Our return to the dusty town of Huaraz tears us abruptly from our mountain dreams. The Duramax seems to be acting up and is throwing large plumes of black smoke from the tailpipe. I check the air filter, pulling it out and tapping it gently on the pavement. About a kilo of black dust shakes itself free, and the filter itself is mangled and distorted. The truck had been choking. The entry to every Peruvian town is lined with mechanics and auto parts stores, and I troll through several before one sharp eyed vendor spots a generic replacement that would work, high on a back shelf. Despite the new set of lungs, the truck still continues to churn out black smoke.
This is the great paradox of overland travel – the mechanical beast that grants you the unfettered freedom of the open road is also your biggest liability. Perhaps because of this, Overlanders develop deep, human-like relationships with their vehicles. We give them names, conjure up personalities, praise them, plead with them, and get to know each other inside and out. You hope that surprise gifts of the much more expensive, fully synthetic engine oil will engender loyalty and reliability. You start each day whispering kind words to it before you turn over the engine. You listen carefully and patiently to any small noises and complaints. But let’s be honest – it's a one way relationship. What is certain, is that the rig that enables your dreams can also dash them with all the finality of a blown head gasket or a failed transmission. Its complicated.
The Duramax and I have been growing in our relationship after our cataclysmic fall out in El Salvador. I am getting to know it’s quirks and needs - when it wants oil or some other fluid, and what rpm it likes to run at. Before every long driving day I undertake a general inspection, crawling under the chassis and poking under the hood. When a small issue develops, a blown coolant line, or a loose battery connection, I do my best to diagnose them and sort them out. Every small issue we overcome is a step to building more trust. I forgive the Duramax its small faults, and it forgives me my learning curve. I have asked much of this machine, and the outcome of our dream trip sits on its broad steel shoulders. The Pan-Am is no joke and lays a proper beating on the those that take on its challenge. The road surfaces, altitude, detours, lack of parts and remoteness conspire to make this one of the toughest motoring challenges on the planet.
I check all the fluids and decide the truck must be basically sound, chalking up the black smoke to the altitude and fuel / oxygen injection ratios. We decide to keep on moving. The road we take goes straight back over the Andes to a little town named Chacas. The road to Chacas climbs at a gentle incline until it reaches the head of the valley that is guarded by a curving ring of granite teeth, enameled in ice and set into the very jaw of the earth. It takes me a while before I see the road that will carry us up and out of this valley – a thin strand of asphalt spaghetti, thrown at the side of a granite cliff, coiled, bent up and barely hanging on. Daniella shifts the truck into tow haul mode to give the transmission a bit more headroom and we start to methodically pull our way through the hairpins, one at a time. The truck and camper weigh close to six tonnes and pulling that weight up those corners is no small task. When we finally nose over the top, we are eyeball to eyeball with the icy glare of the glaciers. They stare us down, resentful that we have intruded in the quiet solitude of their blue, airless kingdom. It is a quiet day with no wind, and we climb out at the summit to give the truck a breather. My altimeter reads 16,453 feet – the highest road we have driven to date. We feel like we have tiptoed through the closed doors of a room not meant for us. The miracles of modern road building have allowed us to reach up into the heart of this range, and as we crawl quietly back out again we feel like we have taken something from this room with us – a glimpse into the very heart soul of the mountain.
Chacas is a small town locked away in a hidden Andean valley that no-one really knows about. A friendly policeman directs us to a spot directly on the main plaza where we can park for the night, and it doesn’t take long before the boys have spun up a soccer game with the locals. The Peruvians here are friendly and not as used to travellers. The boys get a good thrashing on the soccer field from boys who are long accustomed to the thin alpine air and then we head out to search for dinner. The Italian Jesuits found their way to this town centuries ago, and thanks to their influence we find an excellent restaurant serving some of the best wood-fired, thin crust we have found yet.
As our time in the Cordillera draws to a close, it delivers one last surprise – there is no direct route to Cusco through the mountains, which means we must travel all the way back to the coast, sacrificing acclimatization and altitude to get there. We learned to hoard our hard won altitude carefully, and we give it back again reluctantly. We snake our way back to the ocean, slipping slowly from the mountains through enormous canyons cut through bedrock, and past vast fields of harvested chilli’s drying in the sun. We are on our way to Huacachina, an oasis dropped in the middle of the coastal dunes (we later discovered this oasis is actually human made).
Huacachina has found favour with the Instagram crowd, with spectacular sunsets that read particularly well on a mobile phone screen. At dusk hordes of influencers scurry forth from air conditioned rooms. They then make their pilgrimage to the same photo spot (the one they have all carefully sleuthed out from another influencer’s post), and take the exact same photo, hoping that it will garner them a few more followers. It’s quite a scene. This is also a mecca for sand buggy tours and in the background there are dozens of souped up buggies with roaring engines, bulging tires and massive chromed mufflers ripping up and down the dunes in a scene that could be pulled straight from a Mad Max movie.
Despite the cacophony around us, we find a quiet pocket at an eco-resort where we can park the truck and take in a few rest days at sea level. The boys discover sandboarding, and each afternoon they grab their boards and make their way into the dunes. Daniella and I are grateful to have a few moments to ourselves, and the sunsets really are quite good. In the end this strange, manufactured and overhyped place has still offered an oasis for this small band of weary road warriors.
It takes us three full days to climb back into the Andes to the city of Cusco. We share the journey with another Canadian couple (the first ones!) and wildcamp our way back into the mountains. Each campsite adds a small brushstroke to our overall understanding of the Peruvian painting – good and bad. In one camp I am almost bitten by a scorpion clearing rocks for the truck. Jonah and Elias quickly went on the hunt and found a few more, which they dropped into a Tupperware and forced into mortal one on one combat. At another camp Elias and I pulled our first trout from a mountain river. It escaped before we could claim it for dinner – a stroke of good fortune as we were later told that these clear looking mountain streams (the ones that had started to remind me of home) are all poisoned with mercury from the mines.
On one stretch of road we are pulled over by a lone policeman, who adamantly claims we were speeding (we weren’t). He shows us a grainy photo (that clearly isn’t us), and tells us the fine is $900 US, but that he will let us go for a deposit of $200 US. Daniella continues her charade of not understanding any Spanish (she does) and I pull out my phone and start videoing the encounter. 20 minutes of heated discussion later, the officer tells us he is going back to the truck to write up a ticket. After waiting for 10 minutes, I decide to check on the progress of said ticket and walk around the back of the camper. The cop has cut his losses and is long gone. We would experience several more of these shakedowns during our time in Peru. As we drive off, the sweetness of our small victory takes on an acrid taste. How bad do things need to be when you can’t trust the cops? Daniella reminds me that they are notoriously underpaid, and that for many this is a means to put food on the table. I find myself growing increasingly angry at the corruption that robs these people of the ability to live life and provide for their families.
Four months ago we had booked our trip on the Inca Trail, one of the few fixed points in time and space that we had allowed ourselves to be tethered too. It had become a goal, something to set our sights on and look forward too. The infinite flexibility of the road has its benefits, but we have noticed that it also creates stress for the boys. They wake up each day, not knowing where we are sleeping that night, or what might be on the agenda that day. Having a destination to shoot for helps.
We arrived in Cusco, an ancient Inca city whose narrow streets are packed with more tourists than we had seen since Cartagena. We are camped at one of the few campgrounds within walking distance of town that has room for big rigs. It’s a known overlander destination, pulling road weary travellers from the current of the Pan-Am into the quiet back eddy of a large grassy field, hot showers and fast wifi. We meet up with friends we made in Cartagena, share stories, pull disc brakes apart and trade tips. After a couple of days of truck maintenance and school work, it’s time for the Inca Trail.
The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu have defined Peru’s international image. It is mandatory to hire a guide for the 4 day trek, and the number of hikers is limited to 200 per day. That’s a hefty amount of hikers, and the trail is worn by the hundreds of groups, herded and prodded along by local guides. Despite the traffic, we find a rhythm that allows our small group a relative solitude on the trail. Our guide picks campsites and travel times that slip us between the larger groups, and once alone, the trail begins to work its magic. The Incans were an aggressive bunch, colonizing Indigenous groups along the entire length of what we now know as the South American continent. They put these groups to work building some of the most impressive and well-developed trails, roads, aqueducts and fortifications I have ever seen. The entirety of the Inca trail (4 days of travel covering 48 kilometers) is paved in granite stonework, 70% of which is original. The trail winds its way up steep, vegetated slopes, provides a purchase along cliff faces and plunges into narrow valleys. I count a total of 5 loose stones along its whole length. The trail is not just a piece of engineering infrastructure, but a magnificent piece of trail art – a ribbon of stone so beautifully mated to the topography that it appears as though it has always been there, like the mountains have accepted it as their own. Standing on one ridge, we can see the trail briefly emerge from a clearing as it sits gently on the ridge of another distant shoulder.
Early one morning, after being gently woken with cups of steaming coca tea, we climb upward in the pre-dawn light. We have been promised a fortress. As we pick our way up the trail, the rising suns throws shafts of light over the wall of the horizon, where they settle like great golden tubes, cradled by notches in the steep, crenellated walls. It is a three dimensional light show, and the trail dances between spotlights on the yellow Andean grasses. We are almost above it when it emerges – a perfect circle of close-fit stone walls that rest in a clearing. Windows are cut into walls in a symmetrical arrangement that also happens to offer sightlines into each of the adjacent valleys. We sit there on the floor of this ancient place as the light tubes slide across the stonework. It is one of the most singularly perfect marriages between nature and the built world that I have seen. Days later I would encounter similar siting strategies and building patterns in the great city of Machu Picchu, but it was here, tucked into the green fold of a steep Andean mountainside that I most appreciated the architecture of what the Incans had accomplished. Our hike would string together over a dozen of these sites over the course of our 4 day approach to the actual city.
When we arrive at Machu Picchu I have an entirely different perspective of the place. We had approached it as the Incans had approached it, and it reveals itself in a very different way. Walking through the Sun Gate, we are offered a view of the city that those arriving by bus cannot see. The city occupies the top of a lesser peak in the shadow of Huayna Picchu, which looms behind it. But the city does not occupy the peak, it has replaced it. The mountain itself has been carved away, its steep slopes exposed in a series of flat benches – a topographic map sculpted at full scale. At strategic points walls and pitched roofs have been added to turn these landscaped benches into plazas, houses and ceremonial sites. Llamas dot the open grassy areas, nature’s lawnmowers put to good use. We spend several hours wandering along a curated route, and then, after a long day of travel, we step onto a train that takes us back towards Cusco. I had been apprehensive about our visit to Machu Picchu, wondering whether something so celebrated could still hold magic. It turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip, not because of its UNESCO sized hype, but because of the way we discovered it, on foot, through the twists and turns of an ancient pathway.
Our time in Cusco and Peru is drawing to a close. Before we leave, we visit the local market. Shopping at the larger, modern supermarkets is generally more convenient, but it is far more expensive and the food quality, especially the fruits and veggies suffers. Daniella and I have begun to enjoy buying from the markets, knowing the money is going straight to the farmers. It has become an activity in itself, where, armed with a flexible menu, we hunt through the aisles to see what is available. One stall is selling clear cups of a brightly coloured jello type gelatin treat. I ask the vendor in Spanish what she is selling, and she responds proudly in English “Cow hooves”. Each trip to the market finishes with a freshly squeezed fruit juice from one of the dozen women competing for our attention from fruit laden stalls.
Our fridge is stocked, podcasts downloaded and the fresh water topped off. We are ready for the road again. The way south takes us past a few other noteworthy adventures – a mountain range painted like a rainbow with volcanic rock, a suspension bridge across a river made entirely out of grass, and a visit to the famed lake Titicaca. The world’s highest, largest freshwater lake is a place where families still live on floating islands constructed entirely of reeds. Despite the difficult travel, Peru has offered us some special memories - memories set roughly in a country that is struggling visibly on many fronts. It is in the connecting country between tourist highlights that we have seen and felt the struggle. The current political situation has flared up again, and protests are sparking across the country. The border with Bolivia is a hotspot, with angry protestors blocking roads and setting fire to buildings. Friends of ours let us know that they made it through, in the wake of some larger semi-trucks cutting a way through the blockade. Protesters threw rocks at their rig as they sped through. I keep these stories to myself as I wonder quietly what the coming weeks will hold. After weeks of hard travel our troop is barely holding on. Bolivia is not going to get any easier.
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