We leave Abancay in light drizzle but our usual struggle to find the right road out of the City continues. Although we have Sat Nav, they seem insistant on routing us up one way streets the wrong way and up rivers or railways which isn’t very helpful. After about 5 miles and half an hour we are gased u p and on the right track.
The rain soon fizzles out and the first hundred miles are great fun with a drying winding road. The next hundred are not so much fun with the temperature dropping to 2 degrees and the road covered in snow and ice.
We have climbed to 4000 -4500 masl 4 times today and ended up travelling through cloud 3 times. This is the same as travelling in thick fog with a mass of condensation.
At one point I thought my fingers might drop off, they were so cold. Martin had to stop to sort his visor as he could not see the road, mine was fine until we stopped and I then got some moisture inside and I then had misting problems.
We finally stopped in a village for a coffe and to try to warm up a bit, on went the heated vests and a dry pair of gloves having warmed and dried our hands. It is only 60 miles to Nasca and we are told it will take 2 hours, I don’t think my Sat nav is taking any notice of the mass of bends in the road and has simply drawn a straight line.
We thought that as we descend the temperature would rise and we may dry out a bit, as we leave the village we start to climb, again. The rain is relentless and when we eventually start to descend we run straight into cloud. It is now dusking and we are travelling along a wet road in cloud with a sheer drop to one side and it is dark, deep joy. The only saving grace is that the road has excellent cats eyes and markers on the corners, amasingly!
We descend below the cloud and it all gets a bit easier and the temperature is rising. Finally we can see the lights of Nasca in the distance and a quick look at the temperature gauge shows we are over 20 degrees. We pull up outside a hotel and it is now 25 degrees, having checked in we get our suits and gloves taken to Laundry to dry and get thawed out.
This was a fantastic journey but some of it could have been warmer and had better visibility, but you cant have everything.
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