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Peru is adventure motorcycle heaven. Three months and 10,000kms of chasing trails through the Peruvian Andes Mountain Range on our bikes has us addicted. Insane roads, incredible culture, a deep ancient history and some of the best riding in the world… Here’s the story…
This travel blog recounts our motorcycle adventure through Peru in 2025 during our round the world trip. To read more stories from our travels check out Our Adventures
Peru Motorcycle Travel Blog
By Andy Davidson
Mad or Nomad: Round the World Motorcycle Traveller
The Andes
The Andes is the longest mountain range in the world, stretching over 4,000 miles along the entire western edge of South America. Peru’s section alone is home to a quarter of the range and some of its highest peaks.
The Andes splits Peru’s back like a mountainous spine – separating the Pacific Ocean in the west from the Amazon and Pampas grasslands in the east. And our rough route through the country balances along its jagged vertebrae from the northern border with Ecuador to the southern border into Bolivia…
Huascaran
The snow-capped cherry on Peru’s Andean cake is its prized tallest mountain – Huascaran. It’s one of Earth’s ancient giants, towering 6,768m high in the heart of the range. We’ve been chasing the Andes since Colombia and looking forward to this ride for months. But the higher we go the colder it gets until we’re lost in a freezing grey mist. The mountain tries warning us to turn back with gentle rain drops on our visors. Fair enough, we are in the Cordillera Blanca, the world’s highest tropical mountain range.
But we’re stubborn. The trail climbs into the sky until we’re so high, the mountain punctures the clouds and soaks us with rain and hail. The switchbacks turn dicey as the tracks change to mini mucky rivers filled with loose rocks. But our hardy lightweight CRFs are up for it and battle through until we reach the top.
We catch our breath, waiting in the rain for sleepy Huascaran to come out from behind its blanket of white fog. The clouds eventually empty and fade away, the sun appears and the cold rocks steam, the bright blue lake below shimmers and Huascaran bellows in the distance. We’re on top of the world.
Oceans and puddles
The altitude and mountains are addictive. Once you and your bike’s airbox breath in that thin air – you’re hooked. It’ll keep you up there floating amongst the clouds forever if you let it.
The rest of the range is calling so we flick east and pick up a new trail in search of a hidden glacier. Marine fossils are etched in rocks along the way, which means this region of the Andes was once part of the ocean millions of years ago… But now, the only remnants of a once great ocean are muddy puddles, which slap huge smiles across our faces as we splash through for hours on end.
It’s an immense, untouched and prehistoric landscape. You can ride for days without seeing another human, with just the surrounding mountains for company. The only thing disturbing this otherwise still and empty plateau are the sounds of our engines, splashes and tyres spitting stones – until a deep rumble shakes our bones and lightning snaps across the sky. It might be time to find a town and some people after all…
Sombreros
It’s not just the mountains that make the Andes – it’s the Andean people that make this part of the world special. Peruvian villages up here can be extremely rural with very basic amenities, but the indigenous people, their culture and spirituality with nature and strong ties to their past make them fascinating places to stay.
Every village is different. Even the languages, where people speak Quechua and Aymara in honour of the days of the Inca Empire, and still revere the same gods including Pachamama (Mother Earth), Inti (the Sun God) and Apus (Mountain Spirits).
Their culture is on full display as you stroll through villages. Men and women wear different types of fancy hats dependent on the region as an expression of their cultural identity. Women’s hats are usually covered in colourful fabrics, embroidery and flowers. They can symbolise different things from marital status to where they’re from and social standings. Peru is an explosion of colour, tradition and culture that constantly changes as we roll through its different regions.
Canon del Pato
As the villages and people change, the backdrops and landscapes change with it. When we crossed into Peru from Ecuador we were met with green farmlands and rolling hills. But as we moved south, we discovered Peru’s teleportation tunnels. Endless tunnels chiselled into the mountains, each one rapidly transporting our bikes higher until the greenery disappears and is replaced by browns and dusty yellow rocks.
We keep going until we reach the Canon del Pato. An impressive canyon road with 35 hand-carved tight tunnels through solid rock. The gold glow of our little Hondas headlights barely lights the deep darkness in the single-lane stretches, but we potter through hoping no trucks come the other way. By the time we see daylight again we’ve been transported to Ancash.
Making friends
We’re now in a red world. The cliff edges start to rise and the drops steepen. Alissa has a terrible fear of heights and some of the routes start to get the best of her. She takes a deep breath to psych herself up on the narrow trails and keeps her eyes fixed on the tracks ahead. Our route chases a green river as it carves its way through red mountains with ripples of purple.
This is a lonely and barren part of Peru and tiredness gets to us. So, we pull over to eat some biscuits and spot an elderly gentleman sat alone in the wind in the middle of nowhere. We offer him some food and he gives us a few apples in return.
He lives in a town 30kms away but had come out this way at 4am to tend to his animals in the mountains. He’s been waiting all day for a car to pass and hopefully offer him a lift, but doesn’t know if he’ll make it back to town by nightfall or by the next morning. At 90-years-old, that’s hard going. So, we tie his bag of fruit down and give him a lift. He makes a fun pillion with his silver hair whipping in the wind and a huge smile in my mirror. Peruvians are a tough people.
To Lima
We reluctantly tear ourselves away from the Andes to ride to the capital, Lima. We find ourselves on a two-hour stretch of the Pan-American Highway along the coast – and it’s horrible. Long, boring, straight, windy, covered in dust and full of terrible drivers. We finally make it into the city and grab spares to change Alissa’s chain and sprockets. But before we can leave, our mechanic insists on treating us to a meal at his favourite ceviche restaurant, which makes a delicious change.
Normally, up in the mountains our diet consists of chicken feet and hearts buried at the bottom of soups. And if we’re lucky, a plate of chicken and rice. Usually, we’ll eat in what looks like someone’s living room and there’ll be a net full of live guinea pigs waiting for the chop in the corner. The more remote you go in Peru – the more “rustic” the food choices.
But, as delicious as the fresh fish is, it’s not enough to keep us in a city. The mountain spirits are whispering and calling for us to return….
The Devil’s in the name
To get back into the range as quickly as possible, we take another teleportation tunnel and ride through the Canon de Uchco (The Devil’s Throat) – a rock formation dating back millions of years. The local community constructed a road through the canyon to help link the coast to the north – which we’re hugely grateful for.
Bolivia’s Death Road, Mexico’s Devil’s Backbone, Colombia’s Trampoline of Death – they’re all a normal Tuesday morning’s ride between villages in Peru. A Peruvian villager would laugh at those roads. Before we know it, we’re riding precarious trails again, negotiating landslides, thick mud, river crossings, sand and endless gravel tracks through lonely mountain passes, stopping in villages to resupply and stock up on chicken feet.
Time fades as we spend most of our days riding these stunning roads and stopping for hours to watch llamas and alpacas roam the southern pastures. They also taste a lot better than chicken feet and guinea pigs.
The ancients
We break up the long rides with visits to ancient houses carved into million-year-old rocks in the Pampachiri Stone Forests and trek through mighty Machu Picchu to gaze at the Inca Empire’s impressive engineering. Standing atop the green terraces, we gaze over the sacred land, believed to have been a royal estate or religious site due to its proximity to the sky. Now one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, walking through it blows our mind.
Titicaca
But our time in Peru is nearly up and reaching Lake Titicaca marks the end of it. It’s the highest navigable lake in the world and the largest in South America. The Incas believed it was the birthplace of the sun and their civilisation. Today, it’s shared by Peru and Bolivia and inhabited by the Uros people, who live on floating islands they make out of totora reeds. They’ve been living like this since the days of the Inca to hide and escape slavery and believe they’re the guardians of the lake.
Apus…
We’re reluctant to cross their lake, even though Bolivia and new adventures are waiting for us on the other side. Peru’s Andean range and mountain spirits are still calling us – and we believe they will be for the rest of our lives. If your heart belongs to the mountains, Peru offers the ultimate high.
Mad or Nomad
Our route
Here’s a rough layout of our route through Peru in 2025. This route took three months and 10,000kms to complete. You’ll find loads more info on Peru, how to ride it, where to go, our top tips, border info and much more in our dedicated Motorcycle Travel Guide: Peru.
With thanks to…
Thank you to everyone we met in Peru. There’s a lot of wonderful people out there and a lot of very kind souls. But a special thanks to…
We’ve been chatting with James and Claire for years and were finally in the same place at the same time – Vilacabamba, Ecuador. We met up for dinner and decided to cross the border into Peru together the next day. But we ended up getting on so well, we carried on riding together all the way to Lima.
It was so much fun travelling with these two awesome people. It’s so special when you meet and spend time with like-minded souls – and we miss them already.
Importantly, they also introduced us to a portable kettle. This has been an absolute game-changer for us and we’ll always be eternally grateful.
James and Claire started their round the world trip on the same day as us – 1st January 2018. They started on 4 wheels and have since made the excellent decision to switch to two. Check out their site and socials here.
We had the pleasure of meeting Henry, a fellow motorcycle traveller who is riding his motorcycle from Brazil to the UK. Henry’s a very cool guy and we had a great time hanging out in Lima. Check out his Instagram and YouTube vids and follow his brilliant adventure here.
- Insta: Another Little Trip
- YouTube: Anotherlittletrip
Dave reached out and invited us to stay at his place in Banos del Inca. Dave has been running motorcycle tours in Peru for 25 years with his Peruvian friend Franco and they know their stuff.
We crashed out for a couple of days and had great fun planning our route and drinking lots of red wine – and then we went got onto the Pisco Sours, which is now our new favourite drink. And to top it off, he actually had a box of Yorkshire tea, which made our day.
On our last night we all bundled in Franco’s van with his family (all 10 of us) and went to a restaurant for the best food we’ve had in months. Thanks for looking after us Dave.
Pac is a brilliant metal worker, fabricator and probably a genius. He custom made pillion footpeg mounts for us and treated us to his favourite restaurant in Lima. Such a kind person and a real pleasure to be around. If you need any metal work doing to your bike, we recommend getting in touch with him at Epic Experience.
And his friends down the street at Moto Workshop Peru were great for motorcycle repairs.
Read more on motorcycle travel in Peru
Thanks for checking out our Motorcycle Travel Blog Peru. We hope you enjoyed it! Here’s a few more related articles on riding in Peru and South America that we recommend you read next.
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If you enjoyed this Peru motorcycle travel blog or have any questions, please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you.
Andy and Alissa, thank you so much for your kind words and for recommending us to your followers. It was truly a pleasure meeting you and being a small part of your amazing adventure. We hope to see you again—whether here in Peru or somewhere else along the road. Take good care and keep the adventures going! Carlos and I (Jessica) send you a big hug!
Hey Jessica!
Nice to see you on here and thanks for reading! Thanks guys for your lovely words – and all your help!
All the best and hopefully see you on the road somewhere too 🙂
Andy and Alissa
🫶🤗🤗
Hello. Really enjoyed this article! My wife and I are heading to Peru last two weeks of January, can u recommend a motorcycle rental business. And also any recommendations for traveling in that two weeks, is the coast line nice that time of year , we did Sicily in July on a 750 BMW , it was crazy hot but very good time!!
Hi Rennie, thanks for your message and really glad to hear you enjoyed the article! Awesome you and your wife are heading to Peru – you’re going to love it!
There’s a few rental companies in Peru – one of the most notable is Around the Block Adventures.
The coast is the Pan American Highway – personally I would stay way clear of that. It’s long, straight, fast, filled with trucks, dusty and incredibly boring.
The Andes Mountains hold the best riding routes in Peru.
Have a read of this article: Motorcycle Travel Guide Peru
And check out the Peru landing page as it lists our best routes and recommendations.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Andy