20 December 2016 – I’m home again in Toronto, but that has no relevance. You & I, we shall now hop aboard the historical present tense & zoom our way back to Cusco, Peru, early December.

I am pretty well over my bout of altitude sickness (thank you Ray, Michaela, Ada & others for your care); I am all packed up for the 248 km. ride to Ayaviri (capital of Melgar Province, Region of Puno); I am in Calle Saphi, leaning casually against a 1200-cc BMW.

I am ready to roll.

And I am such a fake!

I not only don’t know how to drive any size of motorcycle, I don’t even know how to dress myself for the journey.

This is very impressive biking gear — Kevlar, leather, the works — but it is borrowed, and it takes 3 people to tussle me into it.

That’s Michaela on the left, owner & driver of the BMW; then Winnipeg-born Ada, a mainstay of Peru Moto Tours and generous source of the borrowed gear I am wearing for the trip.

These cool shots of me all rigged out to travel are the triumphant results of other people’s hard work.

I obediently proferred limbs when asked; they aligned limbs with protective clothing, and tugged. I think I giggled a lot. I am only grateful nobody filmed it for You Tube, I’d never live it down.

But Wait! — as the infomercials say — There’s more!

Next I have to mount that very enormous motorcycle. Behind Michaela. Swinging my leg over a U-shaped berm of packed clothing that, yes, will support my back, but also presents a major hurdle for the mounting process.

“You just swing your leg over, like mounting a horse,” says Ray. “You’ve ridden a horse, right?” he adds, hopefully. I dash his hopes.

So it takes another team-effort project to heave me aboard.

But I am finally in place, and off we go.

La Sociedad Curvas Peligrosas de Motocholitas — roughly, “The Dangerous Curves Society of Biker Babes” — heads for the highway.

In the days to come, I will visit churches & cathedral of great age and varying states of restoration; I will meet skilled, stubborn Peruvians dedicated to that heritage for a whole range of religious, social & economic reasons; I will exult in fierce, minimalist, top-of-the-world landscapes, & catch the pungent odour of eucalyptus in my throat; I will eat in local markets with the group & one evening soak with them in a volcanic hot spring; I will see sheep, llama & alpaca, even the elusive & undomesticated vicuña; I will pass lakes dotted with flamingoes.

And, late one afternoon, in a combi-van rattling through the Colca Valley, I will become the owner of a rare species — no, a unique example — of owl.

The origami owl. Mí búho de papiroflexia. Which I shall call Gallo (Rooster).

But all these wonderful moments are yet to come.