on the wrong road. We cross a river first

There’s a great footbridge

Back through a small town. All the towns in the valley have a similar feel. Some of this

And some of this

Then we’re off into the valley headed west on good if sometimes sandy or rocky dirt. Sometimes it does the Peruvian cliff-edge thing which is always fun. If you want to watch a good video of what riding around these villages and roads is like, it’s to the left. Me in front, Alvaro filming (click, enlarge and click HD). Alvaro’s testing his GoPro but it keeps getting dusted up here.

It feels a bit like Italy

At one we round a corner and there’s a van stuck. It takes about 30 minutes for him to get started again

We hang out and talk to a local. The valley is a network of aquifers and troughs moving water around in concrete or stone. Where we’re waiting water comes down a ramp beside us

Under the road. You have to watch for these as you’re riding – some are much bigger

And off to a field on the other side. It’s all very nice

Great country riding

It’s not long, an hour or so, before I figure out we’re on the wrong road. They take small tour buses up the Colca and it’s fairly obvious they’re not coming this way. So we reverse

I see the other road and we head there. It’s dirt too. We pass another bullfighting ring. Now I’m looking for them, they’re everywhere

We ride along a ridge road that looks over the valley. If you click to enlarge this you’ll see literally thousands of terraces built over many centuries  by the Incans that recede to the far mountains. It’s the biggest terrace display I’ve seen in two months of Peru

The road gradually winds towards a canyon

In this pic you can see the road in the ridge cut to the left and a big fire on a valley wall to the right

A screen shot  on this road (from an Alvaro video) showing the typical Peruvian epic drop-offs that are so much fun

A couple for hours later we turn a corner and we’re in the Colca Canyon. You need a different lens to show the truth of this staggering place. It’s the home of the great Andean Condor.

The condor viewing platforms

Giant walls opposite

It’s 13,650 feet deep. This photo is most of that. We’re late for the condors. An indigenous woman says it’s too hot. We wait for an hour, enjoying the views. Then empty-handed but not unhappy we head back. We stop at this village

We have a cactus juice at one of the four our five stalls in the market

People watch

A llama and a peregrine tied to a post

An old bird man is walking through the market with another peregrine.

For a few solas Alvaro poses with it. A beautiful bird, in pristine condition.

We met some German riders in the village. We’d seen them before up at the viewpoint. They’d rented bikes in Arequipa and were on a guided tour riding Peru for three weeks.

They’d seen the condors. Arrggh. Oh well, next time. We headed back to our hotel on the river and talked business over beers

The next morning we resumed our business chat until the days’ ride back to Arequipa was going to have to be a very fast one. We started off with construction delays. Bikes to the front, as always

Llama delays

They’re everywhere

Up close

Then back through the burbs into Arequipa. It had been a very fast ride.

The first day’s track of three to Colca Canyon and back

We’re headed over a high corner of the altiplano. This will be my fourth time. The elevation profile – we top at nearly 16,000 feet

It’s a late start because of the military parade. We climb the cactus covered hills out of Arequipa. Alvaro’s bike is the all-new 2014 1200GS, watercooled and packing 135hp. He painted it a metallic brown before taking delivery, it’s sharp. A twenty-mile surround of Arequipa is dust and dirt – climbing out of it is a relief

As the chart shows we’re climbing constantly

Past 20,000 foot peaks

At about 14,000 feet vicuna are grazing on tough alpine plants. They’re extremely beautiful animals. Leaner and more athletic than llama or alpaca

An exotic landscape that can change rapidly. But the consistent thing is how vivid the color and definition is in the clear air at this altitude

We round a corner and incredibly, there’s a huge marsh and a small pond

It’s very cold

Up against a small hill there are ancient walls. Everywhere we’ve been in Peru there are ancient abandoned settlements at high altitude, and always near water with the exception of outside Nazca. A flock of long-beaked birds patrol the shore for whatever passes for food up here

I disturb them with as little fuss as possible to see them in flight. Oh well, it’s worth the shot

Ducks with huge blood-red feet chasing each other

Further along are more of the giant Andean geese

A huge escarpment with hoodoos stands alone. You see a unique feature here for a few minutes and then everything changes. The constant is the intensity of the sunlight

With a small village at its base. Being a sea-level city boy I really haven’t given a damn about UV or other hocus-pocus radiation talk but everything up here is fried

Nearing the top

The landscapes are huge. Those cliffs are miles away

At the summit are huge clumps of Raoulia and little else

In no book have I seen such gigantic specimens. They must love the baking. Alvaro and I talk about the effects of being at 16,000 feet. The climbers I know of following this blog will laugh at the relative lowness of this but you do feel it. I bring it up now because I wandered off to get the below picture through the soft sand aways and by the time I was back I was noticeably shorter of air when I climbed back on the bike

On the descent we see huge herds of llamas in the valleys. The higher we get the more we see. Click to see them

Giant black bluffs on the western slopes. The road ahead cuts across the lower flank

Down much further villagers wait for rides. Alvaro talks with them while I take photos. It’s interesting watching a Peruvian businessman from Lima chatting with his countrymen from the extreme opposite social environment

Then we can see the first village in the valley below, thirty miles away from the Colca Canyon

The good fast road down

Under a stone arch announcing the village of Chivay. We pass through three villages with these arches in this valley

We stop for lunch snacks

And head into one of the most beautiful valleys I’ve ever seen (better pictures taken the next day)

And around the river becomes oasis-like

Terraces everywhere built by centuries of Incans

The road turns to dirt and we head down the valley to the town of Yanque. It’s still the volcanic base rock that turns to dust instantly

And park the bikes for the night. Lucinda is not well

Arequipa is in the southwestern corner of Peru. It has a population of about 1M people and my friend Alvaro tells me that the people are the subject of cruel jokes by the rest of Peru – the equivalent of Newfies in Canada. But as it happens I really like the Arequipans and I love their city.

The Plaza de Armas is one of the most beautiful in Peru

The Plaza has large covered walkways on three sides

The sun is intense here and the shade is appreciated

The atmosphere in the park is constantly festive. You can always see kids taking photos of themselves. I don’t think it’s my imagination but after a couple of months in Peru I think the Arequipans are more extrovert than elsewhere. They appear to be homogenous and local. Although Arequipa is on the visitor’s trail you don’t see many tourists

And on the weekend there can be several couples taking pre-wedding shots. It’s a wonderful place to hang out and people watch

It’s called the White City. Nearly all the structures are cut out of the light grey volcanic rock

Which looks like this close up

Fabulous architecture everywhere. This happens to be a great restaurant where your food comes out roasting on a hot stone, like in many places

Houses over the river

We go to a couple of museums. This museum, Museo Santuario, houses perhaps the most famous mummy in Peru. Except she’s not a mummy because she isn’t embalmed, but I don’t know the correct word

We’re not allowed to take photographs. I stole this pic off the web. Her name is Juanita and her story is both hugely inspiring and tragic.

Then we go off to Museo Arqueologico. Again no photo’s allowed. This houses a large collection of textiles. Fabulous

One of the reasons I’m hanging out in Arequipa is to receive a front brake pump which is being shipped here, together with a mechanic from BMW Lima. They’ve not done a great job previously so they’re re-doing it here at no cost.

While I’m waiting I get an email from Alvaro in Lima. I met him at the Touratech dealer in Lima and rode down the coast with him a few weeks ago. He’s in his mid-thirties and’s a successful businessman in Lima.

He wants to know if I’m in Arequipa and if so he wants to know if I want to go exploring while Lucinda and I wait. We decide he’s going to ride the 1000K down and we’ll head off to the Colca Canyon. Great idea.

Talking about businessmen, I was searching for BMW Motorrad bike service earlier and here’s what the BMW cars pages look like here in Peru. Fully armoured, and as they emphasize, AK47 proof. In this ad they emphasize how they’ve dealt with traditional vulnerable spots

3cm bullet-proof glass comes standard. Nice

We go out on the town the night Alvaro arrives and are set to leave the next morning. But the hotel is a block off the Plaza de Armas where there’s a military ceremony, so we watch for awhile. Two sides of the square are filled with hundreds of soldiers

They represent the three districts of the Army – jungle, altiplano and ocean. Jungle

Ocean

And altiplano

The altiplano troops are more indigenous than the others, and thus shorter, and much younger. Some of them don’t look like soldiers at all. But I’m assured that not only are they skilled, but they’re fully able to support the government no matter what uprising occurs

Finally and separately are the police. I’m told they’re 90% corrupt and that in a pinch money reliably talks. And not much money

There’s an inspection of the troops by the Chiefs. Airforce, Army and Navy

And in case you don’t think they’re equipped, the papers today announced more MIGs

The marching style of the forces is strident and impressive. See the video to the left.

There are security forces carefully watching the crowds. See the other video for a serious badass on the alert. A drunk older but otherwise presentable man forces his way to the front of the crowd, right beside me, and starts yelling something about how they lost their last war with Chile. The crowd around us isn’t uncomfortable. The security badass gently and very respectfully escorts him away.

I had to think about this for awhile – then it came to me, another Peruvian penny drops – the family extends to all here.

In the side streets school kids are practicing their marching too. They’re enjoying themselves. The girls

The boys are just goofing around because the girls are watching and it’s clearly not cool to be too into this

City officials wait with the beautiful Peruvian flag. Although it shares much with the Canadian flag their flag’s proportions and red intensity are different and the result is bolder

Our Ottawa boys figuring it out. I love this photo. If I’m in a grumpy mood I can look at it and laugh for hours

The night before we’ve bribed the parking lot attendant to come and unlock the armoured gate on a Sunday, telling him to be here at exactly 10:00 am but there’s a glitch. A truck pulls up and dumps troops that line up right in front of our parking lot

But it all works out, as it always does, until it doesn’t

Spectacular

The day’s track

The elevation profile

First, we have to reverse course and get through Juliaca again before heading west. Not any noticeably poorer than anywhere else, just completely hyper and lawless. I had a bit of difficulty finding a way through for a few minutes, due to GPS map shortcomings. Which brings me to a point that’s well illustrated here.

Garmin is the world’s largest provider of consumer GPS systems and supplier to virtually 100% of the long distance riding community. Not only is the hardware not sufficiently stable but the maps are a problem. For instance, their South America map ($99) is incomplete. You have to dig down beyond the sales pitch to find this out. But it’s there

You can see that when you cross from Colombia to Ecuador, the Garmin goes dark. From Ecuador into Peru you get ‘partial’, then into Bolivia dark again. So what everyone does is download open source maps. This isn’t difficult but neither is it easy. And open source maps are far from perfect. So going into Juliaca here’s Garmin’s ‘partial’ coverage (I’m the light green line getting tangled up). Three versions of the same area

OK, we know that there’s poor Garmin coverage. So we’ve been using an open source map, and the newest version available. That was just for illustrative purposes. The open source map:

You can see as I came up from the bottom right I couldn’t find a way through if I followed the recommended route. Which brings me to my main point. Here’s the same area on Google maps. You can see there’s a road just south that could have taken me through, but I couldn’t see on my device.

Complete, sexy, up to date. But you can’t run it on a GPS device, such as a Garmin. You can run it on a smart phone but that doesn’t help. Of course these things never stay unresolved. Someone will give us Google maps on a travel device, hopefully Google themselves, and Garmin can escape consumer product and concentrate on probably higher margin Marine and Avionics. At least that’s my prediction. Lucinda agrees. In the interim it’s a curious situation.

However, earlier long distance riders would laugh at all this. They remind us that in their day they only had a compass with a broken needle, a pencil stub, the stars and hand-signals from cannibal tribes to go on. In fact my friend Helge’s book Ten Years on Two Wheels might have been titled Three Weeks on Two Wheels if he had the tools we do.

Anyway, through Juliaca again. Everyone’s in the process of stealing something

At one point we went along an affluent road, so here’s the flip

We get stopped at a roadblock for the first time in Peru. But they just want to talk about Lucinda. She doesn’t mind

The gradual climb from 12 to 14,000 feet

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A virtually empty town

Next to the park a very nice armoured vehicle with a machine gun platform. No one around it

A few villagers sit unmovingly in the sun

This is extraordinarily beautiful and we struggle for description. But it’s the most perfect place

This is Laguna Lagunillas at 13,600 feet, 1000 feet above Lake Titicaca (which gets all the press because it’s navigable by ship)

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And at last. The most amazing thing

Flamingoes!

An Andean goose flies across the flats

After the laguna we climb further to around 14,500 feet and all hell breaks loose. There’s a crosswind of at least 50 mph and we’re having difficulty staying on the road. Hard work for over an hour

A rapid descent into Arequipa. The city is built on a volcanic rock called sillar that rapidly erodes into various grades of rock, sand and dust

If you live in Arequipa you’re subject to the highest levels of solar radiation in South America

Into the beautiful city. Volcan Misti dominates