Peru - North up the PanAmerican Boring-way

So finally we are underway. We sent our bike by sea, Brisbane to Callao, the shipping agent giving us a 48-53 day wait time. We thought to spent that at a Spanish language school in Arequipa, arm ourselves as it were, with the linguistical weapons for the next year in Latin and Central America. As it turns out, we chose our language school well and our shipping agent exceptionally poorly.

getting our yellow fever shots, don't worry, it was cleaner inside!

 

Finally, after more than 90 days and continual misrepresentations and frustrations later, our bike arrived. The crating performed by the agents' guy in Australia was abysmal. I paid 450 valuable dollars and was able to pull it apart by hand. It only had two sides, was open at the top and seriously, held together with clingflim, it was industrial type however! My pride and joy arrived filthy dirty with bags of belongings just thrown in haphazardly. I’m not sure what I should do about this agent. I want to warn others against his unprofessional service and downright lying ways but don’t want to get bogged down with all the negativity. Short to say, if anyone would like more information on who NOT to ship with, PM me!

look at this crate! And I paid how much for this?

The Peruvian customs was a 4 day nightmare but the karmic gods kicked in with the good stuff and smoothed over the warehouse procedure by providing me with a lovely young lass with perfect English, spare time and a staff pass that jumped all the queues!

Released from bondage and it was time to wrestle with the traffic that I had been a passenger to for the last 3 months. Let it be said that the Peruvian driving technique is a blend of bumper cars, telepathy and blind faith. Here we go, into 6pm nighttime peak hour traffic into the centre of Lima from the very dodgy port suburb of Callao to our hotel. I needn’t have worried, the 12 kms were almost bumper to bumper, horns baring, exhausts exhausting. I didn’t have a crash nor even get lost, I might have gotten lung cancer though!

Next day we pulled all our belongings apart and for the very first and very exciting time packed the bike for her truly maiden voyage right in the courtyard of our hotel of course. Then program the GPS while muttering a short prayer to the gods of satellites and out into the world we headed.

locked and loaded inside the hotel.

took us 20 mins to get 300m from the hotel.

Our first day was always going to be a short one and we made it to Barranca, a seaside town just shy of 

200kms north of Lima. Locate a hotel, unfurl and its was off to the owners recommendation for a ceviche dinner. Ceviche for those who don’t know and should, is a Peruvian version of a dish found in many coastal areas around the world. Basically grab your fresh fish, filleted and chopped, mix with lime and lemon juice and other regional spices and eat. The acidic juices actually cook the fish. It’s great.

After a sleep that closely resembled a coma we were back and up on the road, again heading north. This time our goal was a bit vague, not knowing what colour rabbit we are able to pull out in these early stages, we are powering on up the Pan-American. I know that many of you who have done this trip before will be sitting on there with a tongue-lashing at the ready, let me explain. We have a volunteering commitment in Ecuador which we are now later for, thank you Mr Pretend Shipping Agent. We plan to return back down through Peru in September and stay high in the mountains, in fact we will not see the Pan-Am once on our southward journey.

a comfort stop on one of the more picturesque places

over-loaded? not if you can drive it still.

So after what we thought was a long day, only 360 odd kms, not bad for a second full day on Peruvian roads, we arrived in Huanchaco, just on the seaward outskirts of Trujillo. And here is where a small admission is necessary. I made a rookie mistake. Before I could even get that first beer down I started feeling terrible. By 7pm I was done. I had dehydrated myself during the day, so much so that it was decided to take a rest day the next day. I know, soft huh? Anyway, lesson learnt but it did provide a rather sleepless night filled with vivid hallucinations and flashbacks. Cheap thrills.

Today we have made it to Puira, our last Peruvian sleep before the 130 odd km push to the Ecuadorian boarder and our next country. Our day today filled with low grey skies, intermittent rain and suicidal bus drivers. The scenery has been breath-takingly boring. Apart from some teasing glimpse of the Andes foothills in the very distant background and the worlds largest rubbish dump cum desert in the foreground then you will have to excuse the lack of photos in this post. Tomorrow it's off to Ecuador. Now, it's off to dinner!