Roads and Vehicles. Wow just being on these roads is a game of Russian roulette. I have been on many scary roads, but the dirt mountain road from San Francisco to Ayacucho takes the cake by far. One mistake and you are going more than a 1,000 ft down. No guard rails, traffic control, and the road has partial blockage from landslides at least every 100 yards , not to mention the constant rocks in the road everyone is dodging. But the amazing part is that it is one lane with pull over spots (usually for one vehicle and sometimes two) every so often - so you would think for getting past any on coming traffic, but no, the drivers use them to pass the vehicle in front of you - at night! It is a true race to the top (or bottom) because it is very dusty and no one wants to be behind a vehicle breathing and being blinded by dust. If a vehicle behind you caught up, they would put on their brights and beep their horn constantly even when there was no way they could pass, until they could pass. Of course the driver in front does not want to be passed. So on the short pull over parts your driver speeds up to prevent the car behind you from passing.
The driver with the most fear of dying usually gave way. This is not an understatement! This was pure insanity and I am in the middle of it and I was certain no one was afraid of dying! So damn scary. I had no sleep but there was no way I was closing my eyes. I was scared. Words cannot describe this insanity. I have to go back down this same road on the 30th. I plan on using my GoPro to film the worse parts. The picture above is me holding the camera out the window. If you look close you can see the car in front is two feet from the cliff edge. This was 7 hours of night driving on this insane road. In the daylight you would see crashed vehicles below the road and I even saw a bus, or what was left of it after it rolled down the mountain. Btw, this is, I think, the only road in and out of this part of the region, so it is busy and the government is trying to improve the road.
Another aspect of Peru roads is that they wind around the valleys, not down, across the valley then up the other side, but around the valleys. These are huge valleys. To go 5 miles as the crow flies, it takes 4 to 5 hours because you are going around on the sides of the mountains. Most of the time on dirt roads. The picture below kind of gives you a feel for the size of the valley. The city is Abancay. When on the far side of the valley we were looking down on a condor. By the time I got my camera out, it was way above us and I too far away. From San Francisco to Cusco took us over 30 hours by car. Long long trip, and I rode shotgun while the 4 guides road in the back seat squished in like sardines. They earned their pay. I have to say though that the drive, my main guides uncle, kept dozing off while driving. I would wake him up, try and talk, ask someone to take over, etc. and eventually he did, but not until I thought we would all die. Plus it seemed he would lose his sense of speed and his driving would come to a slow crawl. All that did was make people behind us mad and force passing us like we should be pushed over the cliff.
Rafting. What a dangerous but great time in a special area. Drove all night and no sleep. When we came over the mountain to start our decent to the river, I could not believe how high we actually where. We were a third of the way down the mountain before I could take a good picture to show the river. When we got to the bottom we had a late breakfast which was fish from the river cooked in a little hut that I would have never thought I would even want to enter let alone eat in. But it was very good and the excitement to get going overrode any sanitary concerns (there were many!). At rivers edge, there men drilling holes. We were told engineers for one of the dams. I took a picture, so the stories I read are true, they really are going to dam up this river - the main headwater for Amazon. Such a shame because of the unspoiled beauty. This part of the river gets run only one or two times every few years!
The entire first day on the river was completely void of any sign of human intervention. No roads, power lines, trails, signs, nothing. This is high desert surrounded by the tallest mountains I have seen, even the Alps. The landscape was amazing. We had to portage around the second set of rapids and after that it was nothing but white water for miles. The guides figured out quickly I knew what I was doing so we just went for it and had a great time. They made me feel like I was one of them. We did have to portage around quite a few rapids. Even the most experienced kayakers were not willing to go through these unpassable rapids. Anyone who claims they kayaked the Apurimac without portaging is full of it!! We pressed on till dusk and made camp high on a sand bar. We had almost a full moon and it lit up the canyon spectacularly. We just sleep on the sand with no tent. The 98% deet kept most of the bugs at bay - the only real bites I had were on the bottom of my feet - never thought to put deet on the bottom of my feet.
Day two I saw my first live rock slide. We had more rapids to portage around and thought we would flip a few times but did not. We had two GoPros going so it will be fun to see the videos. We started to see signs of humans, a hand made raft for crossing the river at mid day and then towards evening a couple gold mining on the banks. The gold minors did not like us and would walk the shore line with a rifle giving us the evil eye. It is all illegal but a chronic widespread problem that little is done. Looked like 1800s it was so primitive. Basically open strip mining of the river banks.
We were now into the jungle and the desert plants were gone. It was interesting to see the change to jungle in a matter of under a mile or two. Very quick and now everything was lush and green, flocks of parrots, macaws, cliff sides full of honey bees, and the mountain sides spotted with bright pink trees. The mountain sides are now showing large areas of coca groves. The pic to the right is the first grove we saw. We also saw a drop or pickup points where someone would leave bags of coca leaves. Camp that night was a little intimidating as we were deep into the coca fields and just before we made camp we saw a few huts here and there. Balsa rafts was the only signs of river transportation but that meant someone would know we were there. Our camp locations were on sand bars with cliffs behind us so we were protected and could see anyone coming from the river. All turned out ok and we again had a fabulous meal, joked about gringo, and fell asleep under a full moon (not as bright in the jungle because the trees absorb a
lot of light compared to the canyon).
Day three was all jungle and the rapids were few and not as rough. We came across some people who wanted a ride across the river. One person had swam for a small raft on the other side and was going to "paddle board" person by person across. We gave them a ride so it saved them a lot of time, but they were going to another village to play a soccer game. The first real
village we saw we stopped to see where we were. "Gringo" was a spectacle. No one wanted to get off the boat and we only stayed a few minutes. I could tell my guides were "on alert" sorta speak. A few hours down river we came to a village called San Antonio. Busy little place with a few long boats, cars, trucks, etc. Again Gringo is a spectacle. The male adults eye me suspiciously and it seemed one person was assigned to sit about 20 feet away and monitor me. Women would not look at me. So my only interaction was with the kids - who can not wait to ask me questions and see what this is all about. I was told by my guides not to take pictures of the kids because it could be misinterpreted but I figured out that showing the kids my camera, it worked for them to take pictures - and they all wanted to be in them. Way too cute. One teenager told me he had seen two gringos go by on the river but I was the first he ever met. One boy who was a little chubby asked why I called him a pig. I was dumfounded but appearently something I said to one of my guides in English sounded like pig in Ashaninka. Thank goodness we got that clarified.
My guide decided we could hire a van to take us along the river road to another village where our driver was waiting, otherwise paddling on flat water was another day and not a lot of fun. Along the way the driver stopped and picked a bunch of coca leaves and gave them to me.
Everyone was having fun teasing the gringo about being around the coca fields. We are not even in the red zone! My guide at some point said that the village we drove through was a major cocaine producer. I could see why, but I would have never known. There are a lot of other products such as coca beans for chocolate and bananas. We did pass a pick up truck full of what looked like civilians with rifles. I was told local people protecting local interests. Not military. Local groups with guns was a common sight. I wondered if it was more like cartels protecting their turf. Either way everyone wanted me to keep a low profile and so did I. While driving through this region, we did come across constant check points with police and military, but this was completely different. The military did not stop us but waived us through. The police check points were different but they focused on the driver and his papers and I just kept quite in the far back like I belonged there. We eventually made it to our driver and then to San Francisco for the night drive up the death road.
I cannot say enough good things about Alfonso and his company, Apurimac Explorers and the team he put together to take me through the lower Apurimac.
I know I have left a lot out, but it is late and I head out at 7AM for the upper Apurimac in the morning. I will be white water rafting with them for the next 3 days. Then back to Cusco for a day. The drive back to San Francisco is 30 hours and more by bus. To avoid the drive between Cusco and Ayacucho (19 hours) I am going to fly to Lima Saturday and then from Lima to Ayacucho Sunday. Drive down the suicide mountain and pick up where we left off on the lower Apurimac. My jungle guide Cho will be with me on Sunday. The first we will head out by motor boat down the river to the Ene River and the red zone. I hope to post my next blog on Saturday.
So the plan is, we leave the hotel tonight at 3 this morning, fly to Ayacucho, 7 hour drive to San Francisco (on the death road) and spend the night in San Francisco. Leave Monday morning to a river village called Pichori and take a long boat like the two pictures shown (not the triple boat connected together for moving large cargo across the river, just one of the 3 like those). We will be in the long boat until we reach Atayala. At that point we will look for another boat which Cho thinks will be a bigger boat. He thinks it will take 3 or so days to get to Puerto Copa (a day at Santipo), two or so more days to then get to Atalaya which is the North side out of the red zone. With the time stopping at villages, I am not sure how much that will slow us down. We will figure out sleeping arrangements on the fly but he thinks we can do it by timing our stays in friendly villages rather than sleep on the river.
My last blog was me leaving for the upper Apurímac. What a blast this was. In the picture of me, that is the river to my left on the way down from the mountain pass. The final stretch of road to the river had 25 hair pin turns. Many consider this stretch of the river in the top ten best rivers to raft in the world. Definitely the best river I ever rafted. Most of the year you can only kayak. We flipped in a level 4 rapid. It took everything I had to navigate to safe water and was glad when Julio showed up in the kayak. On a level 5 rapid we had 4 of the 6 of us washed out of the raft. I was one of the two who luckily managed to hold on and not go overboard. It was surreal to watch my rafting mates being tumbled in the rapids. Everyone survived but some of them were banged up pretty bad. We had to portage around 4 other rapids. But this stretch of river is just one rapid after another most being level 3, 4, 5, and higher. In all everyone had a great time and the rafting crews of Amazonas Explorer really made it a fun time and were on the spot to make it as safe as possible. 
