The Pan-American Express
Motorbiking from the dunes South of Ica to Majes
After a week of wending our way back and forth over the Andes in Central Peru it started to dawn on us just how big this country actually is. Our progress on a map of the whole of South America looked pitiful. If we wanted to make it to Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni and get back again we had to start making some distance. This left us with one choice: sticking to the coast and continuing south on the Pan-American.
We repaired the bikes one last(!) time after Didier’s escapade with gravity and a few pesky grains of sand and pinned the throttle whilst waiting for the vast expanse of Peruvian desert to pass under our knobbly tyres. As with most of Peru’s landscape the scale is something to marvel at. Each time I crested a hill and saw the road seemingly stretch off to infinity I couldn’t help but be impressed coming from compact, twisty Europe. However, it was always twinged with the vaguely depressing knowledge that everything above my brainstem would superfluous for the next hour or so. In order to break the monotony, the Peruvians very kindly supply a few trucks that travel an infuriating 3mph slower than our bikes. Overtaking these never fail to supply me with a shot of terror-induced adrenaline to keep me on the ball for the next 50km of straight.
As we neared Nazca on one of these monstrous straights we stopped briefly to climb a tower and see the famed Nazca lines for a few soles. All of us were underwhelmed by the experience. From the tower only three geoglyphs could be seen, one of those had a road unceremoniously plonked straight through the middle of it and the others were far smaller than we had imagined. I should maybe reserve judgement until seeing the hummingbird from the air (by all accounts the main attraction), but I won’t be going back any time soon. On reflection, the best thing about Nazca and the surrounding area was the excellent fried octopus we had for lunch.
We soldiered on in the headwind, our fuel economy taking a battering, looking for a suitable place to stay the night. We arrived in Chala and saw the Hotel George with its impressive sign promising the holy trinity — hot water, secure parking and WiFi. We negotiated our way through the (by default) totally impenetrable glass door and deposited our stuff in our rather manky rooms, tried to use the broken WiFi and had our tepid verging on cold showers. At least the bikes weren’t nicked overnight. To lift our mood we went out on the hunt for some t-bar sockets so we could pretend that we were the real deal by trying to fix our bikes ourselves. Judging by Didier’s expression as these jewels were handed over I think this may be an emotional high that may not be topped this trip, or possibly ever.
The next day started with the traditional search for a mechanic. A clutch lever, some clutch plates and 7 ish sandwiches later we set off again for a repeat of the previous day.
With the continued assault of my arse by the knobbly tyre/tarmac combination, we started to climb back up into the foothills of the Andes after lunch. This did not go as planned. As everybody knows deserts are hot and dry, not cold and wet. Peru thinks it knows better. We climbed up into some of the densest fog I have ever been in and crawled along at around 30kph tucked up behind a Bolivian fuel tanker for safety. I took this opportunity to whip out my £3 military surplus goretex over-mittens and gloat to Tibet about how incredibly toasty my fingers were.
With dreams of the agua caliente and WiFi waiting for us in the cosmopolitan metropolis at the end of this ordeal we stumbled across Majes, Peru’s answer to Milton Keynes. Sparse, centrally planned and half built, it had a surprising number of hotels given how obviously it was not a tourist hot spot. At around 5:30pm we tried our first hotel — no rooms available despite a couple just checking out. At the second hotel we were waved in behind a lovely net curtain to be assured that there were rooms free. We asked to see the room and were told that it was occupied for the next 20 minutes. The receptionist turned on the TV for us to wile away the time, however at this point it dawned on us that we were in some kind of Sin City where everyone was bonking after a hard day’s work. Upon this realisation we high-tailed it and found a third hotel. With this one we hit the jackpot — they had a triple room (arguably reducing the probability of finding something suspect in the sheets) with some excellent WiFi. We even managed to watch the Monza GP from our beds which was quite the luxury. As we were leaving the two laides running the hotel were very keen on having their photo taken with us (as probably the first actual tourists to grace their establishment) before helping them to break into one of their rooms via the wonkiest ladder I’ve ever seen.
The hotel was definitely the nicest thing about the town, however the enduring legacy were the suspect burgers we had served to us in a bus on the side of a square. Excited with the novelty of eating in a bus at first, disappointment ensued when half the burgers didn’t have a burger in them, the tacos seemed to be missing half the ingredients and any flavour, and as a final kick in the gonads my (and Tibet’s) digestive system is paying for the pleasure 4 days later. On the plus side, the first aid kit is getting lighter and therefore my bike is getting quicker as we crack through the Dioralite and Immodium. Given my comically low cornering speed, I need as much help as I can get on the straights!
