Lima at last

Ahoyhoy,

I hope you are all well. I have made it to Lima but at times I feel like only just despite nothing that serious happening. To fil you in on recent events:

Wednesday:

I got the Incan King{s name wrong, it was Pachacutec; thanks Prof Nilo.

Thursday:

I finally got round to mounting the newest member of the Tiggers Travels Team. Senor Llama Tigger:

He seemed happy playing at wing mirror. We set off hoping to get to Nazca despite the warning from our guide of the day before Prof Nilo that it was a very long drive despite the distance. He was right. It was a massively twisty mountain road but it wasn´t this that made things slow going. There must have been a massive amount of rain because during the course of the day I passed, in one way or another, 50+ rockslides and earth avalanches:

But with views like this, who can complain?

I guessed at what must be coming for me and it didn´t take long to appear:

The lucky bit, as there was no one trying to clear the road, was the water you can see below the earth in the picture. This wanted to follow Newton{s principles and head down the hill and it did this by forcing a tyre wide channel between the curb and the mound. I walked through with one foot on the curb, one on the earth and Sir Humphrey shooting dirt behind him between my legs. None of the bypassers offered to help so I didn´t feel too guilty in splattering some of the phone videoers hoping for disaster with mud. Bad Tigger.

Alas it wasn{t long until fate had a second go at halting my progress this time by sprewing fast flowing water and a small hill{s worth of stone and mud across the road:

It was fun watching the bulldozer work and after 30mins I watched a coach, lorry and Hilux have ago so I went for it too. In not having much skill I opted for mucho power and blasted through but 3/4 mile round the bend later I refound the same impromptu river having had a second go and better go and disrupting traffic this time requiring two bulldozer and a large lorry to pull out the stuck one in the mess. After 45mins with the same technichue of wait, wait and then loads of throttle I was through this one too despite now being wet from toe to knee. As I recommenced my journey I was delighted to check Emily and see the road ahead of me was not my route. Things could well have been worse!

But this hadn´t stop the mountains trying but most large spills had a path forced through or round them:

At around 5pm I pulled over in a town considering stopping but with less than 200miles covered I decided to head for the next town and camp there. This started as a good idea considering the route:

But having mistakenly thought I was heading generally down the eastern side of the Andes we headed up and up and it became darker and darker. By 6pm it was deep dusk, it had been raining constantly for 1/2hr, there was no sign of habitation and at 4400m I ran straight into this:

Nice. It was around zero to one deg and after the snow came total darkess, more rain and more snow. It was totally horrid. I came across a minibus and decided to follow his lights until I got somewhere fearful that this might not be until midnight in Nazca. After a truely horrid 1 1/2hrs the altitude lessened, the rain eased off and I saw a carpet of lights in the distance like Vegas in the desert. Vegas it was not. It was Puquio, a crusty little town, bar a pretty white church, full of rude people. I did not like it one little bit but I was frozen to my core and not exactly in the best of dispositions. Nevertheless I was safe and warming up in a crappy and overpriced hostal; I had to sleep in my thermals!

I case of crashing computers I´ll leave it there and continue in the next blog.