We left Caraz at 8 with the plan of going to see some of the lagoons in the mountains. Caraz is very high in the Andes (yeah, like the mints). The region is beautiful but we were having ugly weather prohibiting us from seeing any of the high peaks. You know the paramount logo? Well, it is in the Andes about an hour off-road from Caraz. The map has a star noting it as “The most beautiful mountain in the world”.

The plan to see the lagoons was interrupted by me having some issues with my chain oiler. I thought that it was just out of oil but it was clogged and I had to disconnect everything to get it working again. Since it took me a couple of hours to fix it at the gas station we didn’t really have the time to go up the pass.

Instead, we just hit the road and started heading to Lima. The road was paved but there were TONS of potholes and road constrution making the progress slow going. I just loaded up some music in the iPod and was having a nice relaxing ridef through the twisties of the Andes.

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This lasted for a few hours until the afternoon storms started rolling in a little early at 11. We stopped before the sun was completely blocked with black thunderclouds to put on rain gear. Because it was so cold and the sky was blocked with rain, I went full force:
* Rain liner inside riding jacket
* Rain jacket over riding jacket
* Rain pants over riding pants
* Rain shoe covers over boots
* Rain 3 fingered lobster gloves over riding gloves

I felt like a snowman. With all that gear on, it is a little hard to move and a little hard to control the bike so I very rarely put it ALL on unless I know it is going to rain hard and it is going to be a very cold rain. I think a torrential storm in the Peruvian Andes was the perfect time.

Just as the rain started coming in we started climbing a pass to break through the Andes and start heading over to the coast towards Lima. This was one of the most difficult riding I’ve ever done — We weren’t driving through hard slamming rain exactly, more through clouds that would produce such rain. The air was thick with water. We could only see a few feet in front of us. Under normal circumstances we would stop, but there were no safe places to pull over because the visibility was so poor and there were so many convoys of big trucks on the road. To make this worse the pass was under construction. There were paving crews reducing the road to one lane alternating with huge strips of non-paved highway. This was the double-black diamond run of the Andes.

We kept the speed low but made continuous progress and eventually descended through the clouds onto a desert mountianscape. There was almost no plant life as all the mountains were textured by only exposed rocks.

It was still cool, but atleast the rain was over. We then continued towards Lima.

One of the things that the area north of Lima is famous for in the South American motorcycling community is the corrupt police. I’ve read about it many times on Horizons and spoke to people personally who have had problems with them. There are police checkpoints on the side of the road where there is a big police SUV and a cop standing there with an orange lightsaber looking traffic guiding device. When he sees you, he either waves you by or waves you to stop.

We have already been stopped once north of Chimbote, but managed to talk our way out of any problems by redirecting the conversation to us asking him for directions.

Our stategy is to keep the speed up and hopefully not give the cop the chance to think to stop us or to ride in the wake of a big truck so that he doesn’t see us until we’re passing him.

So we were enacting this technique but were unable to find a truck to ride behind and a cop starts to wave us down.

At the exact moment it was happening, it was unclear if he was waving us through or to pull over. Both our reaction was exactly the same: Wave back!

Anyway, he walks to the drivers side of the car and I start to run the various chase scenerios through my head. It is now clear that he wanted us to pull over and we didn’t. There are checkpoints every few miles and he was now radioing to his collegues to REALLY stop us next time.

Our solution: Find a hotel.

It was already getting late and that is to the police’s advantage. Usually when you get stopped, it is a waiting game. They hold your documents and you just sit there. They want you to be in a hurry and to just “pay the fine on the stop” regardless of if you did anything wrong.

There was a turn off to a small town on the beach called Vegueta. We asked a collictivo (multiperson taxi) driver if there were hotels in town and he spouted a bunch of spanish that sounded like yes.

We headed towards to coast and came upon a sandy beach town. The main road was paved, but the rest of the city of probably 10,000 people were sand roads.

First we stopped at the tourist office. As Theo went into the tourist office, I saw a hotel and went inside to see if they had rooms and parking for the bikes.

I enter the hotel and start with my DaveSpan and explain that we would like a room with two beds. The old Peruvian woman, who I can barely understand, says yes. I think.

Then we start talking about the parking situation and she starts pointing to across the street where all the tuktuks (3 wheels motorcycle taxis) park and says that it is secure. I then ask if we can park inside the lobby area because the bikes should be able to fit. She keeps talking about the tuktuk parking and I decided to break out the big guns.

In my best DaveSpan, I start into a speech I’ve used many times about how my motorcycle is novia (girlfriend) and that I don’t want to park her on the street with all the other men. That I want her to be close to me so I can look after her. My novia is beautiful and everyone likes to put their hands on her, so I like to keep her in very private parking.

She stops pointing and then takes a good look at the bike. With a huge grin, she says I can park my novia right in front of the room.

After all this is going on with me for 5 minutes inside the hotel, Theo is having his own experience. While I’m not sure what that it, the result was him talking in even worse spanish than my own to a group of 10 very curious people.

Everyone is smiling and laughing. It looks like the one english speaker of the town came out and with his very basic english starts to ask questions for the group and translate answers.

I manage to grab a second with Theo from the crowd and we start to move the bikes inside the hotel lobby.

The enthusiastic crowd follows.

Theo and I were now trying to move the bikes into the lobby’s new “Big Bike Parking Area”. There was one guy who had a tape measure and measured the door frame for us, another guy who moved the furniture out of the way, and then the crowd of people who were squeezed into the door frame watching the whole thing transpire.

Once we get the bikes parked they realize I speak a little spanish and start asking me all sorts of questions.

Where are you from?
Where have you been?
Where next?
How much time?
and the final question was: How did you choose our small town of Vegueta?

I of course did not mention anything about avoiding the police.