The Long Way Home
3,500 kilometres, two motorcycles and fifteen days following the long way to the Pacific and back.
It is impossible not to feel a little nervous before setting off on a 3,500-kilometre journey.
A motorcycle has a strange way of reminding you, every few kilometres, how lucky you are to be there. You leave Cusco with an idea of where you are going, but somewhere along the road the itinerary becomes secondary.
The real reason for the trip was simple: to ride.
Fifteen days. One long loop through the Andes, down to the Pacific and back again.
You start to find the rhythm.
Day one was spectacular. You wake up on day two with exactly the same energy, because that is how motorcycle trips work: you leave early.
By the time we reached Ayacucho, though, you could already feel the trip in your body.
And it was only the second day.
The good thing is that you eventually find your rhythm. The kilometres stop feeling like a number and start becoming part of the experience.
Every kilometre gives you another story.
That is probably the best thing about travelling through Peru on a motorcycle. The landscape changes constantly. Mountains, valleys, desert, coast. Roads you did not expect to remember become the ones you talk about later.
By the end of the first day, you already have a thousand stories to tell.
Sometimes the long way is the whole point.
The destination was never really the destination.