After our complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we loaded up and immediately got confused on trying to get out of town.\u00a0 The highway markings here are just basically non-existent, and following the correct path through the towns is a crap-shoot.\u00a0 The road south started out OK, but in the town of Cajabamba, we took a wrong turn and went a few miles down the wrong road – the road to Cuenca.\u00a0 We backtracked, and found the correct turn off, only to be stopped right there for over 30 minutes by a flagman for road construction.\u00a0 We sat for those 30+ minutes in the pouring rain, freezing cold even with all our winter gear and electric vests on!\u00a0 Here we were, barely south of the equator, and the temperature was barely\u00a050\u00ba!\u00a0 Even with our coat liners, we were soon soaked through and through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When we were finally allowed to proceed, we had no idea what we were about to get into.\u00a0 For the next 50 miles<\/span>, we were treated to the worst road, and road experience, that we had encountered on this trip to date!\u00a0 The road had been torn up for repaving, but except for one-quarter mile at the start, and one-half mile at the end, no repaving had been done.\u00a0 There were hundreds of cuts through the old pavement, that had been badly filled with gravel, which had then been\u00a0washed out or\u00a0humped up by other traffic;\u00a0 landslides blocked\u00a0all or some of the lanes, often around blind curves.\u00a0 Huge potholes where everywhere,\u00a0 some partially filled with gravel, and some not.\u00a0 Sections of the road were missing, having slid down the mountain.\u00a0 Washouts ran every which way across the roadway, and the grades were such that the trucks and buses barely crawled up the mountains.\u00a0 We could not maintain evan a 25 mph average.\u00a0 There were no places to pull off, no end to the rain, areas of dense fog, no shoulder, no services at all.\u00a0 We encountered several areas where work crews with heavy equipment were working to clear landslides or major washouts, and at least twice more we were stopped by flagman for extended periods of time while the road was closed by machinery.\u00a0 Some areas the road was covered with wet, slimy mud that was very hazardous for us. This was the main Pan American highway south, and it was just a mess!\u00a0 With the dust, mud,\u00a0and diesel exhaust, we were totally coated with dirt from helmet to boots, and looked like raccoons with black all around our faces except for our eyes.\u00a0 Our clothes were wet and filthy.<\/p>\n After hours of this, we finally came to the end, and came down out of the mountains as well.\u00a0 The road returned to normal, and flattened out, but we had lost too much time to attempt the border crossing today.\u00a0 We stopped in the small town of Naranjal, and failed again to find a single hotel with hot water.\u00a0 We settled for a place that offered secure parking, and cleaned up as best we could.<\/p>\n We had fried fish dinners that were OK, and pulled our air filters out for cleaning.\u00a0 We sat on the hotel balcony, and watch the traffic on the street, consisting of more motorcycles than cars by a long way, and not one rider or passenger with a helmet!\u00a0 We checked our tires for wear, and decided that Lima was where we would need to replace at least the rears on both machines.\u00a0 We will be in Peru tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After our complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we loaded up and immediately got confused on trying to get out of town.\u00a0 The highway markings here are just basically non-existent, and following the correct path through the towns is a crap-shoot.\u00a0 The road south started out OK, but in the town of Cajabamba, we took a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[21,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}