Day 20 Huanchaco to Bushcamp

We left the coast, until South Argentina, on Wednesday 25th August and travelled inland towards the high mountains.  The day started cool, but soon started to warm up, and as a bonus the wind was in our favour after all the headwinds down to the coast.  Police escort still with us as we cleared Trujillo and various roadworks.  The road was mainly paved and slowly we started to gain some altitude.  Not a lot happened until we turned off the main road after lunch and took to the un-paved stuff.  It seemed okay to start with as it was quite hard packed and reasonably smooth as as surface.  After about 10K it got more like what was to follow over the next 2 days, bumpy, mixture of rocks, gravel and worst of all dust like talcum powder, which if you drift into it can stop you dead depending upon how deep it is. Eventually the bushcamp site was reached and we set up our tents for the night.  Unfortunately as I arrived I must have run over one of the thorns from the bushes and later noticed my front tyre was flat!  It was in fact worse because I must have hit some glass somewhere and this had slashed the tyre as well, new tyre and inner tube required!!!  The tent pitching was also a bit hard because of the ground and the sleep that followed after dinner was a bit lumpy.  In summary we had travelled 113K and gained 900 metres into the foothills.

Bushcamp near Chavimochic