Extreme ways

I'm in Trujillo, Peru. Today I crossed one of the harshest environments so far - the Sechura desert.

I started out a little late and it was almost 10.30am when I left Piura. I was hopeful the road would stay like the previous day and my map showed it running straight across the desert, so I wasn't too worried. The traffic in Piura was mental and everyone was honking at each other or in the case of cabs, at potential fares. The noise was amazing. No one seemed to have right of way anywhere and people would just pull out in front of me, or squeeze me out of the way by running their car right up alongside me in my lane. Chaos.

Leaving town the desert started more or less immediately and quickly the land became stunted trees, sand and scrub. I was stunned to see that a good way out into the desert there were homes, if you can call a wooden slat wall shack with a pen out the back for donkeys a home. It was pretty obvious from the construction that these people don't get much rain ;) I wondered what on Earth the people did for a living, scratching an existence on the edge of a desert like that. I wondered how they got water. A short distance further on that question was answered, a truck was dispensing water into many containers that people had brought to be filled by the roadside. Donkeys seemed to be everywhere, pulling carts, loaded with packs, being ridden. It struck me that I was passing through the poorest area I have ever seen. Outside one house there were two kids playing in the full scorching sun, and I thought of my nieces and couldn't imagine them being brought up in that environment.

Soon the buildings and small villages were gone and it was just sand. Occasionally the road passed an area of long, crescent shaped dunes and I stopped to take some pictures, parked up the bike and stood in the desert with my camera. After a few minutes a van pulled in just up the road and started to back down towards the bike, setting off my paranoia meter and making me run to the bike and stick my crash helmet on. Four guys got out and while one had a bathroom break at the side of the road, the others picked up a sheet of scrap metal, threw it in the van and got back in. Bathroom break over the older guy shouted "Hey gringo" followed by something incomprehensible, then laughed and got in the van. They drove off. I relaxed.

My camera then packed up, complaining about low battery and in the time honoured fashion of lazy people everywhere, I hadn't charged the spare. Typically, the dunes then just got better and better. Some were starting to migrate across the road in the strong westerly wind.

A little south of Chiclayo, after I'd been going for some four hours, the Panamerican Highway came to a grinding halt at a bridge over a river. The bridge was shut and a long diversion in operation, but as I approached a local guy and his friend starting ushering me toward the bridge. They talked to the cop in charge and he nodded agreement for me to take the bike over the bridge. So the locals showed me a way around the screens closing the bridge to traffic, and I rode through the pedestrians and handcarts, up onto the bridge. It was partly concrete, but mostly planks and was half dilapidated. I waited for a local on a bike and a handcart with two trussed up pigs in to cross the good section and then rode across, looking down into the river instead of where I was going ;) At the end I had to ride down a steep set of stairs, but some kind soul had put bricks between the steps to make it easier. Then I got back onto the road and found a few Soles for the guys for their help.

Adventure over, the road bent west and south toward Trujillo through the extremes of the desert. I passed dunes the size of two storey houses, undulating sand and scrub, rocky mountains, and occasional green patches that almost always had some small town hidden amongst the stunted trees. I rode along highways covered with windblown sand, and was shocked at the amount of festering garbage dumped outside towns and blowing across the desert in places.

Every town had a police vehicle on the outskirts, but so far all they have done is waved.

The sun started to sink towards the western horizon and I rode for hours just watching my shadow lengthen across the straight road. The sun was setting as I reached Trujillo, and it was dark by the time I found the hotel. I got off the bike feeling a little light headed, maybe the intense heat or a little dehydration, I wasn't sure.

South tomorrow, towards Lima I think. More soon.

Frase.