Sunday, February 1 I was very happy with our selection of hostal Chordeleg. It was a converted colonial home right in the center of Cuenca. Not only did we get to park our bikes in the lobby, our room was clean and spacious with a little balcony overlooking one of the churches. The included breakfast […]
Monday, February 2 I have really enjoyed Cuenca. It is a very neat and orderly city with stunning architecture set in the beautiful rolling hills of southern Ecuador. It was time for us to move on and try to get as close as possible to the border with Peru. After the usual jumble of trying […]
Tuesday, February 3rd It felt like it had been ages since we crossed into Ecuador so anticipation was high for a border crossing. I actually felt rusty about the procedure, but we’d read this was going to be a very chill crossing that wouldn’t take too much time. We had breakfast at the hotel, went […]
Wednesday, February 4 Breakfast wasn’t included in this hotel, so we had a quick breakfast next door for $6 total. Peru was much cheaper than Ecuador if you avoided the obvious tourist places. We were on the road by 9, only to go park ourselves back at the Yamaha dealer. I had decided overnight I […]
Thursday, February 5 Today was one of the most difficult and beautiful rides of our trip. We were venturing east off the coastal road into the heights of the Peruvian Andes, the Cordillera Blanca. Our destination was a small village of Caraz where we planned on staying for another day to take a day trip […]
Friday, February 6 Our plan for today was to take the side boxes off the bikes and visit one of the highlights of the area, Laguna Paron. Unfortunately, we discovered that the road into the mountains was closed, so we decided to ride to the next village of Yungay and take a dirt road to […]
Saturday, February 7 We stirred in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy rain, but by the time we woke up, it had stopped raining, which pleased us greatly. We had planned on doing another excursion on the Cordillera Blanca to the pass of Punta Olympica, which has great vistas and dirt […]
Sunday, February 8 We ate a breakfast of yogurt and fruit from the convenience store and were happy to leave Playa Hermosa behind. The ride continued down the desert coast, which was the home to all of Lima’s suburban beaches. It was mile after mile of playas and unusually for us, we didn’t feel any […]
Monday, February 9 We woke up early today knowing that we had a long and exhausting day ahead. The hostel residents partied until 2 am last night and our room was un-conveniently located right next to the discoteca. The ear plugs and the eye masks saved the night again, and we actually got decent sleep. […]
Tuesday, February 10 After a cold night under several wool blankets, we were up and ready to get out of this hotel. On the other side of the wall directly behind our heads was the shared bathroom for the hotel, so once other people were awake we had little desire to remain in our room. […]