2nd March 2015 – Abancay to Nazca – 2015-03-08 02:49

Today we have about 450 kilometers to drive on a busy challenging road and we anticipate it will take us 12 hours so we have an early start and leave Abancay at 7:30am. We drive out of town through the valley that Abancay is in and start to wind and climb our way over the Andes.We reach a maximum height of 4,557 meters but the majority of the day we remain at around 4,000 meters. The cars perform well at these altitudes, although down on power, and seem to run better on 90 Octane rather than the alternative 95 Octane, thanks to the SU carburetors having the ability to automatically compensate for the high altitude. Michael found that above 3,000 meters using the 90 Octane fuel, the idle speed went from 800rpm to 1200rpm.We drive through the cloud and its misty and drizzling on and off, the temperature has dropped, which all adds to the ambiance of being at this altitude.We see quite a few recent accidents along the road including a truck roll over, a burnt out bus, a couple of cars that touched plus the remains of earlier car roll overs. Rock falls are a common occurrence on this road, fortunately we didn’t experience one, we only came across the rocks over the road after the slide had occurred. Driving across a plateau we can see snow capped mountains once again, just beautiful! Not much sign of inhabitants up here as it’s very remote and I imagine extremely cold in the winter months.The last 30 kilometers of the drive is on a fantastic piece of road that has many switch backs and drops over 3,000 meters in altitude down to Nazca. Michael really enjoyed this section of the drive and can’t imagine there’s a better road anywhere in the world. We follow a truck for a while and as he comes into the corners he sounds his horn to warn oncoming vehicles, then he moves over to the wrong side of the road to get around the hair pin bends. This gives us no opportunity for passing him coming out of the corners, however we have to admire the truck driver maneuvering a vehicle of its size around this twisty steep road. Michael says its one of the best 400 kilometer drives he has ever been on.