Cannonball Lima Cali

This entry is part 12 of 19 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #14

“No. Not wise. Costly, difficult and time-consuming procedures.”

I’d written for information about transporting my 1977 XT500 abroad from Colombia. I wanted to have her flown south as far as possible in Latin America, and from there ride back. My time frame was short. The advice from Mike, of Motolombia Motorcycle Tours, wasn’t encouraging. But then he continued.

“I’ve got a better option for you,” wrote Mike. “A huge tour of mine ends in Lima. I have a spot for one extra rider to bring the bikes home.”

‘Home’ for Mike is Cali, Colombia, where his tour and rentals company is based.

I was dying to get on the road. All kinds of bike problems had kept me seated in Medellín. Everything was okay, but I was busting to ride.

So: Lima in Peru to Cali in Colombia. That meant nearly 3000km, seven days, three countries, and two border crossings. It sounded like fun.

“I’m in,” was all I wrote in reply.

Dress up

I announced myself in a luxury hotel in Limaflores, a nice barrio – municipality or village – near Lima and next to the ocean, late on a Friday afternoon. A few beautiful, exotic women in evening dress left the hotel for, I assumed, a party somewhere. I would have liked to accompany them, but the reality was that in the evening I was to meet my real mistress for the next seven days – a black-and-green Kawasaki KLR650, ready for any road, paved or not.

Andes cap

“We leave tomorrow morning at seven o’clock sharp,” said Chris, our guide. “There’ll be nine bikes, and the daily destinations are planned to make sure we arrive in Cali on the ninth of May.”

I met the other riders at the start. Setting off early Saturday morning meant an easy escape from the huge metropolis of 11 million Peruvians, and as a group we tried to stay together. I had no GPS or map, but the road direction was easy. We’d be heading north for the next week. Still, it was good to know there was someone at the front who did have a route on his GPS.

Outside Lima the desert was there right away. And it was there all over. Huge sand dunes seemed to separate for us like the Red Sea before Moses, allowing the passage of excellent tarmac. Once in a while the road almost touched the ocean. No surfers were to be seen fighting the huge waves and it was lonely on the road. I liked it.

The desert isn’t dull or boring. The road wound around the huge dunes, cut through rock formations and then burst back into the wide-open space of desert and rocks. It was all brown, grey and greyish-yellow in numerous variations as far as I could see in any direction. Further from the ocean the temperature rose and I rode in the same dress I wore into the hotel: jeans, boots and leather jacket. Opposite the ocean the Andes Mountains were visible in the far distance.

Over the limit

There were a variety of bikes to be ridden back to Colombia: a 1200GSA, three F800s, one GS650, one Suzuki V-Strom 650 and three KLRs. The KLRs were the slowest on the bitumen through the desert section. I didn’t like to push the big,single cylinder above 110kph, and at almost 6000RPM she was vibrating just a bit too much for my liking. I wanted to be sure the bike would go the distance with no problems, and pushing her into her red zone didn’t seem to be the thing to do to make that happen, so I got a bit behind.

I wasn’t alone, though. I was with the other two KLRs ridden by Esteban and Carlos, two Colombian guys who were especially into off-road riding. Later I would see why they were on this tour.

We stopped to fuel up and drink water.

The huge BMWs zoomed off right away. “This ain’t a tour. It’s like being on a mission,” I thought.

All riders liked the speed. The desert was just an excuse to ride well above any kind of normal limit.

Local knowledge

After lunch we turned inland and I began to see the ride wouldn’t be a straight sprint along the coast. We hit a sidetrack to go through Cañón del Pato, a canyon from which a road had been carved out recently.

This byway took us high up into the Andes for two days before returning to the coast.

It was dry and hot as the road wound up higher and higher. It was much easier for the KLR to keep up with the brute horse-power of the BMWs in this section, and an hour later the road suddenly became dirt.

We rode on, and after a while it became obvious it wasn’t a road under construction. Chris, the one with the GPS, was sure we were on the right track, but said we still had 160km to our destination for the night.

A local farmer, an old-timer, reassured us.

“Yes, yes,” he grinned. “All unpaved!” He also offered the good news that it was six hours to our overnight stop, Huancas.

‘Six hours?’ I thought. ‘It’s 2.30pm. That’ll take us well into the dark before reaching our destination’.

Weary

Riding off-road in the dark isn’t an advisable thing to do anywhere, and certainly not in the Andes.

“No. Not any village or lodging possible before that,” assured the old-timer.

A decision had to be made. Did we go back or ride on through?

Everybody was pretty adventure-minded so we pushed on.

The track became rougher as we negotiated the mountain passes. From sand with rocks we slid on to more slippery mud and grass, and at the highest points we were bumping over just plain rocks and were well spread out.

It’d been quite a while since I’d done any off-road riding. It took time for me to relax, but it all came back. I eventually dared to speed up and give it the gas instead of always thinking, ‘Slowly, slowly’. I even managed to drift a bit in corners and enjoy it once in while.

After one sharp curve hemmed in with bushes and trees I gassed up the KLR, only to suddenly brake with everything the bike had. A small black snake, about 1.4m long, slithered hastily from the road back into the bushes.

At five o’clock that afternoon we reached the highest point at 4800m, and it was cold up there. Although we were still on the desert side, it was already green all over and it was clear the rain zone started at this point.

It was a mining area, and we arrived about an hour before dark. The group was together as we started the descent, but we were soon spread out again. I was tired and my off-road competence seemed to have vanished. I found my way down, slipping and sliding, and after the rocks it became muddy again. Grey skies turned into dark-grey skies and a tiny spat of rain began.

At six o’clock I stopped the bike at an asphalt road which Chris confirmed was the road to Huancas.

Cracker

At 7.00pm we ran into town, wet, cold and hungry, but very content about this first day’s riding.

Inside the hotel a gas heater warmed us up, and, being Saturday night, there was a religious festival with a brass band and loud fireworks in the main square in front of the church. The square was filled.

Almost all the women wore traditional contrasting skirts and black hats and had brightly colored blankets wrapped around their shoulders. It was cool to see. This was the Peruvian Andes!

The fireworks continued until at least 1.00am. I was tired but could hardly sleep.

Free of charge

Early next morning my bike wouldn’t start.

We push-started it on a downhill road, and in daylight saw the amazing Andes mountains in full glory. White snowcapped peaks surrounded the city and I gazed in amazement. This was like waking up in a totally new environment.

I’d hoped the battery would’ve charged during the ride, but it didn’t. We took off the seat and found to my surprise the battery was completely out of water. All the cells were dry. The hard riding day, hefty speed in the first half and some real off-road riding in the second half must have taken its toll on the battery fluids. We filled it up with plain water and I was a bit anxious that wouldn’t work. The cells had run dry and all the acid had disappeared.

There was no alternative, so we push-started the Kawa again, and at the next stop it started as normal on her electric starter. Who would’ve thought that?

Stand-up guy

The canyon was 32km long and no more than 100m wide, and the road was carved into the rocks. It was no more than one-car wide and went through 40 tunnels to reach a hydroelectric plant. The road surface was paved, but with a lot of sand and little stones on it, and to me it was scary. The sur-face was sometimes firm and then suddenly slippery again. It was a new construction,and until recently the plant could only be reached from a dead-end road 100km long.

This was the road we had to take to get to Chimbote, and from there north again on Carretera Panamericana – the Panamericana Highway. Those 100km were all rock and sand. Dave from Chicago gave me some tips and they made a difference. When I faced a huge rockwall it seemed as if I was drifting towards it instead of rounding the curve.

“You need to focus on where you want to go,” said Dave. “If you focus on a hazard you’ll go towards it.”

It helped, just as did positioning my weight on the ’pegs when standing. The bike steered more easily.

Focus

As night fell we were definitely out of the cold. Blasting through the desert we lost track of one another and reached Mancoran in three groups. It turned out to be a tiny, hipster, fisherman’s place, and we had an excellent dinner…of fish. What else? Mike had prepared a lot of the customs facilities, so we easily crossed the border from Peru into Ecuador and straight away the riding felt different. It all seemed better organised, with more road signs and less trash along the roads. We passed banana field after banana field for kilometres, then climbed into the mountains again. The beautiful, winding roads had little traffic and I tried to pick out the best rider and follow him, keeping in mind Dave’s focus lesson. It was tiresome but rewarding.

As we entered Cuenca I was more than happy with a slice of pizza and my bed.

Green light

From Cuenca to Quito we stayed in the higher-altitude part of Ecuador. There were no straight roads to be found there!

In Quito we found all the luxury stuff a capital could offer: good cappuccino, Mexican food and a lively night scene that all of us passed by because we were just too tired.

Another day brought another border.

From Ecuador to Colombia we had to fulfill some departure formalities before we could deal with Colombian red tape.

Again, it felt different. For a start the roads were more narrow and there was less visibility through the curves. There were also lots of tiny shops and vendors along the road, and the country was all green. There was no more just sand or rocks.

We reached Pasto well before dark.

High calibre

On the last day I managed to scrape one foot-peg over the asphalt. The footpeg of a KLR scraping the asphalt? I couldn’t stop grinning all the way through the mountains into the wide, flat and very hot valley of the river Cauca and into Cali.

We’d done it. Nearly 3000km in seven days. No accident, no serious bike or other problems, and just heavenly scenery and a lot of fun.

So, why did I call it a cannonball run? It wasn’t set up as one.

It just turned out that way. Every day we rode hard over paved and unpaved roads. We did big distance and had to work at arriving on time, and still on the bike.

It was definitely a cannonball run.