ODO: 351,308
The wind tried to rock us to sleep, but the altitude had other plans…We suffer. Our sinuses hurt, we have headaches and mild sleep apnea. For reference, neither of us normally has sleep apnea, or snores. We normally don’t start to suffer until we hit 14,000ft, but todays 13,800ft is close enough. When we do “wake up”, its hot in the tent. It’s only 8am. Today might be a long day. The first thing we see when we emerge into the day is the volcano next to us smoking. We love volcanic activity! Our route today takes us deeper into these high elevation volcano national parks, through several beautiful valleys full of llamas, a small heard of viscachas, and another smoking volcano. Everyone is in a bad way today, not surprising given the night we had, and that we get up over 15,000ft for a little while. Surprisingly, we are not as remote as we originally thought. What was planned as 2-3 nights in the remote mountains of Chile, turns out to be just one night. By mid afternoon, we are descending rapidly towards sea level. Our day ends next to a river at 800ft. We feel amazing.
Still feeling amazing, our day starts with the chores we couldn’t manage at altitude. Which are also all the chores we like to have done before crossing a border. Today is border day, our final day in Chile, and our final stop at a Jumbo. The reason we love Jumbo so much, besides the fantastic selection, is that they are consistent. There are few things on this adventure that have provided the comfort of consistency, but Jumbo has been that for us, and we will miss it. We go for an extra slow wander after our cafe brisket lunch. But don’t buy much because you never know what they’ll confiscate at the border.
This border crossing is in a very nice building, with good flow, a rare thing in these parts. During the inspection they take our ham, peppers, and some of our sausages. And then we are back in Peru! We start out along the coast before heading inland to try and see a canyon we missed on our way south. There was a two hour time change at the border crossing, which throws us off quite a bit. Once more, we drive late into the night and cozy in along a river to sleep.
One of the best things about our set up is how quickly we can pack up if, in the morning, we discover our camp spot is full of tiny, biting bugs. Like, under 10min, fast. The road takes us through deserts filled with trash (we forgot everyone litters in Peru), and alongside people who pass in the most terrifying places. Our road turns from pavement, to dirt, to silt before coming to a stop for road construction. Where we wait. And wait. Once we’re going again, we pass some ruins down in a gulley. Full transparency, all of Peru is an archeological site. You see ancient ruins all over the place in the mountains, just not the big famous ones. We end up being stopped by construction three times, and wait a handful of hours over the first 80km of this road. Being very behind where we thought we would be as the sun is setting, we find a quiet overlook above a town. We cozy in at 11,000ft.
One of the perks of being up so high, condors! There is a view point just down the road, and condors seem to like showing up at their marked viewpoints, so we make sure to be there early in the morning. We see no condors, but we do see Mismi, the glacier that makes the headwaters of the Amazon river. Five minutes down the road, Berne spots a condor, so we pull over to take pictures. A raptor looking bird also gives us a close fly by, which is fun.
We spend the day driving a very winding road. Parts of it are in a canyon. Parts of it are covered in terraces. Parts of it have archeology . Parts of it are incredibly windy, but overall, the drive is very Peruvian beautiful. As the sun starts to go down, we come across Coropuna Está and Nevado Coropuna, two giant mountains covered in glaciers. We’re at 16,000ft and feeling good! Except we need gas, so down the hill we go. Gas seems to be farther than we were expecting, so we make good use of our spare tank. Once again, we drive late into the night, and end up on a beach. Peru is wild, you can go from 16,000ft to sea level in just a few hours. This is not an isolated or rare thing, you can do this, easily, all over the country.
Feeling like super hero’s because we can move without getting winded, we make haste up the coast. We have some dinner plans with new friends, and we have a long ways to go to get there. Highway driving in Peru can be tough. The main highways are generally in great conditions, but are chocked with slow trucks and no passing lanes, so there is a lot of leap frogging that happens. And every now and then, a random speedbump. On the highway. It’s a long day of swirling sands crisscrossing the highway. In some spots it forms small dunes, reducing the highway to a single lane for both directions, or there are small landslides. But we persevere, and make it to Ica for dinner. It’s always fun meeting internet friends in real life. We all walk to a cutesy restaurant and get to know each other before turning in for the night.
The highlight of our day today? Getting organized! The cab and camper get the dust wiped out, again, and we get things put away. It’s wild how quickly a small space gets messy. Another vehicle arrives to our campground carrying…Americans! These are the second Americans we have met on this trip. For whatever reasons, this trip is 90% Europeans, 9% Canadians, and 1% Americans. Fun fact! Both American couples we have met are also from Washington state. Coincidence? We spend one more night with our new friends before we need to get back on schedule. Yes, we have a schedule for the next week, and its a little aggressive, but we like a challenge.
Day 1 of the schedule: Drive to Lima to maintain a work relationship, aka client dinner. It’s four hours from where we are, so we leave in the early morning. Three quarters of the way into our drive, dinner turns to lunch. Oh well, now we don’t need to spend the night in Lima. The traffic into the city is intense, we see several accidents, and several buses try to crush us. In Peru traffic, the truck seems to be invisible. After a nice lunch, we grab some groceries and head back the way we came. This change to the schedule puts us ahead half a day. We don’t know what we’ll do with that time, but we’ll find something. We aim for a beach spot, but it is an active, and slightly creepy fish camp. Hard pass. But, like always, it’s late…We end up halfway between the fish camp and the highway. This is good enough.
