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

Day 19 Rest day in Huanchaco

Well it is good to be sitting on normal chairs for the day instead of a saddle, the backside is enjoying the luxury!  The sun is not shining yet but maybe it will come out a bit later this afternoon, it is nice and warm though.  Our hostal is about 100 metres from the Pacific and the waves are crashing in onto the beach, there is something so relaxing about that sound.  We are all just taking things easy and getting ready for the next 4 hard days ahead as we go back into the mountains and eventually back up to the dizzy heights between 2000 and 4800 metres.  We have days of 118, 80, 66 & 70K to look forward to.  Doesn't sound to bad but these days involve 83, 10, 34 & 100% paved roads, along with 662, 861, 1600 & 1223 metres climbing respectively.  These last figures make the prospect look a little harder, offroad & climbing too, as well as bushcamp for the next 2 days.  The Andes Trail now starts for real, there are days with 0% paved roads to come in the remaining weeks to the end.  We have only had the prologue over the past 1500K, now the real work starts, so keep watching this space!
Thanks to all of you who have put comments on my blog, you are really helping to keep me going, I cannot thank you enough, please keep going with them.  I hope I can keep you informed & provide you with a few funny anecdotes along the way.  The more we move into camping, especially bushcamps, the less frequently I will be able to keep you up to date, but I will get the stories up as soon as I can when wifi is available.  Thanks again to you all for looking in & commenting too!

Day 18 Pacasmayo to Huanchaco

This was another day of barren landscape with the wind gaining strength as the day went on.  We left the coast to go back inland onto the Pan American Highway again and continue south to our rest day stop of Huanchaco.  The wind from the Pacific just grew in strength and continued to batter our tired bodies until the end of the day.  The police were still checking our progress and paid a bit more attention as we went through a place called Paijan which is a bit of a dodgy area for travellers, especially cyclists.  There were a few shady looking characters with masks on who looked a bit menacing, but we went through in a group and came out the other side intact!
The landscape for the day, as well as the last couple of days, was of desert and rubble.  It was not even nice clean yellow sand, but dusty gritty stuff and loads of dumped rubbish from plastic bottles to old building materials.  It looked a bit like some of the desert war places around the globe!  We all realise how lucky we are that we have lives that are so privileged compared to so many of the friendly people we pass by each day.  The kids come rushing to the roadside and wave and cheer at us as do a lot of the grown ups, it is really great  and so humbling as we go past on our very expensive bikes!
The day was 111K long with 410 metres of climbing and at the end we were all pleased to have a rest day in front of us, minds, legs and rear ends that needed a day off!

This was as good stretch!

How better to relax at the end of 7 hard days!!

Day 17 Lambayeque to Pacasmayo

This was another day where the scenery was not too special as we headed towards the Pacific Ocean.  We were going through very sandy areas, sometimes flat and sometimes very large dunes, with a few low hills interspersed.  The pace was quite high soon after we started and it soon increased until there were only 9 of us left in a group heading towards lunch at just over 60K.  The weather was quite dull and the wind was blowing hard from the ocean!  After lunch we set off again at a reasonable pace and so it continued until about 5K from the end 3 of us got blown off the back on the last rise before the end.  The wind was so strong that it was almost impossible to get back with the others, and that is how the day finished with 5 in a group followed by 2 others and one solo rider completing the original 9.  Just after we arrived at the hotel on the seafront the sun came out for the first time and so we could enjoy sitting in the sun after our showers following the 118K and just over 320 metres of climbing.  We have one more day along the coast before another Rest Day and then it's back up into the serious mountains of The Andes!

Day 16 Bushcamp near Motupe to Lambayeque

Short flat day to Lambayeque and it was sort of decided that we get there as quick as possible without anyone actually saying anything!  We all stayed together for about 30K then the race guys broke away and the rest of us just kept up an even pace through to lunch, with police guidance through the towns still!  Lunch was at 50K and that only left about 25K to go, which we soon got under our wheels.  It took us just about 3 Hours to cover the 75K of the day.  Very nice hostal awaited us at Lambayeque after a quick morning of riding.  A number of us visited a museum about the Sipan people who pre-date the Incas, which was very interesting.  The rest of the day we just relaxed, and some of us tried to catch up on our blogs etc.

Day 15 Chulucanas to Bushcamp near Motupe

So before the days story more about the Police in Peru.  It seems that Bike Dreams had sent details of our trip through Peru to the Peruvian Embassy, mainly because there are some small areas of Peru that it is useful for the police to be aware of our prescence.  So there is often a police car along the road whose occupants wave and check us through as we pass.  Then in many of the smaller towns they blow their whistles and stop traffic, or if there are a number of us in a group we are often treated to a police car escort with lights on, siren blazing, and all the vehicles kept to one side as we "race" through!  It has been really great so far, makes you feel that your in the Tour de France!!  They also count us all in to make sure we are all safely home at the end of a day, it will be interesting to see if it does last all the way through Peru.
So, this day started a bit cooler than the last ones but as we are dropping slowly down towards the coast the terrain was still fairly flat and boring.  There were two small climbs today, and we did pass through a few foothills just to break it up, but here was still the nagging headwind!  So nothing really interesting happened on the journey to our first bushcamp.  We should have been in  an hotel but it was found out that it was full, so a bushcamp was found, only about 7K short of Motupe, on a less than green or flat football pitch about 500 metres from the road.  We had ridden 147K with just over 500 metres of climbing.  We all had our dinner at about 6 pm which was really good for the first wild cooking experience of the trip.  A few chats and bed about 9 pm, after keeping my diary up to date.

Mine is the Green Tent!

Day 14 Macara to Chulucanas

We were about to leave Ecuador and enter Peru, but that was not going to be as quick as you may think!  We arrived at the border about 8:20 am and the plan was to let the trucks go ahead of us and the riders follow once the trucks had been cleared.  Well, first surprise, the border guards on the Ecuadorian side were not exactly sober shall we say.  It was quite a while before we got our passports stamped and we could progress the 100 metres to the Peruvian border.  Another slow process getting through, but the sobriety seemed to be better here!  During our wait the Peruvian Police were chatting to us and explaining that they would be "escorting" us all the way through Peru, around 5 weeks!  We did not really understand what they meant at the time, but after over 2 hours we were all cleared and on our way with a police car, lights flashing, leading us into Peru.  The police escort continued all day.  More about that later.
Unfortunately by now the sun was really getting hot after our long delay and I soon dropped off the group.  I was finding the terrain very boring, rolling roads with a nagging head wind.  We did not have lunch until around 60K by which time I was really feeling low.
After lunch we carried on until nearer the finish we had our first serious stretch of unpaved flat road for about 14K including riding through a couple of rivers for good measure!  By the time we reached the end I was in quite a bad way, really suffering from dehydration and when I arrived at the hotel Didier, our nurse, took my bike from me and got me sat down and drinking straight away.  He took my bags to my room and I just sat drinking anything that was put in front of me and trying to enjoy the soup that we always get at the end of each day.  Slowly I got better and went off for my shower and washing out my kit before going out to get some Peruvian money from an ATM.  I bumped into some of the guys in a bar/restaurant and stopped by for a beer or two along with some food.  There were some Peruvians playing a guitar and the spoons as well as singing.  It was a really good night and it turned out that the first day of 124K into Peru was not that bad after all!

Welcome to Peru!