another great ride in the desert today. We got a late start because I saw that there was a museum in town and I had to go over an look it over. Jim came too and I think he enjoyed it too but not as much as I did I am sure. The gold work that those cats made is some of the best I have seen. It is just hard to believe that they could do such good work with stone and wood tools. I have seen a lot of jewelry and I have never seen anything to compare with what these old ones did. It sure gives me a starting place for my metalworking. I really would like to get back home and pound on some metal. It is a long ways home now over 8700 miles. We rode south through some really nice desert country again today. It seems like the sand has blown many miles to cover the hills and valley with sand. There were places where big scale agriculture has come in and claimed large tracts of land and planted several different crops. One that I really liked was the fields of asparagus. I know that it likes sand to grow in and there is plenty here. it seems like all the irrigation is done with drip except for the areas that are planted to rice. One thing that really gets me is to see a half million dollar Claas combine out in a field with tracks and then to see that it dumped the grain in a pile in the field and there are people out there filling huge sacks and piss-anting them up into trucks parked by the road. They also spread the grain out on tarps and stir it around with their feet to dry before filling a sack with the grain. There are huge processing plants to de hull the rice. I saw some guys burning the rice hulls in piles of limestone rock. I could then see several guys breaking the rock with sledgehammers to make lime which they then put in sacks. There are lots of little operations like that going on along the road.
On thing that really surprised me was all the chicken houses that are in the desert along the coast. I guess that the disease problem is very slight and the temperature always constant.
Chicken houses X
One of the coolest things I saw the other day was a guy dipping water out of a well with a long stick attached to a short length of pipe. Instead of using a bucket and rope, he just lowered the bucket and then pulled it up and tipped it over to water his burro. How simple can it get. When I had a small well I went through lots of hell trying to make the dipper work and with this system it always works. KISS, keep it simple stupid….
Peru beach X
This morning after about two hours of riding, Jim pulled over and stopped. I pulled up and he said “I don’t know if I can take a thousand more miles of this” Gee, I was just thinkng, “wow, this is going to be great if there is another 8 thousand miles of this”
We made it to Lima and out to the east fairly easily. It is a huge city but the main road wasn’t that bad to get in and out going towards Cuzco which is where we are headed. About fifty miles up the road or so we found a little town that had some sort of a vacation spot. They had a very secure area all fenced with guards around and lots of small cabins and dorms. We ended up getting a dorm room which was good as I think we were the only ones in the building. We parked the bikes in side the building after getting a board to be able to ride up the steps. Everyone was very nice and they had a restaurant and internet on site.
1-7-06
we pulled out very early and headed up the canyon. Wow, it just kept going up and soon we could see snow on the mountain. It had rained some in the night and I guess it snowed on the hills. The more we climbed the colder it got and soon we came to a long line of trucks and busses stopped. I am not a nice guy and wait my turn anymore and pulled out to pass the line up. The line went for miles and miles with some interesting spots along the way. There were trucks and busses trying to pass and getting stuck and cars always in the way.
The people along the way were great and waved us on and encouraged us to get by. It is so strange as in the US your are a real son of a bitch if you try to sneak into line ahead of anyone.
The road up X
Well, that is not the way it is down here. we had some pretty scary moments and we both dropped our bikes in the ice and snow. Nobody got hurt and we made great time over the mountain. It took several hours and we passed somewhere between three and four hundred cars, trucks and busses.
Trucks and busses for miles X
Jim looked at his odometer and figured somewhere around 15 miles of stopped vehicles. Jim thinks we were the first to make it over the top and down the other side. I don’t know for sure but we never saw anyone else. I talked with one of the bus drivers near the top and he said he had been there for two days. I remember Anna telling me that everyone takes food and essentials for extended stays when they travel down here. busses have flats, break down and evidently snow storms too.
The way past all those vehicles involved riding between them and sometimes along the side of the road and always weaving in and out. Since everyone was stalled it was fairly simple. We never got stopped totally but there were a few places where they moved some and we had to wait to slip through a spot.
Getting’ by X
The top X
We stopped up near the top at a little truck stop restaurant for coffee but they didn’t have any so we ate a lunch instead. We were not sure just what we were going to get but it ended up that we each got a big bowl of rice and mystery meat soup. It was really good and along with the soup we got some potatoes. They were just like some I raised years ago in Nevada when we had 77 different varieties of potatoes. In place of coffee we got a cup with hot water and coca leaves. This is all taking place at over 15,000 feet and coca leaves are supposed to be good for high elevation. I never did feel any effects of the elevation but Jim said he was feeling somewhat dizzy at times. I never did seem to notice any affect from the coca leaf tea but it was OK taste wise.
Spuds and Coca X
After we went down the mountain some I started seeing small farms again. there was some old terrace farming high up in the hills but these farms down lower were really beautiful and well taken care of. The potatoes were in all states of growth from just starting to grow to full bloom with purple flowers. They really do a nice job farming. They were harvesting alfalfa and cutting it by hand and toting it to big trucks on their backs. I saw several carrot harvests along the road. They were using the irrigation ditch to wash the carrots. I grew carrots I Nevada years ago too and can appreciate the work involved.
Carrots X
We went by a field the other daythat was being harvested of potatoes too and stopped to get these shots. They really had a nice crop of spuds.
Potato harvest X
ok, here is a flower photo for those in need.
