Track Pete

(written 11/04 @ 8PM)  Last night Rob, Will and I had an absolutely fantastic meal at a gourmet tourist restaurant in Cusco.  Everything from arugula salad to ravioli in walnut butter sauce and gnochi with polenta and steak, combined with a great Malbec from Argentina.  The total bill was enormous for out here, over ten times what we have paid for other meals, but in total the amount was still about equal in soles to what it would've been in dollars at an equivalent restaurant in the US (s/250).  Fantastic treat. After dinner we hit a bar for a bit, then the rest of the guys went out while I went back to the pad to crash (expecting to leave early).  I'm was asleep by 1AM but the other guys didn't get back until close to 5AM, except for Rob who arrived around 4AM with a girl and got a private room.  Left us a note on the toilet that said "In room 202 with girl.  -Rob"  Haha.   Had a nice slow morning, got some groceries at ...

(written 11/03 @ 6:30PM)  Yes, you notice that don't you?  I actually arrived at my destination BEFORE DARK tonight!  Yay!  No internet at the hostal I'm at though, which means I'm going to have to run around and find an internet place that isn't full of kids playing games and see if I can hook up my laptop and upload the last few days of stuff…  ugh!   This morning we got up around 7AM, packed our gear, and headed up to the Lifan dealer (which turned out to be a simple Yamaha mechanic).  Lloyd and Mark happened to be there, so we sync'd up for awhile.  The mechanic took Rob & Will's bike apart completely, and changed the oil, checked the chain, etc. on mine.  Around 11PM mine was all set to go, Lloyd and Mark had already taken off, and Rob & Will were looking at a few more hours of repair so I decided to head off for Cusco…  alone at last!   It was an awesome ride, huge climb through the mountains on paved roads w...

(written 11/2 @ 11PM) I woke up last night to a knock on my door at the hotel in Chincheros in the wee hours – it was Lloyd from Peruvian Marching Pair asking if he could crash in my room.  Apparently they spotted Will in the window of the hostal but the hostal was closed up – Will let Lloyd and Mark in and they crashed with us.   We took off in the morning in a pack of three, though we spread out very rapidly.  We pushed hard from around 7AM in order to get to Andahuaylas as quickly as possible so that we could make for Abancay.  Along the way we stopped in a small town for some snacks and were amused by some very drunk townspeople trying to get us to drink with them since it was a major holiday (Day of the Dead).    Just outside of Andahuaylas, Rob & Will again had some mechanical problems, with their chain popping off.  After conferring I went ahead into town to grab some lunch and chill out, expecting them to catch up 20-30min later....

(Written 11/01 @ 11PM)  This was supposed to be Ayacucho to Andahualyes (I don't have my notes in front of my so I'm sure I butchered this) but problems with Rob & Will again delayed us. We started the morning by grabbing our mototaxis from the parking and driving over to the mechanic street.  Knowing it was a Sunday we didn't expect to find anyone open, but we wanted to replace our tubes and get some spare chain.  Luckily we found someone who was open and spent the next few hours working on the mototaxis.  We changed the oil on both and got heavy duty chains put on Rob & Will's (I took my heavy duty chains as a spare).  While all this was going on I wandered all over trying to find a cajero automatico (ATM) to get cash, what a pain…  eventually I was able to pay though.   We hit the road and were rocking it out quite well for an hour or two when Rob & Will started to have problems with their mototaxi – it just didn't seem to go v...

(written 10/31 @ 11:20PM) 250km in 15+ hours on insane dirt roads through the Andes?  Yes, this is what I signed up for.   I woke up at 3:30AM in order to be packed and in the lobby at 4:30AM to get my paperwork then head immediately to the field.  Very long story short – I got my mototaxi loaded and in a train with Rob & Will from Valsalva Victory took off for the wilds.  The plan was to hit Ayacucho in a single day, which was ambitious but doable.   The road out of Huancayo started out very nice and paved for an hour or two, and was a great opportunity to learn the mototaxi at speed on the road as well as during traffic.  We made it and did great.  Eventually, however, we hit the good stuff – the crazy dirt road to Huanta.     You have to see the pictures or video to understand this road, and realize that I actually took pictures and video during the *safest* parts of it, since there were many situations I wouldn't even...

After all the waiting, after all the drama, after all the jealousy, hype, rage, fear, disappointment and pain…  We shall begin!  Though I have to admit, reading about a car falling into "the abyss" and some guy getting robbed of s/3,000 by two guys in a mototaxi made a weird start to the day.   I have been assigned a mototaxi, I had literally the very last one in the hat when we drew (all remaining teams but four or so will be leaving tomorrow).  I have named my trusty steed "Jau" in honor of Jau-Ling Chou, who did the Rickshaw Run earlier in the year and inspired me to do this.   Lucky me, four out of the 18 bikes were 150cc instead of 125cc and all the kind people accidentally left one for me!  This means I will have a slightly easier time of it, as my extra 2hp (for 13hp total) gives me a noticeably smoother ride when starting and getting going.  I'm quite excited!   Paperwork just arrived from Lima and ...

Supposedly as of yesterday everyone in Group 1 and Group 2 has been off except for one team. At least two of those teams returned Thursday due to problems, and apparently one team lost a mototaxi after hitting a pothole and rolling it down the side of a mountain into a river (not sure on the details here, but apparently it almost rolled over a girl but everyone is all right). Mototaxi update: We are supposed to find out around noon to 2PM today how many will be ready to go Saturday morning, currently expecting 8 to be ready out of the 22 left. The rest may have to wait until Tuesday. We are now looking at shipping the remaining ones to Cuzco and having a launch from there, so the rest of us may fly over there in order to do some exploration while waiting until Tuesday (Macchu Picchu and all that). I will update this afternoon. I spent most of the afternoon with Scott and Nate from team Hombre Lobo (who are sadly almost definitely dropping out now due to the delay) and ...

Due to the INCREDIBLY poor planning and naivety of the Adventurists about South American politics, we´re now being told it´s entirely possible we may not have our mototaxis until Tuesday. This would be nine days beyond the original start. A few teams took off but apparently two have already returned. Again due to poor planning, one team had problems with their mototaxi not being built properly and effectively dying an hour outside of town, while another crashed a few blocks away from the launch because the brakes were not properly set up on the recently assembled bike. This has turned into chaos and perhaps quite a bit more personal risk than originally intended as well as a massive inconvenience. We´re looking at other options but at this point I expect to be out a couple grand more than expected as well as needing to take an additional two weeks off work and risk being asked to leave early... or I could give up and lose the three to four grand I´ve already invested in this. Quite uni...

Yes, 8 days so far and I have yet to leave on a mototaxi. In fact, no one has I believe! It looks like Group 1 got their paperwork around 7PM tonight though, so they should be off in the morning. A glimmer of hope for the rest of us. Right now, I'm expecting to be stuck here until Friday, which completely destroys any possibility of completing the trip without delaying my return. I'm looking at options but will probably need to extend my vacation by another week and eat a grand worth of plane tickets – I want to experience something beyond trying to kill myself getting to Asuncion. I've now been in Huancayo sitting around for 4 complete days. :( We had a parade today. Instead of a police escort out of town for 61 mototaxis rolling off in grand fanfare, we had a little ceremony and a police escort of 13 mototaxis back to the school where they are staying until the paperwork is done. >_< Not much else to say. We're all accumulating all sor...

Delayed again.  They have 16 mototaxis ready to go tomorrow morning, another 25 they are hoping to have ready in the early afternoon, and 22 more arriving at some point tomorrow to be ready late afternoon or early morning Thursday.  We divided into three groups based on how soon we had tickets out of Asuncion, though I was really quite surprised about all the selfish bickering – so many people seemed to think they had a better reason to leave early.  Hopefully that attitude won't translate into people being abandoned on the side of the road, heh.   Anyway, I slotted myself into Group 3 (possibly leaving Thursday) because I'm just one person to change a ticket and I figure I can push harder than most of these people as well – I'd have likely been in Group 1 but ah well.  I figure I will extend the trip another week depending, though it'll cost me quite a bit.   Until then, let's just stick with a quick recap to entertain yourself:   Photos o...

We've moved downtown to the center and into rooms at Los Balcones today near Plaza Constitucion. Yay for internet and being centrally located to all the happenings. Boo for dealing with noise again. I'll make this update quick since I've just uploaded two long updates from the last few days: - Edited some video this morning while chilling and have a pretty cool ~3min vid of some mototaxi action. Conversion is taking quite awhile though, hopefully I'll be able to upload it tonight. - I spent most of the day with the guys from Mayan the force be with us and even more wandering about with Rob & Will from Valsava Victory as we had a bit of a common bond being in the middle of nowhere for the last couple days. - Spent a long time walking and driving around to find parts with Rob & Will. Ended up with a replacement tube, a patch kit with ~20 patches, a tire iron thingie, and a pump. Good stuff. I apparently still need a couple wrenches and...

(written 10/25 @ 11PM) No internet at all for an entire day and a half now! It's a bit annoying as I have tons of photos to upload and some really fantastic video (though I do need to edit that still). Today started somewhat oddly – I woke up and noted that the power was out. Grabbed a quick hot shower (the first truly HOT shower I've had since last Monday in the US) and breakfast then headed out towards downtown to meet up with the three other solo people. I was shocked to discover that the power was out over the entire town and was unable to upload last night's blog and photos as planned. Breakfast was interesting. Of the other solos, Peter (yes, there's two of us) and Sarah (alas, with an h) both expected to take their time and were planning on sticking around for many days after. April was looking about between, and I personally was concerned more about having fun and the spirit of the trip rather than being a tourist. It was interesting how differe...