Our timing was reasonably good , it was about 9am or so is when we left Cajamarca , and we didn ' t really have any issues with city traffic . Having the GPS has been a huge improvement for negotiating large cities , as this has never been our forte . I liked Cajamarca , as far as cities go , but the surrounding countryside after we went south from Banos del Inca was even better . Much more peaceful and still the same great view . The road we were on , while paved , felt very rural . There was nobody out on the road this Tuesday morning and we quietly buzzed along at our top cruising speed of about 80 kilometers per hour . We passed many Inca style restaurants advertising food " tipico ". There was a few small towns along the way , with intersections to make critical decisions at . Oh the pressure ! Again the GPS gave us the helping hand we needed , though we still relied on our old habit of asking directions from anyone we passed . More than once we have been able to correct a mistake made by blindly following the GPS with a few conversations with locals .
The road was nicely paved , not surprising as this was a main route between Cajamarca and Huamachuco . The scenery was typical Peruvian countryside : lush green colours sweeping across the horizon with mountains in the distance for dramatic effect . The occasional river helped us get our bearings relative to our paper map . We encountered road construction throughout the day , which in Peru is exponentially more frustrating than in Canada . The traffic control employees , if there even are some , have no idea what they are doing and aren ' t very helpful . Honestly it would almost be safer without them and people could be left to their own devices like everywhere else in Peru . When the line of waiting traffic has to wait for more than 10min it grows restless . People start yelling at the stop sign holder , honking their horns obnoxiously . This does not appear to make things go faster . The construction zones were sandy and dusty and mostly an unpleasant ordeal . All the waiting around and choking on dust was wasting our time .
It was getting close to lunch time . The temperature of the day had really heated up as we had dropped some elevation . The lush green vegetation had been replaced by the drier hearty kind and there was a lot more dust kicking about . As we were getting lost in a town that the highway went through ( all roads lead to the plaza des armas ) Alberto got a flat tire . It was a single lane one way street and we had also just discovered we were going the wrong way down it . There was barely a shoulder to pull over onto , but we did . Alberto asked some pedestrians if there was a moto place nearby . The closest one was about 4 blocks . His bike wasn ' t going to be able to make that . We tried pumping enough air into the tire to get to the moto place . That did not work . So without a centerstand , and in the smothering heat of the middle of the day we patched the tire . I held the bike up while Alberto did all the hard work . Thankfully there was two boys watching us complete this impromptu repair job and when the time came to mount the tire we enlisted their help . It was a good job to , as the tricky task of lining the axle bolt back up needed several pairs of hands . We were both exhausted after everything was said and done . It was hot , it was dusty and now we were both hungry .
Unfortunately the nail must have gone clear through the tube and punctured two spots because two blocks down the road Alberto was losing air . This time however we were able to coast into the tire repair shop . This was much faster and much less work on our part . We waited , this time in the shade , while the local repairman fixed us up . The whole thing probably took two hours and we bolted it out of that town as soon as we could . We wanted to put some distance between us and that bad memory so we hustled down the road . There was no construction anymore ( a definite plus ) but the road still had its own worrying ambiance . There was lots of single lane old wooden bridges with uncontrolled traffic . Lots of times the bridges were in tight corners and required very cautious riding because it was difficult to determine the condition of the bridge and the status of oncoming traffic . All in all though we didn ' t have too much trouble though because there was very little traffic . We were gaining elevation again and the climate produced better biking temperatures and the farms and peaceful scenery returned .