A guest post by Catriona Spence
One thing I’ve learned while living in the Peruvian capital of Lima is that it’s virtually impossible to go travelling without having a funny story to tell. The day I said ‘yes’ to going to La Oroya in my friend’s 4X4 was definitely one of those times; a day to remember, or as it seemed at the time, a day to forget.
Marlon, my flatmate knocked on my door at 4am. ‘Hey, do you fancy going on a road trip tomorrow?’ he asked. My senses had barely woken up and for some reason I found myself saying ‘yes’.
At 7am he banged on my door again to wake me up so we could set off on time. Weary-eyed I climbed into the back of his truck, his pride and joy, his baby, his Niva.
Marlon is forever going on road trips to the beach so I set off in a pair of shorts, flip flops and t-shirt. No jumper, no trousers, no socks. This was my first mistake.
I decided to catch 40 winks while we travelled out of Lima, which easily drifted into a 1 hour sleep and, by the time I woke up, I discovered we had left Lima and were passing through the town of Chosica, well on the way into the mountains.
Oh dear, I thought, perhaps wearing shorts and a t-shirt was not a great idea. Why hadn’t my friend told me I would need more clothes? Was he having fun laughing at me, the silly tourist?
As we wound our up way up into the mountains towards La Oroya, the air got colder and thinner, much thinner. And then the car broke down. “Fantastic,” I said to myself as I stood in the cold, shivering and waiting for the car to be fixed.
As it turned out, the problem was with the fuel line. An issue that might cause most people back home to abandon the trip and call out the recovery service. Not in Peru. In no time at all Marlon had a spare fuel can strapped to the roof and rigged up with the line feeding the engine directly. Of course, the five-litre tank ran out pretty quickly so we had to stop several times, but it would take more than this minor glitch to stop Marlon.
So why were we going to La Oroya? I asked Marlon what there was to see there. “Oh, I thought we would just go out for some lunch,” he replied. You have to be kidding me I thought. I refused to believe that I’d said yes to an 8 hour road trip simply to go and eat some lunch!
But he wasn’t joking, we were in fact going for lunch, and it wasn’t even a good one. We stayed for 40 minutes before descending back down the mountains on a terrifying journey back down the twisting mountain road to Lima.
Lesson learned: next time don’t say “Yes” to impromptu road trips quite so readily.
If you prefer the idea of organizing your trip with expert help before you set off, take a look at the range of Peru tours offered by a reputable Peru travel agency.
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