Feb. 18 – Pacasmayo to Lima

2009 February 24
tags: ,
by joe

We were up super early, thanks to Pat, and after out complimentary breakfast were were back out into the Peruvian desert.  More martian landscape, with such variety and diversity that it was just amazing, but wearing and tiring as well.  More colorful mountains, drifted with yellow sand; dunes and rocks.  It was either terribly hot, or cold, damp, and foggy.  In selected areas, the desert had been cultivated and irrigated and planted with sugar cane, or other crops.  In those few areas, there were shanty towns nearby for the farm workers.  More squaller and poverty.  Everywhere we went, there were piles of debris along the road.  There was no way of telling why, but bricks and rocks and dirt and broken concrete block were piled everywhere, in some places for miles out into the desert.  Lots of areas in this desert were filled with burning piles of trash.  What came to me as a way to try to describe the scenery here to someone was to combine the mountains of Nevada, the deserts of Utah,  and the landfills of  New Jersey, and throw in the poverty and isolation of the Navajo Indian reservation, too.   Obviously I am being silly here, but that is what my bored mind thought of as we sped through this desolation for hours on end.

I continued to have gas supply problems, running out of gas several times and having to use the gas can to make it to the next station, which were very few and very far between.  I am baffled by what is causing the bike to not use the last 2-1/2 gallons of gas in the tank.

As we approached Lima, we encountered terrible traffic.  We had difficulty staying together, as the terrible drivers cut us off, and did stupid things for stupid reasons (or no reason!).  We finally got close enough to Lima center to get off the main road, and found what we thought would be a decent place to stay for a day or two.  We and Pat had planned om stopping here long enough to get new tires, and Levi’s bike need it’s chain replaced.  We found a hotel with a garage, and when we first asked they quoted us s/60 soles for all three of us;  when we went to pay, they insisted that it was now s/80 soles, with no explanation for the change.  That should have been a tip-off that we were in for trouble, but it was still a bargain, so we paid and unloaded.

We were all starved, and we found an excellent steak dinner at a nearby restaurant run by an Argentinian gentleman, who knew how to cook a steak!  It had been a long, hard day’s ride, but we felt good in having made our destination.

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