Tossed and turned all night wondering what pleasures tomorrow would bring. I eventually saw the sun come up, kissed Lauren goodbye and hiked out the road.

Not much traffic flowing by at sunrise but eventually a lone tuk-tuk comes puttering along. As I was running him down he gave me a crazy look probably wondering what this greasy gringo was doing standing out in the middle of the desert at sunrise. I explained the situation in my craptastic spanish and asked him if he could pull our truck into town. I showed him our 4Runner stuck out in the sand and he laughed.

“No puedo!” (I cant!)

Come on man you could definitely pull my truck out of the sand, up a hill with you 125CC moto-taxi. Look at that raw power!

I eventually settled on just a lift into town instead. 30 minutes of puttering along and we arrived into the “blessed” town of “Ciudad de Dios”. A true 1-horse town scratched out of the sands of the Peruvian desert. The dusty pueblo is huddled around a small trickle of life-giving water running down from the Andes mountains.

The entire town was still asleep but the mototaxi driver knew of a mechanic in town and took me to him.

We banged on his front-door for a while which eventually produced a groggy man in greasy cover-alls. He yelled at the driver for waking him up and told us to hold on.

When the mechanic returned to the door he said he would be able to help me but we needed to get a taxi because he did not own a car himself. In any other place I would think twice about a mechanic who did not actually own a car… but hell I was desperate.

I sent the moto-taxi driver off to find us a real taxi. He soon returned full-size taxi in tow. We all piled into the car (including the mototaxi driver who said he didn’t have anything better to do!) and headed back out into the desert to our stranded 4Runner.

Back at the dump site, the mechanic and I futz around for a while, first trying a futile jump start that lead us nowhere. I showed him all the troubleshooting steps I had taken the night before. He agreed that it was an issue with the fuel pump and asked if I had checked the fuel pump fuse.

I laughed in his direction and proudly proclaimed “It was the first thing I checked!”. He then asked if I had re-checked it after mucking around slicing all the wiring leading to the fuel pump.

I sheepishly replied no… pulled the fuse and sure enough. It was popped. DAMNIT!!!! We grabbed a new fuse, popped it in, got another jump, and I could hear the fuel pump whir to life. The truck turned over on first crank.

Back in business!!

We shook hands and exchanged hugs. The creepy cab driver hugging Lauren just a bit longer than seemed necessary.. and set off on our merry way.

Wind in our hair, we were only a few hours behind schedule. Things were looking good.

We rolled into another minuscule town and I remember thinking “This would be a crappy place to break-down”

Sure enough… 10 seconds later the 4Runner lost all power. I calmly pulled the truck over to the side of the road in front of a small dusty shack.

Lauren gave me the look… “Fuel pump?”

Yep.

I jumped out and popped the hood, she starts unloading all the stuff from behind the passenger seat so that I can go through the whole removal process again.

A small crowd quickly gathers around the strange gringos in the silver truck.

As I am wrenching on the fuel pump, a small Peruvian man exclaims that he knows a mechanic in town and runs off to find him. OK, Sure.

I am underneath the truck trying to crack the fuel lines so that I can remove the fuel pump and get a better look at it when the man returns with the mechanic. I meet him and he seems like a nice enough guy, I tell him I am having trouble getting these fuel lines off and ask for his help. He says no problem.

I get underneath the truck to get a good angle on one of the fuel line bolts from below and he is wrenching from the top. Problem is; I can’t see what he is doing and by the time I realize that he is actually wrenching and twisting the steel fuel lines in circles, instead of working the bolt, the damage is done. Now we have a dead fuel pump and a cracked fuel line.

I cursed for a long while… especially when out of desperation I cranked the truck and the fuel pump sprang to life, spewing fuel all over the inside of the truck through the cracked fuel line. What the hell is up with this moody damn pump!! One second it works, the next its dead.

The mechanic apologized profusely. He then explained to me that he is actually a moto-taxi mechanic and doesn’t really know much about cars… DOH

With not many options for repair here I decide to try and JBWeld up the cracked fuel line. JBWeld job completed we now play the waiting game for it to set up.

The Moto mechanic offers to give us a tour of the town in his mototaxi, with nothing much better to do we agree and are skated off around the town in his sweet Batman tuk-tuk

Eventually we end up at a local bar, the mechanic buys us sympathy beers and we swap stories of life. He has spent his entire life in this little town but we are surprised to find out that he has 2 children who are studying medicine in Lima. When we explained that is where we are headed he insisted that we look them up when arrived and gave us their info.

We had about 4 hours to kill at the bar waiting for the JBWeld to setup, needless to say we were all feeling good by the time we returned to the truck to see if our rig had worked.

Back to the truck, I work the ignition while the mechanic watches the line. I crank and hear GAHHHHH as the mechanic spit fuel out of his mouth, I knew the fix had not worked

OK, time to regroup here. My rookie mechanics skills have just dug us deeper into a mechanical black-hole. I asked the mechanic where the next real town is, he explained that is about 30 minutes up the road. After spending 15 minutes trying to figure out the Spanish word for “Tow-Truck” (FYI: its “grua”) We eventually arranged for a farmer to tow us into town the next morning.

Now the last thing left to do was reassemble all the crap I had removed during troubleshooting phase #2. I crawled into the back of the truck and started moving some wires around the fuel pump when suddenly…

WOOOSH GIANT FLAME!!!

OH SHIT!!!!! OH SHIT!! OH SHITT!!!!

I reeled as giant flames leaped from the exposed fuel pump hatch, I stared through the flames and saw 17 gallons of freshly pumped gas directly underneath. My mind processed that I must have sparked the recently hackjob fuel pump wires together and then processed WELL NOW IM GOING TO DIE!

I look up and see Lauren at the drivers door who is singing along with my chorus of OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT

I am frantically grabbing for something to throw onto the flames to extinguish them, unfortunately the only thing readily available is the trucks title and all our important paperwork. Not good fire squelching equipment.

In a moment of completely idiotic desperation I get the bright idea to try and BLOW out the fire. Ok… yes I know. Looking back that was the dumbest thing I could possibly do. But I was freaking out here!!

I blow on the flames and WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH the fire gets 10 times bigger, the flames licking the plywood hatch above it and singeing the actual roof of the 4Runner. BAD IDEA!!!

I scream to Lauren “WE NEED TO RUN!!!”

As I look over at her I see her grabbing something red. I realize its the friggin FIRE EXTINGUISHER we had recently purchased at a hardware store in Huanchaco. DUH! Thank God Lauren has a much cooler head than me, it did not even cross my mind.

She tosses it to me, I fumble with the crazy Peruvian safety mechanism cursing the bastards who designed this thing. With my beast-mode adrenaline strength I completely rip the plastic safety lever apart and start going to TOWN on the interior of the truck.

I lit that thing up like the 4th of July. Spraying the white extinguishing dust all over the place, I did not let up until it was a white Christmas inside of the 4Runner.

Fire extinguished, Crises adverted. My adrenaline dumped and I begin shaking uncontrollably as I turn around and see a group of about 15 men, women, and children who had no idea how close they all just came to being blown to smithereens.

Lauren ran around the truck and we hugged each other laughing and crying interchangeably for 10 minutes as the clueless Peruvians wondered what the hell was up with these weirdos.

I tried to explain to them the gravity of the situation but it must have been lost in translation as they simply shrugged and walked away.

After all the calamity we asked the man who owned the shack where we broke down if we could spend the night in front of his place. He was very friendly and quickly agreed, also offering up the use of his shower/bathroom if we needed.

That night Lauren and I sat on the tailgate, drinking cheap box wine, watching the traffic fly by on the Pan-American highway contemplating life and death. We agreed that after all the “dangerous” places and things we have done on this trip, it would be pretty ironic for us to blow our own damnselves up.

Later, as we lay in our extinguisher dust covered bed completely caked from head to toe in dust, dirt, and gasoline we could not help but laugh hysterically at our pathetic situation.

It is not the beautiful beaches, tall mountains, and rum drinks that we will remember when we are old and gray. It is the parts of this journey when we are at our lowest, when most people would give up and walk away, when we question why the hell we ever started this damn trip in the first place. These are the times that stick with you. These are the times that draw us closer. These are the times that we are happy we have chosen one other for this journey. We are in this thing together, thick and thin, and we would not have it any other way.

Oh well, Tonight we sleep and we shall see what tomorrow brings. Don’t forget we are still trying to make it to Lima and the clock is tick tick ticking!

This is the first part of a series of my hilariously rookie mistakes in the world of car mechanics…

It was a seemingly simply affair, pop up to Ecuador, renew our vehicle permits and passports for another 90 days, jet down to Lima to watch our buddies SprinterLife’s hound-dog for a few weeks while they introduce their new baby to friends/family back in the States. But as we should know by now about best laid plans in the world of overlanding…

Like ourselves, the 4runner does not take to kindly to schedules and as we teared north out of Huanchaco we joked that the last time we set a “deadline” for ourselves we ended up with a big ol’ mess on our hands. This time we decided to give ourselves a big cushion of time. SprinterLife was not planning to fly out for 5 days from our starting date. It was technically an easy 3-day trip from Huanchaco-Ecuador-Lima, but we gave ourselves 2 spare days just in case something goes wrong…

Day 1:

It felt nice to stretch the 4Runners legs again, too long had she been idling in front of the apartment only to be driven to the grocery store or some other lame domestic chore. This was not the life of our truck, she was born for the road. Now we all flew happily up the blacktop towards Ecuador diving deeper and deeper into some of the most remote desert landscape this side of the Sahara. Things felt right again.

After a few hours Lauren hollers that she needs to pee (Sorry babe, the devil is in the details!) We follow a dirt-track down to a roadside garbage pit (all too common along the coastline of Peru). With her lady business complete I went to start the truck to get back on the road.

Crank-Turn over-Die… Hmm that’s odd.
Crank-Turn over-Die. Weird.
Crank-crank-crank. No turn over.
Come on girl… Crank-crank-crank-crank. Nothing.

Shit.

I jump out of the truck and pop the hood. The 4Runner has been known to randomly decide she doesn’t like a sensor or two from time to time and chuck the plugs willy-nilly off of her engine block. This time though, all sensor plugs checked out. I look for loose hoses, all accounted for. Check Battery strength 12.5 Volts. This all seems fine. Check oil and coolant, Ok all good there. Lets crank her again just for giggles. Still nothing.

Alright so we got a no turn-over situation. My mind goes into my amateur mechanic diagnostic mode; I figure our problem is likely no spark or no fuel. I pull the plug wires and jam a screwdriver in there and have Lauren crank the truck. From the electric shock I receive in my spasm’ng palm, I assume we got spark.

I pop the Cold-Start Fuel valve and have her crank the truck. Now that I am half-blinded by gas in my eyes I assume we have fuel. OK… so now what.

I decide to bust out the Orange bible AKA the “1987 Toyota 4Runner Factory Service Manual”. This badboy is the go-to-guide for Toyota service factory technicians; Weighing in at close to 8 pounds, 900 pages, and almost a foot thick. If the answer was not in here, it might not be anywhere.

Today I follow the trouble-shooting path for a no turn-over situation.Check sensors, Check spark, Check fuel. I decide to recheck everything, just in case. Sensors good, Spark good, Shield my eyes for the fuel check. Expecting a face fuel of gas I am surprised this time when nothing spurts out of the Cold-Start Injector. I have Lauren crank again, still nothing.

Aha! No Fuel!

I remember troubleshooting a fuel pump issue on my old Firebird and ran back to the tank to listen for the tell-tale whirring sound of a functioning fuel pump. I have Lauren crank the truck. The fuel tank lays silent. I have her crank again. Still nothing.

OK. So there is our problem. Fuel pump.

I go back to the bible and follow the Fuel Pump troubleshooting steps. Check the Fuel pump fuse. I pull the fuse, looks fine. I replace it anyway just in case. Same Problem. Next, there is a Fuel Pump override jumper switch under the hood that I can enable with a simple paperclip (Welcome to 1987 baby!) that might overcome any random sensor or relay issues. Same problem. Now I start to think maybe the paperclip isn’t overriding all the relays that head to the fuel pump so I start ripping apart the dash and taking apart random relays, inspecting them, and reinstalling them. Same problem. Crap.

We might be broke down, but at least we got beers!

I decide the problem must be with the fuel pump itself. So let’s check out the fuel pump directly. Our only problem is the fuel pump is inside the damn gas tank (Thanks Toyota!) and to access it you either

A. Need to drop the entire fuel tank
B. Access it via a hatch located under the rear passenger seat

Now, in a normal truck this hatch would not be so hard to access, but in our situation where we have removed the rear passenger seat and constructed a gigantic immobile wooden sleeping platform, it is quite a pain in the ass.

Lauren takes on the fun task of removing our entire lives from the truck and neatly stacking it in a pile among the garbage dump of our new found desert home.

Our lives removed from the truck I can now prop up the wooden beams just enough to allow me to wiggle underneath and access the hatch.

My new workspace for the foreseeable future. Comfy!

I rip up the carpet, cut up the insulation, and remove the bolts to the hatch. Now I am staring at the culprit, well at least the wires to the culprit. Thinking there might be some sort of wiring issue between the fuel pump and the brains of the truck I decide to snip the wires leading to the fuel pump and apply direct 12 Volts from my jumper box to see if I can get the pump to crank to life. I hesitantly slice the wires and apply 12 volts of juice directly to them. Nothing.

Damnnit! Must be a completely dead pump.

Now what? Were in a garbage dump in the middle of friggin nowhere desert. The sun is setting and I have a completely dead fuel pump.

I decide my only option is to pull the fuel pump out tonight and hope to hitch a ride from some passing car in the morning to a town to try to track down a new one.

So that’s what I do. I unbolt the fuel pump carrier, slide it up and unbolt the fuel pump from the carrier. (This only took me 1 sentence to explain but probably took my rookie ass 2 hours to do…) Now that I have the fuel pump out of the truck I decide, for fun, to try and apply 12 Volts directly to the fuel pump terminals. To my complete surprise, the damn thing whirs to life without a care in the world, spurting gasoline giddily into my eyes and face yet again.

What the F! I yell into the hot desert night spitting gas out of my mouth. (Note: By this time, Lauren is serenely reading a book by headlamp, occasionally asking if I need anything but mostly just keeping out of the way while I curse the Japanese bastards who decided inside of the fuel tank was the best place to locate this blasted pump)

After washing my eyes out with water, I think, well maybe the electric leads from the fuel pump were just loose? I remove them and reinstall them tightly, then test them directly. Pump works just fine.

Awesome!! Problem solved!

I yell to Lauren, well be getting back on the road soon! She looks up and smiles sweetly, then continues reading.

I slap the whole thing back together, splice the cut wires up with some electrical tape, and go to the start the truck, dreaming of the hot shower that I will soon be locating to wash the grease and gasoline from my hair.

Crank-Turnover-Die. OK… maybe she just needs to prime up a bit.
I turn the key to the ON position for a few seconds then crank again.
Crank-Turnover-Die. WTF
Crank-Crank-Crank. Nothing! What the hell!

I have Lauren crank the truck as I lie in the garbagey sand listening for the fuel pump in the tank. Nothing!

What the F!!

I pull off all the electric tape on the wires and apply 12V directly to the pump again, it whirs to life!

Blahrlabhalghhlbah What the hell!!

OK so now its midnight, I’m exhausted. I decide there must be some sort of wiring issue between the trucks electronics and the fuel pump.

I decide I am going to rig the 12V jumpbox directly to the fuel-pump and run it that way. I rig it up nicely and it is running the pump just fine. I go to crank the truck and receive the tell-tale fast CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK of a battery that has been run to low to turn the damn motor over.

I can hear my curses ricochet off the desert cliffs. A far-off coyote returns my expletive calls of the wild.

I get the idea that I can run the fuel-pump from my auxiliary battery (My poor Aux batt is too dead to start the truck at this point in the trip) if I wire it up directly, only problem is the only spare wire I have long enough to reach is speaker-wire, which proves to be useless as it melts the second I apply 12V current to it.

At this point I realize I can run the fuel pump OR jump-start the truck off the jump-box, but can’t do both at the same time, so I determine I am at the end of my troubleshooting rope.

Completely exhausted, sweaty, sandy, and soaked in gasoline, I pour myself a super-sized rum and coke, slide into bed, and wonder what the hell I am going to do tomorrow.

Lauren smiles sweetly, sips her large cup of wine, tells me everything is going to be OK, and continues reading her book as the desert breeze blows serenely through our garbage-dump camp…

One of my main goals before we left our apartment in Huanchaco was to finally get caught up on our perpetually lolly-gagging blog. Well… needless to say that didn’t happen. In fact our blog is now hitting an almost laughable 4-month delay compared to real-time. To all my faithful readers I apologize!

If you are interested in receiving real-time updates then you should check out our facebook page at http://facebook.com/homeonthehighway

Life continued pretty normally in Huanchaco, hanging out with our buds, working, drinking beers, and watching sunsets. We really love our lives here in Huanchaco but we were starting to feel that itch to get back on the road. We finally made the decision to tell our landlord that November would be our last month in the apartment.

Just a few weeks before our departure date we got some more visitors. Jed and Megan from Adventure Americas are fellow Americans who drove their Toyota Tacoma with a Phoenix Pop-up camper all the way from Wyoming down to Peru. They too are headed to Ushaia. When they showed up to the house with 8 liters of beer and a box of wine, we knew we would soon be becoming best friends.

We hung around the house a few days cooking, grubbing, and getting to know each other.

One night we let it slip that we had not been camping in over 4 weeks. Fearing that they were hanging out with a bunch of sissy housecats the plan was made to go camping the next night. We jumped on Google Earth and found some nice 4×4 desert roads from Huanchaco that led out to a canyon that looked great for camping.

We headed out the next morning.

Having a little fun in the soft desert sands

Along the way we picked up two of Jed and Megans friends from Austrailia. The Australians flew to California, purchased two KLR 650’s and headed south. We all agree they are much more hardcore than we are.

We eventually found the perfect spot and setup camp.

Many beers were drank, bullshit road stories swapped, and good times had by all around the fire that night.

The next day was Thanksgiving. Them being Aussies and all; our friends had no idea what lie in store for them when we invited them to a good ol’ fashion USA Thanksgiving feast.

The next day we headed up to the store to try to find a turkey. Interestingly enough… Peruvians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so it was harder to track down a Turkey than we thought. We eventually manage to find a breast and some legs. We combined the pieces into a Frankenstein turkey with 6 legs, since thats everyone’s favorite part anyway. We also bought all the fixin’s we could find corn, sweet potatoes, green beans, butter, etc etc. We got home and hit the kitchen.

Our Australian friends wondering where all the butter keeps going, as I run to the store for the 3rd time to buy MORE. Oh if they only knew…

Stuffing, Green Bean Casserole, Sweet potato pie.

Not pictured is the turkey, but here is the aftermath of our feast. The Aussies said they had never eaten that much food in their lives.

In the morning we waved goodbye to Adventure the Americas and started packing up the house. It took us a grand total of 1.5 hours to relocate our entire lives back into the truck. Definitely a nice perk of traveling light.

People have been asking ask what will happen to our newly found kitten Squeakers? Well… We tried taking him out with us a few times on the road but between him throwing endless squeel fests, being scared crapless, and jumping out the window of the moving 4runner we decided he might not be fit for the hard life on the road. Lauren still wanted to take him but she agreed it wouldn’t be fair to drag along the cat if it was not interested in this overlanding life of ours. It was a difficult decision to leave the little dude behind, but after the hellish week you will read about in our next post we were convinced we made the right decision.

Goodbye Huanchaco. We hope to return someday.

Next we head back to the Ecuadorian border yet again to renew our vehicle permits and then off to Lima to do some dog-sitting for our buddies at SprinterLife. We gave ourselves 6-days to complete this 3-day trip. Plenty of time right!?

Wrong…

We cruised down the bumpy road heading towards the town of Yungay.

Along the way we stopped to have some lunch. They had a full menu of Andes treats. Guinea Pigs, Stream trout, pork, and hen.

They also had Alpaca on the menu but after seeing these cute dudes roaming around in the backyard of the place. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

Plenty of Canchas (Kind of a Peruvian popcorn) and Coca tea were consumed though. It really does help with the altitude sickness at these heights.

We ate up and headed down the road to the town of Yungay.

Yungay while seemingly a thriving town today, has a very sad history. It was here in Yungay that 25,000 people lost their lives during the great earthquake of 1970. The quake dislodged 1/4 of the mountain top sending 50 million cubic meters of debris flying down the hillside at speeds over 400 KMH. The entire town was buried alive before they even knew what hit them. Only the tops of a few tall palms remained after the landslide.

We followed a small dirt road up above the new town headed towards Llaganuco Lodge. Passing more rural life along the way.

Sheep pelts drying in the sun… and a satellite dish of course. You don’t want to miss the latest “YO SOY!”. The Peruvian version of American Idol. Which, if you can imagine, is somehow even worse than that drivel they put on in the states.

We arrive at the LLaganuco Lodge… after getting lost for about an hour. Hey Charlie, invest in a sign will ya!?

We posted up camp and explored the beautiful grounds. Charlie really has an amazing slice of land wayyyy off the grid up here in the highlands just below the Lagunas Llaganuco.

Who needs a newspaper with views like these?

We hung out with Charlies’ 2 Rodesian Ridgebacks. They do a good job of keeping the property safe.

Next morning we headed up the trail on foot to the lagunas, located about an hour walk from the lodge.

At the lake info center they had a creepy display of some native animals. Including this horribly stuffed mountain derp lion.

Luckily the lake itself more than made up for the derp lion.

The steep gorge walls plunged directly into the azure glacial waters. Quite a sight.

After exploring the lake a bit we took a small footpath through a forest of Queñoa trees. They are more popularly known as Polyepis trees and are native to the Andes mountains. Their flaky red bark and twisting shapes reminded me of the Manzanita trees back home in the Sierra mountains.

Lauren climbed up a huge boulder for a better look down the valley.

Carly soon joined

We spotted some tarantulas crawling around too! I have read that Tarantulas cant really bite you and are mainly harmless. I still am to chicken to pick one up.

We encouraged Enzo to get the hell off this cold rainy mountain and down to Huanchaco to enjoy the sunshine. Well… It didn’t really take much convincing, he had one foot out the door already and we gave him a ride to town the next day. When we got back to Huanchaco he had already rented an apartment and setup shop! New neighbors!

We stopped by the same restaurant on the way out of town. Our sweet Llama friends turned nasty and tried to kick Carly. I think her spanish was off and she insulted him.

I didn’t feel bad about eating him any more

Sorry bud!

We briefly stopped in Huaraz to drop off Enzo and do some shopping around the town square. The city was pretty but seemed way too busy for my liking.

On our way out of town we noticed a lot of junk in the road, old tires, rocks, and street signs. Lots of police activity as well. Turns out we had just missed a protest that morning. Apparently there was some shady stuff going down in a nearby town regarding a college president and some misplaced funds. The locals were showing their disappointment with the situation by causing all kinds of grief for truckers and unfortunately tourists caught up in the mix.

We passed many many roadblocks, luckily none were manned by crazed protestors and we could easily drive around them.

I have no idea how they managed to move this giant friggin tree stump in the middle of the road.

Remnants of the roadblocks were frequent, most had been cleared. Note the donkey protestor. Fight the power, Donkey!

We soon came to a bridge where we encountered about 15 geared up police. They were wearing riot gear and stopping cars from crossing the bridge. From our view everything looked fine. We asked the police if we could cross, they said “Not today!”.

We sat around for a while waiting to see what was going on, we saw lots of villagers walking over the bridge but could not see what was happening. As we waited the line of cars and semis grew longer and longer. Truckers eventually got impatient and started blaring on their airhorns and pushing up onto the bridge. Peruvians love to use their horns and soon we had an entire orchestra going full bore. I pulled over to get the hell out of the way.

Note: the Peruvian using a damn bike pump to inflate his flat tire…

At one point about 15 youths came across the bridge and the riot police met them in the middle. I thought it was about to go down but they just had a brief chat, shook hands, and returned to their respective sides of the bridge. I could only imagine what would happen if someone tried to blockade I-10 or I-95 in the States… I am thinking lots of mace, tear gas, and rubber bullets. I admire the Peruvians ability to peacefully protest, at least in this case.

As we were waiting there, some shady looking villager kept coming up and telling us they knew a secret way around the bridge. If we just paid them 100 soles they would show us the way. Not wanting to get scammed we ignored them. Eventually Bike pump guy and about 7 other cars all pooled together their money and asked us if we wanted to get in on this shortcut action. We had been sitting there for 2 hours now and figured what the hell. We tossed 10 soles to the cause and joined the queue of renegades who wanted to get past this bridge. Villager dude jumped in Bike-pump guys truck and away we went with our convoy.

As we pulled up a dirt road next to the bridge we saw what all the commotion was… An entire town of people was on the other side of the bridge. They had gathered thousands of rocks, boulders, trees, and random other junk to block the road. This was the actual town where the shady college was located. They were pissed and this was their way of sticking it to the man. Blocking all cargo south out of Huaraz.

We scooted up the shortcut dirt road for a few miles, the unpassable river to our left following bike-pump guy wondering where the hell we were headed.

Eventually the convoy came to a stop. Everyone got out to do some sort of negotiations. Not wanting to get involved we just sat in the truck and watched from afar. Turns out this little town does have a bridge after all. However, they wanted to get their cut for us to pass it. The convoy collected up a few more soles to pay the villagers and away we went.

Yeehaw! Secret bridge!

The bridge popped us out way south of the town with the roadblock, Success!

About 10 minutes up the road we came to another bridge. BLOCKED! damnit! These crazy Peruvians and their roadblocks…

Luckily this river wasn’t flowing too deep. We locked the hubs and forwarded straight across it. Who needs a bridge!? Toyota 4×4 to the rescue!!

We finally made it past all the towns and into the remote altiplano. Not enough people or news services out here to get riled up about much.

It was an incredible high-altitude drive to Chavin.

We made into town right at sundown. We found the nearest bar and celebrated our crazy journey. I ordered the house special, did not realize it was going to be so fancy!

Grabbed some grub and hit the hay. Up the next day to check out the Chavin Ruins.

The Chavin de Huantar area has been occupied since at least 3000 BC. The major ruins date back to 1200 B.C. Longggg before any Incas ever existed. The site was a large central gathering place for many surrounding tribes and as such contained many relics and artifacts from civilizations long forgotten. It is full of temples, caves, and underground passageways where the artifacts where once stored. The majority have been moved to museums but you can still tour the grounds and tunnels.

Looking up at the main complex

Carvings of snakes, birds, jaguars, and other creatures.

Lauren and Carly exploring the underground tunnels.

Goofing around in ancient passageways

Tenon-head. These heads once surrounded the temple and showed a female figure in various forms of transformation from a human to a jaguar.

Artist recreation of the grounds.

The grounds and nearby museum were very interesting. But we were on a tight schedule and jetted out of Chavin quickly after looking around the place.

We had been in contact with our good buddies Felix and Toni. We had planned to meet up in the mountains to check out some sort of crazy plant called a Puya Raimondii (Yes, this is what we do with our free time… drive all over the place to look at weird plants). We reversed the journey back towards Yungay. Luckily roadblock free this time. Oddly, there wasn’t a stitch of evidence that this whole route had been a shitshow the day before. All bridges and roads completely clear. Fine with us.

With no clear meeting point other than “near the crazy plants on such and such road” we headed up into the mountains once again following a long series of switch points up into the Cordillera Negra.

The villagers here cultivate every last inch of land. How they can even walk to these plots without falling to their death is beyond me.

We got to the top of the mountain and enter a thick fog. Luckily we spy our friends coming back up from the other side of the mountain! They had picked up a hitchhiking Peruvian grandma who needed to go a little further than they had planned. Being the nice people that they are they went ahead and drove down the other side of the mountain to drop her off and then doubled-back to meet up with us.

We met up and headed straight to the stands of Puya on top of the mountain. I learned the Puya is a very rare plant that only grows in certain elevations of the Andes. It grows straight up for 40-60 years before finally flowering and releasing its seeds and pollen. After it has flowered it immediately dies. We had unfortunately just missed the flowering season by 1 month but it was still pretty awesome standing next to these weird giant plants.

Even more awesome was camping with our old pals who we had not seen since Guatemala!

Felix and Toni drove their Right-Hand drive 4×4 Mitsubishi Delica all the way from Canada to Peru and are headed to Ushuaia just like us. Their van rates as one of the most badass and offroad-capable vans I have seen thus far. This Delica can go anywhere and I would be happy to offroad with these dudes any day.

We setup camp on a high ridgeline overlooking the valley and the Cordillera Negra opposite from our mountain range. We shared the view with some wild pigs, flocks of sheep, and some ladybugs.

Sadly all good things must come to an end. We packed up the trucks and headed our separate ways. We hope to meet up again soon somewhere south!

Back in Huanchaco, we had one last party before sending Carly off. Knowing Carly, this won’t be the last time we see her in South America! Can’t wait for her to come again

When we originally started out on the trip we had plan for it to take around 1-year to get down to Ushuaia. We had a quasi-budget and timeline that seemed reasonable.

Somewhere around Month #9 and the country of Peru we realized that our budget was way off. We really should have alotted more like 30-40% of our budget to booze and box wine instead of 15%… and given ourselves at least 1.5 years if not more for this trip.

Damn you Clos!! You know we cant resist.

We were faced with the fact that we could either…

A. Haul ass straight to Ushuaia, see nothing, and basically be broke at the end of the trip.
B. Try to hunker down and figure out a way to make money in Peru to keep the trip going.

We figured worse case scenario we had enough cash to float us for 2 months in Huanchaco and then we could stash the truck, fly home, work for a bit and fly back.

We REALLY did not want to go back the U.S.A. yet. The thought of dickhead bosses, daily commutes, and Applebees sampler platters are enough to turn my stomach. We got started searching for work.

We made some friends in Huanchacho who told us there was plenty of work teaching english classes to locals. We looked into it and to do it legally, you were required to sign up for a fairly large time commitment and the pay was less than stellar (around $7/hour after taxes). No thanks.

Back in the states I worked as an IT Consultant, 95% of my job was done remotely. I figured it would be easy to call up some old contacts and find some temporary work. Well… most of my friends had moved on to new gigs where they didn’t pull much weight or their bosses wanted me to be available for onsite calls as well. Kind of hard to do from Peru.

Desperate, I picked up some shady craiglist gig doing Midnight shift end-user remote support for some Motel internet support company. The calls were from the deepest levels of hell (You can imagine the type of person calling you up from the Big 8 Motel at 3AM trying to get porntube.com working…) and at only $8/hr. I lasted about a week.

Talking with a buddy of mine (What up B-rats!!) about the situation he told me about a remote IT support gig his friends were doing. He said they were making decent money and it was 100% remote. It sounded to good to be true but I signed up anyway and went through an interview process. About 2 weeks later I started taking calls. With this job you were able to work as much or as little as you want, no set schedules, no bosses. Straight 1099 Contractor pay. It was absolutely perfect for us. Lauren found another online job that was bringing in cash as well. We were sitting pretty!

I would work from about 9AM to around 10PM at night, 6 days a week. The calls were horribly mind-numbing but the pay was great and I was able to do it in my underwear sittin’ on the roof of our apartment looking out over the beaches of Peru. I could not complain at all.

View from my office, Ignore the 3rd world ghetto TV antennas and you can see the Pacific!

After the first month I received a legit paycheck deposited into our Paypal account. It was enough to keep us on the road for at least another 2 months.

SUCCESS!

We had figured it out. In the face of adversity and a dwindling bank account we made it work financially here in Peru and along the way we discovered how to technically extend our travels indefinitely.

Elated, We buckled the hell down and grinded out 3 months of solid work in Huanchaco.

It wasn’t all work and no play though. Laurens sister, Carly, flew into Lima, caught a bus to Huanchaco and hung with us for 2 weeks. We partied it up in our hometown of Huanchaco and toured tons of Peru with her.

Carlys back!

She was a hit with all of our Peruvian friends of course.

With Carly around we all of the sudden became the most popular people in Huanchaco. Dinner invitations and parties every night!

During one drunken night we were talking about going sandboarding. Our best buddy in Huanchaco, Pinky, knew some folks who rented boards, and also knew a spot that we could 4×4 too and sandboard for free. This sounded like a lot more fun than paying for some dopey gringo tour. The next morning, hungover as hell, we loaded up the boards and bounced across the deserts of Peru to some towering sand dunes.

Trekking through some farms to get to the dunes.

The one downside to doing this the locals way is you gotta hike your butt up to the top of the dune. Hard work indeed!

Pinky gave us a few quick lessons and away we went! Sort of…

The girls were much better than I.

But I make this stuff look good!

After 2 hikes up the dune we were spent. While I originally thought sandboarding was going to be kind of lame, it was actually a load of fun. It was way easier than snowboarding and a lot less painful when you wipe out. Plus you can do it in a bathing suit rather than 100Lbs of cold weather gear. Highly recommended.

After a few days of fun in the Huanchaco sun we loaded up the 4Runner and hit the road, headed to the Andes.

Sorry Carly, only 2 seats in the 4Runner. We convert it into a Cama-bus for passengers.

Adios beaches. Hello mountains!

We cut up from the coast and soon entered into the famed “Canyon del Pato” (Canyon of the Duck). Canyon Del Pato runs between two gigantic Peruvian mountain ranges, the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra (The latter being the second highest mountain range in the world, only defeated by the mighty Himalayas). The route is a dirt road originally built to mine the mountains out here. It has over 35+ tunnels hand-carved straight out of the face of the mountain with the raging Rio Santa always at your side. It is an amazing trek and a must-do for any overlanders.

Many of the longer tunnels are completely blind and only wide enough for 1 vehicle. You have to “Tocar Bocina” AKA honk your horn constantly and listen for another car/truck coming the other way.

As you can see, not much clearance if you happen to be coming the other direction.

We setup camp in the Canyon and enjoy the quiet night all to ourselves.

Up and on the road again the next morning we leave the canyon and drive into the small town of Caraz. We bump up the road into the mountains above the town passing standard Peruvian village life along the way.

We eventually arrive at our destination. Parque Paron. Unfortunately no one is home to actually open to the gate. Luckily they do not actually lock it so I just removed the chains and raised it, closing it behind us.

We started driving through a deep gorge, sheer cliffs on either side of us with waterfalls seeping from their walls.

These mountains looked omininous, jagged, cloudy, and dark.

We crawled up switch-back after switch-back watching the altimeter climb. Eventually reaching 13,681 feet and the end of the road at Laguna Paron, our destination.

Did not seem anyone was home at the ranger-shack here either. We went ahead and setup camp and took in the views of this majestic glacial lagoon and the surrounding glaciers themselves.

We made dinner and the girls bundled up for a sleep. We were up at 13K+ feet, temp dropped way below freezing, AND we were sleeping 3 deep in the back of the 4Runner. Needless to say no one got much sleep that night.

We awoke the next morning to find 2 Peruvian guys hanging out in our camping chairs. Come to find out they were the park attendants and had been sleeping when we arrived yesterday. They were super friendly and informed us they work up here for 3 weeks straight and seldom see any tourists in the off-season. (Its currently too late in the season to climb any glaciers) They were stoked to have some company and took us on a VIP tour of their lake.

Sadly they informed us that the lake water level has been drastically reduced by the power company using the water for hydroelectric. The surrounding villagers rallied to save their lagoon and have successfully reduced the drainage and the lake is every so slolwy rising back to its original levels.

Can you spy the 4Runner?

After our tour we waved goodbye to our friends and headed back down to the main road. We had much more of Peru to explore with Carly. Stay tuned for the next part of this blog.

We had a few days to explore Cusco before heading off towards Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu is the #1 tourist destination in all of South America. The city of Cusco is the gateway to this destination, which by my calculations would make it the #1 Touristy city in South America. Despite the constant barrage of touts slinging everything from guided tours to 15-minute massages we found the town to still have some noble charm. Though sometimes you needed to muscle your way past a lumbering group of Llama-sweater clad gringos to get to it. Having a massage experience was awesome I wish I had that facility of tantric massage near me or near my hometown.

We roamed around the many large parques and admired the beautiful colonial churches and buildings.

There are a plethora of Inca and pre-Inca ruins surrounding Cusco aside from the big dog Machu Picchu. This ruin was located just a 5-minute walk from the campground. Sacsayhuaman (try saying that 5 times fast) is a sprawling walled complex which contains over 200 separate archeological sites. The walls were made up of giant meticulously carved boulders, some weighing up to 70 TONS! How the ancients carved, transported, and placed these giant stones is still a mystery to us all.

Since we were in the land of the touristas we decided to live it up. We got down on all kinds of Peruvian treats.

Here we have, the neon-yellow bubble-gum flavored Inka Kola. This drink is the #1 softdrink in all of Peru. I have yet to meet a foreigner who could stomach the stuff. I learned the the Coca-Cola company tried for years to defeat Inka Cola in a war for beverage market share in Peru. However, after 30 years of trying and not making any ground they went ahead and purchased the Inca Kola company all together. If you can’t beat em… buy em!

The #1 Alcoholic beverage of Peru. Pisco Sour. Pisco is a type of liquor made from distilled grapes. It is insanely popular here in Peru. My favorite Pisco drink is a Chilcano, basically ginger-ale and Pisco. A traditional Pisco Sour is made with 1.5 shots of Pisco, egg whites, simple syrup, lime, and ice. Blend it all together, add a single drop of bitters for decoration. Drink up!

Vanessa and I got down on an Andean specialty. Alpaca meat! Alpaca is a furry cousin to the llama. Alpacas have been farmed for centuries. Their wool is used for clothing, their meat used for sustenance, and their bones used for jewelery and tools. Not a piece of the Alpaca goes to waste. Especially not when I am at the dinner table. Properly prepared Alpaca rivals the best filet mignon. It is a delicious meat which could be big in the states as long as no one ever saw the cute animal it comes from.

We strolled around the giant Cusco mercado. The market is split into two sections.. The first section contains various arts, crafts and clothing from the highlands. The second section (my favorite section) is a traditional food market along with rows and rows of sit-down eateries.

My favorite food stall was the frog soup lady. She had a bucket of live frogs and a giant pot boiling with frog broth. You pick your frog, into the soup it goes and a few minutes lady you have a bowl of fresh frog soup. Cures what ails ya!

We spent the rest of the day touring around being dopey tourists.

That night we met up with our Canadian friends (freshly decked out in the latest Llama fashions) and we got to drinking.

and drinking… and drinking some more. We ended up at a small locals bar later that night where we danced our face off till 3AM or so. Good times had by all.

Next morning we were up and packed the truck. Feeling a little groggy we stopped for some Peruvian pick-me-ups. A cup of Coca leave tea and some Coca hard candies and we were wired up ready to go.

A quick stop by the Nacional Banco de Peru to pay for our Machu Picchu ticket (~$50 per person) which is about 25x more expensive than every other ruin in Peru… and we were off!

The drive from Cusco to Ollyantantambo, where we would catch the train, was spectacular. We dropped in and out of various little pubeblos and passed at least 5 separate Inca ruins along the way.

My favorite town sign represented their hometown specialty. Cuy Al Palo AKA Spit-roasted guinea pig.

We had originally planned to drive the 4×4 route as close to Aguas Calientes (the final town before Machu Picchu) as possible, but with light dwindling and no real idea on a route, we decided to catch the train from Ollyantantambo to A.C instead. It was ~$50 per person per ticket per way!

We found a cheap lot to stash the truck and posted up while waiting for the train, the ruins of Ollyantantambo as our backdrop.

Lauren, of course, managed to make a new dog friend in our 30-minute wait.

The train was surprisingly fancy and you got a little snacky-snack to eat as you gawked out the panoramic windows engulfed by giant snow-capped mountains.

We arrived into Aguas Calientes just as the sun was setting. An unremarkable maze of a town. Machu Picchu “Made in China” knickknacks flooding out of every store front.

We found a cheap hostel, grubbed out, and hit the hay. We had to be up at 430AM to try and catch the first bus up to Machu Picchu in the morning.

Up before the dawn we rounded up some bus tickets, ~$9, and queued up. We thought we were slick getting up early, seemed like everyone else had the same idea and we were around the 300th or so in line. Eventually the buses actually started running and the line moved fairly quickly, shuffling all our sleepy butts up the mountain.

Dumped off in front of the insanely expensive Machu Picchu hotel (which I later learned was accidentally built on-top of some Inca ruins, nice going guys!) we queued up in yet another line.

Battling our way through the line we made a mad dash up towards the terraces near “The Guardhouse”, one of the best viewpoints, and waited for the sun the come up.

From our terraced lawn we watched the sun slowly rise over the rift. We could see no other life but the llamas grazing sleepily on the tall grass. The crazy 30 hours of driving, the boatloads of spent cash, and the dopey tourist towns all faded away as we soaked in the moment. This is what we have been working for…

We took some time just sitting there enjoying the early morning then started touring the ruins.

/START
DELUGE OF MACHU PICCHU PICS!

Lauren making Llama buds

or at least trying not to get kicked in the face!

More ruins!

TINA, EAT YOUR FOOD!

Inca Bridge. Wooden bridge spans ancient path, the Incas would pull up the bridge when they did not want intruders to pass. Pretty slick.

Final Thoughts.

Machu Picchu, as you can see, is an epic sight. There is no argument there. That being said the entire process surrounding getting to this ruin is a damn racket from end-to-end. Everything is incredibly overpriced and a true testament to foreigner price-gouging.

So should you still go see it?

Hell yes.

Driving through Central America is pretty cool, you can drive from one side of a country to the other in a single day or decide to stay a month or more really getting to know a place.

South America, is a bit different. Most of the countries on this continent are MASSIVE. You really need to adjust your scales when thinking of driving distances in South America vs Central America.

Sometime back in Panama we were speaking with our friend Vanessa about coming down to visit. We weren’t exactly sure WHEN but we knew we would eventually make it Peru, home of Machu Picchu. The quintessential tourist destination in South America. A quasi-gameplan was set for Vanessa to fly into Lima, Peru where we would pick her up and then drive to Machu Picchu. I quickly glanced at the map online, Lima to Machu Picchu was only like 1.5 inches on the map. No big deal. A tentative date was set, plane tickets were purchased and we didn’t really think about it further.

As our friends arrival date approached I finally starting looking into the logistics of this upcoming excursion. From our homebase here in Huanchaco it was a 9-hour drive to Lima. From Lima it was a nice and easy… TWENTY HOUR drive from Lima to Cusco.

Crap!

That’s 2 solid days of driving on either side of the trip, effectively knocking her 7 day vacation down to a 3-day vacation.

We started scrambling for alternatives, we looked into flights from Huanchaco to Lima and Lima to Cusco. The last minute flights were going to be expensive, more than we could afford on our dwindling budget. I crafted a solution I like to call…

“THE GAUNTLET”

1. Wake up buttcrack early in Huanchaco
2. Drive 9 hours to Lima
3. Pick up Vanessa from Lima airport at 10PM
4. Drive 7 hours from Lima to Nazca throughout the night.
6. Arrive in Nazca, if the sun is not up yet, sleep for a few minutes.
7. Once there is enough light, hit the hairpinned highway up into the mountains towards Cusco, drive drive drive drive 13 hours.
8. Arrive in Cusco. Collapse into lifeless ball on ground.

Close to 30 hours of driving in a span of 48 hours. It sounded do-able, certainly not fun but I knew the 4Runner could handle it, if I could. Lauren called me crazy, she said we should just take our time. But now that “The Gauntlet” was crafted in my mind there would be no turning back. It was “Me VS The Road”

We packed up the truck and hit the road south.

We passed beautiful coastline and expansive deserts on our way to Lima.

Peru is jammed with so much history that occasionally you just randomly stumble across it. This adobe fortress rises up out of the desert on the side of the PanAmerican highway. I later learned that is it is the Fortress of Paramonga, part of the Chimu empire. We visited the Chimu capital, ChanChan, in our last post.

After a long day of driving we finally made it to Lima. Ugh. I hate driving in cities, especially Peruvian cities. Peruvian drivers are the WORST we have encountered on the trip thus far. Driving in Lima is truly a no-holds-barred grudge match. I have seen more than 1 public bus swap paint with a taxi cab while jockeying for position. Luckily we drive a big rusted/dented truck with gnarly steel bumpers on either end, add in the fact that I also drive like a madman and we have our own dog in the fight.

We posted up in Lima, caught some quick winks, and headed to the airport. The 10PM airport pickup went off without a hitch. We threw Vanessa in the back of the truck and hit the road. Lauren climbed back there as well and the ladies started chatting away about girly things.

I wasn’t paying attention. I was focused. The Gauntlet has no time for chatting.

Eventually the girls talked themselves to sleep. I was alone. The 4Runner slipping through the inky black night of the Peruvian desert like a grey wolf hunting his prey. I continually pressed my face against the windshield ogling the billions of stars that blanketed the sky above us.

As the hours ticked by the lines on the road slowly blurred into a one long streak.

Sometime around 2:00AM I felt my brain start shutting down. Oh no you don’t brain! I reached into the passenger seat and grabbed one of the questionable stimulants I picked up at a late-night Peruvian truckstop. I slammed the sickly sweet tincture into my gullet and felt an instant headrush and boost of energy. WOOOOOOWWEEE! TAKE THAT GAUNTLET!

Throughout the night I was teetering somewhere on the edge of F1 Racecar driving perfection and crashing the truck into a giant fiery ball. It was a healthy balance.

I snapped back to reality at a police checkpoint entering Nazca. I glanced at the clock. 4:45 AM. I glanced at the passenger seat. It was littered with Oreo cookie wrappers, various truckstop uppers, and a few empty beer cans. Luckily, the cop paid no mind to this crazy gringo driving in the middle of the night with 2 girls passed out in the back and waved me through.

I pulled over in between a bunch of other 18-wheelers parked past the checkpoint, turned off the truck, and tilted the seat back to try to catch some sleep.

Who was I kidding? I was so cracked out on truckstop go-juice there would be no sleep for me. I rolled down the window and stared at the stars for a while, watching the black sky slowly turn purple as dawn approached. It was very beautiful, I couldn’t recall the last time I had been up to see daybreak.

My calming dawn moment was soon interrupted by a cacophony of big rigs roaring to life all around me. It seems we all had the same idea and had been waiting for enough sunlight to hit the wild mountain roads.

Not wanting to end up stuck behind a slow-moving convoy, I cranked the truck and hit the road once more.

We were soon winding through the low-lying front range of the Andes. As the sun came up, so did the girls. Good morning!

This part of the long drive was amazing. We rose from the dusty desert at sea-level all the way up to ~15,000Ft driving along the high altiplano of the snow-peaked Andes.

At one point we crossed through a Vicuna (A smaller member of the Llama family) wildlife zone. These little dudes were everywhere, jumping across the road, grazing the short grass of the Altiplano.

We dipped into a low valley town, dropping out of the mountains down to around 4000FT. After the town it was a long switchbacked climb back up to 15,000 ft. We passed a few roadside cemeteries, perhaps foreshadowing of things to come?

It was on this long climb up that the 4Runner showed her first signs of rebellion against this slogging I had been giving her over the past 2 days. As we climbed I kept a steady eye on the temp gauge. She slowly started rising, I pulled over, checked the oil, checked the water, everything looked fine. Back on the road, I kept climbing. The gauge slowly creeping up into the danger-zone once again. It was holding fairly steady just above 1/2, hotter than normal but nothing to crazy.

Suddenly the motor bogged, I lost power, and the entire truck shut itself off. Fearing the worst (head gasket) out I pull off to the side of the road and pop the hood. Overflow tank is going full bore, steaming and gurgling. CRAP! Did I pop the HG!? I looked at the valley town far below us, nothing more than a dusty mountain pitstop. Not much chance of any decent mechanic down there. We were still 3 hours from Cusco. If the truck couldn’t get us out of here we were going to be screwed. Oh well, at least we had a nice view to break down by.

Cruising along the high Andes we encountered giant free-roaming herds of LLamas, Alpacas, and even more Vicunas. These guys were everywhere, you really had to be careful sweeping a blind curve up here.

SUP?

Cruising at 4500 meters (15,000Ft)

Highest I have ever seen this altimeter roll-over!

High altitude lagoons dotted the landscape.

The ladies take turns sitting in the front seat. The bed is comfortable for sleeping, not the best for riding 20 hours on.

River pit-stop. We enjoyed a nice gas station soup which comprised mostly of boiled chicken feet. I ate Laurens for her…

IS THIS DRIVE GOING TO LAST FOREVER!!?

We pulled into Cusco right around sun-down.

We thought our journey was finally complete. Unfortunately it took us 2-hours of driving the maze-like streets of Cusco to finally find our campground.

Campground located. I park the truck, open the door, and collapse into a ball on the ground…

JAMES – 1
GAUNTLET – 0

We settled into to life at our apartment. It was nice to have some routine after being on the move for so long. We would wake up in the morning, make some coffee, and hang out on the roof of our apartment watching the waves, the sun, and life waking up in our little town of Huanchaco.

It didn’t take long for word to trickle out on the streets that “Home on the Highway” had a sweet beach pad and the visitors soon started rolling in.

Our first friends who came were our Canadian buds we had recently met in Ecuador. We spent lots of time strolling the town together, drinking Trujillo beers, and sitting on the beach. Standard Hunachaco life.

We paid a visit to Trujillo’s largest ruin, the infamous CHAN-CHAN… ChanChan is a massive ruin covering over 20KM of land. It is actually the largest Pre-Columbian ruin in all of South America. The main complex is surrounded by giant adobe walls and divided up into various sections inside for ceremony, farming, and everyday life. At its peak over 30,000 people lived in this city. It was the capital of the Chimu empire.

The adobe walls are full of intricate patterns occasionally depicting animals as well.

Squirrels?


Pelicans?

ChanChan was kind of cool at first, however, after strolling along through the mud hallways eventually it gets pretty damn boring. We usually shy away from guides and prefer to discover a place by ourselves, I feel ChanChan needs a guide to do it justice.

We are headed out of the mud fortress when we come across a Peruvian family who has drug its 2-year old little boy out to see the mud. Surprisingly, the boy is not at all interested in staring at brown walls for hours at a time and its throwing a straight up tantrum as his clearly annoyed parents continue to drag him through the ruins.

At one point the crying kid walks in front of me and plops down directly in front of my feet as I am walking, not thinking much of it and not wanting to punt the kid, I just step over him and keep on strolling.

Looking back… perhaps that wasn’t the best move.

A few seconds later I hear loud shouting behind me, I turn around and find a red-faced 5ft tall Peruvian man holding his kid in his arms screaming his ass off at me. His overweight equally red-faced wife behind him also yelling. Surprisingly, for the first time all day, the baby is silent…

I glean from the screaming that he is mad that I walked over his kid, I apologize but the man won’t let us alone. He starts cursing at me, screaming about how Americans come to their country and disrespect them. Lo Siento Senor, No queiro problemas. At this point his loud shouting had gathered quite a crowd all standing around to watch the show. I stand there a while more getting threatened by this little red-faced man until a security guard comes over and tells us our group of 4 gringos we should probably leave. As I eyeballed 20 Peruvian males all around us itching to let out some pent-up aggression, I agreed.

We all hauled ass outta ChanChan laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Hey, at least we got some excitement out of the place!

Our Canadian friends hit the road and our next set of visitors arrived, the infamous Team LifeRemotely.

We had not seen each other since Costa Rica, and had lots of catching up to do. We quickly fell back into our routine of gluttony and excessive libations.

Jared went crazy finally having access to a real full sized kitchen and cooked up all kinds of deliciousness. Kobus busted out his world-famous empanadas, while Lauren and Jessica provided moral-support from the sidelines, their enthusiasm fueled by the finest of boxed red wine (“Gato” is the finest if you were wondering…)

It was during Life Remotely’s visit that we first discovered our downstairs neighbor had recently acquired a new kitten.

Unfortunately my neighbor is not home much and the very young kitten was left on the backpatio alone for most of the day and night. He spent most of his time meowing and crying for some attention. I would sling down some tunafish from the second-story window from time to time to shut him up, but inevitably he would start back up again. Eventually the cat would cry himself hoarse and start doing this weird squeaking noise. Hence we named this random cat whom we had never actually met, Squeakers.

It was a combination of being tired of listening to Squeakers whine all damn day, a lot of rum, and Jared’s comment of “If you don’t rescue that cat soon he is going to have permanent severe mental problems” that sprung us into action.

Unable to access the first floor patio, we had to somehow catch him from the 2nd story. We rigged up a wicker basket, some rope, and a can of tuna fish trying to create a sort of trap for the cat. Hoping he would jump into the basket and we could pull him up.

We were able to get him into the basket but he would bonzai jump out as we were trying to bring him up to the second story. Not wanting to be a part of a kitty suicide we shelved the plan. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

The next day we waved goodbye to Life Remotely and waved hello to our pals from DriveNachoDrive

Brad and Sheena were onboard instantly with the cat rescue operation. We upgraded from our crappy wicker basket to a high-sided bin and soon enough. We had him!

As luck would have it our neighbor came home just as we are stealing the cat. As Lauren and Sheena pull the cat up into our apartment. I run downstairs to explain to our confused neighbor why she sees her cat being carted away to the 2nd floor in some old plastic bin….

I don’t think she really understood my horrible spanish but she got that jist that we had just stole her cat and she didn’t seem to mind too much. OK?

He was one dirty and pissed off cat, the girls, of course, instantly fell in love.

We put a shine on him and he cleaned up pretty good, I usually HATE cats, but even I had to admit he was pretty damn cute.

We burned through the days playing cards, taking advantage of having an oven, and playing with the cat.

Rooftop Card Sesh. Sheena is the worlds fastest card player. Brad, antsy to throw down his last card and call Rummy.

Brad is a master Nacho chef. He loves them so much his blog is named after them. Well not really, but the man does love some nachos.

We said goodbye to Brad and Sheena and prepared for our next adventure. Lauren’s friend is flying into Lima in just a few days. We will meet her there and then drive to Machu Picchu.

First leg of the trip… the 9 hour drive from Huanchaco to Lima.

We hit the road south and soon were cruising through giant sand dunes and the beautiful desolate shoreline of the Peruvian coast.

Up and on the road the next morning we quickly approached the Ecuadorian side of the border, turned in our paperwork, got our passports stamped out and jumped back in the truck. A few miles further the large Peruvian tourism logo greeted us. Welcome to PERU! Country #12.

It took us about an hour to clear through the entry paperwork. We encountered the standard hiccups which we are used to by now. Note to future overlanders, If your car title has your license plate number listed, make sure it actually matches the tag on your truck…. Our original plates were stolen back in Baja, we were issued new ones and have the proper registration paperwork but it always causes a snag when they see the title and the registration don’t match up. Just a tip!

Paperwork completed, we were free and clear for 90-days of fun in Peru!

We scooted on down through the sketchy border town of Tumbes and were soon cruising some of the best blacktop we have seen the entire trip.

Suprisingly, the landscape also quickly changed from the low-lying coastal jungle of Ecuador to straight Peruvian desert. I soon learned the entire coastline of Peru is actually a giant desert, appropriately nicknamed “The Egypt of South America”. The dunes rose up out of the earth towering everything in sight. Bundle in the lower range of the Andes directly behind them and you get jaw-dropping scenery unlike anything we had ever seen before.

As we cruised along the coastline, we checked in with our friends SprinterLife for some Peruvian travel tips. SprinterLife gave us the downlow that the mountains are actually the perfect place to be right now. We cut up from the desert coast and started heading into the Andes. Closer towards the low-range of the Andes we saw the desert transform from a lifeless sandbox to lush green fields and rivers.

Climbing further up the mountain we soon discovered the source of the greenery below. A giant dam has been constructed here to collect water from the mountain snows/rains and slowly disperse it to the farms in the valleys below.

It’s a dam lake

We crept further and further into the mountains until eventually arriving at a small city named Cajamarca. Cajamarca sits around 9000FT. The city has a very rich history dating back thousands of years to pre-Chavin culture. The Incas took up residence here for a while as well, before being conquered by the bloody Spainards. It has a lovely colonial style town-square, we found a cheap hostel and setup shop.

We strolled around the town taking in the beautiful colonial churches, hospitals and various other historical sites. SprinterLife had been right, the weather was perfect up here the mountains.

Located just outside of Cajamarca are the “Banos del Inca” (Inca Baths). Here there are naturally occuring hot springs that the Inca elite used for bathing and ceremonial purposes. Nowadays even regular Joe’s can swim or bathe in the waters. The Peruvians have constructed a large complex of various showers, pools, and baths. You can get even get a massage on site. The baths are cheap, around $2. An hour long massage only running $10 or so.

Steaming thermal pool

Lauren testing the water in one of the ancient Inca bath houses. Yep, its hot!

We paid our soles and got our own private bathroom where they pipe in the thermal waters. The water was insanely hot straight from the tap, luckily you could regulate the temp with a series of valves. Even so, after 20 minutes of being in there we felt pretty light headed. Lauren actually had to quickly step outside and sit on a bench before she fainted.

Ladies, Try your best not to swoon.

We explored the hills around Cajamarca, passing through many small Andean villages, seeing people go about their daily lives.

Cruising these backroads you often come across locals trudging up the mountain towards their homes. One guy flagged us down and jumped on the sliders. He let me wear his sweet ass hat so it wouldnt blow off in the wind. I was pretty excited as you can see.

Currently Cajamarca and the surrounding villages are in a huge battle against large foreign gold-mining interests who have been destroying their land, rivers, and food sources. There are daily protests, roadblocks, and there have even have been some attacks on the miners by locals. Read more about the situation here.

Unfortunately, we managed to get mixed up in a roadblock where the villagers mistook our large Toyota truck as being a “Mining truck”. Things got a little intense as we approached about 20 villagers including grandmas, children, and pregnant ladies all armed to the teeth with various implements of destruction. Rakes, hoes, pickaxes, and other farming tools take the place of guns here. As we approached the roadblock they started screaming and banging on the sides of the truck. I yelled out the windows that we were “solo touristas!” and pointed to the innocent looking Lauren as proof that we were in fact NOT greasy miners. Once they realized we were just a bunch of dumb gringos, they yelled at us to get the hell outta the way so they could finish their roadblock! Whew, that was a close one! Sorry no pics.

We eventually made it to our destination “Ventanillas de Otuzco”(Little Windows). The ancient Cajamarca cultures dug these small crypts out of the side of the mountain. Inside they would place the bones of deceased leaders along with tools, gold, and other important items much needed in the afterlife. Pretty cool, unfortunately looters had pillaged most everything before scientists ever got a chance to get in there.

After spending a few more days enjoying the area we hit the road back towards the coast. We picked a random road that led back towards Trujillo. Though slow going, the winding roads provided us with never-ending stunning vistas. We spent a lot of time pulled over just gawking at the beauty around us.

My favorite part about traveling overland is you never know what you might stumble upon. While we were searching for a place to camp we randomly discovered this rarely visited Pre-Inca ruin. Markahuamachuco is a huge archeological complex, over 5KM long. It is the largest set of ruins in Northern Peru, and perhaps in all of Peru. Referred to as the “Machu Picchu of the North” archeologists and scientists actually prefer this ruin over Machu Picchu for its relevance as a political, cultural, and military hub of pre-Inca Peru.

We followed the dirt track as it wound up the mountainside. I had to stop myself a few times from staring at the epic sunset over the mountains, the road was barely wide enough for the 4Runner with a sheer 1000Ft drop on the other side. Pay attention James!

We found a nice flat spot to setup camp and take in the sunset over the valley floor.

After a wonderful nights rest, we were up early and into the ruins. We were the first people there and had the entire place all to ourselves.

We wandered through the site exploring countless buildings and marveling at how in the hell an ancient culture built this gigantic complex way up on top of the mountain.

The majority of the site was surrounded by a 20-ft tall, double-layered fortification wall. Come at me hordes!

Outside of the wall there are large circular buildings, visually similar to a bull-fighting arena. However, these circular complexes were actually used as housing for families. There was only one small entrance to the large complex. Perfect for defending.

The one and only entrance to the living quarters.

Inside of the circular walls, we find the ruins of ancient family rooms, dining rooms, bed rooms, bathrooms, etc. Multiple families lived inside the thick walls.

We spent most of the morning exploring the site, we never did see any other vistors or any people for that matter. The 5KM ruin was wide-open for us to explore. Eventually we returned to the truck and hit the road.

We climbed up and over a 14,000FT pass in the Andes. Not much life up here, but it was beautiful in its own way. A few hardcore homesteaders didn’t seem to mind the biting temps and lack of oxyegen.

Driving down the other side of the mountains we eventually landed in Huanchaco, Peru. SprinterLife had just moved out of an apartment on the beach here and told us it was up for grabs. Needing a break from the road and some downtime to figure out our dwindling financial situation we considered taking them up on the offer.

We pulled up to Huanchaco and cruised the beach, admiring our potential new hometown. We discover it is a surf town, popular with Peruvian tourists. A town where the fishermen still use the ancient Caballitos de totora (Reed boats) to haul in their catch. I find I can buy giant beers for $1 and a huge plate of Ceviche for $3. Ya… I think we will get along just fine here.

We double back up the beach and pull up to the apartment, an adorable Peruvian lady speaking the worlds fastest spanish showed us the apartment, we instantly loved it and with a handshake the contract was set. Welcome to our new home for the next month and maybe more?

We lugged our gear up from the truck, laughed when it all fit inside one of the bedroom closets with room to spare. And wondered what the hell we were going to do with all this space!? ~$300 a month gets us a 2-bedroom/2-bathroom fully furnished apartment, 1 block from the beach. With all utility’s and internet included!

We throw down our stuff, grab some $1 beers and walk 30 seconds to the sandy shoreline of Huanchacho’s beach. As we watch the golden sun drop below the ocean, we look at each other and smile.

We may not be on the road, but we can tell right here, right now, together, is exactly where we need to be…

While we were camped out in the jungle, our guide Diego was reveling us with stories of Ecuador’s coast. Hearing tales of the Ruta Del Sol (Route of the Sun), Galapagos Islands, and fresh ceviche was enough to have us change our destination from mountains back to the coastline.

Headed out of the jungle we picked up a flat-tire, we easily tracked down a vulcanizadora in a nearby town. A 14-year old boy and his 8-year old brother came out to greet us. As they were removing the tire I realized it was a Tuesday and asked the kids if they should be in school. They both looked at me confused and said “This is our school”. I felt guilty as I spent most of my 14-year old childhood doing my best to make my teachers lives a living hell. I think they should send little jerks like me to fix tires out in the jungle for a few months. I would be begging to come home and study. Perspective.

15 minutes and $2 later the tire was patched, filled, and we were back on the road.


We made a pitstop near the touristy town of Banos to relax for a few days at the wonderful Pequeno Paraiso, a highly recommended hostel/campground run by a friendly couple whom primarily cater to large. These tour companies rig up giant buses with kitchens, camping equipment, and other overlanding gear, load 30 people on the bus and drive all over the place for months. A concept I had never heard of but is apparently very popular in South America, Europe, and Africa. Personally I don’t think I could be stuck on a bus with 30 strangers for 6-months but some people must enjoy it. Luckily no group was there and we had full run of the joint. Its a great spot to hang for a few days.

We explored the areas waterfalls and recharged our batteries for a few days enjoying the cool mountain air.

From Banos we hit the highway, passing up and over the Andes, waving hello to Mount Cotopaxi on our way.

Pick your cut!

Eventually we were cruising closer to the coastline through some interesting dry tropical forest like landscape, it was full of these giant “bottle trees” which looked more like something out of Africa than South America. I later learned these are called “Ceibos” and actually are related to the famed Boabab trees of Africa.

Lauren, ever the queen of wildlife, picked up a new friend along the way, somehow this guy ended up landing on Lauren’s hand while we were cruising at 55MPH. Amazing colors.

Soon we met up with the coastline itself, ah the Pacific, nice to see you again!

We discovered the “Route of the Sun” was more akin to the “Route of Grey”. It is common knowledge (to us now as well…) that this time of year in Ecuador the coastline is primarily clouded over with grey clouds. Undeterred, We trekked on down to Puerto Lopez, our next destination.

Arriving in Puerto Lopez we quickly tracked down a little campground with wifi, hot showers, and a bar. Check, Check, and Check.

We made arrangements to head out to the “Isla de la Plata” the next morning. We had read that Isla de la Plata was the “poor mans Galapagos”. Home to blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, and other forms of rare wildlife usually seen on the famed Galapagos islands. The difference was, a trip to the Isla de la Plata is $40 whereas a trip to Galapagos can range from $1000-$5000 depending. One day we would like to return and explore the real Galapagos. For now, the $40 Isla is more in our budget range.

Next morning we were out on the beach where we mingled with the fisherman hauling in the days catch. Seemed like 1/2 of the damn ocean was being hauled in to the shore.

We saw giant squids, tuna, dolphin, shrimp, you name it, being loaded by the crate into refrigerated trucks.

We weren’t here for the food today, I doubt my stomach could handle eating a giant squid at 7:00AM anyway.

We met our boat captain, suited up, and walked out into the ocean to board our vessel. No fancy docks here, you gotta get wet to get onboard.

We were soon tooling along across the Pacific, the weather had cleared up and it was a gorgeous morning. My eagle-eyes caught many whales breaching the water off on the horizon. We also passed a few trawlers out hunting for shrimps or squid.

After a 2-hour ride we spotted a small island in the distance. From afar the island island appeared to have strange white patches all over it, as we approached I could see why, surrounding the island were thousands upon thousands of birds flying to and fro. The white patches? Awww ya thats doo-doo baby.

On the boat ride over we made friends with some fellow english-speakers, Aaron and Bri from Canada. We teamed up and got ready to hit the trails. However, once we actually made it onto shore we learned we were not allowed to just freely roam the island, we needed to go with a tour guide. Pretty lame, especially lame since we ended up standing around waiting for an hour for a late boat to arrive with more touristas. Oh well, We made the best of it practicing our best boobie jokes in preparation.

What kind of bees make milk? Boobies!

Finally our hike started and within 15 minutes we came across our first booby-sighting!

Seeing Blue-footed boobies was one of Lauren’s top items on her bucket-list and she was pretty stoked.

I soon learned they don’t have birds in Canada so our friends were a bit frightened by the strange creatures, doing their best to avoid their potential attacks.

Bri and Aaron gracefully dodging the hungry beasts

It was mating season on the island, the male birds were all out shaking their tail feathers trying to find a lovely lady to get it on with. We saw some pretty awkward moments when the males went into a all-out sexy dance for 2 minutes only to be scorned by the female who boredly sauntered away after the dance was over.

I think back to the days showing my white-boy moves off on the dancefloors of Miami. I know that feel, Mr. Bird…

The views from the island were breathtaking and we saw more boobies than we knew what to do with.

Some boobies hanging out on their doo-doo nest. The way the birds mark their nest is by crapping all over the thing. You probably won’t see in the next Martha Stewart magazine but it works for them, I guess.

As much as Lauren was into the boobies, I was interested in checking out the giant Frigate birds. We rounded a corner where we saw hundreds of them filling the sky. Score!

I stood and watched them cruising around with their giant red throats puffed out. So cool, cross it off the bucket list!

Eventually we got bored of birds and the tour came to an end, back on the boat for some up close humpback whale watching. We spent the next few hours chasing after whales and attempting (in vain) to get a decent photo of one breaching out of the water. We did manage to get a few snaps of them swimming along side our boat.

As we motored on home we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the ocean.

…and just as a reminder that we were still in Latin America, the boat broke down and we watched the mechanic struggle to get her back to life. Some of the greener touristas were a bit scared to be bobbing around in the fading light, stuck in middle of the ocean. However, I had faith in my latino brother and sure enough he rigged up some old gardening hose to replace the busted line and we were soon back to shore.

Next morning we were up and headed south. Our new friends were going to be stopping in the town of Montinita just about an hour south. We told em we would see them there and cruised on down the coast.

Hey Dad, this ones for you. You think it would stand up to Miami’s hurricane codes?

We spent 2 nights in Montinita hanging with our buds and drinking way to much. Not much to do in Montinita aside from drink and lie on the beach. And since the weather was crappy, we focused primarily on the former. The weather did clear up a little bit and we strolled down to some cool cliffs at the end of the beach.

Heading south again, the brakes on the truck were making some pretty god awful noises. We stopped in Guayaquil where they were eventually able to track down some new pads and rotors. Note to self: When constantly traversing huge mountain ranges you may need to replace brake pads more often… expensive lesson learned.

We slept nearby the Peruvian border, with plans to cross into Peru the next morning.

Ecuador is an amazing country, we will miss it and its $1.50 gallon gas. In my opinion Ecuador is one of the best countries to travel if you have a short time schedule and small budget. It has everything you expect from a South American country, Amazon jungle, Andes mountains, and endless coastline. The country is small enough to traverse from one side to the other in a day or two as opposed to the giant expanses of neighboring Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. Gas is incredibly cheap and that trickles down to all of your consumer goods. Transportation is practically free, food is cheap, lodging is fair, and the people are incredibly friendly and warm.

Ecuador, we will be back!