MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Peru

Crossing Abra Málaga by motorcycle is the most direct way to feel, in a single morning, how completely Peru can change: you leave Ollantaytambo among the bare mountains of the puna and crest the pass at 4,316 meters, with snow-capped Verónica (5,682 m) in the background, then drop through clouds into the high jungle of Santa Teresa.

The upper stretch is one of the few places on Earth where Polylepis (queñual) forest still survives near its maximum altitude limit, and it's a world-reference spot for endemic bird sightings — which is why you share the road with birdwatchers as much as with motorcycle travelers.

On the other side of the pass, the route becomes the unofficial "back door" to Machu Picchu: from Santa Teresa you can reach Hidroeléctrica in another couple of hours and walk the tracks to Aguas Calientes from there — the real alternative for anyone who'd rather finish the trip on two wheels instead of the tourist train.

Riding Colca Canyon by motorcycle means tracing the second-deepest canyon on the planet: it reaches 4,160 meters deep near Quillo Orco, second only to Tibet's Yarlung Tsangpo (5,590 m).

The mandatory stop is Cruz del Cóndor, the lookout where the Andean condor — the world's largest flying bird — rides the morning thermals almost level with the road. There was no real road to Chivay until the 1940s, when one was opened to serve the area's silver and copper mines.

Whoever continues past Cabanaconde enters the AR-106, a 100% dirt stretch that drops from nearly 4,000 to 1,500 meters through an almost lunar landscape, past pre-Inca farming terraces of the Collagua and Cabana cultures still worked today, connecting on to the Valley of the Volcanoes near Andagua.

Riding Cañón del Pato by motorcycle means squeezing into the crack where the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra almost touch, leaving barely enough room for the Río Santa — and the road — to pass between nearly vertical rock walls.

Between 1917 and 1940 a railway was built there to move Áncash's mining and farm output down to the coast; the era's corruption left only the Chimbote-Huallanca stretch finished, and the 1970 earthquake — the same one that buried Yungay — finished it off. Today's road was laid literally over those abandoned rails.

Of the original tunnels hand-carved into solid rock for that railway line, 35 are packed one after another in barely 12.5 km — the reason this stretch is known today as the "canyon of the 35 tunnels." They're single-lane: you have to look before entering each mouth, because meeting a truck head-on inside a tunnel has no elegant solution.

Climbing to Punta Olímpica by motorcycle means reaching one of the highest points in all of Peru you can drive or ride to: the tunnel bores through the Cordillera Blanca at 4,736 meters above sea level, inside Huascarán National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

It was built in under a year — drilling started May 15, 2012 and finished February 24, 2013 — and opened in August of that same year. At 1,384 meters long, it's Peru's longest vehicular tunnel and the highest in the Americas.

What makes the route unique is the contrast: you climb past snow peaks like Chopicalqui on the Callejón de Huaylas side, cross the tunnel, and descend the other side into the Callejón de Conchucos, a far less-visited valley, down to Chacas, a colonial town famous for its woodcarving school founded by an Italian missionary.

Climbing the Carretera Central to Ticlio by motorcycle means making, in under 200 km, one of the fastest sea-to-altitude climbs anywhere in the world: you leave Lima on the Pacific shore and crest the Abra de Antícona, popularly known as Ticlio, at 4,818 meters above sea level.

The road took ten years to build and was inaugurated on July 1, 1935 by President Óscar R. Benavides — for decades it was the country's most important transverse axis, the route connecting Lima with the La Oroya mines and the central highlands.

Right alongside it runs the Ferrocarril Central Andino, which for a long time held one of the highest-altitude passenger railway stations in the world. Today the route is flagged as one of Peru's most dangerous roads for its sharp curves, narrow roadway and frequent landslides — it's not a technical off-road ride, but it demands respect for the heavy mining-truck traffic you share it with.

Climbing up to Nor Yauyos-Cochas by motorcycle is the closest high-altitude escape a Lima-based rider has: in a single day you reach lagoons of an almost unreal turquoise, fed by the same high-altitude wetlands that supply the capital's drinking water.

Declared Peru's first Landscape Reserve in 2001, the area spans 2,500 to 5,700 masl and packs, along just 20 km of the Cañete river, stepped waterfalls like Cabracancha and mirror-still lagoons like Papacocha, in the town of Vilca.

Unlike Cusco or Arequipa, this doesn't demand a multi-day trip: it's the perfect route for anyone who wants mixed terrain, altitude and postcard scenery without committing a full week — and along the way you cross pre-Inca farming terraces that local villages still work today.

Riding the Huacachina dunes by motorcycle is the most different route on this entire Top 10: no pavement, no gravel, no altitude — just sand, on some of South America's tallest dunes, over 100 meters high, ringing a natural lagoon in the middle of the desert.

The oasis grew up around a small lagoon that local legend attributes to a mermaid turned to stone while fleeing a hunter — the same image Peru chose for its 1991 50-sol banknote, proof of how much this place weighs in the national imagination.

Unlike the Andean routes on this list, the difficulty here isn't altitude or cold but loose sand: without constant traction the bike buries itself in seconds, and anyone unfamiliar with the dunes gets disoriented fast — which is why nearly every local motocross and enduro operator insists on always riding out with a guide.

Reaching Kuelap by motorcycle means riding into the region least traveled by motorcyclists in all of Peru: the Amazonas "ceja de selva," halfway between the Andes and the Amazon, where fog blankets cloud forest and sheer drops alike.

The Kuelap fortress was built by the Chachapoyas culture — the "warriors of the clouds" — between the 9th and 16th centuries AD, with stone walls up to 20 meters tall that once housed thousands of people; many archaeologists call it the "Machu Picchu of the north," though it draws a tiny fraction of the visitors. Since 2017 a cable car has shortened the final climb.

The same circuit passes near the Gocta waterfall, with a 771-meter drop — one of the tallest in the world — that stayed off international tourist maps until the early 2000s. It's the route that rewards whoever is looking for the country's least-photographed corner, not its most Instagrammable one.