Leaving Peru......

I couldn't fill the site yesterday because the Hotel Internet did not worked properly, sorry. Today I loaded the pics of the two days (you can see now two additional titles under Peru) and I will summarize the riding comments.

First I have to mention that I crossed to Chile yesterday evening ….yes I'm in Arica the land of Juan Lopez Fabbri my friend and mentor in this trip....Juan as promised I saluted your land yesterday with a (small) bottle of red wine in your honor...they wait for you here ….

The riding from Nasca to Arequipa was a superb experience, more than 200 km are roads where you have dunes or mountains in your left and cliffs and sea in your right. The road is carved on the rock and copies the shape of the shore, allowing you to exercise the ability to turn and turn and turn.....

Is pretty safe but you have to be careful with two things: trucks that some times invade the other line as they can't turn because the angle of the curve, or sand patches produced by the wind that blows...in those cases you can be in trouble if your bike is tipped to the side and you step on those patches.....there are some guys waiting for you to fall.......look at them....

Before Arequipa y stop for gas at Canama, small town which is famous by his onions ….yes red onions ideal for Sebiche...a local dish made with fish, lemon, onions and cilantro....I met there Mr Alberto Portigo local producer (in the far rigth) and Alberto Hernandez Rodriguez the person who markets his products in Peru. Both tried to convince me to have lunch with them but I was trying to get to Arequipa before night and had to refuse the tempting invitation considering the plates I saw there. They gave me onions instead for my dinner wherever that dinner will be ( I ate them at night, for real)

I was ready to leave when a group of local workers in a truck full of pumpkins approached me with questions......we took a couple of pictures of us (and a pumpkin) and left the place promising I'll post them

Arequipa is a valley surround by the Andes, and like all the south scenery of Peru, with crops and agriculture land that gives a more wealthy look compared to the northern cities. There is also few to none mototaxis that are now replaced by the Tycos, small cars imported from Japan. The crop areas are flat pieces of land that has been literally built to compensate the irregular shape of the hill.

The city has a pretty chaotic traffic (which one doesn't anyways) and you have to exercise a extremely defensive riding to avoid being run over by a grandma.

I have also some info about this small houses built with leaf that are all over the place in Peru, the material is sold in some kind of “Ferreterias” home depot kind of thing, and are use by some people as a primary set up to “invade” public lands, they put first this precarious houses to claim property rigths and then progress construction with other materials around it (look this picture of an “invasion”). This is not always the case, as they use this to fence yards too, but is a establish practice, from the comments I received when asking.

Finally, I rode from Arequipa to the border with Chile in Tacna through the most straight and long road ever......you can see almost 10 Km in front of you, eventually you'll cross valleys carved in the rock by rivers in the past (now there is no water), but mostly you ride in a line.

Chile custom was the most professional one I found since crossing from Canada to USA, Chile is a very organized country and I hope this is going to be the sample for the rest of my next two days here.

I'm planing to leave to Iquique today, stay a night at San Pedro de Atacama perhaps tomorrow and from there cross the border to Argentina to stop at Susque or San Salvador de Jujuy.

I'm getting closer.......

jorge