On the beach, off the beach

In Lima we had been thinking about going to Huaraz, since there were some recommendations both from the internet and from people. But after some research we found out that the only activity around there were long hikes to see the mountains and snow. But since we had experienced our share of hight (Huaraz was on 4000m again) and were not very keen to hike such long distances to see mountains and snow (too many close encounters with them while crossing the mountains anyway) then we decided to skip it after all.

Packing up camp after our private-beach camping

Our first stop was an amazing beach that had no roads going towards it, but luckily the sand dunes were solid enough to ride on them. Have to stay that nestles between the cliffs, with young eagles practicing flying and only a couple of people the whole day, this was the best beach of this trip so far. The only downside was the wind that made it very difficult to make a bonfire (but we managed). 

The roads on the coast

We headed up the coast still to reach Trujillo (actually the neighbouring smaller Huanchaco). The last few hundred kilometers or so we had noticed that there must be a hole in one of the seals of our engine (losing oil and a new sound) but we decided to ignore that until Huanchaco, as there really were no decent-sized towns on the way. Plus there were many warnings about armed robberies in the area between Lima and Trujillo in iOverlander (which caused one very paranoid camping between sugarcane fields to keep away from beach, where tourists would be expected to camp) so we held our breaths to make it without completely breaking down before the town we wanted to reach.

The moment of complete breakdown came exactly the moment when we reached the center of Huanchaco. There we discovered again our bad timing of arriving in this town because the pope was coming for a visit in a week. In Peru, it is a huge deal: there are posters and paintings everywhere welcoming the pope, there are special TV programs on constantly - all about the preparations and expectations etc; since the day he arrived there seems to be an almost round-the-clock special program on the Tv about it and people are traveling from all ends if the country to see him. So since this little town expected three million people (population of the town 40,000) to visit, the hotel prices were through the ceiling.

We managed to negotiate a slightly better price for two nights saying that we won't stay for the pope anyway and we just need to fix our bike. Finding a mechanic, on the other hand, was much more challenging - after asking around from many people (you really can't take directions from only one person around here as they are rarely accurate or even correct) we finally found a... place.

A guy, who was supposedly a mechanic was building a restaurant for himself but promised to help us. There were no signs up about the place being a mechanics shop (because it wasn't) but since the bike had passed the point of starting, we had no other option but to leave Starcraft there to return at 4pm to pick it up. Of course when we got there at 4, the bike was missing the engine, petrol tank, seat and many things more. So we ended up staying there and helping the guy finish the work before dark.

 The guy did seem to know what he was doing, although we had to go to another mechanic in Trujillo the next day to change another leaking seal... Huancho didn't really have many options for motorbike parts so it just broke, but luckily it was a more easily-reachable seal than the big one from the previous day.

After Huanchaco we decided that the desert road didn't have that much to offer us, so we decided to make a small d-tour in the mountains (about a 1000km detour) so we headed towards Cajamarca. The road started out following a river towards the hills, with big patches of the road washed away, patches consisting of only gravel and occasionally the road being directly on(in?) the riverbed. Despite our expectations for the road to get better once we start climbing up, it soon became clear that the last patch of gravel was not planning to turn back into a paved road any time soon. The road was climbing up-up-up, the night was coming and there were absolutely no places off the road with a level place to pitch our tent and to top it all off, it started raining. Hadn't seen rain since leaving mountains the last time as it only rains around 4mm each year along most of the coast of Peru.

Luckily we found an abandoned house to hide us and our bike. We even met the neighbour - a very old grandpa was climbing up the muddy slopes beside the house and invited us over. We politely declined as there was no way of getting the bike up the hill, plus we were not up for the whole evening of deciphering an old version of Spanish mixed with Quechua to keep up the conversation.

The next day we continued the climb through the mountains and clouds and fog, and got some amazing views to make up for the the cold and occasional rains. And to our very pleasant surprise the road also became asphalt again. The villages on the way really didn't see "gringos" very often as was proven by the fact that when I walked into a store to buy bread, the lady could barely speak at first from the big surprise. The people in the small towns away from the gringo trail have rarely seen white people and are quite cheerful (a bit apprehensive at first but then they melt) . The more random the place we stop, the happier they are (Look, gringos sitting on a pile of dirt!) but oh, so sincere. Sometimes, when a cyclist (or motorcyclist) is almost twisting his head off to see us a bit longer, I wave to them so that they could turn their head back and wouldn't crash (but there have been many near-misses).

These are some nice clouds, not the horrible fog that we encountered later

Cajamarca has some cool archeological sites around it. We visited Cumbe Mayo, which is a very complex system of aqueducts (in perfect harmony with the nature) , built more than 3000 years ago by the Incas, making it the oldest one in the word. Plus they are still using it! Of course Incas always found the most amazing places for everything so the site was between some amazing hills and rock-formations and many rocks covered with old symbols and messages (undeciphered, slowly being washed away by the rain and time). We also visited a complex of 'windows' carved in rocks, also almost 3000 years old, which are believed to have been used for burial purposes. Both sights were certainly worth a visit and even despite the cold and rainy weather (it rains every day here because of the season) welcoming us in Cajamarca.

Incan aqueducts - over 3000 years old and still work

Whete the dead were buried

We escaped the rain and cold once more to head to the coast. This time we encountered the worst road-conditions so far as we were crossing a double-hill, both peaks about 3000 metres high. There were evidence that until recently it had still been a tarmac road, but the floods and landslides had done their job, so what was left was a 1-2lane track on muddy gravel. And just as we were climbing the second peak, we encountered fog like I have never before seen in my life. It was so thick that visibility was about 7m. My glasses were so foggy on both sides that I didn't see anything at all, no matter if I was wearing them or not. It was not exactly raining, but because the air was so wet, everything was still dripping with water. And at the worst moments, the road was covered also in a 10cm totally saturated layer of thick, semi-liquid mud (because of course noone will build any drainage on a temporary road. Why would you think ahead... a few rains and they will be lucky if they have half a lane of road left).

We still reached the coast alive and stopped for the first night in Lobitos  - a town popular with surfers, as I had heard, so we went to check it out, hoping it may be the place for a little longer beach-side rest-stop.

What we found was a tiny little town, with half of the houses abandoned, so half of it was a ghost-town. There were tens of oil pumps on the road to the town already, we found a few more right inside the town and when you looked out in the sea, there were oil platforms in any direction you looked. We actually found a nice place in one of the surf-camps but decided not to stay in this town any longer than one night, the reason mainly being, as always, food.

Nope. No food here

Of course there were only two small kiosks (in place of a shop) in town to buy rice and oil but for any other groceries you needed to go to the next town. So we decided to explore the three 'restaurants' on our side of town.

We walked into the first one (the menu outside had about eight different meals on it, all basically still being chicken or fish with rice, cooked a bit differently, some with the addition of potatoes), started discussing that it would be nice to find something more interesting (without rice) and started leaving.

Man (restaurant owner) : What do you wish do have?
Us: what else do you have, besides rice, chicken and fish?
Man: We have anything you want, just tell us and we will make it.
Us: and anything that isn't chicken or fish will cost more money?
Man: yes, of course. what do you want? we can make anything.

It all ended with us going to the next place (looked like an abandoned boat shed with a few plastic chairs and tables), that turned out not having any food, when we asked what they could offer us(why are you open then? ).

The next place also looked like an abandoned surf-shed, but had a menu on the wall promising burgers and pastas and all kinds of good stuff. The few stranded surfers that we finally found in the huge shed said that they have no food.

So we arrived back in the first place, greeted by the wife this time.

Us:What do you have with any vegetables in them?
Woman: Nothing - we have eggs, rice, potato, chicken and fish.
Us: Ok, we will have potatoes with chicken/fish and... you really don't have any vegetables?
Her: no
Us: onion, tomato... anything
Her: no. we don't eat these kind of things around here
us. Ok. we'll just have the potatoes and chicken and fish them
her: no rice?
us: no rice. (they never eat anything without rice around here. we have tried ordering pasta, but then you get 1/3 plate pasta and the rest is still rice)

In the end we did get our food and from somewhere they had also managed to find two slices of tomato for us. But of course we had to pay extra... didn't even ask if it was for the tomato or the lack of rice. Should be called whining-about-South-American-food-blog already. So I shall first let you know that not all is bad:

The more north we go, the more common and cheaper are fruits and fruit juices.
Chile had the best empanadas so far (Guanaceros with freshly baked seafood or mushroom-ham with cheese) and they often have on a table a kind of mixture of finely chopped onion, chili, tomato and something more. 

In Argentina was the best barbecue (Asado), chorizo and a sausage that was a mix of black pudding and Estonian blood sausage (they had that in Paraguay and somewhere else as well). Actually I can't really comment on the food of Chile and Argentina - eating out was so expensive that we always cooked for ourselves. 

Paraguay had also good barbecue and a kind of pay-by-weight eateries, where they had a wide choice of different options with plenty of different vegetables as well. And Erik is still dreaming about Lomito Arabica (the most tender meat in a wrap with nice creamy garlic sauce and salad)
Brazil had mouth-watering pao de queso (cheese buns), ácai (a sorbet of a kind of local fruit) and maracuya juice. We also encountered some all-you-cat eat buffets, that had some choice of veggies as well but not often enough. 

Bolivia - they say that Cocachamba has some good food. Don't know, didn't go. But sorry Bolivia... there really isn't anything good in the food (in the areas we traveled)
Peru - cheviche (raw fish with lime juice, chile, cilantro and onion), fish stew, lomo saltado (a stir-fry of beef pieces and onion, paprika), stuffed paprika etc.

Anyway, in search for a town with a bit more to offer, we got to Máncora - a beach town where you go to party. We stayed two nights in a camping with at least 60 other hippies (mostly south-american travelers), found our first eastern european (a Polish guy hitchhiking south all the way from Mexico) in the whole South-American trip (such a shame he left the next day. there was finally someone who was in the same situation like us - white skinned, but not as rich or western as all locals expect us to be) and pretty fast discovered that the beachfront filled with nightclubs, each one trying to blast a reggaeton song a bit louder than the next one (it was horrible and deafening just walking past in a distance ) , really isn't exactly what we had been looking for. Plus we like less crowded beaches with less trash.

Mancora camping life

We tried the next recommended town (by the internet), found nothing there and kept driving until the evening was close and we just had to stay somewhere. So now we have been resting for a couple of days at a little hospedaje, that didn't seem to be what we were looking for in the first place (not near any areas with any shops or restaurants or other tourists and located right next to the highway) but actually... we pay the same as for our room in Cusco but for that we get a private bathroom with toilet paper (that's a thing here, that's usually not included in the price), almost private balcony with a view of the sea, soap :D, internet, a fan and even one towel. And we can use their kitchen (the town is about 3km for groceries), they insist on washing our dishes and feed us with mangoes and coconuts for free. So we are having a hard time leaving.

Drinking Terere and getting ready to cross the border

There is one other thing that I have wanted to write about. Maybe it has come out in my previous writing as well, but what I find very strange is that everyone copies each other and nothing can ever be different than the neighbor . For example, we were driving in an area, where one person had at one point figured out that a lot of trucks pass the house and he has water so why not make money from it. The result was that on a 10km stretch of road there were 20 places that offered truck-washing service. At that point we were really hungry and would have appreciated a place to eat but unfortunately all the restaurants had been 20km ago where they had 15 of them right next to each other, offering exactly the same food. We have driven past whole towns where nobody sells anything else but lubricants (we were also looking for food) or anything else but baskets or anything else but watermelons or tin pots and pans (they don't even make them there... they just all copy each other). It is all very convenient as a buyer at a market (fifty shops selling tools next to each other) but it can't be good for a business. Who buys all the lubricants in your little town? Do you buy them from each other?

We now have two months to go (will probably reach Estonia at the beginning of April) and are thinking and talkung about it several times a day already.

 Things that I miss the most:

*Having a conversation with someone without these questions: Where are you from? (that is so far! yes. I had to walk five days more than the germans to get here) How long have you been traveling? Where are you going next? So Estonian is like Russian, right? etc. There have been too many of them already

*Going to an atm, pushing the right buttons and as a result, getting money out

*Being able to just walk into a grocery store to buy whatever food you want (it took us about 8 shops today to kind of get what we wanted... not everything.)

*Black bread, sour cream, kefir, kohuke, curry paste, coconut milk, rice noidles, tortilla wraps, different kinds of rice (basmati!!), rice noodles, good cheese, good coffee (and I don't even drink coffee), good chocolate, sült, good cheese, pastries with vegetables

*Not packing and unpacking all the time

*People that keep their promises

*Traffic that is not constantly trying to kill you (using blinkers, respecting other people enough not to stop suddenly in the middle of the street)

*No piles of garbage everywhere

*Not being considered a gringo

*Not hearing reggaeton and cumbia all the time (hearing free different songs right now from the surrounding houses)
*going somewhere with my life... maybe have an actual home and a career?
*not being asked a higher price because of my skin/hair
*Getting change back in stores faster than 2min (doesn't matter how big or small the bill, they never have change)
*people thinking ahead. Ok. You are still waiting to get the bread (you just opened your restaurant. you were just sitting there and doing nothing, why didn't you get the bread then?) but that doesn't mean that you couldn't bring us the drinks or prepare other parts of the meal
*people with a wish do be better. you see people doing things, that you know they have done a thousand times before but every time they are still eventing the wheel and have no memory whatsoever from the last time they dud it. no notes to themselves about what could be done better next time. no will to improve.
*a respect for the nature. If a child is going around the park and beating all the bushes and flowers to shreds with a stick and noone in the whole family even blinks then I think there is a problem in the society (so random example but I get these examples every day)

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