ODO: 328,701
The other day KoKo’s window started to act up. This is not surprising since she opens and closes it a hundred times a day to take pictures. We pour a lot of water on and in it, turns out it was just incredible dirty, and had a lot of mud inside to door! Easy fix. All of a sudden we have a lot going on at work so today gets to be a short driving day, like one hour on the road short. We find a place that seems…ok…and settle in. This place reminds us of Mexico. The coloring, the haze in the air, the smell, and the aggressive amount of flies all scream Baja. And lots of random dogs. Perfect spot for some indoor activities.
We’re very close to Lima. But we don’t need to be there for a few more days. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. We’re in limbo. Fortunately, because it’s Peru, there is always a mountain pass near by! The elevation quickly goes from 500ft to 5000ft, then 9000ft, then 11,000ft. This pass is a little different than the rest, it takes its time transitioning away from canyon. In fact, we just follow the river up and up and up. The road turns to dirt just as the fog settles in. But this road just keeps going up, and we drive straight though it. We find some very high hanging valleys and small lakes, and a town around 15,000ft. We also find a super highway, which was unexpected. Just as its getting dark, we manage to tuck ourselves in above some small lakes for the night. It is so cold up here, but our heater is still going strong so we have no complaints.
It’s so much warmer this morning! And we discover we are camped next to roughly four square meters of sheep poop. How odd. This is one of our more breathtaking camp spots. We are perched above two small lakes, surrounded by large cliffs and mountains. While we are taking it all in, our heater stops…we have run out of diesel. Which shouldn’t have surprised us, we added our spare bottle to the tank last night. Back on the highway, we continue past several high altitude lakes before turning onto a road that is supposed to take us across to another mountain pass road. This is going to be our road into Lima. After winding through more crazy landscapes, and dwindling road, the road disappears altogether. Just gone. In its place, a couple of small shacks. I guess this is where we turn around. Bummer because we maneuvered several switchbacks to get up here that we could not make in one go.
Turned around, we head towards Lima. Our friends from Christmas Eve are leaving Lima in the morning, and if arrive tonight we can hang out again! It’s early evening when we reach the outskirts. On a Friday. And there is so much traffic! We are not used to being near this many vehicles anymore! But we battle on, and make it to our hotel around 8pm. As we try to check in, an older gentleman corners Berne about the truck. He is very adamant that we need to wash it (yes, its on our list…sigh), and then give him a tour. He loves neat vehicles, and has attended SIMA (the worlds largest automotive/innovation show in Vegas) before. He even gives us his phone number. We make it to drinks, a cool local place that makes its own delicious beer, and some dinner. And because we all rise and set with the sun, we are done and in bed by 10pm!
Our weekend starts with laundry and a truck wash. And an interior detailing! We finally get the seats cleaned, which we’ve been trying to find time to do since we landed in Colombia. It’s been hard to find time where we were not going to be driving the truck for a few days, and be somewhere warm enough for the seats to dry. This is a happy day. We also discover a bakery close to our hotel that makes amazing sourdough bread.
We round out our weekend with a complete relax day. Being at such high altitudes for so long had left us completely exhausted, and today is the day it catches us. We had big plans to run some more errands, but all we manage is a walk to breakfast. After that its all napping and ordering food from places within a two block radius.
And then we go to work. In front of us is a week of social interaction, pretending to be professionals, wearing clean clothes, networking, facility tours, and one awesome afternoon where our handler decided we needed to play hooky and head to a near-by national park!
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