We did not exceed anyone’s expectations on Thursday as we turned a four hour drive into an eight hour meander.
And in a first for me I found myself driving through sugar cane fields in our five ton home. That was no fun at all and a bit of a surprise to start our long day. It happened like this.
We got up at seven and were ready to roll at eight or as soon as the gate opened at the entrance to the museum site where we spent the night in Sipan.
Google Maps sent us to the left toward the coastal Panamerican Highway and we should have smelled a rat but we just gave it our best on the crappy dirt road. We had arrived at the museum on a decent paved road by contrast.
And then we met a lady with a flag directing us to the left. Road works closed the already crappy road and we were on a one lane dirt lane through the sugar cane.
The one thing in our favor is we met no oncoming traffic except for motorcycles and a couple of moto taxis but I was ready to reverse if some suicidal car driver appeared. I am not nervous about backing GANNET2 and I’ve done it often as we get stuck exploring.
I had to walk a couple of mud holes to make sure there was enough dirt to support the van but after twenty minutes we came out into a miserably poor village and got onto the highway to the PanAmerican.
We still haven’t got used to the trash being picked over by turkey vultures or kids or dogs.
The village in the middle of nowhere:
The third class highway was pretty awful and we bounced along at eight miles an hour until Layne said “Why don’t we air down?” Duh, of course we should. Airing down the tires is an off tossing technique used to increase comfort and grip as the tires get a greater area of contact with the ground. For us it was a matter of making a more comfortable drive.
After twelve miles we saw the town and the highway in the distance so we stopped to air back up for pavement. We have a tool to sit down which allows us to let air out rapidly without losing the valve core and we have a DeWalt compressor to get us back up to pressure in about forty minutes. We don’t air down often so it’s a simple slow system that works for us. I love pavement.
We stopped next to a field plotted for a housing development. There’s no water around here but they are trying to sell the dream (sueño) of home ownership…
Banco de La Nacion has no ATM fees in Peru but we are limited to US $100 a day each on our First State Bank of the Florida Keys debit cards when they work. Yesterday we had no luck as the bank had no ATM at all. We are decidedly distant from the 21st century here.
Bethlehem Funeral Parlor:
We did pay a couple of tolls each around four bucks, and we were happy to as the road quality is excellent on the PanAmerican.
And we passed another customs and agriculture checkpoint. We were ready to show our van permit and also our hard fought dog papers for Rusty. Guess what? The officials were too busy on their phones to flag us down. Typical.
The desert looks hot but it really wasn’t as the temperature never rose above the mid 70s. We closed the windows and ran a little air conditioning more to avoid the battering of the cross wind and to reduce the noise so we could listen to an audio book.
You aren’t surprised we followed a mobile hay stack for a while are you? Anything can happen on the road down here.
Some of the desert scenery put me in mind of the Mojave Desert.
Sugar cane truck:
Apparently they grow and process rice around here. How they do that in this arid desert I have no idea.
“Let’s protect our environment.”
We saw three overlanding cyclists stopped by the side of the road so we stopped to see if they needed anything. They were fine but we chatted a moment with the cheerful Germans. How they cope I cannot begin to fathom.
They seemed to be enjoying Peru more than we were. The lead rider knows the country and he said after Lima it gets better further south.
The travel lanes came and went according to find road construction plan we were not privy to.
Private technical college advertising. We got to the outskirts of the city of Trujillo and had arrived too late for the archeological site called Chan Chan. So we set about looking for a hostel for the night advertised on iOverlander as always. Google Maps led us down a crappy dirt road, to end that long day as it had started.
We got lost in a middle class neighborhood and we decided we needed to turn around. I pulled forward and turned into a side street and as went went forward GANNET2 rose up on the drivers side, smoothly and silently and like a fairground ride I rose up into the air in my seat. Then as we rolled forward my corner of the five ton van returned gently to earth. Just like that. Below you can see our tire track disappearing into the ditch causing the front left side to rise in the air and me with it. Totally bizarre.
I hadn’t noticed as we sat pondering where we were that the street ahead narrowed to a bridge no wider than our Promaster van, so as I turned to the right our rear wheel cut into the ditch. We could have caused untold damage in such a banal and pointless moment. Amazing that nothing crunched. We stopped and caught our breath before we continued to search for the Hostal for the night.
We found the big steel gates of the Hostal and I got out to ring the doorbell. A little spy hole opened and an eye appeared. “You want a room?” he asked after I said I was unarmed and would he like to open the door in the gate. He declined and peered at me one eyed, a young man of maybe 25. I peered past him and saw a short narrow drive way with a car in it. I couldn’t see spending the night there in front of their house especially with Rusty as dogs aren’t always welcome around here, even if we could fit. I waved at the peephole and got back aboard GANNET2 our home.
We found a nearby gas station and they said we could park in the rear in dirt as soft as talcum powder. It is free and it’s surprisingly quiet in our well insulated home.
As you can see it should have been an easy drive with a walk through a huge archeological dig. It didn’t work out that way of course. God knows what tomorrow will bring but that’s the fun of driving the PanAmerican. The trash is the irritation.
