Ecuador and Peru

After an awesome experience in Colombia we hit the border bound for Ecuador. I would have thought, leaving the country which supplies the world with most of it's cocaine, things would have been a little intense. But to my surprise, it was one of the easiest border crossings on the entire trip.

After a quick pit stop at the world's longest urinal,

we quickly quickly found ourselves in the dry mountains of northern Ecuador. We made it to Quito, the capital, just in time for a huge rain storm while we had to look for a hotel. Weak. But for once luck was kind of on our side. We received an email from the other couple we traveled with through Colombia and they told us they had been robbed on the street while in Quito just a couple days earlier. For us Quito was pretty lame which is better than getting robbed I guess. So after a mellow night of dinner and a couple beers we crashed and got up early to get the hell out of the big city as quick as we could.
We hit the road and posted up in a small town named Latacunga 70km's south of Quito. We geared up and took the bikes out into the beautiful back country to an area called the Quilotoa Loop, where we found some of the most beautiful roads and landscapes to date. The weather was not on our side but we managed to find a restaurant in the middle of no where and were served a semi-edible meal(part of which was blue??) while we warmed up and dried off. We finished the 6 hour loop through the awesome scenic country and made it back to our little town just before sunset.
The next stop on the list was Baños. And for those of you who don't know Spanish, Baño means toilette. So obviously we had to go there. On the drive in we had amazing views of the recently re-active volcano which the town sits at the base of. Our main reason for going, other than to say we hung out in toilette-ville, was for another awesome day of rafting. We have a waterproof case for our camera(thanks Cam) and the rafting company wanted to have some new pics for their advertisements. So we gave the camera to the safety kayak-er who came with us and he was able to get some great shots. There was even a section, people normally have to get out and walk around because it's too dangerous. But because the guides realized we weren't idiots, and, the camera was rolling, we went for it. It was fricken awesome. Afterwards one of the guides told us it was his first time running that section. We rule.
On the way home we stopped at a bridge that was set up for a rope jump. Basically you find a bridge, anchor a rope on one side and then run the rope under the bridge to the other side. Once you tie yourself in, you just jump off and swing under the bridge like a big pendulum(I don't have a picture of me jumping because Hartt took a video instead-sorry). This one was pretty fun, but I did a bigger one off the Port Mann bridge in Vancouver in the middle of the night before I left on this trip. That one was way more fun.
We packed up the next day and headed for the border of Peru. It pissed rain the entire day and we got absolutely soaked. It sucked. Luckily we were able to use our bungee straps from the bikes to MacGyver some clothes lines in the hotel.
The border into Peru was a pain in the ass. So much so that I forgot to take any photos other than this dog who clearly wanted to commit suicide.
Getting into Northern Peru was quite a 180 compared to the last few weeks we had just spent in Colombia and Ecuador. The scenery drastically turned from uber lush, beautiful green rolling mountains to dry, desolate, sandy desert that seemed to go on forever. Some places had a road... Some didn't. This was oil country so Hartt felt right at home.
It was a long ass way to Lima down the coast, and this is what we saw the whole way. The plan was to get to Cusco(southeast of Lima) for the Saturday of Carnival. But instead of taking the direct route, we wanted to spice things up a bit and drive through the Andes. So we decided to go east from Lima. This... is where our luck seemed to run out- or, maybe, our stupidity just seemed to kick in to high gear. Because we are idiots and didn't spring for the 12 dollar map of Peru, we decided to just use the crappy map in our guidebook. Genius. On our map it looked to be about 600km's from Lima to Cusco via the back route. So we allotted ourselves 2 days for the journey. It was fine for the first few hours, great in fact. Cool mountain roads with amazing scenery. But half way through the first day we figured out we were pretty much screwed. In our crappy book, it showed the whole route as a paved road(thanks LP...idiots). We had gone 250km's- too far to turn back, and all of a sudden the road turned from nice, killer, paved goodness to a goat's trail. Seriously. One lane, just about wide enough for a car. Woo Hoo 'Adventure' time...

At the end of the first day we still thought, no problem... shitty roads are gonna suck, but we should really only be behind schedule by about half a day. Once again, we were wrong. We woke up uber early the next morning like total keener nerds. Just as I went to load my bike I found a bunch of little gifts from the road. My chain was super stretched, I was missing a sub-frame bolt and best of all, I had completely sheered off my back brake pad and was grinding metal... outstanding. So after waiting for stores to open, replacing the bolt, and tightening the chain, we were still unable to find a new brake pad that would fit in my bike. And because the roads through the Andes were so crazy, I kind of wanted to have both brakes work. So we ended up having some mechanic 'make' us a new one.
So with a stretched chain and a half-assed fashioned back brake, we set out for day number 2 of our Andes adventure. Once again, unbelievable beautiful roads through crazy back country and high altitudes. The roads were terribly marked though and the towns which were labeled weren't on our crappy map. So we ended up having to pull the compass out at some points and literally just take a guess. We found ourselves in sooo many cool areas. Little villages in the middle of nowhere, wide open plateaus with lakes(it was so cold you can see me warming my hands on the engine block), and vast, huge mountain ranges. We finally hit pavement again at sunset, but only for about 80km's until the next town.
Day 3, more of the same, but this time with rain. Sweet. Blah blah blah... uber remote dirt roads... I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. But now for the best part. I guess after bumping along for hundreds of kilometers on super crap roads, fully loaded up with gear, something's gotta give right? And it did. 2 different sub frame bolts- one loosened and fell out. Then the other sheered off and the bike just collapsed.
From what we could tell, we were in the middle of nowhere, it was raining, and we were about an hour from complete darkness. When all of a sudden, out of the mist walks our little angel. Some dude herding his goats, walks up with a tarp wrapped around him. He asks us what's wrong. We show him. And then, in Spanish of course, he tells us there is a town just over the next hill and he is friends with the local mechanic. So we unloaded Hartt's bike and I jumped on with the goat man and we drove up to try to find his buddy. I think this was the man's first time on anything with an engine because he was holding onto me so tight I could barely breathe. All of a sudden we pass a car and he starts yelling and hitting me... In the car was his buddy taking his family to a Carnival celebration somewhere. We turned around and caught up to him and told him the problem.
In the end, if this problem had to happen, it couldn't have happened in a better place. The guy dropped his family off and came back to pick us up. We loaded our stuff in to his car and I jammed a screwdriver in to my bike where the missing bolts were to make it the 3km's up the road to his shop. We parked the bikes in his garage and insisted he go back and party with his family... We would deal with this in the morning. And sure enough by 7:30 the next morning, he had fixed everything. We couldn't have done it without him. It was a lot of work that we didn't have the tools to do. So wow. Though we had a big problem, we had even bigger luck for getting it solved.
Day 4. More awesome terrain. Yes, yes, it was beautiful but holy shit we were ready to be off these insane roads and get to where we were going. Some of the mountain passes between peak and valley would gain 9,000 feet in elevation topping out at 14,000 feet high. The roads were seriously nuts. They would just drop away thousands and thousands of feet off the side to the valley below. Oh yeah, and that new back brake the dude made for me sheered off again. So I was doing these crazy descents with only a front brake. Lame. If you blow up this pic, you can see the road in the valley, about 8,000 feet below me. It was like looking out the window of an airplane. With all the ups and downs, it took us almost 12 hours to drive 120km's as the crow flies.
So in the end, what we thought was going to be a fun 2 days through the high Andes, took almost 5. It was 500km's longer than what we expected and it kicked the crap out of us, and our bikes. But had we not chosen that route, we never would have seen such incredible places. We agreed that it was the best mistake we made on the whole trip.
Finally, days late for Carnival, we arrived in Cusco. We ended up staying at one of the best places of the entire trip. Loki hostel. A beautifully renovated old building with great courtyards, terrific food, and an awesome staff. We ended up getting along really well with most of the staff and in turn, our planned 4 night stay ended up being 12. It was a blast.
Though I am way more excited to tell stories about the nights of partying, I should not forget to mention the reason why we went there in the first place: Machu Picchu. We put off going to see it for several days due to incredible hangovers. But one day we pulled our drunken asses out of bed and went to check it out. I have very mixed feelings on it. The site itself was amazing. So that was ok, but there is so much lame organization that is forced upon you to get to it that was super annoying. They only allow you to get to the nearby town by train, which they control and charge out the ass for. Then, if you don't want to hike up the 6,000 or whatever feet to get from the town to the site, they herd you onto a cramped, over priced bus with a bunch of stinky backpackers and rich old snobs. Then, let's not forget the huge entrance fee that you can only buy at the bottom, so if you screw up or forget to purchase it, you have to ride the crappy bus back down and back up again, paying every way. Then...(i know, suck it up) we purchased a water and a Gatorade at the top which cost us almost 10 dollars U.S. So all and all, the ruins were great but we left with a bad taste in our mouth from having our wallets raped so many times. But, after all that being said, there were stupid looking lamas all over the place so that made it all ok.
We were happy to get back to Loki to hang with our new friends. The hostel itself is located on a steep cobblestone hill. So the next night after a few cocktails, I convinced the staff it would be a great idea to go into the supply room, get some soap to lather up the road, and call cabs to the hostel and watch em slide down the hill. So we gave it a shot but the cabs' wheels would only lock up for a second or two and didn't give us quite the show we were hoping for. So, trying to make the idea not a complete waste of time, I convinced Rob, one of the staff, to suit up with me, each in a garbage bag, and try the world's worst slip n slide. Needless to say, drunk Kori + soapy cobblestone road = hurty. Who would have ever thought the garbage bags would have shredded on a cobblestone road so easily?? Rob went feet first and smashed his knee pretty bad and I dove head first and scraped the hell out of my chest. And it's all on video. It was a funny-ass night.
After one last night, we finally said our good-byes and drove away as fast as we could. Neither of us really wanted to leave but we knew we had to get moving if we were gonna make it to the tip before the snow starts to fly. So back on the road, we set out for Chile. Thanks everyone at Loki for a great time!