Race to Dakar
January 17, 2012
We entered Peru through the most remote border we could find, and stumbled onto Mike and Jason who we had met in Medellin rocking the old Honda dirt bikes, and their evening conversations of “Did you fix your panniers, adjust your valves or sort out your intake leak?” “Nah, checked my tyre pressures and drank some beer” were a good laugh!
The boys found a petrol station that was being built where we could camp, with a motocross track next door!
We took in some epic roads:
We saw some old bricks as we walked around the ancient site of Keulap, the official at the gate laughed that we would be the only people at the site, unlike at Machu Pichu, where there would be 4-5thousand
Before finding some more epic roads:
We wanted to head to Canyon del Pato, so we crossed some cool desert
Where I decided to have a nice crash when my front tyre blew out at 75kph on rough gravel
It did a number on my bike, and turned my right knee into patella pate, but we pressed on:
The following day, we planned to do a loop around the Cordillera Blanca mountains.
My GPS got a little ambitious, and we soon were crossing rivers
Passing pumpkins
We discovered, as the trails gradually vanished beneath us that we had found a walking track, we were forced to turn around as we couldn’t fit our bikes on it any more.
We headed towards the coast, and to Lima. Lima didn’t really appeal to us, outside of it housing mechanics to fix the steering on both of our bikes, once that was done, we headed off.
We headed south to Pisco to catch up with Mark and Andre
Took in the delights of a typical South American market
Some work was done to the bikes
(police siren)
(grafiti)
Off to Nasca, where we found a terrible spot to camp:
And then we went to watch the Dakar rally competitors come in!
(the trucks being particularly cool)
You could get (surprisingly) close to the vehicles as they rushed by
The next day, using a little charm, and a whole lot of the “act like I should be here”, we blagged our way into the Bivovac, for a tour around
and a free breakfast
Now, its off to Cusco, and Machu Pichu.
Travel, cooking and web 2.0+ 
January 18, 2012 at 12:17 am
awesome blog and pictures, no more falling of the bike, please.
Have a great time and be safe, love maggie xx
January 18, 2012 at 1:57 pm
This is awesome man. Especially I like the mountain pics. I must follow this track too. Did you find it too wet in the dirt. There is wet season in Peru right. Sorry to hear you crashed but unfortunately this is part of our adventure. I crashed between Guatape and San Rafael. Pressed hard on the corner and my front wheel didn’t like small patch of gravel just round the corner. It couldn’t make much difference to my bike Ha…
Keep safe guys.
January 20, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Hey Henry, sorry to hear about your crash. We crossed the border at Zumba (sp?), then went down to Keulap, then took the road down towards Trujillo on the coast. From there we rode up the Canyon del Pato (recommended!), and attempted a loop around the Cordillera Blanca before heading to Lima. You can stay in the mountains though south of Huarez on your way to Cusco and I would recommend it, the coast on Peru offers nothing.