Deane's Motorcycle Trip In SOUTH AMERICA
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Deane's Motorcycle Trip In SOUTH AMERICA |
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April 26, 27 - Arequipa, Peru Chivay to Arequipa, 110 miles |
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After the last couple of days, we needed an easy ride, and this was it. Only about 110 miles, and mostly on paved roads. Most of the others are ready for paved roads also, having had their troubles with the the gravel and dirt roads. All four of us who took the "Road from Hell" were all for paved roads. Thank goodness, we will have them for the remainder of the trip. Starting out from Chivay, we climbed up a very high mountain, with lots of curves on excellent paved surface, and had quite an expanded view of the fields and agriculture around the small town.
We had seen lots of rock walls surrounding small fields, but without either animals or crops. This is the first time we have seen such widespread use of the walls and terraces to divide fields from one another. - Beautiful view! We had a section of very bad pot-holed road, but were soon on good paved road again. Arequipa is a very large town, with a population of about two million. fortunately we found out hotel easily, partly from asking taxi drivers at a stoplight, and partly following the signs to the "Centro" downtown. Our hotel is on the old main square, so is in quite a scenic area. Our hotel was on the main plaza, and from our balcony we could see the large old cathedral, beautiful inside, and the little yellow taxies that abound, zooming around everywhere. There must be thousands of them. They are mostly made by Daewoo - Korean company (?), and hold only two people.
We finally had time to wash the motorcycles and our riding suits. I wore my riding suit into the shower, to get off some of the accumulated dust and dirt. Then we all hired the hotel garage attendant (and his helpers gathered from ?where?) to wash the motorcycles - about $3 for each motorcycle. Tomorrow we will ride from Peru back into Chile, so we'll have another border crossing to contend with. The tour guide that has done all of the planning for our tour has been really helpful in border crossings, doing most of the paperwork for us ahead of time. |
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