Day 17

 37,262 – 37,438   176  Miles today (14,738 Miles Overall)

Cajamarca, Peru – Pallasca, Peru

I slept like a baby last night and I’m sure I would have after yesterday’s long day of riding. The hostel I stayed at had the most comfy covers and beds I didn’t even want to get out of bed this morning. I loaded up the bike after pulling it out of the hostel and started my ride towards Pallasca. I was still contemplating which way to take here.

I had dreams all night that I side swiped someone’s car with my bike and I was running from them followed by another dream of someone telling me the road I was going to take today in the mountains was closed and not passable by bike. It gave me a bit of anxiety because I honestly wasn’t sure if someone told me last night or it was a dream. I’m pretty sure it was a dream after thinking about it for a bit today.

My gps said I had 180 miles to ride and maybe about 10 miles out of town I turned down a dirt road. Really google, 180 miles of dirt? Ugh this was going to be a long long day but this is what i’m chasing after right now eh? This anxiety isn’t leaving me at all once I hit the dirt road. What if I got a flat, what if my bike broke down, what if my bike rolls off the edge of a cliff. I have no service out there and I’ll be in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Onward I went. I did about 20 shitty miles of dirt riding and at one point the road opened up to a huge field covered in mud and I had no idea which way to go anymore. I was praying it wouldn’t be like this most of the way. It wasn’t, it got much much much worse. After about 20 miles of dirt it opened up to paved roads which was nice for a bit and then it turned to shitty half paved half dirt roads. I rode for about 4 hours and stopped at this big lake to get food since I didn’t have breakfast yet.

After I ate I got back on the road and the turn to go up into the mountains was right after where I stopped for food. GPS said 7 hours for 110 miles. Interesting. That gets me an average of about 12-15MPH. What the fuck did I just sign up for. As I pulled up to the dirt road I noticed it was closed and this lady wouldn’t let me past. She said it was closed for a while for construction.

Well shit there goes my plan. My other option from this morning was a 10 hour ride over the mountains to Pallasca or a 14 hour ride down to the ocean and back up which was maybe triple the distance. I hit some towns on my GPS to get me closer to Pallasca without taking the long way around and it seems that at the next town it found me another route through the mountains.

I made my way up the small streets which turned into dirt roads and then I was in the middle of nowhere climbing up a mountain with sheer peaks to the right of me. I stopped to take some pictures and kept wondering if I should go ahead with this route but I am dumb and needed some adventure so I went ahead with it. After about an hour of riding in the rocky terrain I decided that I probably can’t turn around at this point. I’m committed now!

I kept looking around in the distance to see if I could see where i’m going to pop out but GPS said I have another 60 miles to go and I’m barely covering any ground. I think I screwed up taking this path and this looks like it’s about to be brutal. I kept riding and riding slowly trying to cover some ground and at one point I came around a bend. What I saw I was not happy with at all. It was a steep incline with a huge drop off to the left, the path was maybe 5-6′ wide with boulders and huge rocks everywhere. It wasn’t clean at all and there was a young kid walking a bicycle up it. After doing some dirt biking with gramps I learned this was a make or break point right here. I couldn’t stop or else getting momentum to get up this thing would be impossible. So I hit the gas and stood up, blasting through the boulders trying my best to keep the bike to the right of the path because what happens here is a rock hits my front tire and shoots it off one way and then another hits my rear and shoots it off the other direction and off my bike goes down this cliff to the left. I was trying to relax and all I heard in the back of my head was gramps saying “relax, keep to the right, don’t stiffen up and keep the speed up junior”

I blasted past this kid and my speed was good but I was scared as hell. I knew that if my bike flung off to the left my trip was over and I was never getting my bike out of this ravine. At this point I was 100% committed there was zero chance of me turning around. I kept thinking to myself you’re an idiot Marko, you always get yourself in some bullshit for no reason instead of having an easy day. I got to the point of the climb and took a little break. I was trying to catch my breath. I’m at 12-13k feet and it’s 45 degrees out but it feels like it’s 90 with how much I have been working to keep this bike on the road. I took a little breather and kept on going. The path wasn’t getting any better but I’m in the shit now and there’s no going back only forward.

I had a few river crossings to get over and ended up dropping my bike in one of them and got quite wet. Lifting up my bike at that altitude sucked pretty bad and I was out of breath. I dropped my bike maybe 2-3 more times and one was on purpose as I hit a rock and my front wheel turned towards a cliff so I dumped the bike on purpose so it wouldn’t go over. PHEW THAT WAS CLOSE!

A few hours of riding and I came up to some rock processing plant or whatever it was and some guy gave me directions on which way to go to get to Pallasca and I was on the right path. About an hour later I finally passed the first truck and he was coming head on to me towing a big trailer. I passed him and kept going and going and going. Half the time I had the engine off going downhill at about 3-5MPH just trying to not let the bike fall.

I eventually came to a bar blocking the road with a lock around it. I sat there for about 5 minutes yelling Hola but no one came around. I jumped over the barricade and walked towards a small booth. No one inside. I started poking around and found the keys to the lock so I unlocked the lock, opened the gate and bolted out of there. A man came walking out of the woods a few seconds after I passed through. A few minutes later there was another gate but a man there wrote down my plate number and name and let me pass. I was so close to getting out of there and I wasn’t letting anyone stop me telling me to turn around because there was nowhere to go!

I eventually made it back to a main road and to my surprise it was a dirt road again. I had another 60 miles to go to Pallasca and it looked like the rest was going to be on dirt roads. My bike is taking a god damn beating with these dirt roads and all the bumps everywhere. I must have bottomed out my forks maybe 10 times today along with bashing my skid plate into huge boulders. I have a newfound respect for this bike and the machinery BMW makes. I eventually went to a big mountain near a river and down I started to go maybe 4-5k feet. The roads were freshly paved and the turns were incredible after being on dirt roads since 8Am. The turns were beautiful; it felt like I was on a race track. I was ripping down the mountain and then when I got to the base I contemplated pitching my tent by the river but it would just mean more riding for me tomorrow if I stopped so early now.

I made it up the next mountain  for about 30-40 minutes and finally pulled into Pallasca. It took me about 15 minutes to find a hostel in this tiny town because the one I found online isn’t answering the door. I paid 40 soles for a night, unloaded my bike, got some food, and went up to the roof to watch the sunset along with the view of all the mountains I just rode on. It was a lovely way to end the day with the view. I walked around town a bit to take some pictures and hung out on the roof alone enjoying the view, quiet and the sunset. I also had a close call. When I opened my top box to unload everything into the hotel room I noticed my bottle of water opened up and about a liter of water was in my box. My camera was slightly wet along with my laptop and everything else in there but thankfully everything works. That was close.

I am done, my body is done, my bike is somehow still running with no flats and I am so damn thankful I made it out of there with my bike in one piece. I’m pretty sure I used every ounce of skill I had to make it up that one part and god damn am I happy gramps took me out riding dirt a few times these last two summers.