We rode down from Hauraz on one of the most stunning roads across the paramo and then down from 4300m to sea level. After staying at Barranca for the night (moderate sized town with a rough edge), we headed south through the coastal deserts. While these were interesting for the first hour or two, they soon became fairly monotonous with sections of sand followed by agricultural lands. Just before Lima, we had a very interesting incursion with the notoriously corrupt police. They separated us, but didn't realise we had headsets and were talking to each other. One tried to tell Alan we were going too slow, and the other tried to tell me we were going too fast. Al played dumb, and I just kept pointing out other cars who were clearly braking the speed limit. 15min later we were on our way. We managed to pass through Lima without any hassles, albeit about 50km of crazy traffic on a 6 to 10 lane bypass.
We stopped in Pisco for the night to make sure that we had a chance to have a Pisco Sour in Pisco. While given a bad rep from the Lonely Plannet, it was a fairly pleasant town - we'd recommend it. After seeing some of the Nazca lines, we headed in land to Cuzco, with stop-overs at Puquio and Abancay. This road is truly spectacular. 1st, you ride up to 3500m around windy sandhills. Its stunning, but numbing. We got to Puquio late, famished (forgot to get lunch), and freezing cold after passing one of the punos at 4,300m (Punos are high altitude grasslands where the llamas & Vicunas hang out). We found a chicken boaster (nice way to warm up my bum) and demolished a huge serve of chicken, rice, chips and salad each. We then had a really fun chat with some of the truckies we had been playing leapfrog with, and a couple of locals. Next day, more of the same, 4500m punos with chris's moto having altitude sickness, spluttering along at 50-60km per hour and sucking through the juice. We can't yet tell the difference between Vicuna, llama and Guanaco, but it was truly awesome to watch them roaming around and across the road and around the lakes. We picked up speed down the hill for the stunning ride down the river to Abancay; would be an excellent continuous 70km class II-IV run which reminded us of the Buller. Stunning day, and only 1/2hr of light rain!
