Day 4 Andehuaylas to Cusco

After the last few days of late starts we pushed for an early morning start and headed down to the bikes at 05:00 with our gear, by now I’m wishing that I’d left more of my stuff at home and that we'd get a room on the ground floor of these hostels, at least we’re sleeping in doors..!!

Getting the bikes loaded is starting to become streamlined as we organise the “don’t need it stuff” into the panniers and leave these packed. After leaving the hotel it’s not long before we find ourselves on dusty gravel roads again, these are shared by the usual travellers, sheep, goats, donkeys, horses… big trucks..!! and the mangy dog that runs alongside the first bike barking, oblivious to oncoming cars or the bikes following, so it’s no surprise when Dean mentions that his boot heel has had a close encounter with one of the flee ridden locals.. really I think he was taking out his frustrations on the poor dog after following the GPS directions into this man hole..!!

I know it says shortcut but we can't all fit down there..!!



Once we're across the bridge the tarseal begins

Tar-seal, after travelling through dusty valleys for the last few days, today we hit tar-sealed roads and stay on them for some time which is a welcomed relief, the roads here are surprisingly well built and the corners seem to be one of four different curves, “U’s”, right angles, forty five degrees and “S” bends and they all seem to have been made from the same moulds, we also get nice long straights and attempt stick to the speed limit..!! oh and don’t forget the occasional speed hump that’s given me a wake up along the way.

We arrive in Cusco at 14:00 and find a place to stay, after translating what the lady was saying we find ourselves driving the bikes up the curb and wheeling them through the front door and across the court yard to the back of the “casa”.

Sitting in the court yard that we had to push the bikes through

Since Brian was starting a 24hour flu we left him in bed while we went out to find parts for the BMW and some rear brake pads for SamC’s bike, this was harder than we thought having arrived on a Sunday and finding most things closed including the place where we were going to buy tickets for Machu Picchu, considering we all wanted to see this place we decided to add another lay-day to the schedule and we’d have to make it up somewhere else, hope there's more tarseal in our travels

So today was quite an uneventful day, other than Dean taking on a dog and trying to drive to china.