Woke up in a cold and damp room.\u00a0 Walked about this tiny town till we found a place that would cook us a couple of eggs for breakfast.\u00a0 Then we went in search of a hardware store, and after a couple of false leads we found a tiny store that had a bolt that looked like it would work to re-attached Levi’s tail-truck rack.\u00a0 We got the bikes out of the parquedero (mud-lot) that we had paid to put them in, and moved them to the central square, where it looked like we could park on pavement and get the tools we needed out.\u00a0 When we tried to use the new bolt we had bought, we discovered that we had bought a SAE bolt, not a metric one, so it would not work.\u00a0 We got on the bikes and road around the town, looking for an auto parts store, but we stumbled on a mechanic just opening his shop, and when we asked about a bolt, he offered to walk with Levi to a supply store he knew of.\u00a0 This time we scored, getting the exact piece of hardware we needed!\u00a0 We went back to the central square, and quickly re-attached the rack.<\/p>\n
We then walked to our hotel, leaving the bikes at the central plaza, as that was the only level paved place in town!\u00a0 We backed up our still wet stuff, and checked out, then walked uphill to the square to get the bikes and load them up.\u00a0 But just a that exact time, the locals were having a parade and celebration for Carnival, and the central square was filled with costumed dancers and old timers doing there best to celebrate the season.\u00a0 So we had to wait a while, till the festivities died down before we could start up the bikes and drive back to the hotel.\u00a0 It was fun to see the locals kicking yup their heels!<\/p>\n
Leaving town meant again navigating these mud streets, but once out of town the road improved, and we started climbing again on very good two-lane.\u00a0 We climbed incredibly high, 12,000 ft and more, till the road leveled out on a high plain, through grassland with snow-capped peaks and lakes.\u00a0 Lamas and sheep and other livestock roamed free, with traditionally dressed shepards watching over their flocks.\u00a0 Very cold ride.<\/p>\n
After many miles of very high-altitude driving, during which the bikes did not run well, we came to the end of the plain, and descended through miles of switchbacks into an incredible river gorge, between very steep volcanic mountains.\u00a0 The road now followed this river, through some very beautiful scenic country.\u00a0 WE stopped at at roadside ‘restaurant’ (really just some one’s house) where they advertised cuy – guinea pig, fro lunch.\u00a0 there we talked a joked with some folks form Abancay, while we waited for our food.\u00a0 The cuy was kind of disappointing, I thought,\u00a0 stringy, tough and greasy.<\/p>\n
It was getting dark and threatening rain when we finally got to the town of Abancay.\u00a0 We found a hotel that said they had a garage, but after we had registered and unloaded, they opened up a store in the front of the hotel, and had us park our bikes inside the store!\u00a0 They had real hot water for showers, though, so we were very pleased.<\/p>\n
We used the internet to buy our train tickets for machu-picchu, because the train fills up every day and you need to book in advance.\u00a0 The train leaves from Cusco, and we are now only 100 miles from there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Woke up in a cold and damp room.\u00a0 Walked about this tiny town till we found a place that would cook us a couple of eggs for breakfast.\u00a0 Then we went in search of a hardware store, and after a couple of false leads we found a tiny store that had a bolt that looked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[6,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586"}],"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=2586"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2588,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}