The phone alarm clocks incessant chirping ate it’s way into my consciousness at 5am like an unwelcome visitor, signaling that that we had 1/2 hour to load up the bike and escape Andahuaylas before the road-work crews closed our only hope of making it to Cusco before the night fell.  So we grudgingly hurried in the cold dark morning to the bike and drove about asking people in town how to get to the highway.   As the road gained altitude to 4,147 meters and the temperature dropped farther we passed the road closure point about 10 km out of town.

Andahuaylas to Cusco, Elevation Profile

Above Andahuaylas, Morning Cloud, Peru

Without breakfast and quite bleary-eyed we rounded corner after corner on the pass until we came across views of the Andes that I had fantasized about seeing since embarking on the trip – ranges of snow-capped sharp peaks that dropped into cloud layers semi-obscuring lower mountain ranges.  As freezing as we were the remote vastness of these mountains managed to hold our attention for a few photo stops.

Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru

Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru

We stopped for breakfast at an indigenous family’s house that didn’t have any power and seemed to be almost permanently under cloud cover.   The little girl, through a trucker-cum-translator, asked me to teach her English and I tried to remember the few Quechua-language phrases she said to me.  However the trucker also told me that the road further on after Abancay (the first low point in the elevation graph) also had a closure point at 12:30, so cold and miserable we got back on the bike and continued down into the pretty valley of Abancay.  Kai was started to shiver somewhat violently and was not looking very well.

Above Abancay, Peru

After the second pass, nearing 4,000 meters, we passed the second closure point in time and a huge valley opened up in front of us which I took to the famed Sacred Valley.  We wound down through this and became increasingly desperate to reach Cusco after having driving on dirt roads for about 24 hours in 3 days.   Recklessly, I started ignoring the road-workers commands to stop and started driving through the construction sites somewhat madly.

Towards Cusco Peru

We arrived in Cusco at about 3 and found a hotel and drove the bike into it by 4pm.  Kai seemed quite ill and slept without eating the whole afternoon and through the night.  We were served mate de coca by the hotel to help with the altitude.

Kai in courtyard, Cusco, Peru

Bike in Hotel Courtyard,Cusco, Peru

Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru
Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru
Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru
Above Andahuaylas, Snowy Range, Peru	Above Abancay, Peru	Above Abancay, Peru	Above Abancay, Peru
Towards Cusco Peru	Mate de Coca, Cusco, Peru	Bike in Courtyard,Cusco, Peru	Kai in courtyard,Cusco, Peru

Andahualays to Cusco, Peru GPX Track