After I took a cold shower, the three of us went to town for a\u00a0basic breakfast, and we are ready to ride,\u00a0 We gassed up at the only station in town, and have to settle for 84 octane!\u00a0 We rode south on a very good road, with very little traffic, but are almost immediately into the great northwestern Peruvian desert.<\/p>\n
I had no idea that Peru had so much barren land.\u00a0 We rode all day through a variety of desert landscapes;\u00a0 beautiful and dramatic in their own way, but incredibly desolate and empty.\u00a0 There were stretches of nothing but rocks and sand, or sand alone, from horizon to horizon.\u00a0 Sometimes with some desert vegetation, and others without a single living thing visible.\u00a0 Dunes and mountains were everywhere;\u00a0 the mountains came in every\u00a0color imaginable, and were often draped with blown sand.\u00a0 the sand formed hummocks and small dunes that were sometimes anchored with plants,\u00a0 In other areas, the dunes were huge, ‘C’ shaped crescents that appeared to go on for miles.\u00a0 Sand drifted across the road, and blasted our bikes and skin.\u00a0In some places the desert stretched right to the ocean shore, and became the beach.\u00a0 Mostly it was ungodly hot – 90-100 \u00ba, but in some places we rode through cold, chilling fog.\u00a0 The wind blows constantly. \u00a0Mostly flat, we rode fast and saw little traffic, but at times we climbed in and through the mountains.<\/p>\n
The desolation and isolation applied to the human presence in this wasteland, as well.\u00a0 Towns and villages were mostly non-existent.\u00a0 We went huge stretches without seeing a single structure or human presence except the road.\u00a0 There were no services for many miles at a time.\u00a0 When there was a habitation, it was the worst example of poverty and squaller you can imagine.\u00a0 Adobe or mud-and-wattle shacks on barren ground;\u00a0 no shade or vegetation, inconceivable living conditions by our standards.\u00a0 The few towns that exist in this wasteland, are desolate collections of shanties and shacks around dirt streets.\u00a0 Larger villages, like Piura,\u00a0are surrounded by\u00a0shanty-towns that look like middle-eastern refugee camps.\u00a0 The obvious poverty is depressing and dismaying.<\/p>\n
I am having fuel supply problems now,\u00a0 My bike stops running, even with 2 gallons of gas still in the tank.\u00a0 Adding more gas (from our gas can) fixes the problem, but I still do not understand why the fuel is not getting to the carburetor,\u00a0 We have to make extra stops for gas because of this, and gas stations are very few and very far between!<\/p>\n
After hundreds of miles of continuous desert, we enter an area that is green, and are soon surrounded by rice paddies and other farms.\u00a0 Before long we enter our first ‘real’ Peruvian town, Pacasmayo, a cute little beach resort town on the coast.\u00a0 We all three find rooms in a brand new hotel, where we are the first guests to sleep in the rooms!\u00a0 The bed I get collapses when I first lie down on it, and I have to put the mattress on the floor.\u00a0 We have an issue getting hot water, but eventually we get a real hot shower.\u00a0 The town seems friendly, and the many curious people we talk to seem to indicate that not many gringo tourists make it here.\u00a0 We walk around town at dusk, and Levi and Pat have real milkshakes, and then (another) chicken dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After I took a cold shower, the three of us went to town for a\u00a0basic breakfast, and we are ready to ride,\u00a0 We gassed up at the only station in town, and have to settle for 84 octane!\u00a0 We rode south on a very good road, with very little traffic, but are almost immediately into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,10],"tags":[6,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}