Tuesday 18th March ; City of Lima (Customs Office, Shops, Restaurant, Oros-Sundowners)

This morning we all had breakfast together at the hotel and then we went to meet Eduardo our fixer at the entrance to the hotel.

I sat there looking at the traffic rushing by, many many  busses of different size, people on scooters, and skateboards and motorbikes riding on the pavement, pedestrians and cyclists weaving past each others on the pavement, bus conductors hanging out the doors of the busses blowing whistles and blowing their sirens, chaos. And then Eduardo arrived on an old bike he restored himself:

We then walked to SUNAT’s offices (the Customs department’s offices.) There we took a number and started playing Musical Chairs. Soon Eduardo learnt that the people who dealt with our Temporary Import Permits had moved to another building but was given the phone number of the person that could help us. After a long phone call we were told that Eduardo had to submit lots of papers via the internet and then they will send each of us an email with a PIN code which we would send to Eduardo and then he would use the code to activate a 24 hour period in which they could send an inspector to see that the bikes has not been sold but are still locked-up at KTM. Once the 24hour period has passed we can take our bikes regardless if they sent an inspector or not. They would suspend the block they put on the TIPS and we can cross the border out of Peru without any problem as we would have used much less days of the 90 day period our TIPS were for originally. In fact we left our bikes here for 7 months even though we were given 3 months due to the TIPS being frozen to allow us to return at a later date and not get into trouble for over staying out TIPS.

Some of us received their PIN numbers per email this afternoon, but Peens and I have not. I suspect they are battling with my email address as iy has a “ch” in the Fleischer and that they are sending it to the wrong address, time will tell. Peens was given a new email address by Dannyboy on the last trip which he used on his documents with SUNAT and now he can’t remember the G Mail address that was given, so until he can get the address from Dannyboy (who is now sleeping due to the 7 hour time difference) he can’t see if he was sent the PIN number.

At the bikes we went through our panniers to see what was there and what was not there. I thought I had a pair of slip-slops but did not, neither did Millsy, Tex could not find his charger on the bike (but he did find the hammer he bought last trip to panel-beat his pannier after his tumble and he re-discovered the electrical cable we bought from an electrician on the last trip when we needed Jumping Cables to start my bike.

Then we were off to the local Shopping Centre where Mills and I did some Slip-Slop-Shopping and Tex and Pie bought chargers to charge their phones on the bike. Then we were off to play Musical chairs in the bank where we exchanged some Dollars for Sole’s. We were just doing Life and peeping into how doing Life is in Lima. We wandered through the streets and looked at a few shops and then we took a taxi to a little square Peens found on his GPS that “looked nice.” It was. Click on this Video link

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We walked through the park with kids from the school running around us, we smelt the flowers and looked at the people from Lima doing Life, once again a peep-show into their world, then we went for lunch at a very busy little local restaurant and ate local food which I ordered using the photos on the menu. Of course the amount of plates were lost in translation as I ordered two of some plates and only one of others, but she brought us two of everything.  I realized things are going wrong and stopped her from bringing any more food, so we never got to taste their Sausage or chicken, but we did get the beef liver kebabs, which was surprisingly very good in spite of not being little steak kebabs which I thought I ordered. There was a pork belly with potatoes and pumpkin, and of course local beer.

Milsy and Peens was telling us how festive it was at the Moto GP in Argentina and then we decided to talk about the future trips. We decided to just look at the map, speak to Prof Google and work on a route and look at some dates for the next two trips as Leg 22 will see us storing far South, but Leg 23 will need to be done in the Summer as it will be on this Leg that we ride to the Southern tip of South America and there is just a very small weather-window to do this. And on the same Leg we will turn our noses North and head up the East Coast of Argentina. We also spoke about when we will finally ship the bikes back to the USA as Tex is turning 70 this year,  we are all getting older and we realize we can’t do this adventure forever. So at least we are starting to look at “the end” of the bike trip, which no doubt will make our wives very happy as they were told in 2012 that we were simply going to ride from London to Capetown, but then we got lost and it is now 13 years later. Below is proof of our planning and that we are thinking of the “End Game.”

Here are some photos of Peens and Millsy’s trip to the Motor GP

As you can see, they took photos of the atmosphere outside the racing course and they say there was such a vibe with loud music and lots of locals making braai’s and thousands of bikes displaying where they have ridden on those bikes.

So from looking at the screens of these bikes  I see we will have to include Route 40 into our next Legs.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to KTM after breakfast, to fit our panniers and start packing the bikes. Then Eduardo will meet us there around 12h00 and give us photo copies of all our Paperwork, at 14h00 the 24 hour Inspection Window will be over and then we can take our bikes and head South into the desert to our 1st stop of this leg, an Oasis, and I am very excited as I have never been to an oasis.

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Fleisch