The big day and, as always, things ran a little late. Charlie and Gilby put in a heroic effort by dragging themselves out of bed to ensure that the Bumble Bee was fully furred by start time. As the finishing touches were put on the furballers machines the tension built. You could have cut the atmosphere with a wooden spoon. Naturally, it was with only minutes to go that a host of problems with the mototaxis became apparent. Cue a field full of taxis on their sides being attended to by their mechanically incompetent teams. One suspects this will be a common sight. The cavalcade finally cruised down to the square for the start but, as a few jack teams had completely filled their tanks with the emergency jerry cans, this left Anne and Terry running on fumes and good wishes. Our arrival in the square was given quite a welcome. The worlds most relaxed mayor turned up in a Manchester City shell suit along with a couple of other, apparently important chaps who spent most of the time fighting over who would get to shout at the gathered throngs in Spanish whether they were listening or not. Once the shouting had died down four 'Witch Doctors' (we still haven't worked out whether we can actually call them that or not) began a blessing ceremony. About fie minutes into the ceremony one of the shouty men picked up the mic and started on another rant. This seemed to annoy our Inca Priests somewhat who promptly told him to shut up. On went the ceremony, and oh, did the ceremony go on. It turns out the Inca's had a lot of people they could ask for help. We all made wishes into the sacred fire with 3 coca leaves and then were blessed with incense and Condor feathers. This was both cool and surreal as various costumes made their way through the blessing line including two cows, various colours of boiler suit and even the 'Cock Spud'...don't ask. As all this was going on Mayor Cool was texting away on his mobile. After an endless round of speeches from Mayor Cool and the shouty gang, each one insisting on having the last word, we were finally given the order - 'Gentlemen, start your engines'.One by one we rolled through the start line to a fanfare of music, cheers and vuvuzelas. We roared away from our adoring fans, turned the corner and then stopped. We now had to wait for our Police escort out of town, whilst Bigger Balls of Fur were running ever lower on those fumes and good wishes. The rolling goat F*@k finally set off...sort of. With much stalling of bikes and cursing of Chinese mechanics we finally all headed own the hill to fill our severely depleted fuel tanks. And then the inevitable happened. Terry and Anne finally realised that, despite appearances, mototaxis cannot run on only two thirds of the combustion triangle. An emotional push to the garage brought all of us back together again, tanks and Jerry cans were finally filled and the great Mototaxi Junket 2010 was underway. The first day involved various feet-finding incidents as we tweaked our techniques and admin on the furry beasts. Dreagle lost his picture of the Queen early on as the string gave way. Some Peruvian family on the outskirts of Cusco now has Her Majesty above the fire place. Lara also managed to lose her map down a rather steep cliff at 40mph, which was useful as She and Ellis were in the lead....tard. The stark realisation also hit home that there would be no relaxing for the passenger. These things need to be steered from the back, much akin to a racing sidecar. The consequences of not doing this were shown several times as the day went on. Various teams ran out of cornering ability and ended up on the wrong side of the road. Lady Luck ensured a lack of opposing traffic. The most spectacular example of this was displayed whilst Paddy was feeling joyfully dozy sprawled across the back seat. Gareth got bored of cornering and decided that the other side of the road needed closer inspection. As we charged onwards carving a line that in no way represented the shape of the turn Gareth also decided that Paddy was probably missing flying. A rapidly uttered series of expletives spewed forth from both team mates before they hit a large grass embankment, got airborne and barrel-rolled their ride into the ground, ironically, stopping just inches shot of a memorial to a previous victim of the killer bend. Any shock brought on by the incident was entirely overwhelmed by the pressing need to instantly photograph our gnarly experience. Dreagle was righted, dusted down and with only a broken headlamp, a cracked mirror, a cut hand, a bruised rib and a slightly battered shoulder the team pressed on. It was decided that it would probably be wise to keep each other in sight from that point on. The rest of the day was big miles, big scenery and a lot more passenger movement. We finally rolled into Sicuani where we bumped into the French team who pointed us towards their hostel. Basic was not the word, but it did the job (well, the icy showers were certainly an effective alarm clock). Our mototaxis weren't allowed to stay on the street so we did the obvious thing and lifted them into what appeared to be someone's courtyard. We ventured into town, cow suits and all, to get some supplies then all headed for a little restaurant that sold nothing but chicken and chips before passing out for the night.