Lady bikers in Peru with Adventure Peru
It can be a daunting prospect riding a motorcycle through the Andes of South America, but providing you are properly prepared and with an experienced team, such as APM, your confidence will grow as riding each day becomes the norm.
We discuss the different tours we offer in Peru with our lady riders and then select the tour most suitable for their riding ability.
Then it is a question of taking the right bike and protective clothing, which in Peru can entail great variations in temperature during a single day from a 90 degree heat in the morning to freezing temperatures in the late afternoon. Coupled with altitude rides up to 17,000ft, this can be an extreme test, but just take it one step at a time and be mentally and physically prepared.
Our tours are normally booked some time in advance so riders have time to meet us and discuss the tour, see our route DVD's and also get to do some extra trail ride training with our APM off-road specialist Clive Evans. Based at Llanerchindda Farm, Cynghordy Llandovery Mid Wales, here you can use your own trail bike or rent one at the farm complex in Llandovery. Contact Clive on 0797-3383753 for information on cost and availability or visit www.cambrianway.com. Riders booking with Adventure Peru for tours will get a free day’s riding/personal training with Clive.
The extra training will boost your confidence as riding in Peru on sand and shale is a totally new experience. The views, however, when riding in the Andes on a motorcycle are worth all that extra effort you put in! An experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Adventure Peru Motorcycling have been running tours in Peru South America since 2003 and are based in Cajamarca, Northern Peru. It is a beautiful colonial city steeped in history and APM own a 6 bedroomed colonial townhouse, office and bike base here near the centre of town where guests stay either at the start or end of a tour. The city has many tourist attractions to visit including natural hot volcanic baths, cathedral and an Inca ransom chamber. We also do various rideouts around Cajamarca or our Barrance base to give clients an opportunity to feel the bikes and adjust seat heights to suit each rider. We currently have 7 Hondas and 4 Suzuki DR650SE's. The Suzuki is one of the lowest seat height bikes when set right down, we also have gel seats available which give an extra inch lower if needed. The Honda Tornado 250's are ideal for lady riders, built by Honda in Brazil and a favourite choice of previous lady clients, again these can be lowered.
The bike is light and very manoeuvrable.
Our Honda Transalp 650 models we use for rider/pillion clients, or for those who want extra comfort with heated grips and Givibox, which is very useful when touring, although somewhat heavier. When booking a tour please specify your bike selection and subject to availability we will try to accommodate.
Our back up vehicles carry your luggage and you take your day to day requirements on the bike by bunjee net or in a topbox.
When riding you have a day map clearly marked with meet up points and our destination plus areas of special care needed. Our guides will discuss the day’s ride after breakfast each morning.
We currently have 2 very experienced bike guides, Peter Killick who has ridden in the Americas for over 35 years. He speaks fluent Spanish and arranges routes and accommodation while Franco Guevara is our Peruvian/guide mechanic with over 15 years riding experience in Peru. The rest of our team is Carlos Salazar our back up support director assisted by myself and Lorenzo Chalan on larger groups. We normally operate in small groups of 5-9 riders maximum and offer tours in the south of Peru visiting all the main tourist locations such as Lima, Nazca, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Colca Canyon and Arequipa. Whereas in the less tourist known north we run tours through the Cordilera Blanca mountains to Huaraz, Caraz and on through the famous Canyon Del Patos, or duck canyon, being one of the most thrilling routes in the americas through 50 old railway tunnels hewn through a gorge 70kms long, some ride and not for the faint hearted!
This arrives at the Pacific and then up to Trujilo and on to Cajamarca. We also go north of Cajamarca up to the beautiful Andean scenery of the Cloud Forest through Celendin and Chachapoyas, experiencing the beautiful lush vegetation of the Amazonas region.
We then return to the Pacific coast at Chiclayo. Our final tour is to experience the Peruvian Rain Forest by flying to Iquitos, the only quick route as no roads in run through the dense rain forest. You have an opportunity to ride small rental bikes for a short 4 hour ride around Iquitos to Nauta, the road runs out then!
Also spend some time at a jungle lodge, an Amazon experience we offer as a relaxing 1 week add-on to our main bike tours. Please note it can be very hot with high humidity but well worth the effort!
Since 2003 our lady biker numbers have increased each year helped by publicity and bikers’ recommendations such as Mel Falconer, now the first woman bike editor in the UK.
Mel now edits the Motorcycle Monthly and was previously dep-editor of Trial Bike Magazine, or TBM, before going freelance and getting her new post, well done Mel! The trip Mel did was even more remarkable as she had only recovered from an operation to remove a malignant tumour only 6 months before the trip to Peru in October 2007. She did it no problem and rated it one of the greatest bike experiences of her life.
The following year, in 2008, we were pleased to have Elspeth Beard, the first UK lady to ride solo around the world, riding on our tour with her bike journalist partner Paul Blezard.
He did a great voiceover for our Northern Tour DVD, which he experienced first hand in October 2008 and rode every model of bike we owned! Adventure Peru Motorcycling then thought in late 2008 about organising an all ladies tour and I turned to Mel & Elspeth for their help in getting this off the ground and raising money for charity. Mel kindly got publicity in MCN & Ride and I twisted John Newman's arm of Rider's Digest which resulted in over 50 enquiries from interested lady riders in the UK & USA. We whittled the list down to 50 candidates and then held a presentation night in a local restaurant near APM's base in Dallington Sussex. Peter Killick, Mel, Elspeth & Paul all answered questions from the floor about Peru, all having done the tour, to the assembled group of over 40 candidates able to attend. A training session with The White Helmets motorcycle army display team was kindly offered to us free at their practice ground in Bovington, Dorset and a date in May was selected.
Over the week-end and in warm dry conditions the lady rider candidates, now down to a selected 20, went through their paces on gravel, sand and water! Our selectors, together with Capt Tedby and his team of instructors, gave up their free time to help in the selection process and late on sunday afternoon we had our 6 riders. Karen Clarke (Salisbury), Lisa Saxton (Darlington), Paula Everall (Telford), Liz Moggridge (Banbury), Ellie Sanders (Lincoln) and Angela Lewis (Uckfield). In addition, Sally Holmes of ESAM helped to co-ordinate the charity ride to raise money for Help The Heroes, having previously done a round Britain ride in 2008 raising over £10,000 for Brainway after her own near death experience.
For safety we also decided to have a biking GP along on the tour as most of the candidates had recovered from serious illness and well known biking GP Wendy Peters of Solent IAM stepped up to the plate! Wendy did a great job and enjoyed the trip so much she is coming out with APM in September on a Southern Tour along with fellow SAM biker Dr Lilian Hobbs.
The selected group were presented to the press for a photo shoot featured in RIDE magazine at The BMF show in Peterborough in May 2009, complete in APMcomplimentary clothing.
Mel also got sponsorship for bike clothing so each lady received £1,500 of kit free! During the year we emphasised the need for fitness and training. Some ladies in the south were helped by local bike specialist Colin Port of Freestyle in Wadhurst, Sussex and Martin Chapple of AJP in Wiltshire. In October 2009 the group arrived in Lima. The trip began with the excited group meeting our APM team and picking up the bikes in the coastal town of Barranca. After a short ride to experience Peruvian coastal traffic, the group were ready to set off early the next day for the ride up into the Andes to 13,000ft and the Ancash capital Huaraz.
A few hours later our first casualty due to altitude sickness was Paula. Our GP advised us to go on in the back-up with Paula to get her down to Huaraz and lower height. After 20 minutes her blue face went back to pink and she recovered quickly to meet the rest of the group arriving late afternoon. After several days’ riding in the mountain and a few spills and two major offs, we were back down in Caraz ready to tackle the trip down the Canyon del Patos. Lisa was badly bruised after taking flying lessons on the way to Chavin and Karen bit the dust on the way down from the glacier lake losing it on a corner and breaking a foot. However the canyon ride was to be run like a military exercise, an early start saw us reach the coast intact by late afternoon. We used reserve lady riders to break the journey and help the injured riders. We then relaxed by the Pacific before climbing back up the Andes to our base in Cajamarca, mission completed. Nine ladies and a 1,000 miles across the Andes!
Mel back in Blighty did a great write up in Ride's February 2010 edition in time for the MCN show at Excel London and many lady riders came on to our stand at the show after reading the article. We have decided to run another all ladies tour in 2011, this time open to all experienced lady riders and a new charity will be selected to promote.
Please e-mail info@perumotorcycling.com or ring 07768-568811 if you are interested in taking part on this tour as numbers will be limited and bookings will be on a first come basis. David Groves will be at the Huntsman bike show Sunday 25th July. www.perumotorcycling.com, info@perumotorcycling.com ADVENTURE PERU MOTORCYCLING