Peruvian Gifts

The border crossing from Ecuador to Peru on Saturday was a simple and speedy affair. It only took 10 minutes to get stamped out of Ecuador and 45 minutes to complete the formalities to enter Peru.

It is a bit of a backwater crossing as the picture shows. Immigration is in the portakabin. Peru was only marginally more modern.

Peru is know to have some interesting driving habits. My experience of this came quickly in a town called Tambo Grande, a dusty, dirty place. At a stop light the pick-up in front of me decides that he needs to reverse to change lanes, with no where to go I just hollered and hooted to get him to stop, which he did but not before riding up on the front wheel and wrecking the fender. The mounts were twisted like fusilli pasta, the fender busted. Fortunately, that was the limit of the damage, the bike handles as it should.

Once at the hostel for the night I concocted a web of zip ties to hold the rear part in place to avoid getting coated in road muck and to protect the radiator.

  

The day did not get better, shortly after leaving town I was confronted with a 40ft wide water crossing, the concrete crossing bed was coated with slimy algae, the water flowing briskly. Though approached gingerly the front wheel lost traction and that is never a positive, I inspected the slime more closely than I desired. A slow speed spill in water that did no damage to me and only a few (more) scrapes on El Burro.

I rode for another 100 miles and called it a day at Olmos; the hotel had a small pool, my second but more pleasant dunk of the day. Sunday could only get better. It did.

The ride to Chachapoyas up in the Andean hills was a delight. The sun shone, the road twisted up and down, a good surface and the views reminded me of why I decided to come. The frustrations of Saturday washed away. These are the Peruvian gifts I came for.

Though one must never get lost in the moment.

Onward.

T2