Friday April 26th
We flew to Arequipa this morning. This is an unusual place. It
is at about 7500 feet elevation. The town has 1 million people. It is a barren landscape
in a large bowl of a valley with 3 large volcanoes surrounding the city. It is
fall here but the volcanoes have snow on them.
A cab met us at the airport. Driving into town it looks a
lot like Mexico with people walking everywhere and things looking old and in disarray.
However everything is clean. You see people sweeping streets and sidewalks and
there is no trash anywhere. The traffic here is as crazy as Lima with the
person with the most guts getting the right of way. Pedestrians have no right of way at all.
I love this kind of place but Jan made it clear this is her
LAST 3rd world country. She has said that before.
The room in nice but simple. We have a patio that leads onto
a beautiful garden. The garden plants are tropical. We meet the group at 5 pm today.
We met the whole group. There are four guys from British
Columbia. They all have fast bikes at home and have made it clear they “will
not hold us up”. They have been everywhere; Thailand 3 times, Argentina,
Africa, Switzerland and others. A couple is from central BC as well. A guy from
Oklahoma came by himself, a couple from New Zealand. The two women are riding solo
on Honda 400s. The others are on KLRs or BMW F650s. We have the only F800GS.
Our leader laid out the rules. We will ride in a group
through towns and spread out outside of towns. We can stop anytime we want for
photos but will gather for lunch and gas stops. Gas is $8 a gallon but it is
included in our tour price. We stay on track by using a system similar to what
we use at home. One rider stops whenever there is a change of direction at an
intersection. I have a GPS which will be interesting. I might need it to find a
Starbucks.
Jan and I walked to the main plaza tonight and had a great
dinner. I might turn into a beer drinker here. Coming home it was uphill and we
could tell the air is thin. On Monday we will be riding at 16,000 feet. We are
glad we are not walking,
We leave in the morning. Our first day is a long one and takes us over to the coast and north. It is supposed to be similar to highway 1 through Big Sur. We stay in a small place on the beach. No internet. My next update will be Sunday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment