Cat Song

Poma Takina

Eight cats, three generations

Gen 1

La Grita, or Mamacita, or Mitochondria MRCA

Cat Mandala - clockwise: La Grita, Dumbass, Sniffles, Foo Fighter, Smoke, Snowflake, Iskay

Gen 2 - all black

Foo Fighter - biggest, male, explorer, momma's boy

Sister Sniffles - Femme, next biggest, quiet, will climb leg for food

Sister Sniffles

Kwee, or Round Eyes - smallest, female, whispers heavenly labials, born a loner but grew into the fold

Kwee

Sister Sliver - deceased, now down by the riverside

Gen 3, in order born

Dumbass, formerly Tiger or Tigre - male, stripe, strongly marked, takes a long time to figure anything out; alpha at the chicken parts

Iskay and Dumbass

Iskay - (means Two in Quechua) - finely striped, female, affectionate, sleeps in your armpit

Snowflake - female, smallest, black with subtle stripe pattern below - bit of a loner 

Smoke - female, almost twin to Iskay but slightly less defined, Virgo

Sniffles and Foo Fighter

Gen 3 will upon full weaning be farmed out to Juan at the mercado; two for mousers in the market, two as pets for his mom. I will advise Dumbass as a hunter, Iksay as a pet

Dumbass sort of faces camera

Footnote:

As I edit this post, two scraggly interlopers from the neighborhood slink in to forage from the cat's dry food bowl, one after the other. I'm not going to begrudge them that, having overcome so much fear to get here.

Interloper One

Interloper Two.

Paw!

Draggin' my Ass

Pinkuylluna from the window. We're headed for the peak on the left center. 

At the top of the high peak of Pinkuylluna, you can barely make it out with the naked eye, is a post and on the post, sometimes, is a flag.

Now, I've gone up the summit directly above the town, through the ruins for which you don't have to pay, multiple times; but the destination, the place about which you have to be able to say "I been there," that's that flagpole. The Bandera. One peak to the west.

Ramón Barriga-Huaman 

They told me there's a trail around the mountain that will get you there, but I studied the damn place for months, on foot along every path, from the ground by binoculars, and could not find a credible approach. The most likely one runs up to a dizzying arroyo and peters out.


Finally, I proposed a agreement with Ramón Barriga-Huaman, the male half of my landpeople, to show me the way. We went up yesterday.

It was the most exhausting day of my life.

What was there when we got there 

First, Ramón walked me way past the approaches to the colca ruins, past the Punka-Punka gateway into the old Inca city, along a canal. There is no trail up from my mountain.

I knew this would take everything I've got, the fear, the fatigue. The fear didn't amount to much; when I first got here it would have stopped me cold many times, now I had to concentrate on just breathing.

Putting up the Bandera 

It was a gorgeous day, blue sky, crazy clouds, wind varying between gentle zephyrs and taking your hat off.


The slope started out steep and didn't get any better. I started out with a store of gut energy that took me up to the first atalaya, inca watchtower; after that, it began to bleed out.


Ramón went up standing; early on I had to start grabbing bunch grass or brush to pull my self up.


The peak was way the hell up there. At first invisible, we had to follow the trail around the side of a wide arroyo. That part went on forever.

The Suribachi Moment 

Pretty soon I had to start stopping. At first, I'd do it standing; it's hard to get moving again if you sit. Stop and pant until I could go on again.


The intervals between stopping got shorter; the time I had to spend gasping for breath got longer.


I could feel the muscle energy deserting my legs.


We came around the side, could see the peak way up, foreshortened, a distant fist of stone. The trail began to take us up over bare rock - bare rock is good foothold - slippery grass; and long sections of some twiggy, resilient ground cover that looks like rosemary but smells sour; you got foot purchase, but the give in the stuff sucked out your strength.


Now when I stopped I'd slump into the most inert position I could find on the acclivity and drop my head between my knees, gasping. Ramón would wait up the trail.


Then I would have to stop every few meters, do more resting than climbing.


One day, years into the assent, Ramón pointed up, saying, we can see the flag now, it is close. Hour and a half. Yeah, there it was.


But even there I had to doubt that I could do it. The rests wanted me to sleep forever there on the drop, in the breeze and the infinite panorama. I thought that if I had anything (besides one pineapple slice) in me I'd puke.

Ramón added a red strip but it blew away in the night 

Three times I thought I'd had it. Close or not, I was on the edge of being flat done. Putting one foot in front of the other, in the fear that I would not be able to make the next.

The last stoney spine to go; I was collapsing every few seconds.

But we got there.

Ahhhhh 

There was no flag on the steel pole, just some colored strips wrapped around the shaft. A rock carved with letters commemorating the first flag to be put up there, by a professor with three names.


Ramón went up with that Professor when he was fifteen years old; his first time up, planting the first flag.


He took a white cloth maybe two and a half by three out of his pack, tied it to the pole. We rested half an hour, and went down.

From the peak down 

At first, going down was easy, gravity on my side; then I started slipping on the smooth grass - I got those hiking shoes in Berkeley in 1991 and used them a lot; the soles were worn smooth. Every time I fell, it seemed to suck a huge clot of stamina out of me. Again, I had to start stopping. Now it wasn't just my lungs that were going, it was the legs too. I kept thinking of Rocky's line, "I got the locker but I don't got the legs."


The fields and the road so far down. Getting no closer.


On and on, my ability to judge the next step wiped out by exhaustion. Falling more often, sliding down the slope, cursing. Peruvians don't much curse.


Then, the last drop. Ramón says, twenty more minutes. Looking down, I thought, ten. And I stayed on my feet all the way to the canal that marked the bottom.


Ramón was patient all this time, and authentic in his courtesy; he learned my rhythms, learned to stop by himself and sit whistling when he knew I would have to cave in again. He'd wait until I had finished wheezing into my shirt, and again when I caught up to him and rested once more. He learned to stand up and resume without words, by my glance. He wouldn't move until he was sure I was ready.

Orchids for Alicia 

Even on flat ground I could barely lift my feet, couldn't keep my head up. Even there I had to rest once. I was dragging my ass.


I got to my gate only to face the cold truth that I'd forgotten to pocket my keys. I was locked out of our enclosure. At the end of my powers. I sprawled on the ground, scraping in the rocks for any hidden key, without real hope. The only chance was that the old door in the back wall was unblocked.


I go out that back door in the east wall often, but prop it shut behind with a steel rod so no one can enter unseen; but the day before I'd decided to leave it open in case I wanted to come in the back way. There was a chance I came in the front instead and hadn't replaced the rod. I pushed myself up and plodded up to the corner, around to the back path by the acequia, to the door, and, pushed.


I'd put the the rod back in place.


But not well. The door opened just a crack, enough to get my forearm through. A big anomaly; I usually check to be sure it's secure. This time, I could just get my fingertips onto that rusty stick and wiggle it out of the way. I was saved.


I trudged up the two flights of stairs in a flood of cats.

If I had gone up that mountain when I was thirty, with legs muscular from three seasons of work in the high Cascades, it would still have been the most exhausting day of my life. Up to but not including yesterday.

Ramón, 51, went up and came down without much effort. He would have to say of me, he is old. He is weak. But Ramón is pure blood Peruvian, with 25% more lung capacity and the same percentage more white blood cells. Made for the mountains. Unique on earth but for the Himalayan Sherpas. And he has been climbing those mountains all his life. First time up, again, at fifteen years old. As a youth he was a porter on the Inca Trail, he humped over Warmiwayñusca, Dead Woman Pass, forty times, with a heavy load of gringo gear. Then he hired on with the Ministry of Culture, who maintain, guard, and restore archaeological sites; working in the open air going up and down the slopes for twenty years. And he's nineteen years younger than I am. And I am still nursing a twisted ankle. These are my consolations. They don't matter much.


And when I saw him and his wife Alicia the next day, they greeted me with something like admiration, certainly respect. The thing is, I am old and weak, but I kept on going. Through total obvious absolute ultimate wasted fatigue. At least I have guts.


And for all that he took the journey in stride, at the top he called Alicia to photograph him waving his red hoodie, and after putting up that white cloth, he called, one after another, a bunch of his buddies - all tough mountaineers - to come out and look at him up there with the bandera! On top of Pinkuylluna! Gleeful as a kid.


It's not K2 but if you get there you're one of the few.


I was too crashed to think about it last night, but this morning I went out with the 10x40 binocs and there it was, flaming, as they say here, in the wind; our flag. I had to wave my fists in the air and whoop. I been there.

The town from the bandera 

Helmet Cams and Talking to Myself on the Plain of Ghosts

`

Abra Málaga

The new GoPro helmet cam fell off the helmet, so I stuck it to the front fender of the bike and went off riding into the mountains and the jungle, to Espiritu Pampas, Plain of Ghosts, the remote holdfast of the last four rebel Incas after the Spanish conquest. They held out there, making themselves a pain in the royal ass, for thirty years and more.

I really wanted to post some of these road vids here, but despite  being well under the allowed hundred megs, and despite showing as successfully uploaded on the draft, damn if I can get them to show up on the published website.  

 However; I can run them through YouTube, although they lose some production value. 

Into the jungle and across a bridge to 

Espiritu Pampas

So incrementally I learn to get them up here;l now the problem is that when they play through they leave with the next vid on the YouTube list, with no way back to where you started. I'll see if I can hack through that jungle. If no, maybe I'll replace them with still shots and this will be one more boring recounting of a ride into the back country and return, featuring one more fall off the stupid bike. Ankle bunged up and still can't walk on it too good. Should have listened to the doc in the Centro de Salud in Kiteni and not walked on it for a few days. 

He and his nurse gave me a shot in the butt (antibiotic), pain pills, the usual palp-and-rotate check for broken bones, and bandaged it up for support; price? $0.78 US

Talking to myself on the Plain of Ghosts

I went into the ruins with a sheaf of plans and charts printed from Vincent Lee's Forgotten Vilcabamba: Final Stronghold of the Incas, came out bug bitten on the legs and arms but having identified all sectors of the site. He got some relationships and features wrong, but I'm not knocking that; he went into uncut jungle to make those drawings; every minute I spent there I was more impressed that he could eke out any idea at all what he was stumbling around in. 

The guys from the Ministry of Culture who are indexing pottery shards from the site and also excavating and preserving it, let me sleep in their campamento, and fed me too. Part because I knew what I was there to see, part because I knew some of their workers and archaeologists, in fact live with them - and part because they're okay people.

Alright, going to publish this. If it's organized under, above, and around blurry crappy videos, the upload failed, and I'll revise.

Ankle wreck

Bear in mind in all the tales of bugs and bikes that this is all happening among scenes of beauty and intense interest.

Poma Otoroncopas

Lion and Tigers

La Grita

There were cats here when I came, mostly semi-feral - they took food but ran if people tried to touch them. One thin young femme, though, was different; she'd come up the walk trailing meowls and meeting my eyes, and she'd submit to petting. In fact, she seemed to like it. Pretty soon I was saving scraps for her when I came back from town, and before too long I was feeding her. She was so intensely verbal I called her La Grita, She Who Cries Out. 

The Barriga-Terran's told me her owners, next door, were drunk by seven in the morning and pretty much neglected to feed or care for her. I said I'm not nailed down securely enough to take responsibility for anything, but still. What the heck. I missed cats.

Pretty soon she was feeding and sleeping inside. Then she was pregnant. She was like thirteen in cat years, the little jezebel, and was getting more clingy every day; a symptom of a cat on the verge of parturition. I was about to go on the road for a month in a month, so decided not to let her litter in my place. Anyway I'm too old to be a daddy now.

But she'd lay on my chest licking my face, kneading and needing and pleading in cat, and getting wet in the rear. When I saw she was about to blow, I put her out. A couple hours later she was back, but now distant and a little aloof. She'd done the thing somewhere out there.

I had to go the States for a week to renew my visa and pick up the mail; when I came back, I found four black kittens in a box in the chicken coop. 

The trick with kittens, I am instructed, is to get them used to the human touch so that they don't grow up feral. This I did. I petted them and took them out of the box for a walk and when they were old enough, fed them. I would meow as I approached and they came to recognize me as The Giant Food Thing and meowed back. 

They all looked alike, so I painted them with yellow splotches on different parts of their furry bods. Soon I learned to differentiate a little; one was shy and hung back - in fact, she was a little small and was sometimes ostracized by the others in their play. She had big round eyes. I called her Kwee because she'd open her mouth and after a while would emit a tiny supersonic peep, a high-frequency pulse.

Another was bold, climbed my leg, and ranged further away. I called him Foo Fighter because he hung off his mother's wingtip when she traveled, like the blue balls of light that followed fighter planes in World War Two. 

He was the first to come into my room. I put out tasty food. La Grita was so happy to see that, and so grateful, that she killed me a hummingbird. I kept throwing it out and she kept bringing it back. She had plans.

Pretty soon they were all hanging out in my room. I found a source of actual cat food, Whiskas, and foraged sand from the neighborhood at night for a catbox. Later located litter in Urubamba, the Sacred Valley's commercial center. Now I was The Giant Food Thing We Can Sleep On.

But they weren't my cats. I figured I could keep maybe one but the rest would have to go. Alicia, the landlady, said her mom wanted a couple. I felt badly about tricking them into the gunny sack to be taken away, but they were going to a good home with food and love, and I was going on the road for a month or so. Kwee and Lefty went. Ciao, little ones.

When I got back, so were Kwee and Lefty, emaciated and dripping shit all over their hindquarters, about half the size of the two who stayed. Gramma's place hadn't worked out for them. The story was that gramma had two big old cats who wouldn't let the kittens get to the food. Kwee was in the worst condition, clearly dying. 

I found a vet in Urubamba, a good one, Fabrizio, who gave her a shot for parasites and pills for stomach inflammation. He had wet food to wash it down and fatten her up.

One day nonetheless the skinny little one lay down on the concrete floor far from any comfort; I brought her to bed next to my head but in a few minutes she was dead. She made a little two-note cry and never moved no more. I slept beside her corpse until around 4 am. In the morning I took her down to the river, dug her a grave and piled it high with rocks so no one would bother her.  

So I took the living one back to Fabrizio, who tested her and learned that she was anemic. She's taking pills for that. Later, watching her behavior - the minuscule non-aspirated emissions, the big eyes, I began to understand that Kwee survived; it was her sister who died. She who had not been treated. Kwee lives. Now I call her Roundeyes. Sister Skinny is buried in the rocks. 

Took La Grita to the vet to get sterilized, but too late; she was already pregnant. Now she looks like a piñata and is about to detonate. I don't know anything about anything, but I built her a cloth-lined box if she wants to have them here. Fuck it. They're my cats now.

Enciente in the Garden

I'm their Giant Food Thing We Can Sleep On, now

Hatun Rina

The Big Trip - hatun, big; rina, voyage.

The Trip as originally planned, sort of

Couple months back I figured that the best way to use the bike to see all the distant archaeological sites was to do them all at once; that way you don't have to go back over the same roads to get out of home territory. I planned to leave early June and take three weeks to a month. Two days into the trip I see it is not going to happen the way I thought.

Look, Remedia, a rolling junkyard

The Revolt of the Objects

May 31 2015 Abacay Peru

The Mochica people, a civilization long before the Inkas, had a mural the scholars call the Revolt of the Objects - it shows artefacts - tools, weapons, common household appliances - attacking humans. We assume this is some kind of metaphor, but then, that's what they thought about the depictions of giant headdresses, until they found a burial in which the guy actually wore one.

That's what the first day felt like. It was a wreck. I didn't get out of the yard before I heard the bedroll, strapped to the side, hitting the wheel. Had to take it off, put it on top of the backpack I had propped against the hard-case carrier in back, held up by a circus of bungie cords. I've had the sleeping bag since 1978, the pack since 1984, used them together lots of times, but this time, the straps didn't want to stretch out for it - grunting, cursing, trying again. Everything I tried went like that. The bike fell over. The pack came loose. I couldn't figure out how re-loop the plastic buckles. It took an hour and a quarter to get off. 

The objects didn't revolt. I just put my energy into swearing at everything instead of finding solutions.

I had to keep pulling over to push the pack upright. The bike fell over twice from standing still, the pack twice too.  My throttle hand kept cramping, the pants bunched up in my crotch. I was passing through very pretty country but couldn't care because of all the kinds of discomfort. By the end of the day I found myself in Abancay, less than a third of the way to Ayacucho (Death Corner), the first day's goal.

This was part because I had to stop so often to mess with my stuff, and part because: Google Maps can't handle time or distance in the Andes. Too many switchbacks. It takes two to three times as long as they predict.

And, finally in stasis in Abancay, I see that for the next half hour or so, it is still May. I left a day early. Hope Alicia the landlady fed the cats. They are going to wonder what happened to the Giant Food Thing We Can Sleep On.

Lots of landscape

Good luck, bad luck

June 1 2015 Ayacucho Peru

The next morning I woke rested and feeling good; I'd figured out how to balance the pack on the bike - two adjustable straps instead of eight bungies - and how to fix the bedroll to side of the bike, make the pack less top heavy. I got on the road and this feeling came back to me:

It was the feeling I had of a morning on the bike trip - a Honda 50 Cub - to California from Michigan in 1965. In all the biking I've been doing the last few years, I hadn't tasted that. That sweet sweet sensation. It felt so fine. So free. Young again. I was still in it when the rear tire went flat. Just on the outskirts of town in a world of roadside desolation - the nearest gas station had no mechanic, the air pump was permanently down - five kilometers back into the center and what were the odds on getting someone to come down and fix the tire, or dragging the bike up there? I pace around slow, thinking that it's going to be a long day. Bad luck. 

Then, in the welter of gaudy, primitive local signs, right across the road, I saw one that seemed to say "mechanic. All sorts of cars." It was a greasy empty lot with some guys standing around a truck and a little lean-to that might be their shop. I amble across.

The guy gives me a grin and says that there's a tire-changing specialist right there, past that house.

There is, too. Good luck. A wiry old guy with a bunch of heavy trucks in his own greasy yard. I have to go into town to get a new tire - a tack had attacked mine - but a colectivo (little bus) comes right by, and the driver drops me off at a store that sells me a replacement tire for twenty sols; six bucks. Back at the bike, the guy, who works double-fast - when I got back he was fixing a truck tire, I thought it'd be two hours, he had it on in 30 minutes - does mine, using a tire iron the old way, like dad taught us in our greasy gas station, a long-tang screwdriver and a pair of pliers, charges me five sols for the work. That's about a dollar seventy. I paid him five for his labor and another five for existing. Took two hours all told, now I'm pretty sure I won't get past Andahuaylas, two thirds of the way to Ayacucho, today. But that's okay.

Usnu at Curamba - I always wanted to see this place

Back on road, that feel returns; the road is so fine, following a river valley, level ground, warm, perfect for what I have on, jade green river weaving from my left to right and back as I cross the bridges; wonderful scenery, perfect day, I'm in no hurry, but it's the wrong road. I figure that out using the map ap on my cell while stopped for a sandwich and to enjoy the rolling river. Bad luck. I struggle with it and decide I have to make the 50-click trip back to Abancay and try again. On this bike and these roads that's going to be two hours.

Beautiful ride, wrong road

But twelve km on the way back, there's a cutoff, clearly marked, well paved, to Andahuaylas. Good luck.

It was a long twisty mountain road, again awesome territory, but growing cold as the day ages; sign says 116 km to town, sun's lowering and I calculate there's still 70 to go. Bad luck. Then it occurs to me I've figured it in kilometers and my odometer and speedometer are in miles. Don't know why, it's a Chinese bike sold in Peru - you couldn't get one in the states or for that matter Canada - but unless they've left the language in miles but calibrated it in kilometers, it's a shorter distance, and I've been going faster, than I thought.

And so it was. Good luck. So I'm in this 60-sol hostel in Ayacucho eating cheese sandwiches and an apple and an orange exploiting their wifi to do this post. 

So all told I've been revising my plans as I ride. Maybe I'll be lucky to get the two main sites in the hills - Huánuco Pampa and Chavín de Huántar - and maybe one on the coast. If the bike don't fall apart.  Something will go wrong. But then, something will go right.

Peruvian Cities are Shitty and Gritty

June 1 2015, Ayacucho Peru
A little nursery rhyme. It's been true, though, of the three I've stayed in (Abancay, Andahuaylas, this place) - too many people have migrated to the towns in the last few decades, the traffic is apeshit, narrow streets crammed with crazed campesinos like they get in the car just to get on that horn. 

But in the sweet early morning it's kind of pleasant here, quaint and delicate. Except for the traffic.

I'm going to subside here - Ayacucho - for a day, get my balance back, plan ahead. Don't know which route to take to Huánuco, through the mountains - most "direct" - or by the coast - the coast road is straight and fast. Google says the high road, but we know Google is blind up there. 

Came down from a long chill ride through the high plateau to an interminable descent into Ayacucho, then a frustrating, exhausting, two-hour slam through these batshit streets - the place I wanted to go was blocked by construction over and over, the detours leading to spaghetti with no clear way back - and my bike has a real parking problem; the kickstand doesn't lean enough, it puts the bike almost upright, and since roads and streets are convex, that makes it want to tip over to the right. Other motorcycles don't seem to have that problem. Limits the hell out of where I can get off it. Now it's in a good off-street garage in the care of Luis. 

Photon Whisperer takes selfie with pack. The desk clerk has a sour expression because he has to change a S./ 200 note for a S./78 bill

So I'm in a small, overpriced room in a very pleasantly appointed hotel complex - terra cotta garden walls, free-standing arches, dappled sunlight through the decorative trees. Moving to a tiny windowless room up the street, for less than half the price. If it's got wifi, a bed, and a working toilet, it's my kind of seraglio.

Moved. Paid for two nights, S./30. 

 All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air

Want to see Vilcaswaman, a classic site, hard to get to, tomorrow. Next day, Wari, the crumbling capital of the first imperial polity of the Andes; some andeanists see them as the Mordor of Peru. The modern locals aren't Incas, they empathize with the Wari and their descendents (they think), the Chanka. Some see them as the Klingons of Peru. They came boiling out of the northwest to gobble up the sleepy little kingdom of Cusco but ran into one rasty young hard case named Cusi Inka Yupanqui, AKA Pachacuti, who miraculously whupped they ass. If not for him, the Spaniards would have run into the Chanka empire. Wonder how that would have worked out. Don't bother time-traveling back to find out; how do you think Pachacuti won?

Sloop John B

"...why don't you let me go home, this is the worst trip I have ever been on..."

June 3 2015 Ayacucho Peru

Had a Sloop John B experience last night, got back to town, fought through traffic, barely managed to be able to park on the lot with Luis the owner watching, shamefully - the left handlebar bent way out, stalling every time I dropped below 5 mph, didn't know where to find a mechanic (nothing online), or even a gas station, couldn't pick a route for the next leg and it's a long, long way through the mountains or along the coast.  And I ran away from the cheap hotel I'd booked in Vilcas - the ruin was depressing, badly maintained and worse restored - with concrete for christ's sake - and the people looked hostile. Got lost trying to get out of town. Was scared of the ride back, I'd dropped the bike hard on the way in and the road just kept getting worse. How can I take that wounded animal into the mountains? How can I not? Morale flagging.

Usnu Vilcashuaman

But it's a brand new day and everything's in line. Found a mechanic right around the corner who straightened the handlebar and tuned the clutch to better than it was new, then pressure-washed and dried the bike until it gleams. Runs like a fur-lined glove. Took it for a day trip to the Wari site, smooth, took no longer than Google Maps said it would, parked perfectly upon return. Tonight pick a route - Pierro the mechanic and I talked it over decided the coast is the best way, cut back uphill north of Lima. Pick up some fine sites on the way.

Temple at Vilcashuaman

And I didn't blow the ride back, in fact, despite the stalling and bent handlebar, it was fairly easy; got in before dark. And shabby treated as it is, you can still feel the power coming off that temple and usnu at Vilcas. What it would look like in its day is beyond my power to speculate.

Damn. I can remember taking a shot of the fucked-up mud-crusted bike at Vilcas, watching the cop looking at me out of the corner of my eye. I can remember but it looks like I didn't. I need to remember to film the crappy stuff first, the pretty stuff later. It's the wreck of the world that makes the best shots.

June 7 Huancavelica Peru

 I was dreading this day's ride, it looked to be the worst ever, cold country and bad roads. Turns out there are no good roads up to Huánuco from the coast - all nasty narrow gravel or dirt tracks, badly maintained. Can't risk the bike on several hundred km of that stuff, and none of them would get me there in one day, or likely two; and no settlements along the way with lodging or fuel. There was one paved road out of Lima, but it is said to be closed for repair in several places, and was over ten Google hours, which means at least twenty real-time.

So I backtracked above Huaytará, which ruin, now coopted by a church, I saw yesterday, along with surprise site Tambo Colorado, a fine place scarred by graffiti scratched into the 500-year-old wall painting. 















So I backtracked to what looked like a dangerous little paved track, 3A, too narrow for a center line, or even for two cars in places - one would have to back up - sometimes bad pavement, sometimes dirt. And twisty on the acclivities. But when I got there, it was good surface, wide enough, and beautiful country. I thought, "this is what I ride for." High euphoria quotient for a while there. But it did develop enough torque to be risky in places - I had to honk on all the blind curves in case there was oncoming traffic to drive me off the road, which one cannot afford in that geography.

Speaking of which, if this wifi will do the duty, I'll upload a couple postcard pornographies, as Nabokov called some landscape shots.

Funny. Totally didn't register the power lines when looking at this mountain lake.

The end game to that road, though, was grueling; Huancavelica turned into Zeno's Paradox - no matter how close I got, it was always only half the remaining distance. And the road got so doubled that I could often kiss my own ass and sometimes look myself in the eye.

I've got a pretty good vocabulary but I couldn't find a word for this blue.

Then I parked my bike and lost it. Asked a cop if they'd taken it away, she denied it and put me onto a patrol car who rode me around until it turned up. 

Long hard day and two more to come, but here I am, warm, well fed, and accomplished thus far anyway.

Yeah, this video cam can't pick out the colors. Lots of snow peaks on this route

I Probably Can

June 9 2015 Huánuco Peru

I think I probably can after all get to the archaeological site Huánuco Pampa, about which I have a whole book. It's kind of like the tourist flytrap Machu Picchu in that it has no spanish town built over it, although it's on unspectacular flat ground; still a place of particular interest to the cognescenti. 

I made it to the modern town of Huánuco, kind of the pinnacle of this trip - the Ulan Batar or Timbuktu of my imagination. Not bad for a gritty shitty Peruvian city. Beats the stuffing out of Huancayo, where I endured last night without wifi. That's right, I said without wifi. 

Limped in there, one city short of plan, after wasting much of the afternoon trying to put the chain back on the bike. That sleeping bag I mentioned in the beginning worked its way back and caught in the wheel, chain, and sprocket. I did the get chain on a couple times despite not being able to spin the wheel, but it didn't take. Got rescued, yet again, chastening for an outlaw psychology, by the police, this time National. They went into Acosbamba, because ñahuimpuquio, outside of which I broke down, had no mechanic. I took a long hot walk to find that out. They brought one back - had to track him down in his house - who said the chain was too long, and had to take it back to his shop to cut out some links.

I didn't like that much. The bike was made to take that chain. It didn't make sense that it had to be shortened. But, no choice. He also fumbled around with every little thing he did, like he was unfamiliar with motorcycles. He put the foot brake back together way soft. I suspected Pierro from Ayacucho would have had everything in order in a few minutes. He knew his stuff. But another biker, Efrían, stopped to check it out, and agreed that friction can stretch out a chain. He stayed to follow me into Huancayo to make sure I was okay. 

When the bike bound up, jerked to a stop on the road, I thought I'd lost the transmission. That would've been the trip. What peace of mind to see I'd only lost some time and money.

Looked like I'd lost a day, but instead, I woke at 3:45 am feeling fully awake, packed, got on the road by 5 am, and into Huanuco, despite a backup at at road crew, by 2:30 pm. 

On the whole a flaw-free trip, didn't even get lost coming into town, finally thawed out from all that frosty high country. Nice road, mostly, following a river. 

Came into town right down Motorcycle Repair Street again, what luck; got the hotel I had marked in the my notes, took the bike to one of the shops, got brake adjusted, chain greased, oil changed, took it to a garage the hostel lady pointed out, changed rooms for working wifi, and got on this to plan my route to the ruin.

Google maps again didn't know shit, tried to send me up ratty gravel roads for a hundred plus kilometers, saying it'd be an hour and a half. It'd be never and a half. 

I was about to admit that I'd never get to the place, when I figured out that an alternate route could take me to La Union by good paved 3N, and from there I can probably, if the contorted route Street View won't show me is too rough (and it looks rough) walk the distance. Looks like maybe two, three klicks. 

So that's tomorrow, and after that another night here, then north not too far to the town and very ancient ruin of Chavin de Huántar.

And from there, kits, down to the coast - the roads look good enough from sat and street view - then a clean flat ride to Nazca, back up the hill and home. 

Sounds good. I've learned a lot about that bike and riding the mountains on this trip. But "sounds good" ain't over. That's another week for things to go wrong in.

But it's been a kick so far. And the pleasure of twisting the throttle, feeling the purr, of that tough little bike, that's a blood song.

But I forgot, despite my promise to myself and to thee, to vid the breakdown on the road - I've got to start filming the rough stuff, it's where the good shots are. Dang. 

There's a guy out there snoring like the artillery duel at Verdun. 


Lizard Brain

Thursday June 11 2015 7:19 pm

The bad road

Rhea wrote that losing your cell phone on such a trip is sort of like losing one third of your left frontal lobe. It's worse. Losing the map ap felt like losing the whole right lobe, and losing the translation ap and email look out the left. I was operating on the medula oblongata and rhinencephalon. Lizard fish brain.

Really, I felt lost and weak. And worried; all that data in dirty hands.

Huánuco Pampa

What happened: I was sitting in a mom and pop restaurant finishing some rice and chicken, back from a hard ride to La Union and up to the ruins, watching six kids and two adults - the owners - trying to shake some prize down in a novelty machine - for a girl who keeps jumping up and down. I wondered if that is a learned action or natural (but I liked it), when a rain came. Hard. Been dry so far. I guessed it would last twenty minutes and in about that it quit.

Luis, a "vigilante" who showed me around the ruins. I'd've been happier alone but he was an alright guy

But by then I had put my cell phone in a plastic bag with four pieces of one kind of bread and three of another, it case that rain didn't stop by the time I was ready to walk.

Ozymandias

Got back to the ten Sol ($3.33) hotel - room bare but for three beds and light switch; bathroom along the wall in the courtyard, no toilet seat or toilet paper. I didn't bother going in, just asked Alva, the old owner, where to buy some TP. Already tried in two places, failed. He's sitting on a bench in front watching the street; he gets up, walks me across the corner where the street drops down San Fran style past three concrete cherubs dumping water from vases. Just past the copy shop (these towns are full of them) is a little tienda.

The bare room

I go there, buy some papel higíenico, put the bread down to get the change out, stick the TP under my arm and leave.

Now, really, there was some small conversation - she claimed not to have any papel sanitorio, I pointed it out on the shelf, she said O Papel Higíenico, I got her to correct my pronunciation - something about the change.

I hotfooted up the hill ready for that toilet when Alva, now a few meters down from the top watching me, pointed out that I didn't have the bread. For an instant I thought of leaving it, changed my mind partly because he'd had the percipience to notice, then realized my Samsun Galaxy SIII was in the bag.

I got back there in under four minutes from exiting, maybe under two, saw that it wasn't on the counter, and got a premonition which came true: she denied everything. Claimed lots of kids were in there, then a lady buying beer, then a guy getting change for a canister of natural gas he was buying from her husband. I told Alva, we went back together, but she remonstrated - that's what she did - as to her innocence.

Okay. Woman in store sees cell in sack snatches it keeps it. I adjust painfully to no cell. 

Don't trust this man's wife. Or him either

Pretty painfully. It'd been a rough five-hour ride to this river valley town, highway Three, which I'd come to trust as wide smooth and fairly straight, broke bad. Narrowed down, twisted up, and broke into numerous sections of bare rutted rocky dirt, gravel, slippery dust, and, right on the worst curves (that's where the runoff hits for some reason), long runs of deeply rutted slick mud and big puddles. They were scary, you didn't know where to aim your front wheel. Some of the dried lengths were teeth-breaking skull-shaking, didn't know what speed to aim for there. There were also long runs of good road, but some of that was in high cold. And the thing is, on a narrow road in the mountains, the cars and trucks swing way over in your lane in the hard turns to flatten out the curve, so you have to beep the horn to warn them and you don't know that it's affecting them at all - sometimes it doesn't - so you have to slow down and lose time. Or I do; most the locals are born to these roads and doppler up from behind, pass me by, and red-shift out of sight.

3N to La Reunion - at least this is paved

Got to town at long last, and rather than resting and setting up an HQ, just took off up the road to the ruin. I'd seen it in satellite view, didn't look sweet, but figured, after what I've just been through, how bad could it be. Not as bad as the worst, in fact, but pretty scary on the tight turns. 

Saw the ruins, came back pretty tired, ate that meal, lost that phone.

Didn't sleep well that night, although I really like that kind of spartan room - feels so much more real than the excessive false luxury of a Days Inn on Interstate 5. But running through my mind: what to do about data security? How to handle not having a map? How to deal with replacing the cell? How to confront the thief lady (whose husband was in on it and maybe another guy too); and was it still stashed in her her place? Did she already sell it to some kids who would know how to shop the data? Should I confront her again in the morning with police? Get Alva to call my number when I'm in there in case she was dumb enough not to turn the phone off? Why didn't I change the email password when I was changing the others in the internet cafe (lots of those around too) on the corner? 

Just takes one slip of the mind. Cell. Phone. Gone. 

A stranger comes to town

I Rise from the Ashes

Yeah, well, in the morning I got up early and walked the streets to see what I could do; there was a Claro - the cell carrier - office, they call them centers, could they cancel my service? Sell me a new phone? The ATM on the corner was out of service in case I needed cash to do that, or bribe the thief lady - I'd already tried that once.

I did change the password. Nothing else panned out. I rode back. Not as bad as the ride up, but then, it's usually that way; going in all the surprises are bad; going back, they're generally good, because that bad stuff sticks to the brain.

Wiped out twice on this road, dropped the bike stopping twice more

Got back early afternoon, dropped my bike at the mechanic's - I'd dropped it again when some SUV came to a sudden stop ahead of me; I'd left enough room to stop, but for some reason I went down anyway. I'm pretty sure my eyes get hypnotized by some point on the road and I just dive into it. They say about motorcycling that you go where you look. It's true, as long as you're not looking at the sky. That was yesterday; I crashed again today on some dirt turn, first time I've ever dropped a bike in motion. Except for the time I changed lanes into a Lincoln Continental driven by a Michigan State Representative. On the Honda 50.


So the guys turned the right mirror/brake fluid assembly back around in under three minutes, then pointed out the front tire, treads gone. I left it with them and went into town to see about canceling cell service and replacing the phone.

What it was, I blocked service to the old phone, and after four hours in three Claro centers (note: always go to the big place in town, however far that is: the little ones aren't worth it) came back with a Galaxy A5 with a map ap. There's probably a translation ap too but I haven't looked into that yet.

I power-walked back to the bike shop, made it six minutes to closing time, but, shockingly, they hadn't touched the tire. Huh. Well, I was thinking I might give myself a day off anyway, that was some hard traveling all told. And the next day I'd have to retrace that bad road to get to Chavin de Huantar. In the morning, we'll see.

Summary: damn if it didn't work out okay after all. They don't got damn all except for the device itself (Gmail showed them accessing at 4:45 the night before and that's it) and I came out with everything I had before and an upgrade. Back on the road.

I'll tweak it later

And the trick to those bumpy places is to just gun on through. You kind of skim over the rough stuff. And it's a kick.

To the Old Gods and Back

Sunday June 14, Huaraz Peru

A corkscrew turn out of Chavín de Huántar, one of 19 on that stretch

This is a pleasant town on a sunny Sunday, and probably fine enough most days. Wide airy streets, warm, generally pleasant, with a population of 120,000; unless I counted that guy twice. Yeah, I think he changed hats, the animal. But Sunday is nothing-gets-done-day here, so I may need a another day and night to get the bike spruced up.

Glad to be here, back on wifi, in a single-occupation room with four beds, for $8.24. Last night I wasn't sure I'd ever get here, the road into and out of Chavín de Huántar, at least the last 20 miles, being vicious. I counted 28 double-back virages on sat view; 19 turned out to be on the bad part. I didn't give myself odds of not wiping out. But I made it. Talk about euphoria.

Chavín de Huántar was worth it. A visceral and subliminal experience. I can see how the place and its mythos brought a vast section of the Andes and coast under its spell, a major imperial polity based on cultural magnetism, charisma, not force of arms. I'll attach some pix but they don't evoke the feel of the place; it's takes the whole complex to do that.

There's a massive presence here

I could feel something there, something strong and ancient, a power - me no new-age guy - almost hear the old gods rumbling and growling deep below the levels of subterranean passages that are the belly of the place. 

None of my screen shots get the feel of this primordial site

Tunnels upon tunnels, I went down in some of them without a guide and got, for a few moments, lost. There was growing panic. I'm claustrophobic, but I didn't know it would apply to places like that. Was that location picked out by their PR committee, or did they find something more profound, more else, there? Down below. Something we don't yet know. Something a little Lovecraftian.The temple of Pythia at Delphi is now thought to be built on the cross of the Kerna and Delphic faults, effusing  vaporized hydrocarbon fumes, hallucinogens breathed by the oracles. 

With no spooky stuff at all, the place was astutely chosen to attract pilgrims. Two rivers cross there. But.

Tunnels

You can see how people would take it to be a nexus of power; how they would want to attribute it to visitation of intergalactic nerds or lost Lemuria. Their tech was way ahead of its time - megalithic masonry equal to Tiwanaku or Inka but from thirty-two hundred years ago. They had a sophisticated understanding of acoustics, and used it to create eerie effects, rebounding sound through those passages until a voice from far away seems to whisper in your ear. To my inner eye, the Chavín are the essential primordial civilization lost to history. 

The Lanzon, a subterranean carved pillar

So I went there and came back. To get there, I had to ride from La Union back to Huanuco, then back up that bad road to La Union again, then up the range across high plateau and down warm "yunga" valleys. I wiped out the bike twice, once each way, on curves that looked easy to me. Trashed the right mirror and bunged up my ankle, but overnight it decided to get better instead of swelling up and wrecking the trip.

Crags along the road

All that and now I have one more corkscrew road to ride to get back to the smooth easy coast. On Google street view it looks well-paved and two-way the whole drop down, so I should have by now the chops to take it easy. 

Luis Alva. He helped me

Monday 949 am - Mechanic says my sprocket's fine and I can trust my chain, which he adjusted for less than $6, so I go. Google says 2 hours 9 min to the coast, so I'll guess 4 hours 18. Once on the flats it should adjust to about 1:1.

5:58 pm, on the coast, Casma, in a 85-sol hotel for the wifi. No more wiggly roads for a while. Will have to hang around until noon tomorrow because the local laundry can't do earlier - all my clothes except these shorts and a tastefully flowery sport shirt are raw sewage. 

Sweet ride down, the worst parts were a blow job compared to where I've been. And a surprise freebee - the ancient ruin - They say it's the oldest monumental site in the Americas now, older than Caral - Sechin Bajo turned up right on my road in. I thought it was further north and I'd have to miss it. 

Bike in the desert

First time I've been where it's warm in the evening since like forever - Washington, Canada, even Berkeley, weren't. And the food - ceviche de pollo - was good.

Nothing Grows

June 17 2015, Ica Peru

Just passed through two days of desert where nothing grows. Maybe spiders live back in there somewhere, but nothing visible grows. There are no deserts like that in the US, not Utah, not Death Valley, not the Mojave. Just dirt in its various shades and formations. Interrupted by ramshackle settlements. Traffic through Lima was a surreal form of hell. Copped out of it last night to a hotsheet hostal in an industrial district, they didn't supply room keys because nobody stays long enough to go out and come back; but it had a bed. Now in Ica, in a hotel with wifi, digging the comfortablenessosity of it all. 

Thursday June 18 Nazca Peru

Flew over the lines, saw the pyramid, was going to the cemetery but ran out of time and decided: let's let the dead rest (also thought that about a modern graveyard I passed in the desert today. Spindly raw black wood crosses, shiny balloons in the hot dry wind. Would have maybe made a great shot, but - let's let...) 

So that's it for checking off ruins. Tomorrow dress warm - was chilled for hours coming through the high Atacama desert - the morning goes back up the hills... Haven't dropped the bike in several days, let's see if I can get home with that record intact. Don't worry if you don't hear from me until I'm there, might could be no wifi on the trail.

Ironic Robbers

Friday June 19 Chalhuanca Peru

Got up in the the dark of the morn in Nazca, went next door to the garage (cochera) where I'd decided to stash my bike so no one would bother it on the street, and the kids who work there had torn off - literally ripped off - the hard case. You know, black bulbous thing on the back of the bike? See illustration. See irony.

Bike with hard case

Bike stripped. Note that without hard case grass is yellower and it is later in the day. Butterfly effect

Saturday June 20 Ollantaytambo Peru

Got back before 2 pm, ahead of schedule for the day, a day ahead for the trip. Sweet ride down 30A along the Pachachaca river (earth bridge, or world bridge, or space-time bridge, depending on what was in the namer's head) - the same one from the second day out, with the beautiful ride but wrong road. This time it was the right road.

Got back, cats were somewhat weird but seem to be coming around, and the bike never broke down. Give the Chinese engineers credit for that. Know more about riding in the mountains, saw what I came to see.