A JOURNEY THROUGH THE HEART OF PERU LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN - VAN LIFE PERU
so in the last episode we went to that amazing canyon glacier lake glacier cap mountain area absolutely stunning well just so happens that was the last episode and right now we are headed down from that area and we're coming through this unique little farming community so we wanted to show you that but also it's kind of late in the day as we've already been adventuring so we're headed to our camp spot and hopefully we've got a good one now what i'm going to tell you is we have got a lot of driving to do and so we're going to be doing it over a few days we have a few cool camp spots in mind so we're going to bring you along and the cool thing about this ride down is that we have some stunning views of the glacier cap snow lined snow-capped mountains in the back as we come through these uh mud brick dwellings that's wheat after leaving this area of peru we learned that we had driven right through the middle of one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in the world in 1970 a large earthquake just off the coast of peru triggered an avalanche on top of mount huascaran one of the tallest peaks in peru and one of the beautiful snow-capped mountains we were looking at in our last video the avalanche started as a rockfall but when it encountered a glacier at a lower elevation on the mountain it quickly absorbed the snow and ice and began to liquefy into a mudslide the mudslide quickly grew to over 130 million cubic yards of ice mud rocks water trees and anything else in its path for you to understand just how big that is 130 million cubic yards is roughly six and a half million dump trucks of material crashing down the mountain at speeds of up to 270 miles per hour it only took one minute and 42 seconds for the slide to reach the town of yungai where over 30 000 people died almost instantly in the aftermath the government forbid the excavation of the area and all that remains is a statue of christ and a portion of a cathedral that survived those things are now considered a mass cemetery and a memorial to all who lost their lives that day the town was rebuilt north of the original town and is thriving again if we had known of all of this beforehand we would have been more respectful to the memory by filming the memorial and telling you the story in real time but we could not leave the story untold and now we have a more emotional attachment to the roads we were driving as we left this area we were literally driving over the original town of yungai and the thirty thousand souls that lost lost their life in an instant for the record we have made it on the paved road back on the main road we only have about 45 minutes to our first stop of mini on our way to lima we are 15 minutes from our camp spot number one we're coming through this last little town right here all we see on the horizon is snow-capped mountains and it's really cool all right so down there in that field that guy is farming he's plowing with team oxen and he's walking behind the plow wow keeping it real old school we got the hat trick we got the tall hat we got him carrying something there pushing cows sheep little kid people working in the fields what a fun little thing ah i love these little indigenous communities they're so rich with culture flavor and color yeah i love those big tall hats too i need to get me one of those things we have made it to our spot for the night and it just happens to be the parking lot of banyos termales de chancos hot springs aguas caliente or also known as public baths no but it's gonna cost 10 soles a piece to get in here so that's about three bucks and it looks like right yeah i know from walking up here earlier they have a bunch of restaurants up here and whatnot and other little tiendas but we're headed straight to the tamales because we want to get some relaxation on are you ready to get your relaxation on i think so let's go see what it looks like all right people been asking if i tried the kui in ecuador if you missed it the answer is no but it looks like here they have caldo de cui which i believe is soup and it looks like also here is trucha which is trout chicharrone komote which is typically bits of pork fried lomo saltado which is beef with peppers and onions so it looks like they have some pretty decent listings on the menu here is the entrance first little bit is the cueva which actually is the sauna so over here they brought in they have a cold shower and in here is the quave now it's gonna fog up that's it we're going into cueva that's your look we're going in we'll be out in a few minutes because it's hot then we go to a pool we think that was a sauna literally in a cave and steamy hot now we think we head to some sort of a hot pool we'll find out so the caves are literally built into the side of this mountain they are actually caves that they've built a front wall on and doors on but that hot steam is coming from within the mountain and it is steamy i guess we gotta wait on him to take us there's a guy that was amazing wow yeah that's the stress reliever right there yeah hot water nice soak steam yeah now back to the van which is conveniently only like 200 feet away eat dinner probably go to bed we got an early start this morning this is day two of a very long drive across peru headed towards the area south of lima where there's some amazing stuff but we've got a lot of driving don't we 13 13 plus hours that doesn't include stops we're gonna try to break it up into two possibly three overnight stays we've got a couple eye overlander spots we're eyeballing hopefully we can push it it also includes a big drive through lima and or a stop in lima we need some supply snow what do we need the main thing we need is kitty litter now you can find kitty litter down here but we need a quality kitty litter that clumps one it's hard to find clumping litter down here and two when you do it's either scented which i'll tell you why that's bad in a minute or it's just not a super good quality scented litter in our van is too small of a space it just completely takes over and it smells like you're in the middle of a lavender field and it's just too much so we can't do scented litter in our tiny little van and then the poor quality litter we got two cat shoes in that litter box and it just gets the ammonia smell really really fast so when you see us headed to a big city looking for the fancier grocery stores the main thing we need is good kitty litter we're down to one bag which won't even do a whole cycle so we've got about four or five days before we either find good kitty litter or the van's gonna sink so you'll cross your fingers we can find something around lima and we'll stock up with just as much as we can carry but we gotta drive through these cool mountains and i have a feeling we may see some more indigenous stuff all right our first errand of the day gas diesel is 16.99 so less than 17 soles i think this is the cheapest we've paid we'll do the math here and pop it on the screen for you every country has a different mentality when it comes to driving now when we were in medellin back in columbia the moto drivers were crazy what we're learning here in peru and it's just a culture thing we're not beating up peru we are loving this country but the drivers are really rude there is no getting in they will cut you off in a heartbeat i mean even if there's people have to run across the road because they won't even yield for them and it's just the driving culture we're cruising along the high plains to the left or to the east of us as we head south is the white-capped andes mountains the peaks run all along here it makes for a beautiful drive we're kind of on a high plain area about 13 000 feet ish and it seems like every road in peru has one hazard or another and this one is potholes so on a road where you can easily do 55 to 65 miles an hour you just have these huge huge potholes everywhere so again there's no such thing as a relaxing drive in peru always dodging something let's see if they got some good cases okay all right this place looks like they have some quesos who came along and also all these signs maybe we might need to check it out so they have mantakia it looks like they have lots of different kinds of hunty honey those little sesame seed balls we got some queso ee chaos all right i just brought some surprises what's it look like i got snow look like some sort of little caramel cinnamon roll cookie cake things these look like cookies yeah you got those and these this is a big old hunk of cheese i got a small hunk as a she would sell me so anyway let's get to taste it i did and it's good yeah yeah yeah so we'll have some uh macaroni and cheese and cheese toast yeah yeah this little town we don't know the name of it i'm sorry but it is at 13 500 feet in the middle of these high plains and it's clearly a cheese town these little biscuits with the caramel are so good they're really good it looks like we are about to drop in elevation look at all these switchbacks we've been expecting this because where we're headed it's pretty low yeah we got two and a half hours to our camp spot which means we're 13 000 feet to sea level so we're probably going to have a pretty rapid drop and it looks like we're going to get a lot of it down here maybe into a canyon along the river is what it looks like we'll see and they have these big beautiful rocks along here it's it's a really cool uh new vista for us and kurt just gave away our destination we're clearly headed to the beach but look at that up there so this morning when we left the hot springs we had high hopes we really thought that that was going to be a a main thoroughfare for the trucks bringing food into the big city of lima from that farm-rich region clearly we were wrong these roads are a mess and we are still dropping dropping dropping fast in elevation and i shouldn't have complained about the potholes it's not around a chattery gravel road that'll that means no it won't when we stopped to buy the cheese and the yummy little caramel cookie snacks we were at 13 500 feet how many miles ago do you think that was uh probably 15 miles to go in 30 minutes or 45 minutes we are now at 8 500 feet we have dropped 5 000 feet we've dropped a mile that was some pretty straight down driving on those switchbacks we still have a ways to go but it seems like it's leveled out it might happen a little slower i gotta get down pretty close to zero we have finally made it down to the riverbed we're at about four thousand feet elevation so we still got a ways to go but i think we're just going to follow this river to the coast yeah you can see these andy mountains just start to wither away they're getting all dry like we're getting close to the desert and you look up on the mountains and there's zero trees and it's just rocky and dry not really much life except right along this river we're dropping fast we're almost to 3 000 feet if you look ahead it looks almost identical to the way it looked a few episodes ago when we were headed to the beach that has the world's longest wave but this river valley is spreading out getting a little wider and as green as can be but as soon as you get to the mountains if there's anything it's a few cacti so we think we're going to just follow this road right to the coast turn south and start driving towards lima how long till we get to our camp kirti one hour and 15 minutes about an hour and a half because we never make it when the google says so see y'all a little bit with an update all right along this area when you come through some of these larger towns still small towns it's not uncommon to come through a point of control where the police officers kind of stop everybody really and check your paperwork or whatever here in peru one thing we're noticing they see our license plate and wave us on through so in other countries sometimes that's the reason to get stopped but here it's worked out in our advantage i hope you didn't just change this you'll know what i think about that all right another elevation update it's been 15 minutes we just dropped below 2000 feet everything looks pretty much the same as it did at 3 000 feet but one thing we didn't tell you is the road conditions got much much better around 4000 feet so soon we expect to start seeing some beach looking stuff so we'll see y'all at 1000 feet we're dropping in with uh 800 feet above sea level update because we have stumbled upon something we've never seen i think they're peppers we think they're drying peppers on the side of the road not a few peppers millions of peppers yeah i think we're in pepper land i think we find our chili pepper all right the name of this town is shara s-h-a-u-r-a and i am declaring it the pepper capital of the world because there are millions of peppers being dried all along here but we have yet to see where they're growing them they must be kind of down in the valley where we can't see but there are peppers everywhere i'm not exaggerating when i say millions of peppers so shara also known as pepper capital of the world that's not true i made that up but it sounds good oh there's yellow peppers over here that's corn oh never mind so bananas papayas sugar cane no pepper plants maybe they grow them under the mango trees i don't know one thing we've been noticing on this journey is they grow this stuff along the side of the road in some areas of peru looks like sugar cane i don't think it is i think they use it and they dry it out and turn it into kind of like a bamboo type reed type thing that back in the states you might would use maybe for a fence panel or something like that here people actually build their houses with it so imagine a little bamboo thin mat at your walls and or your ceilings we see quite a bit of that especially in the farming economically distressed areas before we get into our camp spot we're coming through a vast area of sugarcane fields both sides of the road as far as the eye can see sugarcane and also it's really hazy or cloudy or something here and i know a lot of areas they burn sugarcane fields after they harvest not sure but it's hazy on a personal note last week my little niece harley had her first little baby and his name is hayes so kurt said hazy and it made me think about it i have not told y'all about it i will be going home for a visit in a few months i'll wait till it gets a little older and the excitement wears down but there's a little personal tidbit from snow i have a brand new great nephew named on long driving days we do our best to make our kitties as comfortable as possible this morning kurt built vanna this cute little cubby she likes to be all snuggled up in her pillows and g loves forts so this morning i built him his very own private fort and they're doing good our world traveling kitties we are around 200 feet above sea level but it is time to turn south we don't quite make it to the coast until we get to our camp so we are headed south towards lima how many people did you say live in lima i think over 7 million it's a huge huge huge city by far the most massive city in peru yeah southbound on the pan america highway and it's four lanes so smooth so smooth hello for one and a half kilometers ferrous dominion window then turn left to stay out of the fairest immediate window in i feel like he's coming to shoot us pretty good the bathroom anyway so that doesn't matter park here yeah we'll park here and then we'll make it oh yeah right yeah yeah this is good all right it is 1pm and we made it to our camp spot the kitties are chilled and happy that we're not moving we've got the screen door open so jeez sitting out there we're at a very large lagoon i believe it's one of the largest lagoons in peru if not the largest right along the ocean sort of in the sandy deserts there's all sorts of water birds around if i'm feeling ambitious after a recharge from this long drive we'll see if you can't get the big camera out and catch some of these birds for y'all tomorrow's going to be another long driving day but if you guys have seen peru peru offers a lot of very unique different cultures and things to see along the way so we're excited for the drive tomorrow so anyway this is where we're gonna stop for the night we're gonna chill out relax and recoup hopefully you're seeing some birds right now if not we'll see on the road in the morning what you doing here hey good girl good girl so we're out here walking the kitties and all of a sudden a couple of these birds started chirping and they must nest in these reeds because they're kind of coming in from all different directions over here and i've seen this before with other birds but sometimes they're coming over here probably to defend their nests so we walked down past a ways past where the birds were about to start dive bombing g and we started walking back and there's a whole crew here just waiting for him look at his little belly flopping the beauty and the grace nothing we would change a feeling that is deeper than the ocean rage the whisper of the wind calling us to something more the light and we were made for all of this ready for it all this is who we are this is where it starts the rash of the unknown awakening reaching out beyond our hesitations knowing how we've come so far the veil is getting thin more than just a glimpse in time the light and the wilderness we were made for all of this this is who we are this is this we were is for all of this you will own my confidence ready for it that's an owl that's an owl flying right there look at his big head good morning everyone we had a good night's sleep last night and what a pleasant surprise at peru's largest lagoon it was just an overnight spot for us very comfortable and you probably know by now we saw lots of birds including an amazing owl second owl siding uh in peru we saw one in the jungles as well anyway we have a two-hour drive today snow's at the wheel we're gonna get some groceries and then we're gonna head on to our destination so we told you this could be a three-day three-day trip we decided to do it too a long day yesterday and we are around the road early today headed south to an amazing destination so the countryside everything is always interesting as we come across these countries today we're going to be passing through peru's largest city lima it was a little hazy yesterday and today there's a little misty rain as we were driving through but snow was talking about humble housing thatched roof walls yesterday and we're definitely seeing more of i guess you would call it poverty or humble housing across peru and so right behind those guys washing the trucks right there you can see bamboo thatched housing it's like a little neighborhood there at that car wash and there's the lumber store right there so just big long uh almost like trees just stripped of the bark the van is dirty we've been eyeballing car wash all the way through here all right sometimes nothing beats just simple entertainment so the lady came out and dumped a pile of corn and bunch of bread on this little deal and the dogs are around here eating it and all these ducks you can see them still coming around the corner came out here and the dogs were able to fend off a couple of them but once the ducks overtook them the dogs even snapped at each other it's so funny and now all the ducks have just ran the dogs off the dog one he's stuck in there is sniffing at the docks but i think these ducks are gonna win the day all right we've got a clean van it was 15 soles which is four or five dollars for a quick wash not a perfect wash but it was a good quick wash of what we needed and we also got the entertainment of the dogs and the dogs the dogs and the ducks feeding so we're back on the road a couple of things we're coming through a little road construction nothing major they do have a lane shutdown it looks like right here they're building bridge beams on the side of the road you can see them right there and then they're gonna set them across right here it's a pretty major project for the little lane closure that they have and you can see they have those hoses through a lot of times those might be electrical conduits but a lot of times they have tension tensioners in there so they can pull those tight cables tight and tension it to help the strength of the actual beam itself yep those were cables so that's what they're for a lot of roadside food stands anywhere traffic slows down a lot of rubbish which tends to be the trend along this pan american highway we're getting closer to lima there's more bridge approaches definitely starting to get into more traffic so it's going to be a fun morning of driving for snow it's smoggy along here it's been smoggy kind of since we came down to the pan am highway and we suspected a lot of it had to do with sugar cane burning and other stuff i don't know if it's general smog or climate related or whatever but right here along the road we see a couple huge fires which is billing smoke see what this is just burning and just burning yard rubbish i think we've made several comments about the clouds and the fog and the haze and the smog well we're in it we're in the clouds zona de noblina we're kind of on the outer limits of lima we're definitely not in the city there's still some desert between here and there but this is kind of a big suburb community if you will and you can see the type of housing and the dirt roads the sandy desert conditions continues right up through the suburbs wow look at the houses on top of the side of the hill i can honestly tell you that i have never been so surprised to pull in such a big and major city really something totally different than we expected you know we see stuff that we don't expect all the time but i'm sure from the video you guys can plainly tell what i'm talking about but just nothing at all like we expected look at these little houses prefabbed houses definitely a lot of lumber i don't see any yeah maybe either all right if you guys are wondering we made it to the grocery store we definitely stocked up on kitty litter on felix kitty food vinegar and then we did get a couple other items but not much these are the staples that we need and have a hard time finding so but we're in a plaza bay and it's kind of like if you're back in the us like a super target or a super walmart we are pulling out of the plaza bay and i can tell you it was a stressful endeavor getting everything put away some reason ours our fresh water sink is not working i don't know if we got a wire wiggle loose or what it's possible on all our bumpy roads anyway we're moving on we're going headed south bounding down you can notice here they're a little kind of different different kind of tuk-tuks here they're enclosed and they're four-door tuk-tuks and they're all around and they drive every bit as crazy as the ones all over peru coming in to lima here's a giant refinery repsol i know you see a lot of shipping containers but we're not shipping anywhere just yet but it's clear that we're coming through a huge port area and we just came through the refineries and we still have yet to make it into lima proper but we're getting close to the left is lima airport we're now coming under a big tunnel which i'm guessing is where the airplanes taxi across um but i will tell you this and we've said this before improve we've experienced some of the most aggressive uh crazy driving that we've experienced along our whole journey and it seems to be consistent the truck drivers almost run you off the road if you're trying to change lanes to work into traffic cars will speed up to cut you off i hate to sound like i'm complaining but if anybody's traveling for peru i want you guys to know that this is not for this is not for the faint of heart especially here in and around lima it's it's aggressive driving so you really need to be prepared so there's a couple three people dressed like spider-man street entertainers working at this intersection they literally scaled up on the side of the bus they're up on top of the bus dancing around and doing acrobatics honestly we needed a little tension breaker said it before but peru drivers are actually the most aggressive by far drivers we've had several near incidents where they're trying to run us off the road cut us off and we just can't wait to get out of this city it's all right i can honestly tell you the best part of lima is in the rearview mirror and the reason why it's in the rear view mirror is because our rear view mirror is a dash cam looking forward whoa i'm not going to be labor the point because my mama always said if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all but i am excited to get to our next destination away from lima away from lima all right we came up on some traffic and uh looks like a semi he i don't know what he did jackknifed turned over he made a mess the good news is the ambulance is still here so hopefully he's okay yeah they're pumping the fuel off of him oh but that's scary as heck yeah we think it's a fuel truck how scary would that be they're pumping the gas out of him now into another tanker wow that would have been scary to be beside him when he did whatever happened right there all right after all the stress in the big city we get this little brush in the lake view or ocean view i was wrong the driver did us in we're not going to make it we're going to go ahead and stop we found a little space we think along the beach here we'll see we're headed there right now on this chattery road hopefully we're moments away from our camp spot all right we're at our spot for the night we're parking we're exhausted we're gonna settle in and we'll see in the morning one more little short stint at least we have this beautiful beach if i get recuperated maybe i'll show you some of it it was one heck of a drive guys one heck of a drive snow did amazing through lima but we're not gonna talk about that anymore no it's over no more lima all right we had found that nice little peaceful place to recuperate from our crazy drive but if you will remember kurt told you our water pump was acting up we thought it was just going to be a wire that had bumped loose because we'd been on some really bumpy roads so we pulled into our camp kurt got out checked the wires checked all the output with this little electronic meter thingy and we have a bigger problem something's wrong and we um decided not to stay here we're heading on to the original destination which is more of a camp where we'll be secure and we'll be able to pull the stuff out of the back of the van that we need to to get under there and see what's wrong so it is 4 15. we should arrive at our camp at around 5 35 or 5 40. our long day continues but we need water it has been a long day i'm exhausted but good news we just topped the tank i asked snow to turn the pump on pump started kicking water started coming out of the shower tank i have a valve that goes from our fresh water tank to feed the shower tank when they washed the van today the pressure washer must open that valve so basically our tank pumped and overflowed into our shower out under the ground our tank was empty we're full now the valve is closed we're good to go we're going to get some sleep i'm tired and water came out of the sink everything is good let's go sleep i think we're only like 500 feet from our camp let's go get settled in what good news and what a freaking day what a day we needed good news if you liked this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys
2022-08-08 05:55
