By now I had a couple of thousand kilometres of these types of Andean tracks under my belt. I knew there would be signs at the roadside, and I knew what they would say:
"ZONA DE DERRUMBES". Landslide Zone. I couldn't see them, but knew they must be there.
There would be other signs too - Maybe a good old "ZONA GEOLOGICA INESTABLE" (which I'll let you translate), and probably a few "NO DEJE PIEDRAS EN LA PISTA" (Don't put rocks on the road) too. But the derrumbes were what should have concerned me.
When you're peering into the inky blackness of the Peruvian night up a mountain after a long, painful, liquor-coated day, your eyes can play tricks on you. You nearly take bends that aren't there, miss bends you're right on top of, and imagine a giant two-metre boulder right in your path which leaves you fractions of a second to react.
Then a giant two-metre boulder is right in your path which leaves you fractions of a second to react.
My laughter echoes in the bracing wind, and as I'm picking my way down the mountain the track turns to asphalt. What luxury! I start fooling myself into believing that now it's suddenly perfectly safe, even though I still can't see a thing.
There's still the odd landslide to dodge, just to keep me on my toes, but then a giant glowing sphere of good fortune appears. The moon has risen, and she lights my way beautifully. I can see the bends before I have to go round them, so I click the engine into gear, bump-start the engine, ruining the silent mountain night, and am soon powering round the hairpin bends. It all seems a little too easy...
Not to worry though, my luck won't hold for long. Now I understand that sight is indeed a blessing, but some things you just don't want to see. Some things are best left a surprise. There was a sign, and now under the stark light of my always-reliable friend I could actually see it:
"ZONA DE NEBLINA". Fog Zone. Now I was descending, I would have to go back down through the cloud. It was inevitable, but I didn't want to know.
And then, all too soon, I was in the thick, soupy fog, which was now glowing by the moonlight and my vision was as bad as ever. I shift back down through the gears to neutral, and kill the motor. I'm back to my silent night-running, and can get over 50 km/h between the hairpin bends without the engine anyway, which is way too fast when I can barely see past my front wheel.
Somewhere down in the valley I'm descending into I see a pair of faint, small, red lights. They're winding down the road, and are hidden most of the time, but pop into view for a few seconds at a time. If I can catch up with this other vehicle, which probably has headlights, I can just follow it without all this ridiculous mental strain I'm under reacting to the road as it falls beneath my wheels.
The engine's back on, and I'm storming down. The road seems to be getting predictable, just evenly spaced hairpins, and I was getting good at the split-second steering inputs needed to stay on two wheels. As long as there's no more landslides, I have a chance. I still have no idea how I did it, but I did, and within a few minutes I was behind a truck, which did indeed have it's very own headlights.
As long as it stayed on the road, so would I. Or so I thought.
I hadn't been following for more than a minute when my back wheel quickly started flailing around, and my moto was bucking wildly as I rolled to a stop at the roadside. Watching my precious lights drive away into the clouds knowing exactly where they were going was heartbreaking. I had fought for them, I had earned them, and they didn't even know I existed.
I knew before I looked that I had a flat tyre. Then remembered a conversation with Enzo (in Valpo) months before. "Please, take the can Eddie, you never know - sometime you might not want to, or have the time to, play with tyre levers and patches".
Enzo had given me a can of tyre repair liquid. I'd said I didn't need it because I had patches and could fix them myself, but in his wisdom he'd made me take it. This was that time he was talking about - it was cold and dark and I was in pain and mentally exhausted.
It would only take seconds to spray some gunk in the tube, I could even catch up with my sacred lights. If it worked.
A healthy squirt of goo and some frantic pump-stamping later and I was back on road. But it hadn't worked, I didn't get 200 metres before I was stopped again. The lights were long gone, and I wouldn't see them, or any others for a while.
As I got off the moto a loud dog appeared, barking angrily. It stressed my mind, but I knew I had to stay cool. If I rushed and fudged something it could waste a lot of time. The patching went okay, and the exercise kept me warm, I'd been getting really cold riding down through the damp cloud.
I didn't know the time and I didn't want to. I'd hidden some chocolate for desperate times in my tool kit, and this was the time. I hoped when I found a town to sleep in that somewhere to buy a hot meal would still be open, but I had no idea how far I had to ride and what I might find. So chocolate would do for now.
Well, I rolled down the mountain safe in the knowledge that everything that could go wrong, had. I had a new sense of calm, and before long I came back down out of the cloud. I started seeing villages, which meant I was probably going to come across a town, and I could finally end my day.
I'm pootling through one of these villages, pretending I'm warm and cosy already, when a dog jumps off a verge on my right, from head height, barking maniacally. It was so sudden, and scared me for a moment in the quiet night. As it landed next to my right foot I instinctively kicked out at it. As my leg stretched out my trousers rode up from my ankle and as some pink flesh exposed for a fraction of a second the beast clamped it's teeth around it.
I couldn't believe it. When will this day end?
Well, it turned out it was soon after. I rolled into Abancay, found a friendly alojamiento, a hot and tasty pollo a la brasa and a well-deserved cerveza.
Phew.
There's still the odd landslide to dodge, just to keep me on my toes, but then a giant glowing sphere of good fortune appears. The moon has risen, and she lights my way beautifully. I can see the bends before I have to go round them, so I click the engine into gear, bump-start the engine, ruining the silent mountain night, and am soon powering round the hairpin bends. It all seems a little too easy...
Not to worry though, my luck won't hold for long. Now I understand that sight is indeed a blessing, but some things you just don't want to see. Some things are best left a surprise. There was a sign, and now under the stark light of my always-reliable friend I could actually see it:
"ZONA DE NEBLINA". Fog Zone. Now I was descending, I would have to go back down through the cloud. It was inevitable, but I didn't want to know.
And then, all too soon, I was in the thick, soupy fog, which was now glowing by the moonlight and my vision was as bad as ever. I shift back down through the gears to neutral, and kill the motor. I'm back to my silent night-running, and can get over 50 km/h between the hairpin bends without the engine anyway, which is way too fast when I can barely see past my front wheel.
Somewhere down in the valley I'm descending into I see a pair of faint, small, red lights. They're winding down the road, and are hidden most of the time, but pop into view for a few seconds at a time. If I can catch up with this other vehicle, which probably has headlights, I can just follow it without all this ridiculous mental strain I'm under reacting to the road as it falls beneath my wheels.
The engine's back on, and I'm storming down. The road seems to be getting predictable, just evenly spaced hairpins, and I was getting good at the split-second steering inputs needed to stay on two wheels. As long as there's no more landslides, I have a chance. I still have no idea how I did it, but I did, and within a few minutes I was behind a truck, which did indeed have it's very own headlights.
As long as it stayed on the road, so would I. Or so I thought.
I hadn't been following for more than a minute when my back wheel quickly started flailing around, and my moto was bucking wildly as I rolled to a stop at the roadside. Watching my precious lights drive away into the clouds knowing exactly where they were going was heartbreaking. I had fought for them, I had earned them, and they didn't even know I existed.
I knew before I looked that I had a flat tyre. Then remembered a conversation with Enzo (in Valpo) months before. "Please, take the can Eddie, you never know - sometime you might not want to, or have the time to, play with tyre levers and patches".
Enzo had given me a can of tyre repair liquid. I'd said I didn't need it because I had patches and could fix them myself, but in his wisdom he'd made me take it. This was that time he was talking about - it was cold and dark and I was in pain and mentally exhausted.
It would only take seconds to spray some gunk in the tube, I could even catch up with my sacred lights. If it worked.
A healthy squirt of goo and some frantic pump-stamping later and I was back on road. But it hadn't worked, I didn't get 200 metres before I was stopped again. The lights were long gone, and I wouldn't see them, or any others for a while.
As I got off the moto a loud dog appeared, barking angrily. It stressed my mind, but I knew I had to stay cool. If I rushed and fudged something it could waste a lot of time. The patching went okay, and the exercise kept me warm, I'd been getting really cold riding down through the damp cloud.
I didn't know the time and I didn't want to. I'd hidden some chocolate for desperate times in my tool kit, and this was the time. I hoped when I found a town to sleep in that somewhere to buy a hot meal would still be open, but I had no idea how far I had to ride and what I might find. So chocolate would do for now.
Well, I rolled down the mountain safe in the knowledge that everything that could go wrong, had. I had a new sense of calm, and before long I came back down out of the cloud. I started seeing villages, which meant I was probably going to come across a town, and I could finally end my day.
I'm pootling through one of these villages, pretending I'm warm and cosy already, when a dog jumps off a verge on my right, from head height, barking maniacally. It was so sudden, and scared me for a moment in the quiet night. As it landed next to my right foot I instinctively kicked out at it. As my leg stretched out my trousers rode up from my ankle and as some pink flesh exposed for a fraction of a second the beast clamped it's teeth around it.
I couldn't believe it. When will this day end?
Well, it turned out it was soon after. I rolled into Abancay, found a friendly alojamiento, a hot and tasty pollo a la brasa and a well-deserved cerveza.
Phew.
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