Day 18, Arequipa to Chivay, Coca Canyon, Peru

Arequipa turned out to be a lovely town, 2380 metres above sea level but it was very warm and sunny when we left. The clocks went back another 2 hours when we crossed the border into Peru and we are now 5 hours behind UK time. After breakfast we replaced a dodgy ball joint (on the car) and gave The Mighty One a good service. Later we wondered into town which was a pleasant experience, many of the buildings are colonial era Spanish style and the focal point is a big square which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, it's where everyone seems to meet up on Sundays afternoon.
After a quick lunch - alpaca and chips (this should be on the Brompton Lakes Christmas dinner menu?) we set off for Chivay, a relatively short drive of 160 kms with no controls or timing as it's a transit day today. We reached the highest point of the rally, 4886 metres above sea level, predictably the views were stunning, and it was easier going down the other side than going up. Our bodies are better acclimatised to the altitude now and we didn't suffer any real side effects, just a bit tingly and a slight headache. The trick seems to be drink masses of water, the downside of this is we had to stop 3 times on the way up!
Chivay is an amazing place, no more than a large village really, and very rustic. It's at 3700 metres, so it's easy to get out of breath. It is in the Colca Canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon at 4100m deep but the walls are not as vertical and it's wider so perhaps not quite as dramatic. The local people are very Inca and maintain their ancestral traditions and there are lots of stepped terraces which they cultivate. This place is VERY rustic! Colca is the official source of the Amazon, there is a small spring about 40 kms north of here but it would take 3 days to walk there and back, so maybe next time.
Apparently there are huge and magnificent Condors which can be seen at close range two villages down from here but it meant leaving at 5 am this morning, maybe tomorrow.

Day 17, Arica to Arequipa, Peru

Well, what an exciting day we had today. First job was to clear customs out of Chile, which we managed without problems.  Next we had to get into Peru, not so easy. We visited various desks getting important documents stamped several times which was OK but then we had to get our Carnets stamped.  This took 15 minutes...per car! Unluckily we were number 29 in the starting order so altogether we were there for 7 hours! They had 2 people on the case but one of the computers didn't work, a complete nightmare and very tiresome.
The 3 tests planned were cancelled and it was simply a matter of getting back onto the Panamerican Highway and slogging away for 545 kms.


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Day 16 San Pedro de Atacama to Arica, Chile

Day 16 San Pedro de Atacama to Arica, Chile

As yesterday was a rest day we had chance to catch up on many jobs which needed doing.  San Pedro was a peculiar little town, step back 200 years, tiny little windy streets and not a square metre of tarmac anywhere. The filling station was an experience in itself, almost impossible to find hidden away down a back lane.
 We went out for pizza in the evening with Jon and Chris, Richard and Nicola.  Back at the hotel our laundry hadn't turned up by 10pm so we liberated it, unclean.  This is starting to cause problems but Peter is pretty deft at washing his boxer shorts, I just have to find a way of persuading him to do mine too!
There were very few highlights crossing the Atacama Desert, first the biggest opencast copper mine in the world called "Chuqui" with vast spoil heaps the size of mountains (production 29 million tons p.a.)and then we visited a meteorite crater at Quillagua about 250m across.  This is officially the driest place on earth and looks the part.
We did a couple of regularity tests, one of which was a bit silly, very complicated and over terribly rough gravel surfaces, our front suspension bushes are on the way out and making horrible noises, we are unlikely to get to Rio without replacements.  However we have a cunning plan involving some nylon mudguards and a garden hose.  Watch this space.
Chile is turning out to be mildly disappointing, I assume there are better bits than we have been through today.  There is an oppressive police presence, they are everywhere, trying to catch us speeding and offering "help" by insisting on escorting us through the towns.  This is in sharp contrast to Argentina where the police were almost non existent.  We will be going back into Argentina later in the trip which is just fine because it's a wonderful country.
Tonight we are staying at the Hotel Panamerica which is on the beach, next to the Pacific Ocean and it's a fantastic sunny evening.  Guy Fawkes night, which Peter and I of course don't celebrate as we went to the same school as him, will be a bit different this year, and the cocktail party starts at 7.30pm. Tomorrow Peru.

Day 14, Salta to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

We set off from Salta early in the morning as we had 563 kms to cover, mostly on unmade roads. As one Mustang made it back into the rally another one had trouble this morning. The driver, an ageing playboy type from Lichtenstein and a complete knob, was revving his car up outside the hotel foyer as is his normal routine when he decided to show off to the small crowd of onlookers, dropped the clutch, smoked the tyres and went straight into a wall! What a plonker!
The first few hours were spent following the Tren de las Nubes, not as interesting as it sounds, it means Train of the Clouds, basically a railway connecting Salta with the Chilean border. 29 bridges, 21 tunnels, 13 viaducts etc etc, the third highest railway in the world. The road was diabolical, no more than a track, more suitable for donkeys or maybe a trials bike.
Our first test this morning was a regularity up a windy mountain road, starting at 4200 metres, we did quite well but along with all the other smaller engined cars we struggled for speed, and missed the time by a few seconds. At this altitude nothing seems to perform as well as it should.
The wildlife was pretty spectacular as we went through some extremely remote areas, we passed flamingo inhabited salt lakes, lots of alpacas and llamas (or were they vicuñas, difficult to tell apart) and have seen desert foxes roaming around. Some of the villages we passed through were about as remote as you can imagine, we thought at one point we had discovered the lost tribe of the where the **** are we Incas. In some of the hilly regions which seem to go on for ever, if you walked up one of the hills you could be pretty sure you would be the first person ever to go up there.
We reached an altitude of 4850 metres (higher than the summit of Mont Blanc) a couple of times and spent most of the day over 4000 m. It doesn't feel that high as the high plains are relatively flat, and we have so far not suffered any altitude sickness. Late in the afternoon we went through the border control to get into Chile, predictably a long paper chase getting our passports and carnets stamped, but it only took an hour which apparently was quite good. that was the Argentinian end, we then had to drive 140 kms to the Chilean border control to do the whole thing all over again. Whilst in no mans land we went down the longest hill you can imagine, losing over two kilometres in height with surreal views over the Atacama Desert in the evening sunshine. Halfway down we were stopped by the police on motorbikes, oh dear here comes our first speeding ticket we thought, but they just said "Buenos Tardes, are you Roy and Peter? Si, señor we replied, and then he welcomed us to Chile hoping we would enjoy our stay...
Tomorrow we have a day off, chance recharge all our batteries, do some personal grooming and service the car, get it cleaned up a bit and relax. I won't bore you with our hotel, but it is very acceptable, miles from anywhere in the middle of the Atacama Desert.
No blog tomorrow.

Day 13, Cafayate to Salta, Argentina

After all the amazing days we have experienced it seemed unlikely that today was going to be the best so far, as on paper it looked pretty standard, short but a lot packed in to it, not unlike me really. We set off from The Patios de Cafayate Hotel, the best so far, and the roads were great for about 5 kms then everything turned to dust again. We did a Fangio section pretty early on then carried on through the Valles Calchaquies, a group of valleys known for their incredible geological features, contrasting features that range from mountain desert to subtropical forests. After a coffee halt and a regularity section that caught a few people out, not us of course.
After lunch there was a long climb through an open area covered in cactii up to an altitude of 3368 metres, the highest we have been so far. The temperature dropped about 15 degrees and The Mighty One was wheezing a bit. The view from the top was astonishing, see the photo attached but you may have to open it up to see how far the road stretches down the other side, there must have been a hundred hairpin bends to the bottom, most of them fairly hairy.
The final fling of the day was at Salta Autodromo and then on to the hotel to do 2 1/2 hours of work on the car trying to identify some new rattles and squeaks, and giving her a good old spanner check for good luck. 7 o'clock start tomorrow, ugh!

Day 12, Villa Union to Cafayate, Argentina

We have been on the road for 12 days now, however it seems longer, the rally is turning into a blur of hotels and lunch halts, things are flying by so quickly it's difficult to take it all in. It also appears we are on a gastro tour, the food has been so good and plentiful. Usually on a rally like this when things are non stop action all day long you tend to lose weight but not this time, we are eating for England!
The local people have been very friendly towards us, every town and village we go through people are waving and cheering, the cars respond with a wide variety of air horns and klaxon noises.
This morning we had a mountain pass to tackle which was quite challenging, a very steep climb up a narrow and dusty red track and then down the other side, with very steep drops down to a river 200 metres below, often with no barriers or walls. Then we had a couple of test stages, one of the Mustangs fell off the road on the Fangio section and rolled down a bank landing on it's roof, thankfully the crew were both OK with minor cuts and bruises, amazingly the driver didn't have his seat belts on, not recommended on a competitive stage. The car, we are told, should be able to carry on although I expect it will look a bit battle weary.
The lunch halt was quite good fun, the usual slap up meal, today with spare ribs the size of T bone steaks. The restaurant, and just about every other business in town from what we could gather, was owned by Paco-no surname, just Paco. He kindly organized a troop of Gauchos on horseback to ride around and entertain us.
The notable change in scenery today was the abundance of cactii which have suddenly appeared, just a terrain change I guess, we keep expecting to bump into John Wayne round every corner. We have been on and off route 40 again most of the day, we have followed it for nearly 2500 kms now, but keep diverting off to see various attractions or to go up some dusty track to do silly things. We also saw a cloud this afternoon!
Once again we have landed sunny side up in the hotel stakes, we are staying at the Patios de Cafayate Hotel and Spa, a wonderful Parador style place set in a winery, as I write this Peter and I are in the room, which is the size of a squash court, there are two king size beds, chairs tables and a huge flat screen TV. Tough being a rally driver...

Day 11, Mendoza to Villa Union, Argentina

Mendoza turned out to be a really lively and affluent city, we went out in the evening and the whole place was lifting, bars and shops full of people at 10 o'clock so no sign of cutbacks here and everybody having fun.  Today started off with a long flat drive across a scrubland desert, very dry and dusty and quite hot, summer seems to be coming early this year.  We called in at the Autodromo Eduardo Copello, named after the "Turismo Carretera" champion driver who is very famous in Argentina but probably unknown everywhere else.  The circuit was in a narrow valley with very dramatic rocky hills rising steeply away on all sides, all very impressive.  Needless to say we made a bit of a hash of things as usual but lucked in with a reasonable result.  From there we took a bit of the Dakar Rally route before getting back onto the ubiquitous Route 40.  We wheezed up a long uphill stretch for about 75 kms rising from 1000 up to 2600 metres, the highest we have been so far, the views from the top were amazing, so many different colours of rock in huge geological swirls.  
After a much needed lunch stop we passed by a bright turquoise lake and then through the beautiful gorges of Cuesta del Viento and on to a regularity section, on tarmac for the first time.  The final blast to tonights halt was across a really strange area where the road was a roller coaster ride of short hills for about 60 kms, a bit of a lurching ride not for the faint hearted.
The rally is organized by a Dutchman called Bart Rietbergen and a fair proportion of the competitors are Dutch too, with a smattering of Belgians,  Germans, Brits and Irish.  After nearly two weeks we are getting to know everybody and the atmosphere is getting better and better.  Most of the meals are communal so it's easy to socialise and have a good time.  Thinking of you all back in Blighty, pip, pip!     
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