Picking up from Huacachina, the Nazca Lines and Chauchilla Cemetery: Peru’s Most Unsettling Day Trip. The series starts here: Peru and Bolivia: The Andes, the Altiplano and the World’s Most Dangerous Road.

Across the Andes to Chalhuanca

This drive became a highlight of the trip. Nazca to Chalhuanca: across the Andes, over switchbacks and ridgelines, through landscapes that kept changing every twenty minutes.

Up a mountain. Down a mountain. Up again. Along a ridge at 4,559 metres — higher than Mount Cook by nearly a kilometre — then down to 3,000 for the night. The road switched back on itself across bare slopes, dropped into dry river valleys, then climbed again. Drop-offs of more than a thousand metres, roads better than they had any right to be.

I overtook a truck on a short straight. Janine commented: “You drive like a local.” I was not sure it was a compliment.

At altitude, everything becomes an effort. You feel it in the chest first. Janine developed a headache. I was largely fine, which I noted with unnecessary frequency.

We arrived in Chalhuanca on the wrong street. Switching from Waze to Google Maps found the hotel — then Google tried to send us down a flight of steps.

We declined.

The hotel was basic. Off the tourist trail, genuinely unused to tourists. The kind of place that reminds you how far from anywhere you actually are.

In the evening we sat in the garden while the other guests drank beer and played music. We had Inca Cola — fluorescent yellow, tastes like bubblegum, inexplicably Peru’s favourite soft drink. The mountains sat in the last of the light behind the pool.

Onwards to the Sacred Valley

The road north the following day was different — lower, greener, the big altitude behind us. We got stuck at the entrance to a small village. After sitting for a while, Janine jumped out, armed with Google Translate, to ask what was happening. The truck driver behind offered two things: “Fiesta,” and a shrug about how long. We waited.

Buzz came out for the first time at altitude. Thin air presents challenges. She managed, just.  

The sky was filled with smoke all day, from crop burning in Brazil. The valley sat under it like a lid had been put on — the mountains cut off at mid-height, the light flat and grey. The air was fine. The view was not.

Later we stopped to fly Buzz from a hilltop above the valley. Her highest launch yet. Flying off the edge of the hill, she lost lift in the thin air. For a few heart stopping moments, she began dropping into the valley below. She recovered. The footage survived.

There were toll booths along the way. Entering one village, I slowed to pay — but the booth was empty. And burnt down. The locals, we later discovered, had disagreed with the toll. They made their position clear.

Stardome Lodge

Easier to find on satellite than on the ground.

A glass geodesic dome on a hillside above the Sacred Valley. When we got below it there was no road up. We called them and left a message. To find the road up the mountain we switched to satellite view, navigating by the shape of the road alone. Backtracking, we found it — narrow and steep, blind corners requiring a toot to stay safe. Halfway up, they called back and asked to speak to our driver. They struggled with the concept that they already were.

We got there. The valley spread out below, green fields running along the river, mountains rising on both sides. Views in every direction. On a clear night, more stars than the name suggested.

It was worth the navigation.