Day 2 -Juanjui to Aquatia

Got up ate breakfast and loaded the truck up and we were on our way, more dirt roads and i was getting more comfortable on the moto. Toby lead the group followed by Kelly myself Jim and my dad. The support vehicle followed. It had our gear and extra moto and 2 passengers, Rachel and Heidi.



The ride started out mostly on dirt, it was very loose at some places. The Peruvian infrastructure is improving, Peru's road are getting better. Everywhere we traveled we saw a lot of construction on new roads. When I was young it took forever to travel in the jungles of Peru. The dirt roads had huge potholes everywhere. It looks nothing like that anymore. Granted in the rainy season these are still washouts and mud that you contend with but overall it is much better.

Here is Jim living the dream.



If you guys could just smell, hear and experience where we were, you would absolutely love it!

Break time, we stopped for a break at this bridge in the early afternoon. The bridge that you see looks pretty sturdy right? Wrong some of the support wires had been cut, it had been sabotaged a while back, and they only let small vehicles over the bridge. The big dump trucks and semi truck had to get over by other means.





It was hot! Here I am stopped waiting on the other guys. I am starting to get delirious as you will begin to see. I could not think straight....



still on the side of the road...



Well since I was feeling more comfortable on the moto i decided to try to hold my camera and ride at the same time. Not the best idea but it worked, here Kelly in blue on his honda 600 and my dad passing me up.You can realy see the greenery around us in the high rolling jungle and the dusty dirt road ahead.



We rode hard all afternoon and at one for our short breaks we noticed that Jim had a flat tire. Toby and Kelly had gone ahead unaware, we stopped the support vehicle. Instead of trying to change it we just took the spare bike off the back of the truck and put the other one in the truck bed. We were back in business and back on the road. The road was kind of weird, it was paved and then it when to dirt and then back to pavement. Here is a stretch of pavement that we were flying down to try to make up some time.



RIDER DOWN

It had been a long day and were were not even close to Aguatia the sun was starting its decent. We were all moving and then I noticed that I was alone. I pulled over and waited as we were instructed to do. Toby was ahead of me and I must have sat on the side of the road for about 15-20 min. Next thing I see him coming back towards me, he stopped and said that someone fell... and rushed off. I turned around and followed. Immediately I thought it was my dad since he did not say who it was. My heart was racing and I felt numb... It wasn't, it was Jim from Texas.



Jim was banged up, we did not fully know the extend of his injuries. But we knew he need medical attention. Rachel the nurse in the support vehicle took care of Jim. Toby made the decision to push on ahead to Aguatia since he knew there was a hospital there. The other option was to go back to the town about an hour behind us and see if they had a clinic or hospital, chances where there wasn't one.
The push was exciting and scary all at the same time. I had never ridden on dirt in the dark and I was going to learn. We also had to deal with the elements, it got foggy, so foggy that we could only see 10 feet in front of us and the construction on the roads made it big hazard driving. At one point my dad was in the lead and he was stopped to look at a map and stepped down on loose stones and fell. I pulled up as he was on the ground, he was more embarrased than anything but he did hurt his shoulder. On the other hand it was probably better that we didn't see what we were driving next to. Huge drop offs and shear ledged were just few feet from the road. We got into Aguatia in darkness and lucky to get there in one piece. We made it!