Bama Rides

Adventure Ride to Machu Picchu in Peru

September 10th, 2009 |

l’ll start with the bag and what went in it. I like to travel light but that’s kind of hard when there are extreme changes in elevation and the weather is supposed to be chilly. I packed a GorTex Jacket, GoreTex pants, 1 pair of jeans, Under Armor shirt, UnderArmor pants, MX gloves, 5 Tshirts, 7 pairs of socks, and a red Marmot fleece vest, fleece hat, bandanna, 5 pairs of underwear. I wore a pair of jeans and my moto-cross boots. I carried my helmet with me. Yes there was a camera and the POS helmet camera and cell phone. I picked up one of those Japanese Manga books (the kind you read from back to front) for layover entertainment.

Turns out I over packed. All I really needed was the 2 pairs of jeans, bandanna, GTex jacket, vest, socks , underwear t-shirts and gloves.

Drove (yuck) to the Atlanta airport. parked. strapped on my MX boots and walked to the terminal. No checked baggage.

Land in Miami. Almost miss my connecting flight. Miami’s airport sucks… hell Miami in general sucks – just flush the f*kn place.

Decided to remove my boots on the flight to Lima.. he he. My feet stank like wet cheddar. Hell, I even put deodorant on them before i left – didn’t work. There were two mama sitas in the seats next to me. I don’t speak much Spanish but I know what two women look like when they are saying something like “dear f*kn God that guys feet smell like sh1t !”. Sure was nice to get some air one em’

Land in Lima. Exchange some Dollars for Nuevo Sols. Who the hell designed our money – friggin lame compared to everyone else’s money. One of Peru’s bills has a dude flying upside down in a bi-plane over lake Titikaka. .. ours has some guy named Abraham on it. Have to pay a $30 “airport fee” before going through security.

Arrive in Cusco

Alejandro Luna Castro meets me at the airport exit. He knows its me maybe cause I’m the only one with a motorcycle helmet and MX boots.. maybe. There is always that chance that you will get severely screwed when traveling to different countries and its always in the back of your head. LUCKILY these guys are legit.

“Alex” has a crutch. He is the owner of Peru Moto Tours. I find out later that he broke his hip in an MX accident. He has trophies above his desk. Turns out I lucked out and hit Cusco in the dry season. They have 2 seasons there – dry and wet. It will begin to rain nonstop in October. We roll into town. I’m staying next door to the bike shop which about a 2 minute walk to the center of the city of Cusco. I’m supposed to meet them at 18:00 to go over the route and meet my guide Jose. So I have some time to relax.

First off I get myself a cup of Coca Tea. The hotel has a basked full of dried Coca leaves next to some hot water.

The Cusco Plaza is cheap and clean.

The altitude bothers some people. It bothers me…. The only thing that I forgot to bring was my ALTITUDE SICKNESS PILLS. ahem… So I went to the doctor and had him write me a prescription to these damn things… oh well, just have to tough it out. I feel tired, kind of like i’m getting the flu. Drink more Coca Tea.

This is the Altitude of Cusco. The altitude outside my house in B’ham is 550ft.

Walking around Cusco City

It was on one of these streets…that I found THIS joint ! … WTF ?

I had to go inside. They had loads of cool motorcycle stuff in there. old gas tanks old posters, stickers and stuff. None of the staff spoke English. Ate a burger that tasted like trash.

Some Farmer ladies that came down from the hills with their baby lamas

Oh yea. The Peruvian Weapon of choice…. the Uzi. also a requirement is the Macho leather gloves

Ok, so I meet up with Jose at 18:00 to go over the route. I would get to know him pretty well over the next couple of days. Good guy. We would leave Cusco at 9:00. Head into Urubamba Valley, then up into the Andes mountains.

“It gets cold, do you have enough warm clothes?”

Yes.

“OK.”

Then we will take off road here to Santa Teresa then to Hydroelectric. We look over the bikes. Instead of the Hondas we decide to take the Yamaha XT-Z 250s . Hell yea. Ill choose a Yamaha over a Honda any day. These are fuel injected. Euro-restricted, so I can barely tell that its running. Ive never ridden a fuel injected dirt bike before.

“ok, sounds great. see you at 9:00.”
Get dinner. Eat alpaca – awesome. Drink Hot Chocolate – never had hot chocolate that tasted like that before, very good.

Ride to Santa Teresa and Agua Callientes:

6:00AM - People throwing bowling balls down wooden stairs on top of my ceiling. Throw away my sox, underwear, t-shirt. Rummage in bag until I feel content with the “order” of it. Eat 1/2 bag of airport brand trail mix. Meet up with Jose. Mount up and roll out into the morning Cusco traffic. Cobblestone streets. chasing dogs, lane splitting, bus dodging. Only passing law is that ya’ gotta mash the Hooter button.

woo! f*kn hell. The way I figure it is that the closer I am to Jose the better. The city doesn’t seem to last very long (thank the mighty condor-totum spirit) . We hit dirt roads off and on as we head towards Urumbamba Vally.

Urubamba Vally

Now. The scenery is just mind blowing. Its hard to keep my eyes on the road. The roads are switch backs, esses, sweepers and every now and then a mountain stream will cross the road or a landslide will be all over it. The roads are bad to the bone, the best I have ever ridden or seen. I cant describe the views. Just constantly picture perfect. Ansel Adams pictures everywhere I point my eyes. We ride through Urubamba town and start climbing in altitude through the Andes.

Riding the twisted twisties in the Peruvian Andes

yea, that is a road

this.. this is like some kind of strange moon or something right ?

Remember the picture of the farmer ladies dressed in red?
well as we were going up into the mountains we started seeing people dressed like that. just plopped down next to the road looking out at the mountains. Jose told me that each farmer “owns” a mountain. There are more mountains than people out here. they live off the land. drink water from the streams. grow potatoes and have lamas and alpacas.

Riding twisties in the Peruvian Andes: Headed towards Santa Teresa

We just rode. kept going. I didnt want to stop but just had to take pictures. Had to wring the neck of the XT. Using all of the gear box the whole time. The air was getting thin. We topped out on the road at 14000ft and some change according to my altimeter which Jose said was pretty spot on. Started wanting to race Jose up the mountain (wanted to stuff him in the corners ) but caught myself thinking about being in a Peruvian hospital. Been in a Chinese hospital 2 times before (once for alcohol poisoning and another for dysentery), not good experiences, so I stayed safe and let him control the pace. Probably a good idea.

Pictures at the top:

The pavement ends

Just stops. Runs out. I ask Jose how long it took to build the road we were just on. He tells me they just finished that section about 4 years ago. His brother worked on it. The Dirt roads here go from hard pack to loose to hard pack with golf ball size rocks to hard pack with jagged rocks sticking out. All of them have a “wake” in the middle that is usually thick and powdery dirt… er.. that will make your front end wash out if you hit it just right.. more on that later. The edges of the mountain roads are sheer. If you fall off you WILL die. Jose told me that the tour companies lose about 4 buses per year on these roads. The tour companies pay the government lots of money so that they can stay in business.

This next video picks up just after we put a new tube in the front tire of Jose’s bike. It was an easy job. Both of us knew how to do the job, and he had packed a tire change kit… but he forgot an extra valve stem core and he didnt have a valve stem core remover. Jose jumped on my bike and pulled over a big truck. Flats are common out here so lots of people carry them. We had er’ fixed in no time. Actually I was kind of glad we had a flat!! I like being tested like that. Only bad thing about it was that we stopped at a little stream crossing – MO-FUGGIN-SQUITOS!!. The mosquitos here work as a team. One group flies around your face and tries to enter your nose, tear ducts and ears while the other group bites the stank out of every exposed piece of gringo they see. At first I see them and hey… “those aren’t mosquitos, those are fruit flies”. Jose tells me “I hate mosquitos. Too many here”. I tell him “man I don’t think these are the biting kind”. Was I wrong. These things draw BLOOD, seriously. They look like fruit flies but they have some kind of hard shell around them. Damn. Then come the thoughts of “jeez are these amazonian mosquitos going to lay larvae under my skin? Yellow fever? ”

We rode in the dirt for a long time after that. We needed to get the old tube patched just in case we had another flat, so we stopped in a little town. There was a shop with tires piled up out front. “Hola !” , “Eh!?”. Big moma sita taking a shower behind a plastic roof cover puts a green towel on. Spanish flurry between Jose and moma sita. She comes over with the towel on and grabs the tube, looks at it, puts some clothes on. Then she starts to apply cold patches to the two holes in the tube. Jose and I look at each other. Spanish flurry. Jose grabs the tube and peels off the patches and hands them to her. We leave. We need a hot patch. Cold ones will not hold up more than 10 minutes here.

We rode on. Down to just T-shirts and jeans now. Hot.
We stop for gas in another little town. People outside smile at us when we ride up. Woman keeps gas in 3 big barrels inside a small shop with a porch out front. She fills up a bucket with fuel, brings a big funnel with a t-shirt stuffed inside it and a length of water hose cut and attached to the spiggot of the the funnel. I love it here. One bucket goes into Jose’s bike. We top it off using a little sheet metal watering bucket like one you would use to water a house plant with. Then we go through the same fill-up routine with my bike. I love it. I wanted to take pictures of the gas barrels and the fill up procedure but I was feeling a little GRINGO at the time and didn’t want to start poking my camera around the place – know what I mean? We found a guy to hot patch the tube. He finished in about 15 minutes. did a good job.

These roads lead us to the town of Santa Teresa. Jose tells me that this town was destroyed by a huge land slide not too long ago. Many people died. The people rebuilt the town on top of the wash and old rubble from the town. Jose pointed at the mountain next to the town to show me a line in the earth. That was where the mountain dropped off and slid down on to Santa Teresa.
Here is the second video of the road going to Santa Teresa, followed by pictures taken upon arrival in Santa Teresa and along the road to Santa Teresa.

Stopped in Santa Teresa for a little while:
After the stop in Santa Teresa we were off to Hydroelectric. Its on a big river that they use to generate electricity. More dirt roads. These are leaning towards the “in shambles” variety – pulverized grey stuff, powder with softball and golf ball size stuff scattered around. The middle will wash the front out. I’ve almost lost it a couple times already. The front tire on the bike worked good for everything but this. I’m just moving to quick. We pass an old white Mercury with roof racks., first Jose then me. I pass on the left, get a ways ahead of them . As I cross the center of the lane that has all of the powder build up my front tire just goes. I have no idea why it went like that, just like i hit a slab of ice or something. Fell on my right side. Lucky I didn’t fall off the mountain. I stand up and the Mercury is pulling up behind me as I’m lifting the bike up. The woman comes running at me with toilet paper wanting to wipe off my arm. It’s bloody and covered with grey grit and dust. “I’m ok, its ok, ok”, I tell her. Jose has pulled around by this point. By the way he is talking to them I can tell he thinks they clipped me. I hear him tell them that I don’t speak Spanish. They look at me. “Its ok” I tell them. I’m smiling as I work my arm to make sure I can use it. It checks out - good to go. Front brake lever is jammed against the bark buster, screw it Ill use the rear brake.

We make it to the bridge that crosses the river at Hydroelectric. The guards won’t let us across because we are on bikes.. hmm… OK. So we get on the bikes and backtrack a few miles to a little house with chickens running around outside. We park the bikes and ask the owner of the house if we can park our bikes there for 1 day. He is OK with it. We hike back to the bridge and up to the little shanty train depot. There are vendors all along the tracks that have strung together lots of blue tarps which are used to sell goods out of: water, ‘nanners, cola, beer. Jose asks one of the vendors if we can leave our helmets in his wheelbarrow for 1 day. He is ok with it. hmm. OK, sounds good to me.

The train company makes the Peruvian nationals ride in separate train cars than the foreigners. As I sat down there are two Spanish hikers seated next to me, the chick sees my arm and winces, talks to her boyfriend, they agree. She pulls some iodine out of her bag along with some sterile gauze. I rinse off my arm with some water. Then wipe it off with the Iodine and the gauze. Sh1t that stuff is strong. I say gracias a bunch, and then give them my pack of gum. They didn’t want it. I had to make them take it.

The train arrives in Aguas Callientes. Its about 17:00 but dark because the sun is behind the mountains.

Aguas Callientes is in a deep valley. Its a jungle. Bananna trees, MO-FUGGIN-squitos, lots of green leafy plants, thick, avacado trees. Shit its’ the Vally of the Incas man. Cant find the hotel. Takes us about an hour to track it down. We find it. Nice place. We will stay here tonight and tomorrow night. Good, enough time for me to clean my arm up and go check out Machu Picchu.

I get up to my room and see the mirror. Ive got dirt all over my face from the ride here. no wonder people were looking at me funny. I’ll use the bandanna on the ride back to Cusco. Clean up my arm a little then take some time to snap some photos of my road rash before hitting the shower.

I sleep bad because im trying to keep my arm from sticking to the bed sheets the whole night.

Wake up at 3:00 to the sound of people f*king . It would be OK, if I could just hear the woman. But I hear no woman. Just a male climax. Heinous!! That totally ruined any chance of rest full sleep I may have had. Get out of bed early, head to Machu Picchu.

There were some Lamas chillin’ out at Machu Pichu. Doing Lama things like eating grass and looking at mountains.

This is the road up to Machu Picchu:
It is used by buses and maintenance vehicles only. Machu Picchu is a “sacred” place so they try to protect it from cars and evil motorcycle diablos. Still a crazy road none the less.

After I came back down to Aguas Callientes my arm was feeling er.. not right. I kept finding mosquitos eating it. It had puss and was oozing. I started walking around the town trying to find a drug store. I wanted some hydrogen peroxide. Should be easy to find right? It comes in “the brown bottle”, easy to spot and point.

SCORE! found what I needed after walking around for a couple of hours.
I headed back to the hotel to clean up my arm.

The hotel had a crappy computer that I used to post an update with. It took forever.

At around 17:00, I went down to the desk and there was a message for me. Gave me the name of Jose’s hotel. I went to find him, found him. Then we went and drank Pisco Sours for a while. Jose has 4 brothers and 7 sisters. His father was murdered in the 1980′s. His sister lives in Arizona. He tried to go to Mexico on a boat illegally one time to marry an older woman but the authorities caught him in Panama and made him go home. The guy has done a lot of riding. He also takes people out into the Amazon jungle … in the rainy season. Tough SOB. Good guy. Great job he has.

We talk about when we are going to leave. Jose tells me that the first train out of Aguas Callientes leaves at 12:30. The trains that come before that are only for Peruvian nationals…. screw that! That’s too late for me. We are going to meet at my hotel at 6:00, have breakfast then Hike down the Rail Road Tracks to get our bikes. It will take us 2hrs and 30 minutes. . In MX boots.

Great decision. A beautiful hike and long talks.

We meet one of the “nationals only” trains on our way down.

When we get back to the train depot at Hydroelectric we buy some water and head back to pick up our bikes. I use Jose’s tool kit and fiddle with the bark buster until I can move the front brake lever again. good. OK. Ready to go, bandana on. I like the bandanna, covers the face, really useful thing. Kind of like the Swiss army knife of cloth.

We ride to Santa Maria taking a different route than before. Pass some ghost towns.