Peru, the road less travelled.

I am known for doing stupid things, so when a friend recommended that I take a short cut to Cusco, and he assured me the road was amazing, I skipped Lima and took off on some road that was not even on my map. The first 60 km was a dirt road and I only saw one truck and one motorcycle. Then the road got worse, much worse. I have been on roads this bad before in Afghanistan, but I did not expect them in Peru, so for three days I grueled away at the road. The little towns that I biked through had little on the shelves, but I was able to scrap up enough food. When I finally did get back on the map yesterday, I thought about kissing the pavement.

Last night I camped at 3,000 meters and over the next few days I will go over a couple passes that will reach 4,800 meters. The camping at night has been great. I camped one night on the side of a cliff, below me was a canyon bottom 1,000 meters, and a giant water fall on the other side of the canyon. Now I am in the town Huarez, then I will be going to Huancayo, then Cusco. I will be on and off the map, some of the roads that I will be taking are dirt roads. I do not know exactly how long it will take me to get to Cusco, maybe more than 10 days. It is roughly 1,000 km to Cusco so I am expecting 12 or 13 days depending on rest days and road conditions. I will be connected again to the Internet in a few days, hopefully!

The dirt road

Camping for the night, it was a rough day.

The only drinking water, and I wonder why I have stomach problems

Lots of tunnels on the side of the mountain

Some coal miners on lunch break

Just one of the dozens of tunnels

The real road through the mountains

Early morning

And my bright shining face

Snow capped mountains, it is only up from here.