North of Lima

KS- for Sunday/Monday

I'm writing this on Thursday, from a bus, somewhere high in the Peruvian mountains, on the wrong side of a massive landslide.

We started out our Sunday morning in Chimbote, Peru. After a light breakfast with fellow motorcycle travelers, Joseph and Ward,  we went back to our rooms and started to pack up our gear, we carried the bags out to the parking area and since it was still shady and not too hot so we decided to do a little wrenching before riding. Chip's bike has been running poorly, as usual,  so after lubing the chains on both bikes I opened up the carburetor on his bike for the,,,   honestly I have lost track of how many times I have opened this carburetor.  This time the culprit was a bad o-ring. After replacing the offending part,  I reset the float level, then put everything back together, started the bike and tuned the idle mixture. Finally things actually sounded pretty good again, hopefully it lasts this time.  After saying goodbye to our new friends, who were heading north towards the mountains, but wanted to hang out a bit to watch the mechanical circus.  We finished loading our bikes and ventured south towards the desert, stopping for gas shortly after leaving the hotel.  Continuing down the highway that ran along the beach, Chip's bike was running good, but the pinging has returned under full throttle acceleration.  Next gas stop he filled the tank with high octane gas and it got rid of the ping but then the clutch started slipping under heavy acceleration.  It really never ends with this bike. In fact, jumping ahead to Wednesday, the headlight stopped working.  While we're adding to Chip's list of equipment/gear failures, go ahead and toss in his helmet comm that fried out in the rain the other night,  and his riding boots that leak badly enough to actually pour water out of them at the end of the day.

There were a couple areas that had good views and places where we could ride out across the desert sand to overlook the ocean so we took advantage of one of the great view points to do a few photos and take a little break before we headed on south to go visit my cousin who lives near Lima. As we rode the highway along the beach I started seeing large chicken houses built right on the sand. They were probably 50 by 500 feet long they had their own water tanks and feed thanks and were usually in groups of 10. There had to have been over a hundred chicken houses in this area along the beach. I thought it would be kind of weird to check your chickens then walk out onto the beach.  It makes me wonder if "the foolish man built his house upon the sand"  also applies to poultry farming as well.  I think I'll continue raising my chickens in houses built on Virginia dirt with plenty of rock in it, as for the wise/foolish thing, let's not get into that one today.

Christine and Simon live about an hour north of Lima.  We arrived just before dinner time which is usually not a bad time to show up, so after dinner we spent time sharing stories of travel and growing up in Virginia before heading off to bed. The next morning after a good breakfast we decided do a little more work on the bikes because I had noticed my front wheel will starting to squeak, and I was hoping it was not wheel bearings going bad. Once I tore it apart I found that the speedometer drive hub was starting to seize up so I added some more oil to try to get things freed up with less than perfect results, so I figured it would be failing soon. (and it has, just outside of Cousco) As we were working on my bike the children were playing around with Chip's bike, touching things and moving things, when one of them realized that the brake pedal would not come back up after they pushed it down.  That is how "we" diagnosed Chip's rear brake pedal pivot was rusted and had been sticking when he used it. So we tore it apart, sanded it,  greased it,  and put it back together. Now its working is good as new, or as good as these things tend to work in this situation.  Once the bikes were squared away, I walked around the farm with Simon and learned some of the challenges and processes of farming in South America.  I have to say I am not jealous of the farmers down in this part of the world, there is very little machinery and lots of work that is done by hand.  After the tour was over we went back to the house finished loading our bikes and said our goodbyes to Simon, Christine, and 8 of their 9 children. The plan is to head further south, chasing Dakar Rally that had started just two days before, in Lima.

After weaving and winding our way through the horrible traffic of Lima, we made it to the city of Pisco, down by the beach. this town was also another stop of the rally. As we were sitting in the middle of the town square, next to our illegally parked motorcycles, the city police pulled up next to us and started a conversation. Luckily, these were very friendly police, my favorite kind. They were asking where we were from, about the bikes, what food we liked,  what we thought of Peru,  and if there was anything we needed.  I told them I would like to find a hardware store to pick up a tool that I had been wanting for the motorcycle.  So they had us follow them through town and took us to the store where the younger cop walked in with me to help me find what I need.  Meanwhile Chip went into a neighboring paint store to purchase some rust remover and primer to combat the corrosion that was attacking his motorcycle.We were both successful in our missions and the police asked if there was anything else they could do for us.  They asked where we were staying, we told them we did not know yet. The older policeman said he knew a place and for us to follow them again. He took us to a hotel that was under construction,on a street that was also under construction. They had a nice room that was ground level in the courtyard where we could park our bikes right and front of our room door. Since we still had plenty of daylight we decided to do a little more wrenching on the bikes. Chip started sanding the rust and preparing to paint, while I worked on my turn signal that had quit working as we entered South America.  Not that it was a problem because most people in this continent are unfamiliar with operating procedure of turn signals in a motor vehicle. It mainly seems to be the lever that they may bump as they are throwing trash out their window while driving down the road on their cell phone. By the way,  Peru is the trashiest, most polluted, worst driving country we've driven through. The cities and areas around them are disgusting. I try to portray things in a positive light, but sometimes you just have to call a spade, a spade. At least the mountains are beautiful.

Bike work finished, and freshly showered, we walked into the main part of town and found a nice restaurant for dinner that actually had really good service, something that is also rare in this part of the world, but it is appreciated when you find it. After dinner was over it had become dark and since we were quite a ways from the hotel we opted to hire one of the little 3 wheeled taxis, that we have seen all over town, to take us back. So we wrapped up another good day and are preparing to head into the mountains tomorrow for the Nazca Lines then eventually Cousco and the famous Machu Picchu.

No pictures at the moment