Tuesday Aug. 21, 2007
After leaving Vilcabamba I visited the nearby city of Loja to have my foot looked at one more time. It was still sore and I was starting to wonder if a piece of the stinger had broken off inside my achilles tendon and been missed when they cleaned it at the hospital in Atacames. I was surprised when I found a private x-ray office, owned and operated by a Dr. type guy with what looked to be state-of-the-art equipment. I walked right in off the street and he zapped my foot for $15 US, told me everything was fine and wrote me a prescription for anti-inflammatories ($6 US).
The countryside in southern Ecuador is so beautiful that I wanted camp somewhere, but campgrounds don't exist and everywhere seems to be fenced. So I decided to ask a farmer if I could stay on his land, but that turned out to be harder than it sounds, and 4 hours later I found myself driving down a dodgy path in the dark with a whole Ecuadorian family guiding me to a parking spot in their sugarcane field. The next morning I awoke to a beautiful sunrise on the edge of a field surrounded by fruit trees.
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I'd heard that the price of gas in Ecuador was considerably less than in Peru ($1.50 vs $4.00 US/gal), so I decided to fill up near the border before I left. Unfortunately, that's also very common logic around these parts, so the military only allows gas stations to open - in their presence - for a few hours each day. It was only supposed to be about 1/2 hour before they arrived, so I waited. It turns out they just show up whenever they please, and over an hour later I was finally on my way into Peru.
The Panamerican highway in Peru runs north-south near the coast. I thought I'd figured out the two main factors of weather (altitude and latitude), so I was expecting the weather to be hot as I rode through their bleak and garbage filled desert for a couple of days - but I was wrong. The sun was hot when I stopped alright, but the air was cold. That's because of a little thing called the Humboldt current in the Pacific that brings cold water (and cold winds) to this coast every year.
Gas (which BTW is still leaded if you buy the cheapest grade) wasn't the only thing that was different in Peru; the drivers in the small cities were terrible. That's partly because there wasn't any stop or yield signs at any of the intersections - so nobody knew who had the right of way. It was chaos! Everyone pushing their bumper out into the intersection to pry their way through traffic going past. If it was this bad here, I was really getting worried about being in a big city like Lima.
There were plastic garbage bags stuck to every tree and plant in the desert, signs indicating dune areas where sand blew across the road like snow drifts and horses on farms that looked like a skeleton covered with skin. It was hard for me to be there for only 2 days and I struggled with the fact that some people actually lived there all their lives.
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When I arrived in the little town of Lambayeque on the coast I was very fortunate to find the Hosteria San Roque where a very responsible young lady named Romina Gatti, who seemed to be in charge, offered me a big discount if I would share with her some pictures and stories of my trip. To say I was impressed is an understatement, because the typical mentality of people in the majority of hotels I've visited so far has been very limited; they don't care if it's full or empty the price is often the same and their attitude is often cold with a strange uninterest in business. This was a high-end hotel built for archeologists from around the world who worked for years on the nearby ruins and now sat relatively empty. Romina certainly didn't need my money. She was simply working there for a short break from her home in the capital of Lima where her parents who owned this hotel lived.
Romina is a not only an extremely friendly person, but also a very mature, well educated and talented young lady. She is currently in university, speaks (and sings) Spanish, English and French, is taking dance lessons, helps run her family's hotel business and is a great host. In my few days there I was somehow automatically included in her world (along with a couple of other guests). We enjoyed nice, late-night snacks and light breakfasts in the beautiful dining room every day, we were invited to watch Romina practice with the young girls at her traditional dance class down the street, and one night we all crammed into a taxi for the nearby city of Chiclayo to see a free classical music concert. I felt a little out of place after living out of a bike for so long and in some of my traveling clothes, but Romina and her friends always made me feel welcome. What an amazing oasis this place turned out to be in the middle of such a cold and ugly desert.
While there I also changed Buzz's oil at a friendly Yamaha shop and visited the very interesting Sipan Museum, an old train museum and a witches market where you could buy all kinds of odd things - including voodoo dolls.
Near Trujillo I visited a cold and grey beach to see fishermen still using traditional 2500 year-old fishing boats called 'Caballitos' which they would sometimes surf back to shore like ancient surfboards.
I also visited the nearby ruins of Chan-Chan, the largest pre-Colombian city in the Americas and largest mud-brick city in the world. This Chimu capital (one area of this huge civilization) was built around 1300 AD and contained about 10,000 structures.
There were also these Peruvian hairless dogs that reminded me of the cats I've seen in shows about Egypt. These guys have extremely high body temperatures (40-ish degrees C) and were held by ancient people to help with the cold nights and arthritis.
Further south, at the end of a long, tiring day as I entered Chimbote, I was rudely awoken by an open manhole in the street. While riding in traffic and searching for a hotel, it appeared quickly and unexpectedly from beneath the vehicle in font of me. It was an abrupt impact on the front-end that felt like the shocks had bottomed out and I was sure it had broken the front wheel. But after pulling over and catching my breath I was glad to see that it was simply another dent in the rim.
From here I turned east towards the Andes mountains toward the Cordillera Blanca (white mountain range). The asphalt quickly turned to dirt, sand and gravel as I continued slowly through very tight switchbacks up into the mountains. After reaching an altitude of 4,282 m (14,048 ft), I finally arrived in Caraz, 160 kms (100 mi) and 8 hours later.
The next day I took a day trip up a huge valley to see the magnificent lake Paron at 4,200 m (13,780 ft) nestled at the foot of a snow covered peak. The road up made yesterdays trip seem easy as Buzz and I snaked back and forth up the side of one of the walls of the valley. Every time the road turned me back the other direction I kept wondering how it could possibly turn back again on this vertical face. Along the way I stopped by a stream and saw this incredibly beautiful orange colored tree that seemed to be shedding its bark. It was as smooth and thin as onion paper. The view of the lake made the whole trip seem worthwhile.
The next day I made another day trip north to see the Canyon del Pato (canyon of the duck). The interest here turned out to be the journey itself rather than the destination. The road passed through way too many single-lane tunnels to remember along a surprisingly deep canyon.
Before leaving Caraz I had the bike washed at a truck wash (they don't have a self-wash system here) and sadly saw another of my decals get washed off the textured panniers. I've learned to explain things clearly before they start and then hang around while they wash the bike to make sure they don't inject water into any of the wheel bearings or chain. I sure miss not being able to wash it myself like at home, and often I'll just wash it in the parking lot of a hotel.
Later I headed south along a good highway to the pretty, but touristy little city of Huaraz for a few days. At 4:30am one night, on the residential street just outside the little room I was staying in, a truck driver somehow managed to get his semi-trailer stuck in the small intersection while trying to turn the corner. So after being awoken and listening to his big diesel motor outside my door for 20 minutes, I decided to go out and watch the show.
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