Breaking Bad (Huanuco to San Rafael)
Upon arrival in Huanuco we drove straight to our bikes. These three fine specimens of unequalled Chinese engineering were supplied by Toby, an American engineer we had found through some rather convoluted internetting. One of Toby’s main activities as a long time resident of Peru is to use his intimate knowledge of the badly mapped trails and tracks to run tours through the highlands and jungle on motocross style bikes. As a sideline to this business he had agreed to prepare three such bikes for us. When we arrived in Huanuco we were expecting to rock up to the workshop, pick up our brand new bikes and then be off. How wrong we were!
Toby carefully explained to us novices that it was not that simple — the bikes needed a couple more hours of labour spent on them to finish them off, before being broken in gently and checked. One of the main issues was that the racks could not be finished until the welder had our non-standard discount military surplus bags in front of him to ensure that they fit properly. Also, as the bikes were brand new and the engines had had extensive work carried out on them, the list of checks before we took them off into the Peruvian wilderness was significant. Finally, there was the small matter of collecting more magic stamps in order to transfer the bikes into our names.
This is where the service that Toby provides really shines — getting started in Peru for this kind of adventure would have been almost impossible without his help. After the quick tour of the workshop to see our bikes we were offered the spare bedrooms in Toby’s house and introduced to his wife, Sara, and together they know how to cook a mean breakfast! Toby deftly guided us around the various administrative departments of Huanuco to help us navigate the labyrinthine process of transferring ownership of the motorbikes. As a final bonus Toby sat down with us in the evenings and showed us which paths to take in order to see some of the most stunning Peruvian scenery. It seems all maps of Peru have a lot of roads on them that don’t exist and few of the roads that do exist. Toby patiently used his encyclopaedic knowledge to modify our maps and gave us copies of his own annotated with useful details to lower the probability of us getting lost.
On the evening of the first day we unpacked and went back downstairs to have the first, rather exciting ride on Didier’s bike which was newly finished. Riding two-up through the swarms of gnats we ragged it around the neighbourhood all kitted out for a couple of hours until it was time for dinner. Toby and Sarah directed us to the local ‘sushi’ restaurant, which like all things culinary and Peruvian was a bit strange. All of the sushi we had contained some sort of cheese, with the house special being a roll with battered prawn (chicken?) topped with American burger cheese and flambé-ed as it arrived at the table. It was weird. A few Cusqueñas (the local beer) later we headed back to get ready for the next day.
That evening the electricity dropped out so Sarah and Toby took us to the roof and showed us Huanuco by night. They told us stories of the guard huts on the mountain side (to stop mass land invasions) and of the excellent work they do with disabled people in the town, helping them to live as normal life as possible. Then, their dog quite brutally killed some pigeons.
Another great breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup later we were packed and ready to go. Breaking in the bikes on a moderate length journey, we took off up the valley. Starting in arid Huanuco we went up through the many little villages — this was our first taste of Peru proper. With the dogs, chickens and pigs running across the road, higgeldy-piggeldy shacks and political slogans daubed on various walls it had an endearing laid-back chaos about it. After around 30 minutes of good quality tarmac road with nice long curves we entered into the tunnel at the top of the valley. On the other side the climate changed dramatically to jungle and an amazing hazy sunset — what a backdrop to ride to!
On our final day in Huanuco we spent a lot of time packing, and trimming some of the fat that Tibet and I had brought along. Finally we were ready and so were the bikes! We got about 300m down the road before the first problem hit — a detached tyre valve for Tibet (a bag strap melted too, but we’ll skip past this) meant that we had to pop to the nearest Vulcanisador for him to replace the inner tube. We also had some rubbing at the rear on two of the bikes, so we thought it prudent to head back to Toby’s for Jaime (the chief mechanic) to tweak the exhaust with a large block of wood and a hammer. Setting off for the second time we got around 50 or so metres before we realised that it was not the exhaust but the luggage rack that was rubbing against the rear tyre, so we headed back to a wide grin from Jaime’s wife (who was clearly enjoying our inexperience) while Jaime customized our racks with the same block of wood and hammer. We tried to leave again, this time with more success. Third time not-so-lucky we got about a mile down the road before my luggage came loose and I lost a glove to a suspiciously smelling gutter. Not long after I’d got the wet glove back on my hesitant hand, Didier noticed a noise on his bike. Tibet helped out by taking it for a ride, almost killing someone in the process, dropping the bike to avoid the panicked pedestrian, giving the bike back to Didier on a slope, making Didier drop it again, smashing a wing mirror and causing fuel to leak from the tank.
Not the most auspicious of starts it would seem, however we soldiered on for about 50km before Didier’s bike decided that it didn’t want to change gear. After fretting about potential catastrophic damage to the transmission Tibet towed Didier to the nearest town where our first of many friendly mechanics re-torqued various bolts inside the engine while we ate empanadas from a street food stall. It was a relief that we wouldn’t need a new gearbox so early on in the trip. At this rate we reckoned our two month trip would only be about 500km long and we’d have completely new bikes once a week!
After the mechanic had finished off it was getting dark so we found “Hostal Nancy” and unpacked for the evening. Nancy seemed to own half of the town and got us all set up with supplies for the following couple of days including the requisite recreational drugs needed to cope with the altitude. After a few beers in the town square and nursing our many gnat bites we went to bed at 8pm very tired hoping for a better start the next day.
