The Peruvians love striking and protesting so when we heard that there was a two day road strike we didn’t think too much of it when we decided to leave Cusco on the second day of the strike. So we set of with Trisha and Cholly towards Nasca hoping to make it pretty close to the 600kms. However to do a short 80kms of road took us all day as there was massive disruptions on the roads with trees, rocks, burning tyres and human blockades. We struggled throughout the day having to go off roads and on farming tracks, lift the bikes over the obstacles, create bridges and talk our way through at times mobs of people. The four of us where exhausted when we came across a very angry mob as it was getting late. The group of men had machetes, sticks and rocks and stood in front of our bikes demanding money which we happily gave to them to let us by, and whats 2 bucks to get through... Surprisingly this was the only angry group of people we met all day with most of the locals happily helping us or giving us directions. But once we got safely through this drama the rest of the way to Nasca was relatively uneventful… thankfully! but very beautiful with views of kilometer high sand dunes ect...
The Nasca lines are parallel and geometric figures as well as designs such as dogs and birds cut into the desert thought to be started around 900-200BC. These lines are a pretty amazing site and are best seen from the air so we took a light airplane trip over them. Despite feeling pretty green with the pilots flying technique it was a great and mind boggling trip as the lines we so accurate and it was amazing that they didn’t have a Dampi level… or perhaps they did.
After Nasca it was time to split up with Trisha and Cholly as they headed north to Lima to fly back to Europe and we started our south bound journey towards Santiago. The ride south was amazing with sand dunes and the driest desert we had ever seen. Not a thing survives except in the occasional valley where a small supply of water exists and people had set up olive trees and fruit trees somehow. The first stop was Arequipa, and with a new crack appearing on the rear rim of the motorbike we had to spend a very relaxing 3 days waiting to get it welded yet again. Once this was repaired we headed into Chile spending a night in Arica and then onto San Pedro de Atacama. We visited Valle del Luna but the weather we had there was incredible with + 80km/hr winds and sand storms making it very tricky on the bike. We were literally blown away by the landscape of the area and it can really seem at times like you could be on another planet.
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