2017-10-01 Day 168 Sun

Continued to the lake that we’d hoped to reach last night. Big lake and lots of agriculture. A few flamingos. The road was quite good, but narrow and very dusty. The land around the towns were well watered via aqua ducts. Dry above them and green below. Quite a stark different.

We like the new bridges better than the old ones.

 

Pulled over for 5 big trucks to go through.  Luckily the first guy told us there were 4 more and the last guy made it clear he was the last.

When we got to Oyolo we took a wrong turn and a local showed us the road down by the soccer field; a very narrow road. The road we turned onto after the town was great, and freshly dressed. What a shame it was the wrong one. Back to village and onto a very narrow washed out road. We climbed up between gum trees, new houses and brick making blocks. The road only had two sets of fresh tyre marks….

We climbed continually until we finally stopped  late evening beside a gorgeous lake at 4884m alt.

A cold night of -6.3°C with ice on the lakes fringes.

2017-09-30 Day 167 Sat.

Stopped at a museum in the middle of nowhere at 4600m.It was dedicated to helping Vacuna, the smaller of the Llama’s. A volunteer showed us around and we understood a lot of what she told us of the stuffed animals. Last was a immature Condor. Big birds. It seems that the Vacuna’s are herded into a corral yearly. A vet is in attendance and the animals are checked, ear taged and if hair long enough clipped/shorn. They do not shear the chest area, that is needed to keep the animal warm.

Just after we left we came to road-works and had to wait one and a half hours till 12noon. When it was close to noon all the trucks and cars came up on the left side of the road to vi for positions to get to front of the queue. We had to pass a lot of them later. The road was sealed and fast. Although we limit ourselves to 75km/hr to try and look after our tyres a bit, and always aware that we could have another blow-out. Not a nice feeling when overtaking….

Pulled off up a small white road to get off the main one. Just as we were leveling up a farmer came by. Told him we were from Australia and just stopping for the night. He rode off quite happily. A nice quiet camp.





Most of the road maintenance is manual labor

 Found more Pigs to feed our scraps to.
 

2017-09-29 Day 166 Fri

John heard a car come in just on daylight. Later we visited the two guys fishing off the rocks, and they had caught 3 small fish each, using little swimming bugs and limpets for bait.

There was a large Christian Cross overlooking the ocean near-by. The three vultures perched there-on added a sureal note to the vista

Turned inland on good yellow road covered occasionally in dunes. Road progressively got rougher and hence slower. Color contrast in dunes was fantastic and reminded us of the living-room sand scapes popular in the late 70's.
Sad that there were many wheel tracks everywhere. 30km’s of this lovely clean environment then a rubbish dump in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding fence was falling down but had collected most of the plastic. Once past the entrance the road side was progressively more covered in rubbish. Either it falls off thetrucks or people get sick of the terrible road and just dump it. Or maybe both. For the next 12km's into town rubbish everywhere really made us feel sick.

Next reed mat suburbs where lots of small huts made from mats but with no people around. As we got closer the suburbs became more developed with more permanent buildings shops etc.




Then the main town of Ica, Had a quick look at oasis. Nicely done but surrounded by commercial dune buggies.

Did some shopping at Plaza Vea. Some supermarkets have gum leaves in their vegie department. We are yet to discover how they are cooked/eaten.

Met a Gold Coast couple also heading south. They had a worse border crossing than us - 4 days! The computer had their car permit for only 4 days and their paper copy was 90… so at $365 per day some $25,000 owing.

Headed south to Nazca lines a good road. Paid s/-3 to climb platform to look. Interesting lines. Climbed some small hills and looked at another area.

Met some Columbian bikers going to Cuzco but indicated they were heading wrong way.

Continued to the Nazca township, turned inland and camped on a sandy hill which was actually just dust. Great sealed road lots of corners and trucks. Trucks very good at indicating safe to pass with their left indicator.

2017-09-28 Day 165 Thur

Went for a walk along the cliffs and up the sand hill to higher cliffs A great view of the bay, blue sea white foam, red beech and yellow sand. We could hear the sea-lions but could not spot them.

Had a long chat with park ranger who wanted us to move again. We were not parked in the designated parking places. He spoke good English. Went for a drive around roads and they had great infrastructure, all new since tsunami in 2010. Toilets were as usual locked. Park is very clean and tidy.

                                                              
We opened our Wahwah, very interesting. black seeds covered in cotton wool...


On our way out southern end of park met fellow travellers heading to Arica to sell car. Been 8 months from Urshwai to Columbia and back.

We have notice that most people travel up the Pan America highway only with a diversion out to Cusco. We wonder why this is, yes it is faster, but there is nothing to see except rubbish and dirty little towns it is a terrible impression of Peru when there is so much beauty inland and lovely clean mountain villages with very friendly people.

Had lunch on a great beech. John set up the chairs and we had a picnic. Driving south the coastal region was beautiful and one of the prettiest areas we have seen in Peru. The white roads existed on the map only. There were lots of tracks so we stuck to what looked like the most used track through sand dunes. Wonderful to have no rubbish to spoil the ambiance. We navigated OK and found the occasional park sign to welcome us to the beaches.

Camped on small headland by a cross.

2017-09-27 Day 164 Wed

A big day. Drove to the Pan American. A big round-about so we dutifully went around to the right, while others behind us just turn left! We then discovered that the dual lanes were blocked. For the next 100km’s we travel on dual divided highway all on one side or the other. For the initial part we drove in fog at some times it was very thick and I kept the truck in fronts tail lights in sight as I wanted to know where he was. We started to think that we would not make our 400km’s. More rubbish more small towns more speed humps.

There is no by-pass around Lima. All roads lead to Lima. So we suffered the two hours driving through Lima's suburbs. First half was very slow speed humps, traffic. The second half ran much faster and we were through in 2 hours. Anything goes on the high-way.

Drove till close on 6 as we wanted to get some miles done in this not so exciting part of Peru.



Lots of squatters on the outskirts

Some of the main roads were not on our map…. Filled with fuel and water at villa Tuapc Amaru then headed to Pisco, a peninsula just past Paracas. When we got to the turn off discovered it to be a national park.

There were many of these big sheds along the high way. They are chook-sheds not sure whether for eggs or meat.



Parked by the ocean (after dusk) only to be moved into a camping area by the ranger.

Parked right next to ocean cliff for the night in the dark. Had poached eggs for dinner and crashed…..

We managed 450k’s our biggest day.

2017-09-26 Day 163 tue

Neither of us slept very well and I had a headache. John got me some nurophin at 4:30am, I also felt a little queasy when I turned over. However when I got up at 6am all good.

Tried to drive up the old road above the tunnel but the road got a bit narrow from rock falls. Started to snow a little and the road became impassable so turned back and went through tunnel. Popped  out the other side of tunnel to more snow flakes and poor visibility.

Long switchbacks with a car over the edge. Flat valley floor with yellow  grass lots of cattle.

Park gate in the middle of park - cost us s/30 - no receipt - hmmm?

After shopping in Huaraz we drove through a lovely high (400m alt) open valley with mountains covered in cloud.

We descended about 4500m in 3hrs - about two Koscuiscos!

We finally found a small road to get down to the river and camped in the river bed. A family were by the river so I went over the mum and dad were in the water finding yabbies under rocks.

2017-09-25 Day 162 mon

The rough ride continues but the views are astounding. So much nicer than the Pan Americana maybe not as fast but much more enjoyable.

Lots of gum and pine trees planted.

There are two passes back to the West. Because the road is so slow we will not be able to traverse both passes so at the last minute we decide that maybe as the southern pass has a big tunnel the road may be sealed.

 Yes a sealed road.

What a great climb we turned onto the old road used before tunnel was built and drove to where we could camp with a view of a lovely colored glacial lake. A little high for us at 4700m altitude but we thought we’d give it a go.

A shame such a lovely place and yet they still dump rubbish!