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I last wrote a little past Lima, where I was staying in a campsite next to ancient ruins. What an awesome place. From there, we road along really tough dirt roads for two days before getting to a campsite just outside the town of Chimbote. The next day, the plan was to transit all the riders to Chiclaya to avoid an unridable stretch of road. Since we weren't riding the next day I figured it would be good to go that night to my destination instead of waiting for our vehicle which was only leaving the next day. That gave me two days off. So I packed my stuff and went on the highway to try and get a ride to Chimbote, the next town. I figured it might have taken a while to get a vehicle but a bus came by five minutes later and I got on it. Another guy who has a huge beard on my trip said that he also once tried to stop busses, but was unsuccessful. Apparently the people on the bus yelled, “Osama Bin Laden!” at him.
It only cost me five soles to get to town, which is a little over a dollar. My original plan was to try to go to Chiclaya right away, which is where the group was going to be spending the day off, but Chimbote turned out to be awesome. Tons of casinos and just a lot of fun at night. Both nights I was there I went to the casino and played the slots. I had a lot of fun.
I needed to meet the group the night before we started riding again, so I took a bus from Chimbote to Trujillo, and then another one from Trullio to Chiclaya. Since there were road blocks I only ended up getting there around midnight which was tough. Since Chimbote I have cycled five days. A lot has happened and I have been busy with riding, working on the Habs video, etc. so I apologize for the lack of updates. We rode a couple more days through Peru, which were a lot of fun.
At night it is finally nice out and we are having warm nights for one of the first times in the trip. It was really great after having so many nights in cold altiplano campsites to have this nice tropical weather. One night I remember well, right outside the town of Chuclucana, I slept outside my tent and fell asleep under the stars. In the distance, I could hear some great music and right next to me the trees were slowly swaying back and forth. Not like those nights on the beach in Chile. It’s great that I don't even have to stake in my tent and it won’t blow away. The best camping weather in a while and it’s just amazing to end the trip like this. The weather during the day has been less pleasant, but it’s been a great at night when it finally cools down.
It seems like the riding is routine at this point because all the riding days seem to be blurring into one, except for maybe today which was a really tough 100 km stretch of mostly climbing. I guess of significance is the fact that I am now in Ecuador, my final country of the trip. They use American dollars here and everything is so expensive compared to Peru. Another interesting thing about Ecuador is the fact that both towns I’ve seen shut down electricity for a couple hours at night to save water. There is a big drought and they use hydro power. It’s actually nice - I find everyone puts out candles and the towns look really cool for a couple of hours and then the power switches back on and everyone gets really excited. Tomorrow I will get to Loja for my day off. Loja has been described as the most musical city of Ecuador. Should be interesting and exciting.
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