The road to Machu Picchu (part 2)

We rested at the Tampumayu hotel for 2 days and on day 1 we were the only guests.
They even gave us the equipment to go fishing trouts in the river nearby......no catch however, since our technique was very poor.
On the second day we were joined by another couple of bikers, Marcus and Claudia from Bahia in Brasil.
We had dinner together and exchanged plenty of useful information.
In fact they were doing exactly our tour but in reverse, hence had already been to Argentina Chile and Bolivia and they were heading to north of Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
The following morning we waved goodbye to our brasilian friends and left the hotel at 8am.
Here is a picture of Marcus in the background packing his bike. They call it the "favelitas" due to the quantity of luggage strapped together at the back of the bike!

Interestingly enough to travel around South America they use the same technique we used to travel around Europe. They park the bike somewhere, fly back to Brasil, work for a while and fly back to get the bike and carry on travelling!

The first 100 kms up to Abancay were easy peasy; the road was smooth, empty, the sun was out the valley carved by the river absolutely gorgeous.

After Abancay we went up and down the mountains several times accross at least 3 valleys.
The views were as usual spectacular.

Luckily the sun was shining and I had perfect visibility as the road was full of hazards such as rocks falling from above (derrumbes), all sorts of animals crossing or sleeping in the middle of the road, speed bumps poorly signalled and road works.
We feel for our brasilian friends who did the same road the previous day with rain and fog!!!
Eventually after hours of corners we reached a beautiful plateau, only 40 kms from Cusco.

Then, 19 kms from Cusco we turned left towards Ollantaytambo, our next destination for an extra 60 kms of "super road".

As we got to Urubamba the scene in front of us was apocaliptic: The whole mountain was on fire, to the point that it looked like a volcanic eruption, there, only few hundred meters from us.....

Well, after all that driving we would not allow a bit of fire to stop us, would we?

Eventually we got through and pressed on for the last 20 kms towards our final destination.