April 10 - Canyon Country Peru - 500km

Finally started heading inland after a 1,000km along the coast.

The coastal desert drags on for another thousand kilometers, past Lima.  Heading inland, you quickly run into massive canyons dug by the water flowing down from the highlands.  The valleys are fertile, while the rest is completely barren.

Peru doesn´t have many paved roads (only 14%, in fact).  The good news is that all the major cities are connected by beautiful highways so it´s easy to avoid trouble in the backcountry gravel.

500km plus a border crossing made for a long day, but the riding stayed spectacular.

Sandy cliffs and green valleys.

Watch out for the cows that sometimes jump out of the bushes.

Hard to capture here but the green and tan combo is really striking.

...and sometimes its stretches in this foggy dessert.  

Southeast Peru is a big exporter of hot peppers.

Not a fake picture... this is a power plant smack in the middle of the desert.  The loading dock for ships is way off the left there.

Self-portrait for the collection (this is for you, KJK).

As the desert gets pushed up into mountains the views are absolutely Martian again.

Back up into the stratosphere.

Glamor shot of the Don.

Cold cold cold.  The rivers and lakes were frozen and I wound up driving in my glacier mittens!  

Alpine lakes start to appear as the desert starts to make way to high altiplano steppe.

The bluest blues and greenest greens you´ll ever see.

Incredible road twisting and turning through the steppe.

Traffic on the highway.