12-Jan-2010

Caraz, Peru. Holy shit, what a ride. The BMW beared the brunt of the abuse from today as you can see in one of the bottom pictures. But Peru has definately redeemed herself. I took 119 pictures today as opposed to 16 yesterday if that tells you anything. We rode 150 miles today, it took us 8 hours and some of that was hiway. We rode from Chimbote(shithole) to Caraz(damn nice) today. I don't think the tourists come this way. I wouldn't if I knew any better, but I'm too dumb to check on road conditions before we go. Actually a good thing. If we'd have checked on road conditions we may not have come this way and I wouldn't trade a second of it for anything. Spectacular, we had a few words for it that I just can't type here. We got our first glimpse of mountains over 20,000 feet today, amazing.

The whole ride was up and up and up. We road through a canyon, Rio Santa, to the top of the world between the Cordilla Blanca and the Cordilla Negra. Beautiful. The ride up was some of the most barren mountains I have ever seen. If there is a place I can compare it to it is around Buena Vista, CO above the treeline, but we have never been above the treeline. Today started at sea level. The pics are gonna have to speak for themselves because words won't do it.

I told Nick that I was keeping him within site behind me or stopping to let him catch up because I wanted to have a good idea of where to put the marker if he were to go off the edge into the river. I was only kinda kidding. We came upon a wreck from a couple of days ago and that's all there was to do, is put up a marker.

Tunnels, there were so many tunnels, all one way. You had to honk your horn and hope that a bus wasn't coming. What a crazy road. Much of this trip you could have done on a Honda Gold Wing or a K13oo but some of it, and today certainly qualifies, you needed these kind of bikes.

The pics. A Peruvian wide load. Good pic of the kind of country we rode through all day long. Cola stop in the middle of nowhere. The little girl just stared at us the whole time. Tunnel pic, notice the tunnel I just came out of in the rear view mirror. Cool Waterfall. Farm crew. Cool country and tunnel. Another waterfall. Bad wreck. The beamer after a hard day. 22,000 ft peak, view from Caraz.