Decker Trip - Panamerican Highway 1966

Nov 25. Well, while we're waiting here, I might as well record some more. Perhaps you can hear the ocean. We're sitting here right in front of a derrumbe in which three cars were plastered. We just took a picture of one.
We had a good lunch at Aticua. We're between Aticua and Aconha. The kids had beefsteak for lunch and soup. And I had lapa--sea slug or octopus or something--which wasn't too tasty. Plus 3 bottles of pop.
The road from Nasca is pretty good and progressively gets better until Challa. You go along the seashore with beautiful beaches. Since Challa the beaches have given way to rocky coastline--very beautiful. We've seen some seals on the rocks and what look like small whales or large porpoises out on the rocks. The kids got a kick out of that.
This is about 2:00, and they say we probably can't get through until 5:00. These huge rocks have piled onto the road and they keep drilling them down from on top to make the grade of the rock slides less so there's no danger of more of them falling down. Then they push them off the road with bulldozers.
The road from Nasca goes through some desolate country. Then you get into this rocky coastline with some weird wind-sculpted sandstone formations. From Aticua this way you ride along the edge of the mountain that comes down to the sea almost.
After we left the derrumbe we got as far as Canana and stayed on the other side of town at a gas station that had a little restaurant--where they let us stay overnight. We had tea for supper with cheese sandwiches.
Nov 26. In the morning we had cafe con leche and cheese sandwiches. The lady gave us the cheese sandwiches for free. Perhaps she took pity on us--seeing we were a family without a mother.
Anyway, from Canana you go about 5 km more on the sea coast, then you start up--for about 18 km you curve up into desert until you reach kind of a level area, then it's all desert until you get to Arequipa. You go up and down some before you get to Arequipa. There's a last stretch we took on the new highway which serves you, plus a few miles on steeper grades, which the new highway doesn't have. You pay 15 soles for that. In Arequipa we got gas and just went through town. We asked directions on how to get out to the highway. A few miles out of town we stopped and the girls cooked dinner of spaghetti, and Gordie and I fixed the car (we put new spark plugs and filed the points and so forth).
After eating our lunch, we continued. Well, soon after that, the paved road ends, and we start on a very bad, windy, dusty, narrow dirt road that climbs and climbs and climbs. It's about 40 miles of steady climb. Then you finally break out into a more or less level country--pampa like--and you go up and down slightly. After that the climbs are quite gradual. But this must be up, oh, 10 or 11 thousand feet, and you keep going up up up until you reach the high point of about 15,000.
Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. I had to set the spark forward before we got too far along on that dirt road, because the power just wasn't going to be enough. And then, toward late afternoon (of course, you can't go very fast on the road, so we hadn't gone too far--about 85 km from Arequipa), I noticed that the trailer was kind of dragging sideways. So I stopped right where some other fellows were changing their tire, and sure enough, the main spring on the right side had broken. And also the second leaf of the spring on the left side, so we decided we'd have to get this fixed.
We fixed the right side there and had our supper (which wasn't much--I can't remember). It was so bitter cold, by the time we got things ready for bed we just fixed some hot cocoa for the kids--real thick, sweet chocolate--and told them to take a good sip each for energy. We were all kind of sick and dizzy. It must have been 13,000 or more feet up there, and couldn't do too much work without getting real tired. So that's what we had for supper.