T - Peru!! We tried to research the border crossing last night, but there is very little solid information on it. It appears that Ecuador and Peru have combined some border stations but we weren't sure. All we could tell was that we might be in for a bit of a wait.

First we had to cancel the Temporary Imports for our bikes. This was done at the incoming part of the border on the Ecuador side. But only this and only in one spot. We over shot this place and ended up in Peru without any stamps or exits. So back to Ecuador we went.



C - It was ridiculously confusing! After asking a security guard and a cleaner we ended up in the wrong Aduana office and finally got shown the right window to go to. I am sure what the three employees did with our import papers, but it took about 20 mins to get them back with one additional stamp on each one. This set the tone for the day!

T - Then it was into the border station inside Peru where we had to get our exit stamp for Ecuador and our entry stamp for Peru, plus our TIP for the bikes. Ugh. This was by far the crappiest border crossing for us. Worse than any of the Central American ones, simply because it took so bloody long.
We stood in line at the immigration section for over 2.5 hours just to get stamped out of Ecuador. The process was so long. Then we were stamped into Peru and 20 minutes later we had the import permits for our bikes. Normally Customs takes the longest not immigration.





C - The waiting in line actually got painful! There was a security guard and a police woman who had very different ideas how the line should work. We would obey what the security guard would say, just to have to do the very opposite when the police woman came back. I was a little frustrated!

T - We had to purchase insurance and being as we weren't sure how long it would take us to do Peru we opted for two months at a whopping $55 each bike! Holy crap that's expensive. Cars are only $70 for three months.
We were free to go after that and soon we were heading to a camping spot for the night just 70 odd kms up the road and right near a beach. Lovely!





At the camp ground we met another couple with their kids who are coming up from the south. They told us that the inland roads are bad and the further we go into the mountains the worse they get. Some roads are deep mud for days with many trucks making the roads worse and worse. Apparently the Pan Am is the best way south and that may even fall apart if Peru gets more rain. So we have made the sad decision to make tracks south. Apparently once we get to Lima there is almost no flood damage on the coast or in the mountains. So that is our focus for the next week or two. We need to cover around 2500kms to Cusco and Machu Pichu which is way down in the south. Luckily we are returning to this section of the world otherwise we would be sorely disappointed.









C - Driving from the border, we saw some evidence of the flooding, but it obviously wasnt so bad up this way.



Once we arrived at the camp site, we met a very lovely Peruvian Hairless dog called ‘Oso’ (Bear). He came and hung out with us whilst we set the tent up and then we played fetch with him, before we watched him attempt to dig to the centre of the earth!













T - Tomorrow we are going to try to knock out 300 plus kms, maybe even 400 if the going is easy.

C - After talking with some overlanders who came from the south of Peru last night, we decided we would miss the northern highlands and head straight down the PanAm Highway towards Lima, where we will, hopefully, be able to enter the mountains.

Neither of us were particularly inspired by this. We whinge about it enough for everyone to know we do not like sitting on highways, day in and day out. Our mission so far has been to ride as little of the PanAmerican Highway as possible! We were not particularly excited about this, but realise that it is really the most sensible option at this time.

With a lot of kilometres to do before Lima, we decided to push through as far as we could today. Our going this morning was pretty easy where the PanAm was straight, relatively smooth (there was more tarmac than potholes) and little traffic early in the morning.



By the time we stopped for lunch, we only had 60km to go to Piura (250km from our starting point) and thought it might be possible to push on further. But, we said the magic words “we have been maintaining a pretty good speed this morning”.



After lunch, you can guess what happened! We knew that Piura had suffered in the floods, and within a few kilometres of leaving our lunch spot, the road became more potholes than bitumen and was extremely bumpy, slow going and VERY dusty. Needless to say, the next 20km took us nearly 40mins and we knew we were not going to make it any further than Piura today.

We pushed on and by 3pm, we were checked into a nice little hotel in the centre of Piura. The ride in revealed the flood damage, with some of the city streets covered in mud which is VERY stinky. Pity we could not save some that stink to share with you all!!!



All the shops in the centre of town still have their sandbags at the ready and the ones around the town square seemed to be all shut and without power.

Tomorrow, we shall push on southwards and see where we get to. Another big day (well, for us!) is on the cards it seems!

T -My camera has started to show spots all over my pictures and I cant see where from. The lens is clean as is the sensor. I hope a good clean makes it better. I apologise for the crap quality of the photos.

Look out highway, here we come to be a nuisance. We are both glad we made the decision to zoom south. There is quite a bit of flood damage here and there is still water flowing down a few streets in Piura. Smelly, skanky water. We really didn't want to get into the mountains and get blocked in by new mudslides, washed out roads, and collapsed villages. Of which we had been assured there was plenty!

The highway today was straight, very straight and very flat. The landscape was a nice desert once we got out of town. But we did pass a lot of white tents set up as temporary shelters and we saw quite a few families with their meager possessions stacked up under tarps. It was a very sobering section of riding today and made us realise how lucky we are. It also reaffirmed to us that we had made the right decision to not get in the way of the rebuilding and clean up here.



The desert rolled on by and we passed through a few washed out sections of road which had been temporarily fixed. We could really start to see some of the damage done by the flooding. There was still a lot of water laying around and some of the rivers were still running hard and fast with muddy water, though they were not as swollen as they had been a week or two ago.









We cruised through some larger towns today with crazy chaotic traffic. Two lanes of road would always contain 3 and 4 lanes of traffic, all beeping and jostling for position. It was fun on the bikes as we filtered through and pushed and shoved our way to the front. I wouldnt like to do it in a car!









One thing we have noticed in Peru so far is the incredible amount of litter. Maybe some has washed in from the floods but I suspect a fair bit hasn't. It is everywhere. Piled high in the streets, in the drains, and dumped in piles anywhere that there is a vacant lot. The majority of it is plastic and it made me really sad to see it all. In some places there was an awful constant stench of rotting garbage that went on and on. I have been shocked here as I had visions of Peru being so different.







We met another rider along the way who has had a string of bad luck on his big BMW, a nasty crash in Costa Rica nearly destroyed the front of his bike, and then just recently his fancy electronic braking package failed and locked up his front wheel, while he was travelling at 80km/hr and NOT touching any of the brake levers. He suffered some nasty looking road rash and he is pretty unimpressed with the big Beemer.



We stopped in a nondescript town and plan on an early start in the morning. We hope to cover at least half of the distance between here and Lima tomorrow.

T - Up and early today meant we would cover a bit of ground nice and early before the traffic started. Or so we thought. The buses and trucks were flying thick and fast southwards when we hit the road. So we sat over near the shoulder and stayed out of their way!







We passed through more desert and saw much more flood damage in the small towns as we went. Some of the rivers still had water raging through them. Crazy! Then we got to the back of a line of trucks. So we pulled out into the centre of the road and kept riding past them. And kept going. Past more and more trucks and buses. Eventually there was three lanes of them parked up on the highway with people everywhere. They looked as though they had been there a little while and there was a tone of takeaway food and drinks containers littered all over the place. Plus the smell of urine was strong enough to make my eyes water. People had been peeing everywhere and we dodged around all the suspect stains and puddles as we kept passing the traffic. At times the now cars, buses and trucks were so badly parked that there was no road at all and we resorted to riding in the drains to keep pushing to the front. We started to see a lot of police with riot gear after a while. Standing behind huge shields and staring at the crowds of people milling around. There was a very tense feeling in the air and as we rode through both of us started to feel very nervous. Probably at this point is the most nervous we have felt on this whole trip.









C - There was kilometres of the PanAm completely blocked up. We suspected this was due to a bridge failure, as some other overlanders had told us that we would reach a traffic jam of about 25km long. We assumed this was it and the feeling in the air was not pleasant. I could not believe the litter everywhere, but mostly, I could not believe that people were using the road as a toilet like that. There was plenty of desert on either side of the highway, but people were urinating all over the vehicles and the road, even as we rode past. I was already feeling a little nervous about the whole situation before we saw the riot police and that just cemented for me that we needed to keep pushing and finding a way through the hordes.

T - We didn't want to get stuck here as it felt like something was about to kick off at any minute. So we squeezed through crowds, and sucked our bellies in as we slipped between vehicles. We didn't slow down and just revved our bikes as bodies blocked us in, eventually they would move just far enough so we could pass. We could feel the eyes of thousands of people on us.

C - At one point, Todd slipped through a gap in the criss cross of cars blocking a whole intersection. As I attempted to follow him, a van tried to close the gap, staring at me - it definitely felt very deliberate. With Todd telling me just to go through the communicator, I squeezed through holding my breath. Accidently hitting a vehicle here was definitely not an experience I wanted.

T - We followed another couple of bikes as they cut through a farmers paddock of sugar cane and we swung past what we could only assume was a blown out bridge and then arrived back onto the PanAm and were faced with more parked up vehicles. This time all facing north and waiting to get through. Again there was heaps of people around and many police officers. The air was thick with tension so we hurried forwards. This time riding against the traffic. Ducking in and out of any spare space as we raced to get away from there. At one point we were hemmed in by trucks and they parked nose to tail so we had no way out. I started to think about taking the mirrors off the bikes so we could squeeze under one of the trucks trailers, I was by now feeling very nervous and just wanted out of here. One truck driver came to our rescue and got us out and back on the shoulder and off we went again.

Eventually we tore free and went sailing on down the road, keen to put some distance between us and the mess on the road. Without any exaggeration, there must have been 30 kms worth of standstill traffic, nose to tail. Trucks with trailers had driven sideways across the road at each end blocking other traffic from driving away in what we assumed was some form of protest at the lack of progress on getting the main bridges fixed.

C - It was nice to be out of there and experiencing some fresh air. We were both feeling a little ill from the intense smells of the traffic jams. It reinforced to us that we had made the right decision by staying away from the areas that suffered the most damage in the floods.









T - We passed through some more stunning desert and had to skip through a few other traffic jams at collapsed bridges, but nothing compared to that original jam. We rode hard and we rode long. Topping off the bikes tanks to ride more. We wanted out of here now. Peru is in a bad way at the moment and we just feel its best for us to keep moving.

C - As we were crossing the last makeshift bridge of the day, the water was still tumbling down the river at speed. We saw a truck, laying awkwardly across the river with just the roof the cab and trailer sticking out of the water. Next to it, lay someones house, slowly being torn about by the raging waters. We were both full of compassion for the whole country, whilst at the same time observing a distinct lack of order in the management of the emergency.





T - We made it to a small town with a small hotel and checked in. We planned on another early start tomorrow to try to get past the capital of Lima and on our way toward Nasca. We feel bad for Peru as it looks like Peruvians have a lot of clean up to do over the next few months.

Still catching up with you two! More wonderful stuff! The Dogs and Cats always break our hearts. I often buy food for them. Most times you won't find pet food so we buy Tuna or whatever is in a can. Friend for life!

I'm sure you've heard of SLIME ? Or Ride-On? both are tire sealant products you put in tube BEFORE you get a puncture. Often, they can prevent or slow down a leak. I've used SLIME since 1998. It's especially good for very tiny objects like Staples, Cactus spines, thorns and tiny nail. It can work on larger things too but nearly always works on Staples and Cactus.

I'm not sure if it's sold down South, but maybe worth a look. Has saved me many times over years of use. Patching tube with Slime is a challenge ... but CAN BE DONE! (It's water soluble)

OK, back to trying to catch up on your report. Keep it up, rubber side down!
Stay Healthy!

Gday! We tried Slime in our bikes way back when we had a DR650 and a KLR. Then we got a flat and the stuff spewed out everywhere making a huge mess! I never tried it again, but it may be worth while giving it a go. I reckon I could find it somewhere down this way! I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog!

T - This town looked as though it had been hit hard by the flood. And someone obviously thought it might rain a little more yet as they stole our umbrella in the night, from inside a secure parking lot. Bastards!

C - It was such a great umbrella too! A little momento from Colombia. Oh well! The hotel we stayed in last night obviously had been affected by the flood and even though they had cleaned the rooms, there was still the dark stain on the walls, curtains and floor where it had ingressed.

The town did not look in much better shape.

T - As we rode out of town we saw people shovelling out their homes which were knee deep in mud. Their mattresses and furniture piled up in the street, covered in black mud. We saw a few cars that had been swept along in the floods and they had tyres tore off, windows pushed out and panels crushed. Mother natures fury is an incredible thing to see.

We rode through more amazing desert, but today it was covered in dense fog with visibility down to just 30 odd meters. It was very pretty though. We stopped for a quick bite to eat and to buy some fresh oil for the bikes. The service centre we bought the oil from also did oil changes, but they just dumped the oil straight onto the ground out of the engines and there was old oily filters and massive oil puddles everywhere in the dirt. They offered to do our bikes for us but we said “no thanks.” We prefer to do ours the earth friendly way.





C - After this, we noticed all of the service centres doing the same thing. Cars, trucks and moto oil being dumped straight onto the ground outside the workshops. We were both a little bewildered by this.

T - Again we rode and rode and rode and soon we were into the outskirts of Lima. The traffic started to build up slowly at first and then BAM, we were in the thick of the stupidest, most insane world of driving we have ever seen. We watched countless near misses as cars cut lanes without looking, taxis stopped in the highway, and buses careened out of pullouts. A one point I found myself within inches of slamming into a parked black taxi car that was in the third lane of a multilane highway.

He had stopped because a bus had pulled out from the shoulder which had caused another bus and 17 taxis to all swerve out to miss the original bus, but then everyone had to stop for the other umpteen buses that had also stopped in the highway *because of the next 4 taxis who were picking up a few thousand people who had just alighted from 34 other buses that had parked around 65 cars who were trying to squeeze through the next 12 buses while motorcycles passed through the middle of them because another bus was trying to cut across all the lanes because he had missed his turn off, but 15473 people were in his way because they were all standing on the road and trying to flag down the 300 million buses that were all screaming towards me at warp speed that hadn't seen me stopped behind a black taxi car and so on it went for the next 70 kms.

Wow. I will never complain about traffic again after this. Crazy.

C - Seriously. Wow. Normally, you drive on the road and expect to make it to your destination. You know there is a slim chance that you could be involved in an accident, but really, the odds are not that high. Well, that is unless you drive in Lima. In Lima, you expect to die and are a little astonished if you arrive at your destination unscathed. The traffic was completely insane and I really do not know how we did not see a pile up. I wish we had some footage, but unfortunately the GoPro was flat.

T - We made it out in one piece in the end, my spidey senses tingling like mad as adrenaline raced through my body. What a rush. Scary and crazy and kinda fun all at once. But once was enough. I have no desire to ride an underpowered, underbraked, postie bike through that crap again. Well maybe just one more time.







We started to look for somewhere to call home for the night. There were no campgrounds in sight so we opted to hotel it again. We needed wifi though as Chantelle has been writing an article that she needs to send off. We rode further south, no wifi at this hotel, no answer at that one, this one was just too expensive looking, and then finally we settled on one. It was way out of our budget but we were so tired that we stopped caring for the minute.

What a day. Tomorrow we shall ride into Nazca and we hope to do something exciting to go and see the famous Nazca Lines!

T - Another big ride today. We were looking at a good 350kms to get us to Nazca. But it was all on the highway again so we knew we could slog along at our usual 65km/h all day. In theory it should take us 5-6 hours, but distances like this always take us 8 or more. We have a lot of bum breaks.



Not far down the road we decided to stop and check our maps as we were no longer on the GPS. Turns out that we were on a new section of road! While we were stopped I happened to glance at Mabels front sprocket. It had a snapped tooth showing. I wheeled her forward to see if it was just one and found 6 had snapped off out of the 16 it had. Luckily we had some spares but they were 17 tooth ones. So after a quick swap we were back on our way again. For about 20 meters. There was a nasty rasping noise coming up from the sprocket at speed. I figured Mabes had a stretched chain and the stretched bit was flinging itself off the sprocket and hitting the case.









After pulling it all apart again I saw that it was indeed just that. There was some fresh gouge marks in the case. I put on an old very worn smaller sprocket and we will try to find some new ones or a new chain along the way.

We passed through some more very nice desert scenery. The sand dunes were really cool and some of the empty plains stretched away into forever. It was very pretty.









Just before Nazca we cruised through some nice bendy canyons and then we were on the desert plain where the Nazca lines were drawn! Very exciting stuff. It didn't take us long and we were soon into the town and hunting for our accommodation.







Tomorrow we are going to see the lines and stay another night before we head to Machu Picchu and then Bolivia.

T - We decided to treat ourselves. We had booked a seat each on a small Cessna and we were off to fly over the Nazca lines today! Woohoo! Our bus arrived on time and whisked us away to the airport where we were checked in and shoehorned into a tiny little aircraft.



The Nazca lines are made up of animals and geometric shapes dug into the desert sand and some of them are huge. The lines look like they go on for kilometers and the animals are really well done.

C - I was really excited about this. I believe that the Nazca culture died out many years ago and the language is now extinct. Archeologists do not really know the exact purpose of the lines and drawings, other than believing that they were completed for religious purposes. We were going in a six seater Cessna, which is a pretty tiny little plane. I was excited!

T - We shook and wobbled our way up into the air and began to circle over each of the more prominent shapes. There was a whale, dog, hummingbird, condor and even an astronaut. It was a very exciting thing to do. I especially loved that the pilot had a Garmin Street GPS tacked onto his steering. A nice touch.







C - The pilots do two swings past each prominent shape, one curving to the right and one to the left, so all the passengers get a good view. Really, I thought the price ($80US) was pretty reasonable for the trip.









T - We spent about 35 mins in the air and then it was back to our room where we both zonked out. The last few days of go go go have caught up to us.













We have a few more long days ahead of us yet as its about 700kms or so to Machu Picchu and we would like to knock it out in two days. So tomorrow we get up and going nice and early.

C - During the night, poor Todd suffered from a short lived, violent emergency bowel evacuation sessions. We thought we may stay another night in Nazca, but he woke up feeling fine so it was back to the road!

T - It just came out of nowhere! Better out than in right? I was feeling pretty off for a while before my trip to the toilet, but once the nastiness was out I began to feel better straight away.

C - We were both feeling a lot more buoyant today, knowing that we would finally be off the dreaded PanAm Highway and heading into the Andes. The ride up to Cusco will take us a few days, so today we aimed to get to Puquio, just 150km away. But, we knew we were in for mountain climbing, as I had read that Puquio was close to 3000mtrs and Nazca at only 600mtrs.

The morning started well, with us finding perfect front sprockets for our little girls for a mere $2.15 each. Score!!





The ascent started straight away, with us climbing up with amazing views of the desert plains below. The hills gradually changed from void of vegetation, to snippets of green, to completely green with stock and llamas grazing the high plains.





It wasn't long before we reached 3000mtrs and were stopping on the roadside for some layer adding. Shortly after this, we were at a shivering 4139mtrs, the highest for the trip so far. We were both keen for more layers but too scared to stop up hill at this height lest the bikes not want to get going again. They were both having some power issues at this height and neither of us felt like pushing!

T - The poor bikes. They were really struggling up here. Puffing and wheezing like the little old ladies they are. Both of us felt pretty bad for them! But true to form they kept on chugging along. It was quite chilly up there and at the coldest point my heated grips decided to bite the dust.







C - We began the long, windy descent and the views over the farming land was completely breathtaking. We stopped to add those extra layers now we were facing downhill and decided to have some lunch. Sitting on the green grass, overlooking one of the spectacular views I have seen this trip, and sipping hot, fresh Peruvian coffee was certainly a highlight for me. A moment that I will not forget.







After shedding some more height and getting down to a now warm 3300mtrs, with 10km to go to our destination, I came around a corner and felt Rosie suddenly swing sideways. I straightened her up and let her run on the other side of the road to take the corner wide, realising I obviously had a flat rear tyre. WHAT? We had such a good run from Baja in Mexico until near the Colombian/Ecuadorian border and now we are back to the old chestnut of regular rear flat tyres.

Immediately, we found the cause. And yep. You guessed it! Remember the problem we had with Mabel a few weeks ago? Same staples in my tyre, except it has taken weeks for it to become problem. Todd picked out six bits of staples and we found two holes in my tube which perfectly lined up with two of them.



We cruised into Puquio at 3pm and found a perfect little hotel on the square. We wandered the town and enjoyed the cool, clear mountain air.

C - We went looking for a tyre for Rosie this morning, as her tyre is pretty well bald and we wanted to make sure that we would not get any more flats from staples. Grrrrr! Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a tyre in Puquio, so we just had to hope we got all the staples out and she would be a good girl today.

Last night though, Todd’s laptop charger cable finally died, after Todd fixing it a million times since Guatemala. We did manage to find one of those before we hit the road.

As soon as we left town, we found a pretty little spot to stop and have some breakfast. We sat, overlooking green valleys and the little town of Puquio whilst enjoying tea, coffee and porridge in the morning sun.







We started climbing straight after breakfast and did not stop for the entire morning. We only had 180km to cover today, but it was shaping up to be slow going. Every time we came to another hairpin bend, we would comment that surely there was no way we could go any higher. The mountain must end! But sure enough, the road would continue to climb and Rosie and Mable continued to gasp and splutter all the way up to 4551mtrs.









T - It's odd to ride these roads and see the top of the mountain as you get to it, only to be confronted with an extra top of the mountain. And so it goes until eventually we would reach the actual top of the mountain! We loved it! This was so much better than the Pan Am.

C - We had to be careful where we stopped, as we were worried about the girls being able to get going again, so strategically timed our breaks with small downhill sections of the road.







The road sat consistently between 4400mtrs and 4500mtrs all morning and the views were painfully breathtaking. We crawled past lakes, endless plains and snow covered mountains and saw millions of llamas grazing away. It was bitingly cold with a super cold relatively strong wind blowing, but the beauty and constant awe of where we were made it a little easier to deal with.

We started to descend around 12.30pm and found a lovely little spot by a raging river for lunch. By this time, it was only 40km to our stop for the night, so we took our time and enjoyed the views whilst we watched a local family fishing in the river.









Eventually, we arrived at Chalhuanca and found a nice little hotel on the square. We browsed around town and finally splurged on a beautiful rug - I have been looking ever since Guatemala!





Now to find somewhere safe to stow the rug for the rest of the journey!

Yes, Slime does not always work, especially a large hole or tear in side wall of tire or torn tube.

But most times all you will see are a few Green Dots ... where the Slime has come through and has sealed the punctures (small).

Also, remember, it's water soluble. Just wash any mess away with water. If your tube has been ridden on FLAT with an object in there, it's likely that tube is torn up and may not be repairable.

I've pulled tires off (worn out) tires and found 4 or 5 places where the SLIME was doing it's job ... most I got was a slow leak. Much better than a full out flat. So I know it can ... and has ... worked.

One of the MAIN reasons I use Slime is to prevent sudden air loss at speed, which can cause a crash. My DR650 (as you know) can power through the corners at 80 to 100 km. Without Slime, a puncture can sometimes cause sudden air loss ... which can cause a crash (especially front tire).

SLime will most always slow if not stop sudden air loss. On your little Hondas not such a concern, but I'm fairly sure it would stop those tiny punctures you get from those staples and such.

Haven't finished your last few posts, but I did notice a pic of a front sprocket. Bad! So easy to head this problem off. When front sprocket gets worn (It's FIRST element in drive line to wear) it then effects both chain and rear sprocket. Premature wear occurs.

Since the front sprocket is the cheapest bit ... it's always a good idea to swap them out early ... and to NEVER EVER let them get to the state of the one shown in your pic. On long trips I carry at least TWO spares. I prefer OEM but JT are OK too.

With front sprockets, I prefer OEM if possible. Next best would be Thai made JT
sprockets. After that, you are on your own regards quality and longevity. Always Steel, never Aluminum.

On my DR650 I change front sprocket every 6,000 miles. (9k km) This extends chain life by 20% or so (rear sprocket too). Your front sprocket is like a Canary In The Coal mine of your drive line. Take care of it and everything else will last longer.

Hi there,

agree what Mollydog said about front sprokets, i normaly use two front sprokets to a set and change around 10 tkm the first front sproket. But on the other hand for your bikes it should be easy and cheap down here in SA to find chains and sprokets (not in good quality). Enjoy your ride. And if you come to Samaipata Bolivia, I would like to invite you for a and if my guest bedroom is free you can use it. saludos mika

I might just have to give it a shot. Most of our flats are from bits of crap we pick up on the shoulders on the main roads. It is where we spend a lot of our time if we cant take back roads. Although we don't do anywhere near DR speeds it is still scary when the rear end suddenly slides out into the traffic due to a sudden deflation of the tyre! As for those front wheel flats, they are bad on any bike at any speed!