[Above: An Andean llama!]

Journal by Todd Borgie

It wasn’t an early wakeup call this morning. Although we had 660km to go before reaching Cuzco we had a number of team members that were quite sick. Nancy, in her competitive way had broken the fever record producing a new record of 102°F the day before. She woke only to drink some broth and fall back asleep. Chanda was part of the competition as well only peaking out just short of the record, and for the most part the rest of the team was either recovering or trying to come down with something, I sure hope my healthy streak holds out.

Anyway we got up as early as we thought was necessary, but as late as we could get away with, we finally had breakfast, packed up and were rolling out about 9:30 or 10:00am.

I loved the town of Nazca and it was a nice respite from the hard driving we had been doing for the past 3 days. It seemed to be a friendly town that hadn’t been jaded by its famous monuments nearby. The desert was amazing. I asked a couple of people along the way, what this Peruvian desert was called and most people looked at me strange. I thought it was my Spanish until I tried to look up this Peruvian desert in Encarta. I found one small article referencing the Sechura desert. The article had less to with the desert than with securing oil rights around it, hmmm. Everything I looked at described the boundaries of this place, but never really told me much about it. I was confused. I looked up the definition of a desert and found the following: Desert, term applied to regions of the earth that are characterized by less than 254 mm (10 in) of annual rainfall, an evaporation rate that exceeds precipitation, and, in most cases, a high average temperature. When I looked up Peru I found reference to a coastal plain that extended the length of the country varying in width from 40 to 100 miles. I also found that this region was an extension of the Atacama Desert in Chile, however, when is a desert a desert and when is it an extension? I guess I will have to do more work to solve this riddle, but it is kind of fun being confused like this. When I return I think I will look at geographical programs, as I am tremendously interested in this subject.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier we hit the road. The roads snaked around through the dry canyons, rocks and sandy dirt, but not much plant life. We installed our new radios yesterday, so this canyon was a perfect place to try them. We had been used to our little hand held mobile radios, which were adequate for convoying, but very little else. They didn’t work over long distances, and it was sometimes very hard to hear what was being said. We were excited to see the range of the new ones, Nick said they would transmit over 5 miles, but I was the Doubting Thomas. Nancy and I pulled over to truly test the distance these radios would cover; we waited as the rest of the team went on ahead. As the minutes rolled by we talked to Nick and Chanda. Soon, two minutes turned into 6 minutes and the radios were perfectly clear. After 10 minutes of waiting, and still a perfectly clear signal, we decided to roll rather than check the maximum distance, besides we were in a canyon so our results would have been skewed anyway. These were cool radios, thanks to Day Wireless in San Jose.

We continued to snake our way up through the front of the Andes, up, up we traveled winding through more canyons. We climbed over 13,000ft; we drove into some precipitation and experienced a major vegetation change. We drove by a river, which is something we hadn’t seen in couple of days as well. Apparently on the west side of Peru there are 52 rivers heading west from the Andes mountains, however, due to the dryness of these mountains only 10 of these reach the Pacific ocean without drying up. Now over the summit we saw a lot of short grass, small brush, and an occasional tree. However, this leads me to another question. The trees I saw were mostly Eucalyptus trees, which are exotics, and I saw a few conifers as well. All of these trees seemed like they were introduced, so I wondered what the native tree life was like here. Was this area massively deforested, or did very few trees grow here? At what elevation is tree line? Another question of mine that remains unanswered, I will get to the bottom of it soon.

We pulled into the small town of Puquio for gas; at this point we were about 13,500ft. I was concerned at the altitude and the fact the people were not feeling well. If we continued on would we have to stay at a higher altitude? People can climb the 10,000ft in a day without too much problem, just headaches and shortness of breathe, but anything beyond that was a gamble. We had a lot of bronchial problems that would complicate any altitude adjustment. Cuzco was about 11,500ft but the Andes stood in our way and they were known for their height.

We tried to gain some insight from maps, but didn’t find very good information. We knew there were towns between here and Cuzco, but would they be at a lower elevation?
Local knowledge suggested the next town 200km away along windy roads was lower in elevation. We like to trust local knowledge, but often times these people had never been out their communities, and besides elevation would not be an issue to them, so why would they know about it?

The decision was made to get lunch in the town and drive on. We arrived at a restaurant just as a downpour commenced. After eating our fish, chicken, or soup we headed out in the rain. The drive continued to be beautiful as we drove at about 14,000 ft. With our new radios Nick, Chanda, Nancy and I played 20 questions and joked and talked as we rolled down the road. It was almost like we were all in the same car. It reminded us of being back at the office where we would banter back in forth. That reminds me to send a special thank you to Minitool, who provided us with the office. Without their help we would not have made it this far. As we travel we do think about the many people that have helped us along the way!

As we drove in and out of the clouds we actually saw flamingos fishing in a pond. Apparently flamingos color changes based on their diet, as these flamingos are white and the ones on the coast are pink, apparently form eating shrimp.

Darkness set in as we hit the peak and began to descend. I was relieved to see our altimeter slowly ticking down. It reached 9500 ft just before we pulled into our stopping point of Chaluanca. Only a couple of us made it up for dinner, as tomorrow was going to be an early day and many people had to rest.

Logbook for January 7th, Day 68
Start: Chalhuanca, Peru, 0800
N: 14* 17.704'
W: 73* 14.860''
Finish: Cusco, Peru, 1700
N: 13* 31.017'
W: 71* 58.835''
Mileage: 179
Notes: The whole team is coughing, but nobody has a fever, for now. The team continued across the Altoplano and completed their first crossing of the Andes. We are looking forward to exploring Cusco and exploring Machu Pichu. Before we can play, though, we have several days of work ahead of us here in Cusco. We are taking photos and writing testimonials for each of our sponsors. When we are finished with this critical task, we will play. The city of Cusco is the most beautiful we have visited. At an altitude of more than 11,000 feet, it's also the highest. The people with virus-affected lungs are finding it difficult to breath. That will get better with time as we acclimatize. (N.O.)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four certified pre-owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking here. 100% of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.