In Peru we have spent on night in Surrena, one night in Tortuga and last night in Pisco (where I am writing to you now.)  Just about all of the drive has been through deserts.  Sand dunes and occasional rugged hills, sometimes along the pacific, sometimes not.  The roads are quite good and generally straight, so we cruise along at approx. 95 miles per hour.  We make good time until we hit a city and then get lost due to a lack of signage and lose our momentum for half an hour or so.

      The first town, Surrena, was just a place to crash.  We found a decent hotel, went out for a few drinks and a chicken and rice soup, got a little lost, asked directions, were told we were in deep danger, and then found our way, through dark, unlit streets, home.

 

     

    By the way, how about those pictures I got up today.  Pretty dry and bland, huh?  The desert life is so drab compared to the jungles earlier on.  I'm pretty sure it will be a lot of arid landscape through most of Chile, so we have got to get used to it.  Up here, however, it is rugged and green and often rainy.  (Luckily I have my Adidas rain coat that I bought here years ago.)  I'll try to get some good pictures from around here to balance out the desert ones.  (Also, I've got some good audio clips to upload (cops, border crossings, desert driving, ect.), but I just discovered that I will need to recharge my batteries in my recorder, before I can do any uploads.  Be prepared!

    There is good internet here, so I'll keep you all posted. 

 

1. We made it to Machu Picchu today.

2.  Machu Picchu is impossible to describe with words so go there yourself.

3. Bought train tickets just as our train left, so had to take a long taxi ride to intercept train.

4.  Great weather at Machu Picchu until moments before we had to leave.

5.  Had a first class seat for the return and played cards with a French fellow and a Peruvian.  (Rummy)

6.  Upon return to our hotel, we discovered that they 'checked us out' per some confusion.

7.  All of our stuff had been packed up in bags and put in a storage closet.  (Pity the person who had to pack all our stuff up).

8.  Our room was rented, but they had a smaller room available, which we took.

9.  Just had a great Peruvian dinner, but Eli wimped out on the Roast Cuay (Guinea Pig) (He had Alpaca ((again)).  (I'm way too wimpy to order Cuay, so it is not an issue for me.  Eli, however, had a lot more pride in his exotic eating portfolio, so I think I can beat him up a bit over not eating the Cuay after he said that he definitely was) (So send him some taunting messages y'all.) 

10. Had enough Piscos to say 'let's not go out tonight because we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow'

11. What else?  Nothing much. Tomorrow we leave Cusco after trying to get our breaks fixed.  I also have a custom Alpaca jacket being made for me (fleece liner, alpaca shell, hood, inside pocket, negro) which I can pick up tomorrow at 9 AM, so I'll get that as well.  Other than that, We are going to pick up a water and go back to our room for a smoke and a relax...no high altitude hangover tomorrow.  (High altitude hangovers are vicious. Eli claims the last one to be his worst hangover ever- probably the 8th time on this trip that he has had a 'worst hang over ever'.  It definitely ranked in my top 163 as well).  No fun!

 

Wishing you all our very best from Cusco, Peru!

     Naturally, once it got dark, the road went to hell and we had to slow way down and pick our way through pot holes and rocks, blinded by the on-coming trucks, until we made it here. 

      We found a nice room here ('nice', by our current standards, might leave you all with something to be desired, but this room had it all...two separate beds, a toilet seat and more ash trays than sheets of toilet paper on the roll.  We had a great dinner last night in a little restaurant.  The beers were right off the shelf, but cold.  In fact you could see your breath in the restaurant, which was run by a couple very hyper, very inquisitive, very young girls.  I don't think they see many of us whiteys around here.  Next we went to a bar in the upstairs of a casino and had a couple glasses of good rum.  Eli tried hard to chat it up with an overly friendly Bolivian fellow- a truck driver extremely proud of his CAT (caterpillar) vest and boots.  I listened to numerous lousy Karaoke renditions of popular Peruvian songs.  (Popular Peruvian music is way better than our pop music.  Loads of horns and percussion)  and I watch the accompanying videos to said songs on the TV above the bar.  (Popular Peruvian videos are trippy.  Guys in very traditional outfits standing in mountains with scantily clad chicas dancing all around them...the occasional insert of animated birds flying by, the cut away to a steamy bedroom scene and then back to Juan Carlos playing his pan-flute in his ornate poncho.  Just awesome).  After that bar, we had another drink at another Karaoke bar (the only apparent options) and there isn't too much to note regarding this place.  Older bar tender in white with black vest, tried, as usual, to slip Coca Cola into our rum but couldn't get away with it because we always watch and wait for this like hawks....like quetzals, big water tank on the bar next us us leaking all over the bar, drunk man staggering around in indecision about leaving or staying, People dancing up the stairs on the second floor...the stairs that smell of puke.  So that was that, we headed back to our room and crashed out...or I did anyway.  Eli had some problems getting to sleep he told me when I woke up sometime in the night.   I had great dreams again.  Log rolling down grassy mountain slopes, Silver Al honking as a guy with a boisterous tall hat drove her around and around a round-about (rotary), my hair falling out revealing a tattoo on my skull, Eli bringing me into a cave full of waterfalls and a giant chess table.  More dreams in one night than I have in a month...and I remember large bits of them.  This high altitude life is treating me well.

      Anyway, I ran out and grabbed a couple coffees para llevar (to go...to carry, actually).  The first place gave it to me in a plastic bag, but our room is sin vasos (without cups) so that was ditched and I found some in cups down the street.  Today we are heading back down to the coast.  I have no idea what kind of roads to expect, but there is one shown on the map.  Could...will....be a long day for sure.  We are just beginning what should be a good bunch of days of full-on driving...both hands on the wheel, shoulders reared back..driving.

 

I'll be sure to let you know.  PS: I know I have been neglecting the tips page, but I've got a few goods ones to add next time I get the chance.  This blow by blow blabber has taken precedent, I'm afraid, even if the tips are far more useful and far less subjective.  Es Vida.

PPS: I also have some great audio to put up soon too.  Without the laptop it is a little trickier, but I've figured it out now.  I've got cops and more cops and our reaction to the cops and messages from Machu Picchu and various roads.  I'll see what I can do in the next few days!! 

      It rained harder and harder and there was lightning and thunder.  Then there was sleet which turned to hail.  Just as the hail started the tar road ended and in its place there was a dirt track.  Rutted, washboardy and at times, washed right out.  Still we drove on.  The question in our minds was whether or not we would be able to continue all the way, or if we would reach an impassable part.  Every once in a while the rain would left up and hide behind the mountains.  We stopped at these times to snap and take in the beautiful Andes all around us.  In one spot Eli discovered a piping hot geyser shooting a stream of water into a neighboring pool.  Another time we came across our first snow, dotted around the tundra.  I picked a patch to attempt a snow angel but it was too small.  Where there wasn't snow there was the stickiest and heaviest mud I have ever encountered.  It was yellow and green in color and clumped to the bottom of my feet so thickly I could hardly lift my legs.  Elis flip flops both got stuck and he had a hard time pulling them loose.  Even back at the car, cleaning the mud off was really hard.  I used rocks to scrape at it and some got on my hands.  Eventually we got enough of it off to properly function and we drove on, mud smeared everywhere. 

     Further down the road we came to a muddy section of road that stopped us in our tracks.  It was a red mud, not this weird sticky mud, but it was deep.  A huge truck happened to pass us just then and we studied it as it stopped, looked the mud bog over and hit it fast and hard.  Even with its high clearance is squirmed around as it revved through, only adding to the monstrous truck tire ruts that passed through it.  The mud trench was a solid 80 feet long, at least two feet deep...in the middle of nowhere, Peru.  It seemed ridiculous to try to drive Silver Al through it, but the thought of turning around at this point would be painful and then what?  Drive back to Cusco and then back to Nasca and then down the coast?   Then again, if we did make it through, what was next?  It was still raining.  Who is to say there wouldn't be another mud bog, and then another?  Who is to say if we did make it through, which seemed slim to begin with, that we would not have to turn around moments later?  And if we turned around then we would have to make it through this pit a second time.

     It was one of those head scratching moments, but decided to go for it.  After all, we are from Joppa Rd, Warner, NH.  Years ago we seeked this stuff out.  Only difference then would have been that we would have been in a four-wheel-drive trucks and had buddies with their trucks to call...or Mom and Dad to bail us out.  

     Eli jumped out and scoped out the best path.  The only chance was to ride on the raised sections between the truck tire ruts.  Slow was not an option.  The second the car lost its momentum, we were done...probably wouldn't even be able to open the doors.        The moment came and I gunned it.  I don't know exactly what happened but Silver Al lurched forward and screamed into the pit.  Mud flung everywhere. The steering took on a life of its own and I could feel the right path through it.  The car slid left and right.  It bounced up, splattered down, started to slow as the tires spun then regained traction with the twisting of the wheel.  There was never a crash of a rock on the oil pan.  Then it was bouncy, but fluid, like a white water raft.  It seemed like forever but was probably over in moments and we popped out the other side.  Another huge truck that had, in retrospect, probably been caravanning with the first truck had stopped behind us and the look on his face was priceless.  Silver Al, our little city car, in the land of big trucks had made the grade and for that we got a whooopp and a pulsing thumbs up and a huge smile from a truck driver that probably though, moments before, that he was seeing his day fall apart.  Two stupid gringos in their silly little car plugging up the road a hundred miles from anywhere.  Can you tell I am proud?  We don't have a photo, the thought never crossed our mind, but Eli watched it all and said if he had had a camera out, any shot of that muddy rampage could instantly make the cover of the hilly-billy-est, red-necky-est, badest-ass off-roading magazine the rural regions of North America could ever know...And I've got to say that I believe him.  Viva Silver AL 

     As it turned out they needed a ride all the way to the town we were heading for...Moquegua, which was quite a haul.  Finally, and with no warning, the sand road reached a tar one and only then did we feel like we were actually going to make it.  Of course just as we thought that we were going to be able to drive faster than 3-13 miles per hour a blizzard set in.  When the blizzard subsided, fog almost as thick as the mud from a few hours before packed in all around us.  It was a long day, but just before nightfall we rolled into Moquegua! 

       After the restaurant we found one of the coolest bars that we have seen on this trip.  It was called the 'Bandito Bar' and was just covered from inch to inch in retro cowboy themed posters and brick-a-brack.  They had a really good mix of music playing and we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  The bar tender was a cool kid and he made a mean jarro (pitcher) of Pisco sours.  We had three pitchers, paid our bill and then ordered an afterthought fourth.  This was our last night in Peru.  Tomorrow = Chile!