Day 41 Lima to Huanuco "Last Time Over the Andes"
We got a good start today, around 8 am, knowing that it was going to take us a LONG time just to feel like we were out of Lima. You've got to realize that Lima itself is over 9 million! The traffic was a nightmare! If anyway you can avoid Lima, you should. In and out of the North and South Panamericana is not so bad, but the eastern route up into the Andes is dirty and disorganized. There are few signs, lanes don't mean anything, and you wonder if you will ever see the other side of it all !The weather was dreary, but we looked forward to getting outside the Lima winter cloud cover. By about Chaclacayo we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We were stopped momentarily by an accident between a big truck and an SUV on a tight turn. The moral of the story is to not cut any blind corners in this part of the world!
We were constantly seeing motorcycles (bigger ones) pass us in this steep climb and we wondered where they were all going. Halfway to the top we stopped for some coffee and ran into 3 of them and found out they were going to a Rally race up in Huancayo (where we were on our 2nd day of our trip. I was half tempted for us to take the extra day and detour that way, but we had friends waiting for us (or so we thot) and had to keep on schedule.
The riders wer AMAZED that we had covered 10,000 km and 3 countries on these little 250s (they had KTM 950s and BMW 1200s)! They were mostly impressed with Luke and the fact that he had done this at only 17 years of age and they asked for his autograph and photo (pix)!
After that we continued to climb up to the top (Ticlio at 15,800 ft - pix) and along the 13,000 ft "pampa" without much
ado (except when Luke took a wrong turn, and because of the altitude and the evenly matched motos, his 200 yard lead took me 20 min to catch! I was out of breath and angry; mostly that I couldn't catch him.....We lost some time there, so coming down into Huanuco it was already dark. Then Luke got a flat. We found a good place to pull over and were helped by some kids with another flashlight and a bicycle pump. Finally we are in Huanuco and head back to our Day 1 hotel. They are excited to see us again. "Crazy Gringos!"
Lets go get some Chinese food.....
NEXT DAY: day42huanucotopucallpa.htm
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