Things look differently from the seat of a motorcycle going 90 kilometers per hour through the Peruvian Andes. They become more than your standard mountain range, they feel like a personality test. The mountains don’t just rise, they explode. Peaks like harpoon tips stab the sky before collapsing into rivers.
I rented my motorcycle in Háunuco from a man named Tobie, who assumed I had more mechanical knowledge of the complexities and nuances of motorcycles than I truly did. To be fair, I knew little more than “shift, brake, throttle, go”. In the end I went with the cheap option: a Chinese-made Nexus 250. It was budget-friendly, and just like all poor decisions, it would follow me around like an unpaid bar tab and would lend itself to some great travel stories.
Jesse and I aimed north, toward Cajamarca, lured by rumors of Peru’s most extravagant Carnival celebration; a five-day pre-Lent street riot of samba music, body paint, and water balloons. To get there, we rode through endless switchbacks which stacked up the slopes of the grizzled geological wonder which is the Andes Mountain range. Rain turned the roads into soup. We maneuvered cliffside lanes which were barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass at a time. Each encounter with an oncoming vehicle was a duel, a testosterone fueled staring contest, so to see who would “blink” first and edge towards the drop. Jesse excelled in these challenges where I was more prone to give in and swerve towards the cliff’s edge. I always “blinked” first. Peru didn’t have many guard rails along their cliffside roads. I like to believe they did this just to keep things interesting.
The weather was moody and temperamental. Sun one moment, cloud cover and rain the next. The road surface couldn’t seem to make up its mind. It was gravel, mud, rock, sometimes all at once. Steering our bikes felt like maneuvering a high-powered weapon through thick custard. The occasional glacier appeared among the knotted peaks and outcroppings. Curious wild alpacas eyed us with caution. Somewhere in the blur of rain, fog, fatigue, and focus, as we traversed the spine of South America, exhilaration snuck in. It felt suspiciously like joy.
Canon del Pato
Canon del Pato was a gunsight of a canon where two mountain ranges squeezed into a gorge so tight you’d swear they earth was trying to crush itself. The road runs along an unprotected ledge, no guard rails, just a 100-meter vertical drop to a furious rock-strewn river. There were thirty-five one lane tunnels carved into rock. Passing through each felt like Russian roulette – we’d pause, listen for engines, then rev the throttle and blare the horn, hoping no trucks were coming the other way. We’d shoot out the other end into the blinding sunshine like a bullet out of an exit wound. It felt like we cheated death every time. It felt like a personality test.
Towns, Food, and Faces
What felt the most special was passing through towns where nobody needed us there. No trinket shops, no tour buses. Everything we observed from markets to street vendors was being operated by locals and fore locals. Just people living their lives.
We ate fried trout, ceviche, and steaming bowls of Caldo de Gallina, a regional chicken soup with the miraculous power of resurrection. Generous portions of rice and starchy root vegetables made the meals feel heavy. Sometimes we climbed back on our bikes sluggish and half asleep.
Our pale faces and stifling motorcycle attire made us stand out like flamingos in a dying brush swamp. The locals investigated us with equal parts curiosity and caution, and I felt the same about them. I fell in love with them all.
The Andes remain deeply Quechua which is both an indigenous group and a language. The people we met were striking—high cheekbones, copper skin, dark almond eyes—and physiologically adapted by centuries to life in thin air.
Carnival in Cajamarca
We arrived in Cajamarca in time for Carnival, a five-day eruption of color, chaos, and cultural mashup. For the uninitiated, it’s an exuberant pre-Lent celebration that most people associate with Rio de Janeiro. Cajamarca’s version may lack Rio’s international fame, but it doesn’t lack energy.
The festival was equal parts indigenous ritual and Spanish influence. Costumes dazzled, bands roared, and the streets became rivers of bodies. Strangers hurled water balloons and handfuls of paint at one another in an escalating war of color. We surrendered quickly, drenched and drunk, part of the collective madness.
From Mountains to Sea
After the mountains came the jungle, alive and armed with vines and thorns. Everything in some primal way competing for sun and reproductive rights. Then the jungle gave way to the desert, brittle and thirsty, and just like us, desperate for shade. Even the plants looked exhausted. And finally, Máncora, a sun-scorched surf town on the Pacific 130km shy of the Ecuador border. After two weeks of mud and rain, stripping out of our gear and running into the ocean felt like baptism. We came up for air born again. Sanctified. Slightly less filthy.
Circling back
We looped back through the Amazon, ambushed by rainstorms and chewing coca leaves to stay awake. The Incas believed coca leaves were a diving gift which connected them to the gods. They chewed them for stamina, rituals, even communing with spirits. I chewed nearly five pounds of coca leaves over the course of the trip, strictly in the name of good journalism.
Deep in the amazon somewhere near Tarapoto we found an Italian Renaissance castle placed randomly in the jungle. Castillio de Lamas, built in 2005 by a wealthy Italian expat. It was fun to visit and explore, but it looked the equivalent of seeing an elevator in an outhouse. Its medieval style architecture with its turrets and battlements stood in absurd contrast to the jungle hills which surrounded it.
We also detoured to Yumbilla Waterfall near Cuispes. At 895 meters, it’s considered the world’s fifth tallest. The hike wound through cloud forest, past numerous smaller falls, until we stood before Yumbilla’s impossible thunderous drop. That’s what I love most about waterfalls: their power, yes, but also their tendency to exist in places so remote they demand adventurous hikes to arrive at them.
If the Andes mountains are the ultimate test for adventure motorcycle touring, Cañon del Pato is the final exam. One last gauntlet of tunnels, cliffs, and duels with on-coming trucks. Our motorcycle adventure had stripped us of comfort, predictability and the illusion of control.
What was left was exhaustion and a stubborn sense of being alive.
And that’s why you ride for 40 days through the Andes. For the Experience of being alive.
***NOTE: This post is an abbreviated rendition of the story. The full adventure can be found in my book Creature of Discomfort: The Price of Feeling Alive.