Madrid airport knew we were coming.... Playground already set up
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Off to Peru... looking a little damp
- Thread starter simondippenhall
- Start date
Long but uneventful flight to Lima - and I managed to snaffle a couple of spacious seats in the exit row.
12 hours later we arrive in Lima - it's time for a beer
and some dinner in the Haiti restaurant on the main drag in Miraflores.
Pulpos for me:
Serious club sandwich for Bob:
All tucked in:
Pretty decent view of the hotel in the morning
The bar list in our room carries an insightful and poetic name for what we Gaels know as uisce beatha:
And Jose the driver who met us was right: ignore the forecast, it will be dry in Lima today.
So today will be a little tourism before we set off tomorrow to Cajamarca (by plane) and finally onto the motorcycling we came to do.
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12 hours later we arrive in Lima - it's time for a beer
and some dinner in the Haiti restaurant on the main drag in Miraflores.
Pulpos for me:
Serious club sandwich for Bob:
All tucked in:
Pretty decent view of the hotel in the morning
The bar list in our room carries an insightful and poetic name for what we Gaels know as uisce beatha:
And Jose the driver who met us was right: ignore the forecast, it will be dry in Lima today.
So today will be a little tourism before we set off tomorrow to Cajamarca (by plane) and finally onto the motorcycling we came to do.
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Our next destination
The airline we are flying on had a plane fire on landing yesterday (at another airport) so fingers crossed
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The airline we are flying on had a plane fire on landing yesterday (at another airport) so fingers crossed
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The airline we are flying on had a plane fire on landing yesterday (at another airport) so fingers crossed
Hope the travel insurance is up to date Simon
The pulp looked good, hope the pink sauce tasted better than it looked...
The trip briefing from our professional leader goes downhill when he gracefully falls off his chair into the greenery
May have to investigate trainer wheels for his bike!
Gets a bit more serious when we discuss recent outbreaks of dengue fever in one area we are/were headed for!
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May have to investigate trainer wheels for his bike!
Gets a bit more serious when we discuss recent outbreaks of dengue fever in one area we are/were headed for!
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Johan
Registered user
Peru, or at least Lima, has the best food in South Americs. Enjoy
Certainly did so yesterday with lunchtime ceviche at Cordano, accompanied by a Pisco sour
Lovely old restaurant
Fortunately no hangover as a 'hair of the dog' is not much use in Peru, as witness the hairless Peruvian dog:
In a day of light tourism, met this couple who had cycled here from Canada - epic stuff:
Note the Brooks saddles on their Surly bicycles. Decent sized tyres and apparently no punctures so far ��.
Today a flight north to the mountains, Cajamarca at 2,400 metres and then 'gentlemen, start your engines!'
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Lovely old restaurant
Fortunately no hangover as a 'hair of the dog' is not much use in Peru, as witness the hairless Peruvian dog:
In a day of light tourism, met this couple who had cycled here from Canada - epic stuff:
Note the Brooks saddles on their Surly bicycles. Decent sized tyres and apparently no punctures so far ��.
Today a flight north to the mountains, Cajamarca at 2,400 metres and then 'gentlemen, start your engines!'
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A few pictures if the Northern Sierra as we rode out from Cajamarca
Local lad is FD fascinated by tyre pumping and bike fettling after our lunch stop
And back in Cajamarca here is the ransom room which Atahualpa's Incas filled with gold and silver extorted by Pizarro
All to no avail as the Spanish still garrotted and burnt him as a heathen
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Local lad is FD fascinated by tyre pumping and bike fettling after our lunch stop
And back in Cajamarca here is the ransom room which Atahualpa's Incas filled with gold and silver extorted by Pizarro
All to no avail as the Spanish still garrotted and burnt him as a heathen
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Great stuff Simon. Love the hats. Now the real trip starts!
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A couple of other pictures from Day 1
The local milk coop is active in Banos de los Incas
Roadside lily (Arum?
And no day is complete without a guinea pig for dinner
Very tasty, a cross between chicken and rabbit with a bit of fish thrown in but quite a lot of work for little reward.
Vegetabls have been rather harder to find. In San Marcos I asked the chef in the quite smart restaurant if he had 'legumbres' (vegetables) and I might as well have asked him if he had herpes!
As we are now high in the Andes I am advised ceviche is better avoided - makes sense as it is raw fish!
Tomorrow we set off to Celendin, a little wild west town at a similar altitude but with some great roads en route.
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The local milk coop is active in Banos de los Incas
Roadside lily (Arum?
And no day is complete without a guinea pig for dinner
Very tasty, a cross between chicken and rabbit with a bit of fish thrown in
but quite a lot of work for little reward.Vegetabls have been rather harder to find. In San Marcos I asked the chef in the quite smart restaurant if he had 'legumbres' (vegetables) and I might as well have asked him if he had herpes!
As we are now high in the Andes I am advised ceviche is better avoided - makes sense as it is raw fish!
Tomorrow we set off to Celendin, a little wild west town at a similar altitude but with some great roads en route.
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Sorry for the lack of posts but no meaningful WiFi here at Chachapoyas in Amazonas province. Hair raising ride yesterday over a single width road from Celendin
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Riding in the clouds, hoping a bus won't hurtle around the next hairpin bend because there isn't room for both of us and I am on the valley (cliff?) side that is breaking away
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This policeman in the tropical town if Huasmin (cue for change of trousers in the main square
to something lighter) knows the Irish well and chats with me about the good work we (or rather Sister Philomena and Father Fogarty) have done for the poor in Kima. He seems genuinely wistful for them and touched by their care and charity.Then onwards and upwards to CallaCalla - should have kept me merino jumper on!
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Because WiFi has been scarce I am taking a Joycean approach to this blog (Finnegans wake rather than Dubliners) but will try to get the chronology sorted soon!
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Joycean references in GSer ride reports, what ever next
. Those oncoming vehicles can be a menace as Ted Simon will testify. Keep safe, enjoy the trip and update when you can.
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. Those oncoming vehicles can be a menace as Ted Simon will testify. Keep safe, enjoy the trip and update when you can.Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
Reverting to a more chronological approach, we spent day 3 on an off road ride through the mountains from Celendin to Sauce.
I breakfast in the local market where we chat to a local lady and her granddaughter. At 7.30 am there is a loud honking which I think is the school bus.
But Senora says it's 'agua' - they have had no running water for 4 days and a tanker has arrived.
Everyone is running for water but there is no argument and no police presence
It's a dry but cloudy day initially and there is enough mud on the trail to make the ride excessively exciting for one of the gang.
Ready to go
Local agriculture
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I breakfast in the local market where we chat to a local lady and her granddaughter. At 7.30 am there is a loud honking which I think is the school bus.
But Senora says it's 'agua' - they have had no running water for 4 days and a tanker has arrived.
Everyone is running for water but there is no argument and no police presence
It's a dry but cloudy day initially and there is enough mud on the trail to make the ride excessively exciting for one of the gang.
Ready to go
Local agriculture
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Attachments
The last picture is local rider Franco and the treasure chest which his dinner came in yesterday (really!). Any resemblance to Captain Jack Sparrow is purely incidental.
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We get into the groove of the winding fitted stony and muddy trail and there are no major casualties. Views are great if you don't mind heights
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Day 4: Celendin to Chachapoyas
A long day over a very high mountain pass.
We start the day winding our way into the mountains, before diving down into the tropically hot pueblo of Huasmin mentioned above.
The schoolgirls here got chatting to me and were doing a project on Adolf Hitler and so asked me to tell them more about him. It stretched both my Spanish and my recollection of A level history but I made sure to stress that AH in particular was a very bad hombre as were all demagogues.
Excuse the thumb of the amateur photographer!
Thinking it would stay warm I shed a few layers but we soon climbed into neblinas (cloud) and then rain.
A bit of Roadside maintenance, of course
This cloud combined with narrow one track roads with potentially oncoming buses and a 750m drop on our side, so please forgive the dearth of photos - all concentration was on staying on the road.
CHilled and somewhat damp, we finally made it to the delightful hummingbird cafe at Leymebamba where we had the best suckling pig sandwich I can ever remember, encased in toasted rolls along with fresh avocado and tomato. Hmmm!
I have a great slomo video of the hummingbirds there but it won't load
so will have to try later - this is a poor substitute:
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A long day over a very high mountain pass.
We start the day winding our way into the mountains, before diving down into the tropically hot pueblo of Huasmin mentioned above.
The schoolgirls here got chatting to me and were doing a project on Adolf Hitler and so asked me to tell them more about him. It stretched both my Spanish and my recollection of A level history but I made sure to stress that AH in particular was a very bad hombre as were all demagogues.
Excuse the thumb of the amateur photographer!
Thinking it would stay warm I shed a few layers but we soon climbed into neblinas (cloud) and then rain.
A bit of Roadside maintenance, of course
This cloud combined with narrow one track roads with potentially oncoming buses and a 750m drop on our side, so please forgive the dearth of photos - all concentration was on staying on the road.
CHilled and somewhat damp, we finally made it to the delightful hummingbird cafe at Leymebamba where we had the best suckling pig sandwich I can ever remember, encased in toasted rolls along with fresh avocado and tomato. Hmmm!
I have a great slomo video of the hummingbirds there but it won't load
so will have to try later - this is a poor substitute:Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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