Off Road Adventure Motorcycle Ride in the Mountains of Peru
Update 28 (April 2023)
Piscobamba to Trujillo, Peru
Prior to reaching Piscobamba the rain set in and the road condition deteriorated to a slippery muddy single lane track. This didn’t stop the occasional small size bus blasting past. They presumably don’t want to stop or slow as they probably wouldn’t get going on the slippery mud. You have to feel for the locals that have no choice but to take the risk with these mountain roads and bus services to go about their lives.
The morning after, Piscobamba was still wet and my luck eventually ran out and I took a graceful slide in a muddy patch. Just a slow motion low side and 180 degree spin. Luckily a few fellas came by 10 minutes later and helped lift the bike,which saved me a lot of effort.
Through all of this I had realised I was unlikely to find an even moderately fast road through the mountains. An adventurous road is good, but travelling in first and second gear much of the time just doesn’t work out when you are trying to cross a country. So I had decided to make my way north west, back to the coast again.
This was very much a rural area. This plateau stretch with horses was quite unusual, most of the time it was passing through small villages clinging to the side of a mountain, with sheep, pigs, donkeys, chickens, cows and goats being farmed along the road.
There was some forestry of pine and eucalyptus going on also.
This spiky plant seemed to be taking over. On a few occasions I passed locals trying to dig or burn it out.
The scale of the country around here is mind boggling. The town in the top of that valley is Sihuas and my destination for the night. Still a while to go, to get down there.
I made it to Sihuas at a reasonable hour and set about finding some accommodation. It was a decent size town and there were a few hotel options to select from. So I was sitting on the gutter of the main street, checking hotels on Google Maps when a couple of young kids walked by. They bravely started asking me about my motorbike, not realising I did not speak their language. We chatted anyway and I sat there pointing things out. They were typical young boys and giggling at their own funny questions. After a while I decided it was time to move on and stood up to leave. The look on their faces was priceless, they had no idea I was so tall compared to what they are used to. There was an initial shock and then they relaxed when they saw me laugh. There are obviously very few foreigners that make it into the area.
I didn’t take any photos of the town for some reason but I did hang out in the Town Square for a while. Word seems to get around that there is a gringo with the a huge moto. I later found a nice pizza from a super enthusiastic owner of Flava (new?).
No breakfast again the next morning. The hotels rooms are cheaply priced and simple (10 USD). I was now heading west and planning to cut across to Chimbote and then up the coast road to Trujillo.
It’s probably hard to see, but there is a large blue and white truck up the top, to put the photo into scale. There were actually a few men mining a black seam by hand and loading it in the truck. A closer view below.
Note my motorcycle parked on the side of the dirt road. And note the fall…..
It’s a long way down if you make a mistake. No more local buses around this area but still the occasional small truck.
It was about now that I did come across a foreigner. I rounded a corner and there was a young woman travelling solo with her bicycle and all the gear. I pulled over for a chat. She was Canadian and the first fellow adventure traveller I had come across for longer than I could remember. And she spoke English. We chatted for a while. She was pretty much going the opposite direction to me but had an even more adventurous road to take at one point. It was a gutsy effort in this place. I suspect that like me she didn’t quite realise what really lay ahead, but she was already stretching out her travel timeline.
This photo can be a little confusing. The photo is looking downhill all the way until there is another steep drop after the brown hills into a deeper gorge below. It’s just such a long way down.
My road in the valley below. Getting to it took a while.
I made it down to the bridge and then turned right and northward to then begin the 120km west trip to the coast.
There were a few tunnels, until this….. I probably could have made it past the left of that rock but what lay beyond was the question. I still had about 110km to go and there appeared to be little civilization on my map, so there was a good chance no road maintenance was happening on the other side, so who knows what other obstacles may exist. Plus I only had about that much fuel, so no contingency for getting three quarters there and having to return. I turned around.
It was quite a drop into the river below.
So I back tracked for about 10km and then headed further south along the river to picked up the next westward road.
With the day drawing to a close I hit another problem. This time a truck had broken down on a one lane bridge. There wasn’t even room for me to sneak past. I think it had done a tyre. Luckily there were a few people that knew what they were doing and we were on our way after about 45 minutes.
I reached the town of Huallanca and faced my next dilemma. To take the shortcut to Huaylas or go the long way around to my westward road? The shortcut was 25km, much of it a series of switchbacks. It was a little foolish at that time of the day but I opted for the shortcut. It was a grinding neglected track with at least 30 switchbacks of loose rocks that needed to be taken in first gear. No other people around. I made it before dark though. Huaylas was a nice small town and I had nice hosts at the Mirador El Huaylino Hotel.
This was the third night in a row my bike had been bunking down with hardware goods.
The next day I set off on a westward road, to again come out at Chimbote. But again things weren’t what they seemed on the map. After about 15km and once I had cleared the local housing, the road deteriorated. It was obvious from the track that no one used the road. It again had the feel of a track that just wasn’t going to work out and I’d find myself in trouble. And I still hadn’t come across anywhere to buy fuel, even with my previous host helping me look around Huaylas.
So I turned around and rode back to Huaylas. I bought a simple breakfast of eggs and coffee, and then turned south again to try the next westward road. The road south was still dirt but it was a little better and quicker.
These peaks are part of the Cordillera Blanca Mountain Range that I rode past, but I don’t which is which.
As it turned out I still didn’t take the next westward road. It had the hallmarks of being a slow tedious road. So I went all the way back to Huaraz where I had been about four days previous. At least it was a sealed road. I had some fuel by now and eventually took a westward road, which was also sealed, mind you with a lot of landslips and water covering parts of the road.
I had already cancelled my hotel in Trujillo one time, so decided to push on through. The north south highway passed through quite a few large towns which was tedious. There was even some sort of children’s parade in one, that blocked the main street for about 15 minutes. I was right at the front, so it was kind of a fun experience to watch. It was dark by now.
It was after 9pm when I arrived. Riding at night is bad news and stressful. The visibility through a helmet is never good and you feel like a sitting duck, but it was a good hotel and the kitchen was still open. Nice.