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After leaving Huanchaco I headed south a bit along the coast, then picked up a route to Huaraz that would take me along the famous Cañon del Pato, or “Duck Canyon.”
Once again, another spectacular Peruvian canyon. This is a “do not miss” ride in Peru.
The crystal clear skies, and warm desert climate were a welcome reprieve from the eternally cloudy and chilly Peruvian coast.
Leaving the canyon, headed to Huaraz.
Here is a little video of my ride through Cañon del Pato to give you a better idea of how it looks riding on a motorcycle.
Sorry that I dont have any photos of Huaraz, but I had some kind of stomach illness and was bedridden for a couple of days so I didnt even walk around town. When I felt better, I just wanted to ride and get out of town. I opted to skip the spectacular mountains of the Cordillera Blanca since I was still feeling a little green, and I figured that in my condition, going up to around 15,000 feet and spending a great amount of time there would not be so much fun.
So I opted to leave Huaraz and start making my way to Cuzco, staying in the mountains the entire time and bypassing Lima, Nazca, and more boring coastal riding.
When you climb up into the mountains leaving Huaraz, a huge waving Jesus greets you as you emerge from a tunnel.
A beautiful lake at around 14,000 feet.
After a short but spectacular ride from Huaraz I found myself at the site of the Chavin ruins. Its quite a pleasant little town with a couple of nice hotel options right on the main square.
Village laundry facilities.
Nap time.
Colorful dress of the indigenous inhabitants of the area.
The Chavin ruins are around 3000 years old, well before the Inca times. It is thought that this place was a spiritual center of power. As far as the scientists can figure, this town became important since it was built in a very hazardous landslide area and was left unscathed after numerous landslide events. Hence, it was believed that the inhabitants had magical powers over nature, so people flocked from miles around to try and learn this magic to take back to their villages. Learning the magic of course involved paying large sums of wealth as tuition. Then the powers were acquired by living on the site and taking large quantities of a hallucinogenic cactus, and seeing visions of the gods. After the “schooling,” the pupils would return to their own village armed with new powers to protect it from the wrath of the gods, and then of course charge a fee for their services. You may not believe this, but the exact same thing is going on today. Its called college.
The site was closed to visitors on this day, but the night before I had met one of the archeologists from the states that was working on the site. He offered to give a little private tour to us which was very nice of him.
One of the psychedelic half man, half beast heads that were all over the site.
A ceremonial obelisk with the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus in the background.
After leaving Chavin I decided to continue south in the Andes via dirt roads. A few days earlier I had met up with 3 Dutch guys riding 1980’s vintage Yamaha Tenere’s and I decided to ride with them for a few days.
These guys are total crack ups and a lot of fun to ride with. They are aircraft navigators in the Dutch Navy so it was fun to talk aviation and swap flying stories. Total characters, and given what they do for a living, I would expect nothing less.
They like to start riding around noon, and put in a good 3 to 4 hours before calling it quits, and having a beer. In light of this, I told them that they should be riding Harleys.
The road leaving Chavin quickly returns to dirt and winds up into the mountains revealing spectacular sights.
As always, there are the ever present road closures. This closure was due to blasting in a mining area. The road was closed for two hours, open for one hour, and that schedule is repeated the entire day, every day.
Of course we hit the area at the start of a two hour closure, so its nap time for the Dutchmen. What’s the problem boys? Too much beer the night before?
After the mining area the road becomes fantastic pavement (no doubt built by the mining company) winding through elevations of up to 15,000 feet, and sporting spectacular scenery.
We stayed the night in a village called La Union, which resembled a garbage dump more than a village. The next day was one lane twisty pavement into the friendly city of Huánuco. We pulled up in the town square to look for accommodations, and within 5 minutes we had a mob around us, and two reporters from the local TV station proceeded to interview us.
Actually, in this pic the crowd is quite small. A few minutes later, there must have been over 200 people around us when they saw the reporters interviewing us. We wound up on the mid-day news on the following day. Guess it was a pretty slow news day.
After Huánuco, we climbed back up to a high plateau at around 14,000 feet.
And found ourselves in the chilly, but friendly village of Junín.
Once again, after 5 minutes, a crowd had formed around us and we were suddenly looking like campaigning politicians, kissing babies and having pictures taken with peoples kids.
As luck would have it, there was a festival starting that night in Junín where we walked around the plaza de armas freezing our butts off while we drank Maca, a tea made from an Andean medicinal plant, and listened to music and milled around talking to the local party goers. Except for a handful of Peace Corps workers, we might have been the only gringos in town.
Given the receptions we were getting in the high mountain towns we were visiting, its apparent that they don’t get too many moto travelers coming through. I can highly recommend a route through the Peruvian Andes, it was a fantastic experience. To be continued.
Saludos, Vicente