The Andean trout shouts from below: “I never wanted to be sushi! Feliz Montezuma, gringo! Chinga te!”. Whenever something upset my stomach, it was always a posh western restaurant – never one of the dirty little cookshops. So it was this morning at four o’clock in Cusco.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Right at the start of the four-day Machu Picchu Inca Jungle Trail with a small, good group of Americans and Germans, downhill mountain biking, rafting and mountaineering are on the programme. (more…)
km 4.549: Cusco
The tourist bus lines all advertise that they would not travel this route to Cusco. CIVA drives the 830 kilometres over the highest Andean passes and the sharpest hairpin bends, 18 hours through the night and by double-decker spaceship.
At dawn, I wipe away the condensation in front of the panoramic seat on the top floor at the wrong moment. You wake up pretty quickly when a truck suddenly comes out of a bend to meet your spaceship as you overtake. On the left, the road descends almost vertically for 300 metres. (more…)
Huacachina: The desert roars
Huacachina is the only oasis in South America. A few hostels and shops plus plenty of jeep tours line a small palm-fringed body of water. The surrounding sand dunes are up to 200 metres high and very steep. The attraction is the jeep tours into the desert. Today I’m going to do what everyone does.
The improvised three-point seat belts are anything but superfluous. The jeeps are powerful and loud, and the lads really know how to chase them over the dunes. Two hours before sunset, we are hurled through a violent natural rollercoaster. Steep bend, uphill, bum takes off, mogul slope, full throttle. The sand dusts everything. (more…)
Paracas: Kiting with flamingos
Mad Max was definitely born a good 30 years ago on the Panamericana south of Lima. Four roofless walls in the middle of nowhere proudly proclaim the possibility of renting them as a restaurant. A few abandoned houses stand on the sand. High walls around them protect the nothingness from the nowhere. 20 ice cream stalls once offered “Helado Artesanal”. In between, rubbish heaps burn again and again.
A large display proclaims a golden future for your family in an urbanisation somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The building site was abandoned years ago. Sand dunes, dust, some petrochemicals, a steelworks, hundreds of lorries full of scrap metal and incredible poverty. This is the most desolate area I have ever travelled through. (more…)
km 3.315: Lima? Puta Madre!
The bus to Lima, 20 hours and 1,300 kilometres to the south, is a spaceship on ten wheels. Board service and reclining seats are crowned by the entertainment programme. Vin diesels at full volume through three outbreaks of human error that are hard to beat.
On the left, the poorest street villages and dusty steppe like in northern Brazil pass by on the Panamericana. On the other side, the sun conjures up a sunset over the Pacific that even Bob Ross would go for. Then the whole bus shouts: “Gooool!” Peru has qualified for the World Cup. Peru is bitterly poor – and its joy is a mixture of Sambodrome, religious fanaticism and GDR. For days. (more…)
Full Moon Party & Kitesurf @ Máncora
Out of the nine-hour night bus from Ecuador at six in the morning. By tuk-tuk to the last beach hostel. Sleep in, set up the board, pump up, out onto the water. 22 knots sideon on an endless sandy beach behind wild waves. A flock of pelicans passes by. His soloist fishes undisturbed next to my passing kiteboard in the Pacific.
The waves break narrow and close to the beach, no comparison to Santa Marianita with its endless smooth waves at pleasant intervals. The wind here is more powerful, and sideon jumps are more exciting over ten centimetres post-shorebreak anyway. Máncora should be higher up on the worldwide kitesurfing map – plenty of space and lots on offer. There have never been more than seven kiters on two kilometres of beach within a week. (more…)
The Author
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.