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March 30th, 2012 | Peru

Juliaca to Cuzco…

I was unable to get the early strat that I had hoped for, because the local cell phone provider where I had spent an hour the previous evening trying to get the Peruvian sim card to work, had asked that I come back this morning to get it sorted…

The Le Merced church on the central square, boxed in between a fast food restaurant and an a beauty salon...

I walked around the main square, taking in the sights while I waited for them to open…

Riding in this traffic, on pot-holed streets, where the occasional man-hole cover is also missing, is an adventure in itself...!!

The time I spent in Juliaca, was time wasted, as not only did they open an hour later than they said they would, but after another half hour of fiddling about, my connection to the “outside world” was still a frustrating impossibility…!!

Juliaca lies to the west of Lake Titicaca, and is a small but crowded town, with narrow streets and traffic congestion that will make your hair stand on end…!!

Three wheeler taxi-scooters zip in amongst the cars and buses, causing more than just a little havoc…

It had rained the previous evening and at 3 825 m, with an overcast sky above, the temperature was not too far above freezing…!!

Dressed in five layers of clothing, I was blown out of town by a cold wind… The Altiplano was covered by thick cloud and for the rest of the morning, I would be dodging rain showers, as well as stray sheep and Llamas, but with the roads in excellent condition, I managed to ride at over 100 km/h for most the time, until the descent into Cuzco…

I had my doubts about the strength of the internet signal at this establishment, so did not bother stopping to check my mail...!!

The recent rain had filled every hollow along the road, and the wind blowing over the water made things even colder...!!

Another grand old church, this one in the village of Ayaviri...

I thought of stopping here for fuel, but the spelling wasn't quite right....!!

Back out on the Altiplano... Fields of Canola, snow-capped mountains in the background and a very threatening sky above...!!

Refueling at Santa Rosa... I met an Argentine biker on a 250cc Honda, who was on his way back to Cordoba... We chatted for a while, and I gave him some onfo on the road that still lay ahead of him...

Light rain fell from time to time, small scattered showers that had me thankful I was already kitted out in my rain gear…

Sometimes it is that ",6" that can make all the difference...!! Especially when you are pushing your fuel range to the very limit...!!

I passed through the tiny settlement of Chuquibambilla, hoping there was a fuel stop there but finding none… I had my spare bottles filled, so was not too concerned and headed for Santa Rosa, which lay at the head of a wide valley up at about 4 200 m… It was biting cold when I arrived there, and the little service station I stopped at, had no amenities where I could get a cup of coffee…

I chatted to a young biker who arrived there looking a bit flustered… He had been riding with three other guys who had decided to stop somewhere along their route behind him… He had decided to push on ahead on his own, but had no maps or GPS with him, and wasn’t exactly sure where he was headed…!!

I gave him a spare pen and tore a piece of paper out of my note book, and then gave him enough info to get him to Juliaca and on to Puno… I wondered how he would get to Cordoba without his buddies…!!

I think there had been a “falling out” amongst them, and considered advising him to wait for them to catch up, but held my counsel back, believing that he would come to his senses sooner or later…!!

Proving that at high altitude, the Big Fella could still buzz along merrily at 120 km/h...

Down from the higher altitudes and into Cuzco, which is still pretty high at 3 400 m...

The next 200 km to Cuzco would through a series of mountain ranges, that had us climbing up through narrow passes and descending into small valleys, where villages stood off to one side of the road… They were usually just a cluster of ramshackle homes, built from mud bricks… Sheep and Llamas grazed on the lower slopes of the mountains, and in the village themselves, pigs rooted around in the gutters and hollows, often trailing long ropes that once tied them to a pole or a rock…

In this part of the world, there are as many stray pigs running around as there are dogs…!!

As we dropped down off the higher regions of the plateau, it got warmer, and by the time we reached Cuzco, the sun was out and the day had brightened up considerably…

I rode down the cobbled streets surrounding the main square, looking for the many touts that I was told would find me and be offering accommodation…

I did not have too long too wait…!! One and a half circuits of the huge main Plaza de Armas, and a guy came galloping across the lawns to intercept me…

“Hostal…??” he shouted from 20 metres away…

He knew a place where “all the bikers stayed” he said, and gave me directions… It was barely a few hundred metres away, up a quiet side street behind the Cathedral… He jogged alongside me, holding onto the pannier as I motored along…

The Casa Grande Hostal was indeed the haunt of bikers… But to get through to the inner courtyard where bikes could be parked, I had to ride through the glass doors of the reception…!! We got through with barely an inch to spare on each side…!!

The central courtyard where bikers park their machines...

My room at the Casa Grande, complete with towels shaped as kissing swans...!!

While I would not call the place “first rate” by any stretch of the imagination, the staff are super friendly, to the point of exchanging cheek kisses with the guests they liked, and very helpful when it came to making booking for tours or suggestions on where to eat and what to do in Cuzco…

It is also only a few minutes walk from the main square, where everything you may need can be found or arranged…

I immediately liked the feel of this part of town, as apposed to the areas that I had ridden through to get there… The roads were covered in litter and mud, and without GiGi, I would have had a hard time finding the main square… Signposting is not as conspicuous as it could be…!!

The ride from Juliaca, 350 km away, had not taken very long, and it was only late afternoon by the time I had unpacked and shed my riding gear…

I was directed to a small tour company opposite the main Cathedral, were I spent an hour planning the tours I wanted to do over the next few days…

The Cathedral on the main plaza, where over the next few days, military parades took place, marching bands played, and thousands of tourists gathered...

I made my Machu Picchu booking for the very next day, a day long tour for the day after that, and another half day tour for Monday… Satisfied that I was covering most of the sites that I was interested in, I walked around the plaza, looking for a place to have a decent meal…

Near the Cathedral, stands the Church of the Society of Jesus, considered one of the best examples of colonial baroque style in the Americas... you have to pay an entrance fee to see the interior, but the entrance to the cathedral is free...

Not for the very hungry...!! I should've ordered two plates...!!

Just around the corner from the Casa Grande, I stumbled upon a small Italian restaurant and was welcomed inside by a friendly guy, who apologised for the smell of fresh paint…

“We only completed the painting this morning senhor…!!” he said, a he saw my nose wrinkle at the strong odour of the chemicals…

"More milk with your coffee, sir...??"

Against my better judgement, I stayed and order a meal that I hoped would make up for the smell of the place, and when my “chicken stuffed with Andean cheese” arrived, I was more than  a little alarmed to find that they were into that nouveau cousine stuff…!!

You know…t those establishments where the description on the menu takes longer to read than eating the actual dish itself does…!!

I made very short work of my meal… In fact, the door to the kitchen had just swing shut behind the waiter who had delivered my order, when I put my knife and fork down, and considered gnawing on the table leg to satisfy the hunger I still felt…!!

A pair of Snickers Bars, which I bought at the convenience store next door, and ate on the way back to my hostal, finally took the edge off my hunger…

Back at Casa Grande, I stopped to look at some of the stickers on the glass door in the entrance… I saw that there was a sticker there from the Brazilian Bikers I had met in Tocopilla in Chile…!! I had passed two of them as I entered Cuzco, and they had waved wildly to me, but didn’t stop to chat…!!

This was the first of many co-incidences I was about to experience during my stay at the Casa Grande…

A trio of battered looking GS 800's were parked in the courtyard when I returned from dinner...

A group Brazilian bikers had arrived while I was out, and had gone out on the town to celebrate their arrival in Cuzco… Judging by the condition of their mud-splattered bikes, they had had a hard time over the past few days, riding in from Nazca…

I thought it best not to mention to the Big Fella, that we would be following the same route in a few days time…!!

I was due to be collected from my hotel at 4.00am the following morning for my trip to Machu Picchu, and went to bed excited at the prospect of seeing the place that I had dreamed about for so long…

©GBWT 2012

 

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