Accoding to the owner of the hotel it should take us around 4/5 hrs to get there which would leave us the afternoon to speak to various agencies to plan the tours for the following days.
The road on the coast is desert as usual, however, we never get bored of it as it changes constantly and amazes us with new shapes and colors, like in the section north of Santa where sand dunes meet brown rocks.
We fill up in Santa and we turn left heading towards the town of Huallanco.
I ask how is the road ahead of us and the guy at the petrol station confirms it's in perfect conditions.
According to our schedule we should have only another 2 hrs to go.
The road is beautiful. The river Santa, on our left, has carved a beautiful valley, which thanks to a system of canals is incredibly green.
As we approach the Andes the road begins to climb, the valley narrows and the vegetation dries up again leaving only cacti among rocks.
Strangely the road is absolutely empty, no cars in front of us nor coming towards us.
The river Santa is on our left and only now and then we spot heavy machineries used for rock extraction and mining.
Suddenly we find a fork on the road.
On the left a very dodgy looking wooden bridge, that leads to the other side of the river.
In front of us the tarmac ends and dirt road begins.
I begin to think how to cross that dodgy looking bridge when out of nowhere a jeep appears.
Is a local ranger. We ask which way to Huallanca and he points toward the dirt road.
Thinking that the road is only briefly interrupted for works we ask how long before the tarmac begins again.
The answer is not what we want to hear: This is the actual road all the way to Caraz!
Off we go.
It's now 2pm, it's hot and windy and the dust penetrates in our helmets and even in the gloves.
Our clothes are not exactly appropriate for this enviroment. We expected mountains and cold, therefore we are wearing warm fleeces below our gore-tex clothes.
What makes us mostly uncomfortable however is the sound of rocks hitting now and then the bottom of the bike.
This bike is not exactly designed for off piste road. it has a very low baricentre and, fully charged with luggage, boxes and the 2 of us, it weights 380 kg!
It is just a matter of time. Sooner or later one of these damn rocks will do the dammage.
Finally we hear it clearly. It is a metallic sound of "some part of the bike" hitting a rock very hard, detaching itself from the bike and tubling down the canyon......
We stop to assess the dammage. That is immediately done. As I look down to lower the lateral stand I can see that the foot is missing. It is the same wide foot that we bent one month ago in Cotopaxi.
This time however is completely missing, leaving us with the smaller original foot that really struggles to hold the heavy bike.
Somehow we get off, remove helmets, gloves, glasses and fleeces and look at each other to decide what to do next.
Then disaster strikes again. As I am looking at maps on my mobile to establish a potential alternative road I hear Elena shouting: "Paolo!!!!!".
I turn around and see the bike slowly sinking on the left. The lateral stand cannot hold the weight.
I launch myself below the bike to help Elena and in the process I stamp on my glasses breaking them.
We lift the bike back up. As we catch our breath we find out that the dammages are worst than we thought. There is a wet patch below the bike and it smell like petrol.....the bike is leaking petrol.....
Now, it is not nice to find yourself in a desert canyon, on a dirt road, 80 kms away from the nearest pueblo with a bike leaking petrol.
Whilst Elena holds the bike I lean down to assess where the leak might be. It's hot and the wind blows in my eyes as I am now without my glasses.
The leak seems to have stopped, then I begin to use my brain again and think. Maybe it is not a leak. Maybe when the bike leaned on the left side, petrol came up to the top and flowed out from the lateral holes that deal with overflow!!
Yes that's it. No leak and all is good.
But what if there had been one? That could have been a disaster.
We had enough. We turn around and drive back 80 Kms towards Santa.
We stop at the same petrol station to fill up. It's 3pm and we are thirsty and hungry, consious that we wasted 3 hrs.
It is now time to review our plans. The guy at the petrol station (him again) tells us that on the main road, to get to Huaraz (the other big town in the Cordillera Blanca) it will take us around 7 hrs!
If we stay on the coast there is no civilised town until Lima and that is 6 hrs and no trecking on the Cordillera Blanca.
Either way there is no time to waste. We swallow a bit of bread and water and press on as quickly as we can on the Panamerican heading south.
I don't want to drive at night. We will make a decision once we get to the junction to Huaraz.
We wizz through Chimbote, a horrible town with a terrible smell of processed fish, then we pass Casma and soon we find an unexpected fork. There is a clear sign saying Huaraz. Could this be another dirt road? We ask a guy at a fruit stall. He assures us the road is tarmac and it is 4 hrs to get to Huaraz.
It is decision time and we decide to turn left. It's now 4.30pm.
When peruvian people talk about distances between towns they express themselves in hours, never in Kms. You never know if 4 hrs is for a donkey, a car or a rocket.
Well as the road is good and empty we press on at full speed. The sceneries are so beautiful that we even take few pictures.
We will find out later on that this road is the 14A and leads to a pass at 4600 meters.
The views are stunning. We hit quote 4600M exactly at sunset in a race between us and darkness. The more the sun comes down the more we climb up to keep light on our road.
As we climb up the temperature is obviously dropping and now we are really missing the fleeces that we removed back in the canyon.
No time to stop though, as it's getting darker we really want to get to Huaraz asap.
And yet I have to ask Elena to take few pictures on the move.
This is our shadow against the rocks as the sun waves goodbye for the day.
As darkness reaches us we have time for a last shot at the lights of Huaraz waiting below us in the valley between the Cordillera Negra and the Blanca.
Yes, it is not the best shot but Elena is doing what she can with freezing hands and me opening the throttle.
We hit town at 7pm, 1.5 hrs ahead of schedule, and maybe, we think, maybe tomorrow we can even go trecking......
No comments:
Post a Comment