Date: 22/02
City: Tortugas , Peru
Kilometres ridden: 386
Cumulative kilometre: 34581
Street: Highway mostly desert
Weather: cloudy/warm

We started early to avoid the frantic traffic in the city and it worked well. Not far from Chiclayo we were riding through the Atacama Desert for the first time, white sand everywhere you look. We stopped and took a couple of pictures.

We continued riding until we could see the ocean from the Pan American Highway, so we decided to turn off and have a look. When we arrived at the beach we realised that the promenade was not ready yet, but a mermaid sculpture was placed there.

The idea was to find a nice restaurant with ocean view, but this didn’t looked like the right place, so we continued. Riding through the desert and not having too much sand on the road seemed a bit strange, so I wondered if the sand was soft or if it had a crust on top. So we stopped and Sigrid had a look at it, the sand was soft.

We continued further and found a turtle sculpture on road, so we stopped to take some pictures.

Opposite the turtle was a sign to a hotel that was off the highway and towards ocean. So we decided to give it a try and found a small village nestled in a cove. There were plenty of accommodations around, so we had a look and found something suitable with a great view of the ocean.

And then there was the stunning sunset. What a day! 🙂

I like sunsets 😀

 

Date: 23/02
City: Eco-Truly Park, Peru
Kilometres ridden: 325
Cumulative kilometre: 34906
Street: Highway mostly desert
Weather: cloudy/warm

The ride was again through desert. Then, to my amazement, there was suddenly a sugar cane field and then desert again… Just a green patch in the middle of the desert. Strange!
At lunch time we stopped at a road house. After the break we continued until it started to get late. Then we asked the GPS for accommodation and it guided us to a hotel complex that looked like it was out of star wars. We parked the bikes straight in front of our accommodation.

And that was the view from the courtyard.

We had the room in the left corner (first dome on the left).

After we settled in, we were chatting with Bhuvanath, one of the people responsible for sustainable tourism in this resort. It was interesting to hear how they try to save water, harvest their own crops, use compost toilets and all the other approaches to minimise the impact on the environment. I really enjoyed the conversation; we almost forgot the sunset!  We rushed to the beach and just saw the last bit, but it was good enough. The water was once again freezing cold.

Tomorrow we will try to get through Lima as early as possible. We did hear from fellow motorcycle riders that Lima has the worst traffic and the car drivers don’t care about motorcycles; even if the’ve just bumped into one they continue driving. So the cunning plan was to ride through Lima on a Sunday morning, when all the good people are still sleeping.

Date: 24/02
City: Pisco , Peru
Kilometres ridden: 308
Cumulative kilometre: 35214
Street: Highway desert
Weather: foggy, cloudy/warm

In the morning we started early to get through Lima. When Sigrid tried to get the bike from the lawn to the foot path, she dropped it. Anyway, Bhuvanath and Sigrid picked the bike up, before I could get my side stand out, so no picture of the bike on the ground 😉

It was still early when we arrived in Lima and within an hour we were through without any incident. I can imagine how dangerous it would be to go through Lima during the week. It was quite tense sometimes and that on Sunday morning. I didn’t realise that Lima lies in a desert. With the cold water from the ocean Lima is often foggy. 60km out of Lima we had a break at a petrol station, this was the first place without fog after Lima. The rest of the ride was without any incidents and we arrived in Pisco relatively early and found a good hotel with an easy access to the secure motorcycle parking.

So we decided to clean the air filter on both bikes, as it was long overdue. Sigrid found another use for the air filter cages 😉

Ah, the reason why we went to Pisco was to have a Pisco sour, which is the Peruvian national drink! After all the messy oil business we went out to have a Pisco sour and ended up in a nice bar. Unfortunately we now both like the Pisco sour 😉

On our way back we strolled over the plaza and found some arty hedges

After the drinks we though we have something to eat and went to a restaurant that looked typical Peruvian. We ordered Inca Kola and a mixture of skewers, not knowing what we ordered. The Inca Kola we ordered because we saw an advertisement on the highway so we thought we give it a try. It tasted a bit like dissolved yellow Maoam, very sweet.

Then the food came, it looked great but for me it didn’t taste great. To be honest, I didn’t like the taste of any of the skewers. From the taste I would say they were beef liver, heard and a tipe skewers. Well, everybody has a different taste.

Date: 25/02
City: Nazca , Peru
Kilometres ridden: 226
Cumulative kilometre: 35440
Street: Highway desert
Weather: cloudy/warm

We oiled and fitted the dried air filter and started our way to Nazca. A couple of kilometres before Nazca we arrived at this viewing platform.

From the top we could see two Nazca figuriens, the hands and the tree figurines, but I found it hard to get it onto a picture.

So we continued to Nazca and were looking for a hotel and that is where we met Carlos. He showed us the way to the hotel (Google maps got it wrong) and he was also a travel agent who made us a good offer for the flight tomorrow. So after looking around we called him in the evening and booked the flight for tomorrow morning. He was also a wealth of information about Nazca so we talked with him a couple of hours.