Southern Peru

Paracas & Ica

With the car problems of northern Peru behind us, we headed on south. It’s always a nervous time when you’ve just fixed the car. The time shortly after a fix seems like a time the problem is mostly likely to occur again. If you go long enough without the problem, then you’re probably as likely to experience a new problem as much as the old one – or hopefully no problems at all for a while. In any event, the repairs in Lima seemed to have held and we pushed on with a relatively short journey (by Peruvian standards) the four hours to arrive in Pisco.

Naturally, we assumed that we’d stop in at Pisco, the namesake of the spirit, for a Pisco Sour. To our disappointment, it appeared that there wasn’t a single open bar or accommodating restaurant in all of Pisco. Even after a drive down to the ocean’s edge where we assumed we would see a string of restaurants and watering holes looking out onto the pacific, we only found one open bar and they looked at us funny when we asked for a Pisco Sour. Evidently, we were in the wrong place.

It caused me to muse a little about the relationship with the Peruvian’s relationship with the ocean. In Australia, the US and Canada where I collectively spend most of my time, homes and establishments with an ocean or lake view are prime real estate. In Peru, they don’t build near the water and don’t seem particularly interested in it at all. Oftentimes beaches are inaccessible, vacant or obscured by levies along the roadside. A curious detail.

Paracas proved to be what we had imagined Pisco to be – an oceanside town with restaurants, bars, a view of the water and many fishing boats filling a relatively picturesque harbour. We got our Pisco Sours and celebrated with a few – a cheers to being back on the road and making progress again.

A late afternoon visit to Peninsula de Paracas nature reserve rewarded us with a beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean as we drove through the sand dunes.

Seeking out our first Pisco Sour. I’d later learn that there’s a bitter dispute between Chile and Peru about who originally created pisco

Wistfully staring at the Pacific Ocean towards Australia

Sunset from the dunes of the Paracas natural reserve

Yes, I know, I take a lot of pictures of the car. But it’s very photogenic (or at least beauty is in the eye of the beholder)

Having grown up in Perth (Australia), sunsets over the ocean were such a commonplace thing and something I’ve missed since moving away

Arriving in Ica was another case of finding a normal and functional but not overly interesting town. But we had noticed something unique during the drive in there that I hadn’t seen for a long time – vineyards. They felt wholly out of place in the dry desert, but sure enough looked healthy and our attention was piqued. A quick internet search of local wineries and we were on our way to Tacama, potentially the most notable Peruvian winery and with a rich history dating back hundreds of years in collaboration with French winemakers.

The vineyard offers tours in English and as well as tastings of their wines. The unique part of this wine tour, different to the many that I have taken before, was that as well as their reds and whites, they also make pisco. I had no idea that pisco was a grape derivative – I’d never really given the drink a whole lot of thought truth be told. Essentially the strong liquor is the result of distilling fermented grape juice into a high proof spirit using copper pot stills. An entirely fascinating day.

Having started a wine business with one of my best mates back in Australia about five years ago, wine is more than a drink for me – it’s a hobby, a passion and a big part of my life; as it is for many of my friends in the wine industry back home. And to my Australian readers, shameless plug – go find yourself a bottle of Black & Ginger with yours truly being the Ginger half of the wine producing duo. So in light of that background, was more than pleased to find myself at the oldest winery in Peru that makes a wine product I knew absolutely nothing about.

Hacienda Bodega Tacama

An impressive on-site production capability

As well as the charming old homestead

What better way to lift everyone’s mood than wine

Taste testing the pisco range at Tacama

Having driven through much of the country, I never would have guessed from the climate that any wine came from Peru but then Peru was full of surprises

Vineyards are good for the soul

An oasis from the many days of driving through deserts

Some thoughts on styles of travel

The winery is a nice change of scenery and a dash of luxury to contrast with our recent experiences in Peru – largely staying in $5 per person per night hostels and occasionally in the rooftop tent. Modest would be an understatement to describe some of the places we’d been sleeping and the food we’d been eating. As younger backpackers and without jobs to sustain their travels, the girls were on a much tighter budget than I was. And in part for this reason the first cracks in this travelling threesome began to appear.

I’ve given a lot of thought to who I travel with, if anyone. There are so many different styles of travel and budgets. A true overlander will by-and-large prefer to sleep in their truck and steer clear of cities. A stereotypical backpacker scrimps and saves and stays in cheap hostels and follows the highlights along a well-trodden trail. A short-stay vacationer will splash out on hotels and all the activities, making the best use of time and pays less attention to money. The hitchhiker is like a backpacker but more frugal and optimising for a long adventure without having to go home. The digital nomad will base themselves in cities for longer periods of time and interlace travel with their work and living abroad. And within these, there are those who travel in groups and those who prefer to travel alone.

I don’t believe I fit any of these stereotypes but rather encapsulate many of their different elements. I work on the road so I need time, space and decent internet to fulfil my obligations as they come and go – often in hotels and cities. Because I work, I don’t have such a tight budget as the backpacker, hitchhiker or typical overlander. I enjoy a sleeping alone in a desert or a workshop as much as I do a nice hotel, a traditional dinner with a local family in the jungle as much as a world class degustation with matched wines, an off-road trail as much as an opera at a colonial theatre (ok, that’s a lie, I’d take the off-road trail over the theatre any day).

Add to this, my preference in South America has been to generally travel alone. It means meeting more people, especially locals. It means practicing Spanish and more opportunities to learn the language. You are exposed to more people will more different lives than yours from back home. And you get to choose what you do and how you do it and how long you take.

And there’s one other element to all this. The joy of driving a continent, of being an overlander, is to get off the tourist trail and discover for yourself. To stop in places that others don’t go because the bus doesn’t stop there. To drive into a desert and find solitude there because you can. It’s a freedom beyond all other modes of travel (but at the same time it comes with a unique set of challenges and responsibilities). So the longer I travel, the more allergic I become to finding myself on the trail, doing the done thing, following the road frequently travelled. If it’s easy to get there, if there’s a lot of tourists, if everyone knows about it, I don’t want to be there. Being forced onto the tourist trail wasn’t sitting well with me.

Because of these things, I found my patience with the girls was strained already and we hadn’t even covered a fraction of the ground we’d discussed covering together. At this point I resolved to suck it up and hold out until as close to the Bolivian border as I could.

Huacachina

With the mornings tensions difused by several glasses of wine and cheese from Tacama, we headed for the oasis in the Huacachina desert. My information from iOverlander was that you could drive into the dunes and set up your tent overlooking the small oasis town. It was not to be – evidently, they had banned private cars a year or so earlier (around 2018 I believe). I was so looking forward to a night in the tent overlooking the lights of the oasis but it was not to be so we found a cheap hostel a few kilometres back towards Ica.

Huacachina is a certainly an interesting spot. Firstly, because in my life, I don’t recall ever being at an oasis before – not like this, not like the ones from the movies. And while I was set on driving the dunes myself, I was happy to have someone else beat up his car to thrash us up and down the steep sandy banks of the dune system that surrounds the oasis. The dune buggy we were in was a Nissan Patrol frame, Chevy engine and the rest a custom roll cage and seating system and felt very Mad Max. The buggies stopped in the middle of our tour to let us go sand boarding which thrilled the girls but for me in a silent protest of the touristy and popular nature of the thing, I refused and took photos instead.

To me the most interesting part of that excursion was to turn our backs on the oasis and gaze over the sea of houses littering the back side of the dunes. A whole city in the sand ( I was told half with running water and electricity, the other half without). It seemed like such a strange place to build and I wanted to know more. While the girls were getting their jollies sliding down the sand, I was planning the evening. I wanted to explore the desert.

Huacachina Oasis: a series of restaurants and hotels surround the lake while sand boarding, dune buggies and hiking the dunes are options outside

I find the contours of the sand dunes mesmerising

These custom dune buggies (basically reconfigured old Nissan Patrols on beat up leaf-spring suspension) will take you for a wild ride through the sand dunes. In the end I’m happy we took their trucks and not mine - I probably would tipped over my high-centre-of-gravity Discovery

My Dutch travel companions

The curious settlement behind the Huacachina Oasis

Way more vehicles than there were tourists to take. Most sat idle and interfered with otherwise great photos of the oasis

Little human specs braving the hot sand and sun for the best vantage point over the oasis

It was surprisingly hard to get a good photo of the oasis and capture it all properly and in the context of the dunes. This was my best effort

We didn’t stick around into the evening though I wish I had for a good night shot

Playa Carhaus, Peninsula de Paracas

The night before I had wanted to sleep in the desert but it wasn’t to be. That just made me more motivated the next day to find a way, seek some adventure and expose the girls to my style of travel. So after a morning of the oasis and everyone had exhausted the relatively finite amount of fun one can squeeze out of the place, I had developed a plan – speaking to a local with Land Cruiser, he told me about a road that exits behind the sand dunes, passes the city of houses in the dunes and continues into the Paracas reserve and out to the ocean. And so we went.

The drive was much longer than anticipated. The rough road felt like it would shake my car to pieces and I couldn’t find a speed that felt good over the endless ripples in hard dirt road - slow or fast was just as painful. Nevertheless we pushed on and with the fascinating sand town disappearing behind us, pretty soon we’d driven two hours through empty desert without seeing a soul. From the GPS, we could see that the ocean was close. That was our goal, a quiet campsite sheltered from the wind looking out west over the Pacific and watch the sunset with a glass of wine in hand and this is more or less what we found (less shelter from the wind).

Curiously within moments of arriving and feeling like we were the only people on earth, a scruffy Peruvian walked up to us. Needless to say, we were surprised to see anyone out there in the remote desert. As it transpired, he had just started walking the ~10km to the nearest settlement to seek assistance. Their battery had died while their group had fished from the rocks by the ocean all day. They were extremely lucky that we had ventured in and set up camp only a few minutes walk away. I left the girls briefly to drive over to their car, jump start it and they were on their way.

The night was cold and windy but wine, a pasta meal and bottle of rum kept us warm and happy. And like the time further north in Llanganuco, three in a rooftop tent is a good recipe for the cold.

The drive out was much better than in. Heading north to exit the park out into Paracas, rather than the rough road back to Ica, we made our way over the packed sand and weaved our way through the dunes. A few times we stopped to get some of my favourite drone footage of the past year - the car passing slowly through the lonely desert in between the giant dunes.

Camp for the night

Another Pacific sunset

Our newly purchased Tacama wines in plastic camp wine glasses

Drone shot of our camp for the night

The view down Playa Carhaus

Drone follow of us making trails towards Paracas the next morning

The roads here were largely optional and the maps provided the route. Although I did see a few warnings on iOverlander about the white salt flats in the background of this shot - evidently a few overlanders had gotten a little cocky and bogged themselves in there before

Helping out some Peruvian fisherman with a dead battery in an inopportune place. They were lucky we were passing by otherwise they had a long walk to get assistance

Nazca

Nazca seems like a place to visit as we make our way south. I was curious about the famous lines and, while there had never been a burning desire to go out of my way to see them, our journey through to Bolivia would take us right by them.

As we entered the outskirts of town and realised we were amongst the lines, I quite enjoyed pulling over to the side of the road and getting out the drone to take a look. I loved seeing the designs in the dirt take shape in my camera screen as the drone ascended to a reasonable vantage point and circling around our position to look for more.

Arriving into the town, I used the excuse of a sandy and dirty car to get some space from the girls and went to find a car wash. I chatted with and helped the two Venezuelan guys to wash my car, cleaning up the rubbish, pulling everything out and re-packed it. While driving overland and your car is also your home, its contents your only possessions, there’s something very satisfying and cathartic about pulling everything out, cleaning up, organising, taking stock and putting it all back neatly. One can endlessly find chores to do on the road like checking and topping up the oil, filling jerry cans and bottles with water and striving to find the best and neatest arrangement for your inventory.

A large part of the next day is spent hanging around the airport and waiting for the flight over the lines. It’s disorganised and could be frustrating if you haven’t already acclimatised to the South American pace of life and way of doing things. Indeed the flight was enjoyable and the lines interesting but there was a distinct lack of information in regards to the history and story behind them. I resolved to research it in my own time and never did - maybe one day when this adventure is over, I can dedicate time to researching and learning more about the many things I’ve seen.

More interesting and fun than the flight was finding out there was a fiesta on in the central square that night. The centre of Nazca was drunk and rowdy and the perfect excuse to get some contact with the locals and join in on the fun. We drank Pisco Sours in the park until the party was over and then, while wandering home, spent 30-minutes trying to help a drunk Peruvian guy find his car (who of course should not have been anywhere near his vehicle in his state). We ended up just walking up and down the same street, back and forth passed the same cars while he drunkenly groped at Sanne but we were amused by each other and the oddness of the situation and she took no offence. Thankfully we never found his car.

We pulled over here and flew the drone to see if we could see the lines around us

Patiently waiting at the airport for our flight over the lines

I asked them if they’d let me fly (I’m a bit rusty but I’m sure it’s like riding a bike). Unsurprisingly they said no

The Nazca lines from the plane: The spider

The condor

Clockwise from bottom left: The hands, the tree and what I assume is a lizard

This is a drone image we captured from the side fo the road. It was unclear if it was part of the main group of lines, not being in the style of the above images. But I nevertheless enjoyed exploring from the air

Poquio

As we head out of Nazca, I’m feeling uninspired by the approach we’ve taken in Peru and how similar, I’m sure, this experience is to everyone else’s. There have moments of brilliance and curiosity and we’ve stumbled into some strange and fun situations but for the most part it’s safe and along the well-trodden path.

The road ahead, however, excites me as we point towards the centre of the country and face many days of driving to get to Cusco the hard way. Reading online about the route from Nazca via Poquio to Abancay, many people tell stories of landslides, being stuck for days and the remoteness of it all. We’re getting off the track and I’m coming alive again. In fact, I don’t even care about the goal we’ve ostensibly set for ourselves – some natural pools somewhere between us and Cusco – I’m just excited to be headed into the unknown again.

Leaving Nazca, the first stop was Poquio. It seemed like a safe place to fill up with gas and rest for the night before covering some reasonably long distances on unknown terrain the following day. We expected nothing from this small town; some chicken and rice, clean beds and a half-decent service station with some 95-octane gasoline would have been a great outcome. But it would end up being my favourite experience in the whole of Peru.

Wandering into the town plaza, it became immediately obvious that this town wasn’t commonly frequented by many foreigners. An elderly man called us over to sit with him on the bench. He inquired about our journeys, toured us through the main town church off the main square, introduced us to his friends and ultimately wrapped us up in conversation for an hour or so while a young boy polished up my boots.

I think we may have spent all day with that man and his friends, happily chatting, had we not been approached by a lovely middle-aged woman who took a similar interest in us. She told us it was the last day of the Fiesta del Agua (the annual celebration of water). Of course we took her up on the invitation and followed her across town, wondering what this fiesta will hold.

We had no idea what we were in for. The party was well underway and would go all through the afternoon and evening. There was dancing, drinking, traditional live music and it appeared as though the whole town had turned out for it, many in traditional attire.

We were introduced to the festival organiser who was clearly a respected and senior member of the community. We became their private guests and were treated like royal visitors.

The special thing about the fiesta was that we were a fascination to all of the locals. Everyone was curious about us. They would beg us to join them in the circles to dance with them, bring us drinks and ask to have photos with us. For our part, we were delighted to be a part of their festival. It was such a mutual fascination and genuine experience – us enjoying the invitation to their annual festivities as honoured guests and their great pleasure that we were so obviously enjoying a cherished celebration.

I don’t think there’s more to say. The smiles on our faces and those of the people of Poquio say it all.

Our new best friend, the man in the left of frame. We talked for over an hour with him in the main town square. He was so pleased to have us a company and tell us everything he could think to talk about

I tend to like my boots dirty but it’s a good excuse to give some money to the local kids

Sanne enjoying the company of our new guide and friend

On our walk to the fiesta, the streets were vastly empty (presumably with everyone already at the party)

The festival organiser. He would frequently dance in the centre of the circles. Between the dancing, the people of the town would come to pin money to his vest

Adorable ladies in traditional dress

Our host, centre-left of frame and the organiser with the sash in the foreground

The centre of attention. From the attention Sanne got, one got the distinct impression they don’t see many blonds here

One of many times a local would ask for picture with us - and of course, we would make sure we got our own photographic memento

Some of the Peruvian kids were too cute

I love that in every photo you can see someone pointing their camera at Sanne

These women asked for a photo and after it was taken, I kissed the top of the hat of the girl in the right of frame. Their reaction and mine was hilarious

The mood of this day is indescribable. The whole day everyone had such a happy disposition and were having so much fun

I love this photo. I had my camera out and was panning around looking for photo opportunities. I saw this girl looking at me and indicated to my camera so as to ask permission if I could take a photo of her. She nodded agreeably. Her face and smile are just so beautiful, innocent and happy; and the candid shot of her mother beside her equally caught up in the magic of the day. It’s my favourite photo of the festival and makes me happy looking at it and recalling the memories

Crossing the country to Abancay:

Leaving Poquio, we have a disaster day of driving. Roads that supposedly exist according to Google Maps disappear and we’re forced to improvise our route. We cross countryside, off-road trails, go through small villages and vast expanses of open land. We saw guanaco (or llama … or alpacas … or vicuna … or all other them - I still can’t tell the difference).

For me the highlight was filling up at a ‘service station’ that turned out to be a cute indigenous family on the plains and their adorable son who played with a stick walking around my car while his mother filled up the fuel tank in a series of pours from a watering can.

One of the many relatives of the llama. I stopped trying to tell them apart but the choices are llama, alpaca, vicuna or guanaco

There were shepherds nearby so I guess these many have belonged to someone. But they aren’t fenced in and are a very common sight across the open plains

This kid couldn’t be cuter. I must have taken 50 photos of him while we played and waited for his mother to fill up the tank

Getting some much needed gasoline on the road to Millpu

Out the back of the ‘service station’

Piscinas Naturales de Millpu

The piscinas (natural pools) at Millpu were incredibly difficult to get to and while the map made makes it look like it’s broadly on the way from Nazca to Cusco, I recall it adding significant time and effort (and adventure) to get there.

The pools themselves are quite beautiful. There were few western tourists there and, from the sample set of the day, presumably more frequented by locals of the area. It doesn’t warrant many hours once there and is only about 45 minutes walk from the parking lot to the top of the canyon. I certainly enjoyed the challenge of trying to pilot the drone up the canyon flying only by the vision of the camera around the bends.

For me it was probably more about the challenge of getting there than the pools themselves. There was multiple hours of reading and research involved in figuring out the best route and how possible it was. And then multiple trails and off-road routes to get to where we needed to. In part it was difficult due to the fact that Google Maps lists another Millpu four hours outside of Lima (with pictures of the Piscinas Naturales de Millpu) as well as owing to the multiple spellings of the name with Mullpu also listed elsewhere. It just goes to show that it’s not an overly visited destination.

Aguas Turquesas (torquoise waters)

Looking down onto the pools from the trail above

Piscinas Naturales de Millpu

Driving up to Hidroelectrica

By this stage, the tensions between myself and the girls owing to our different travel styles had reached a sufficient level that it was time to abandon them. I was still managing to enjoy the adventure but it was in spite of them, not because of them. We all had different plans about how we were to tackle Machu Picchu and I saw my window. Stopping in the forgettable city of Abancay for the night, I said that I would be leaving them there and that they could catch a bus the rest of the way to Cusco.

At this stage, I was determined to travel solo. I needed to rebound hard in the other direction – having spent so much time with people, I would overreact the other way and look to spend an extended amount time by myself adventuring alone again.

Heading towards Machu Picchu, I was determined to go an alternative route and avoid the swarms of tourists as best I could. Again, I was fooled by Google Maps which suggests there is a road in to Hidroelectric from the south. Arriving to the area, I was told it was it wasn’t a driveable route and had to enter via Ollantaytambo from the north. This blew out my plans and was forced to drive most of the way to Cusco and double back to the northern entrance.

I greatly enjoyed the drive along the cliff edges on the ascent up to Hidroelectrica and when I arrived, there was a café that doubled as a parking lot for those needing to leave their car behind and hike the rest of the way to Aguas Calientes.

The road to Hidroelectrica

Getting as close to Machu Picchu as possible by myself and avoiding the hoards of tourists as best I could

Drone follow as I wind my way along the cliff edges to Hidroelectrica

It’s really a stunning drive and a preview of the many similar routes I would drive in Bolivia

Back driving solo. Just me, my car, my music and my way

The car would rest here for a couple nights while I hike into Aguas Calientes and up to Machu Picchu

The result of not being able to enter from the south and many extra hours of driving around to the northern entrance was that I arrived comically late to Hidroelctrica and without much daylight to walk the four hours into Aguas Calientes. Packing my bag quickly and paying for parking, I headed off along the tracks with the sun low in the sky and warming my back. While the first hour was fine, the other two or three hours were more or less in pitch black, following the railway track alone in the dark until eventually the bright lights of the bustling Aguas Calientes appeared in the distance.

The beauty of arriving late was that the trail was more or less all to myself

The last photo before the darkness set in and I followed the tracks alone by torchlight in the otherwise pitch black

Machu Picchu

There was a certain irony about ditching my backpacker friends to race to Machu Picchu. I was trying to get back to solitude, adventure and my way of doing things… but then racing head long into one of the world’s biggest touristy shit shows. While I loved the challenge of getting to Aguas Calientes, the rest was lamentable.

It was my second time in Machu Picchu, having been almost exactly ten years earlier. I guess the privilege of a second visit and extensive time on the road put me in a unique position to be critical of the place and the sheer numbers they allow in every day. But the word ‘circus’ is certainly one that was on repeat in my mind.

There are some people who no doubt dream of visiting here one day, will be prepared, book early tickets, get up well before the sun rises, experience some solitude at the site and have a great experience. The potential is still exists to enjoy this natural wonder – and it is truly and amazing site.

But my advice for those who go because it’s on the list of the wonders of the world (and not really, it’s on the ‘New7Wonders’ list) or because someone told them they ‘need to go’, maybe try a little harder to figure out what hasn’t been discovered yet (or isn’t overrun yet), what you’re passionate about and how to spend your valuable time away from the office and make your own adventure. It’s easy to build up expectations for something as renowned as Machu Picchu and even easier to be disappointed when you find yourself shuffling single-file behind 40 children in a school group and an otherwise endless snake of tourists and selfie-takers from the entry gate all the way through to the exit.

With a 10am entry ticket thanks to my late arrival the night before, I had no choice but to wait through the morning for my chance to enter the gates

Proof that you can get a shot of the ruins in the thick of the midday throngs of people. However, the reality is that right behind me are 30 people waiting to take this exact photo for their Instagram. Following this shot, I turned my attention to capturing Machu Picchu as it really is, which is to say, my camera was pointed at the people and what I saw in front of my face rather than trying to get shots to fool myself and my audience that I was practically discovering this untouched wonder

The highlight of Machu Picchu for me was getting the f*** out of there. My car was waiting for me, as was an adventure into the Bolivian Amazon

Cusco

It was with some dread I entered the city of Cusco, scarred by the memories of the crowds in Machu Picchu. My fear was that Cusco had gone the same way as Aguas Calientes (the town at the base of the ruins) – transforming itself from a quaint little mountain town into a finely-tuned tourist machine. I was extremely pleased to see that this wasn’t the case. Cusco was and is still a charming, clean and picturesque colonial city and if anything I found it more delightful this time than the last.

It’s a little squeezy at times driving a fully-kitted Land Rover down these narrow streets

Cusco old town really is quite a romantic and lovely part of the world

Try as I may to spend some time alone, I did find myself with some new friends quite quickly in Cusco. Magnolia and Fred would be good company for a couple days while I rested and prepared to leave Peru

Lessons learned

Peru was an interesting experience and in retrospect I could have done it very differently. As a result it was the cause of much reflection. In reading through my notes, I found the below I had written while in Aguas Calientes and I think it sums things up nicely as to my thoughts on travel styles which I had really considered over the period:

I find myself asking one question over and over as I travel: what will bring the most adventure?

Another way of putting it is this: what decision should I make that will bring me experiences that aren’t regularly experienced by other travellers?

Sitting in Aguas Calientes, I have mixed feelings right now. Half of me is proud of how I arrived here and the adventurous day that brought me here. The other half is almost sick that I’m doing what every other backpacker, traveller and tourist is doing.

I’ve developed quite a distaste for the formulaic backpacker. You could almost write the story of what they will do and see with only knowing a rough sketch of their plans. There’s almost a rule book of what they have to do and have to see, a predetermined list from which they will be ticking things off.

It’s made me even more resolute that I need to follow the path less travelled. I don’t want a cookie cutter story about seeing all the ‘must sees’. A tourist who happens to have a car.

Maybe it’s why I like breaking down and getting stuck. It shatters the tourist agenda and puts me deep in a different world.

I’m glad I will be staying in Buenos Aires some time. Like in Colombia, it will be a chance to dig deep into a country and culture and experience it truly.

In the meantime, I need to dig harder, put myself into unusual scenarios, follow more rabbits down rabbit holes and avoid travelling with people that don’t share this mindset.

I have a capable off-road vehicle so that I can access places that others can’t. So, to be sitting with a bunch of tourists in Aguas Calientes seems like a real affront to my ethos as an overlander. Going forward, I will take the road less travelled.  

In those words, I had subconsciously paraphrased snippets of the Robert Frost poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ which concludes:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference.

So, with this lesson firmly seeded in my head, I left Cusco for the Bolivian border and an eagerness to keep doing things differently. And my first goal – head deep into the Bolivian Amazon which would be an adventure indeed.