Bienvenido en Peru !!!

Weeeeelcome back to the more than exciting, extraordinary and amazing stories of two happy idiots, who decided to leave safe-haven Europe to get an experience they would never forget.

And they won't...!!

Sooooo... where did we left off? Ah right, we crossed the border from Ecuador to Peru. Within 10 minutes, a lot changed. The food improved by factor 10, the luxury standard decreased by factor 3, the noise increased by factor 5 and the roads became... boooooooooring.

On our way to Tumbes

As usual, your perfect sweet travelers provide you with a map! A very close one for once. And as you see, absolutely fascinating.

From the border of Ecuador to Tumbes, the first large town.

To "unearth" the border control was quite a challenge. I will pass on our hunt for a (closed) border office, followed by some weird indications to take a long empty road until, hop! the border control pops out from nowhere. The road was already boring and border control officers already unfriendly! Anyway, we passed it.

Only 1295 kilometers to go to Lima.... the road looks exciting, doesn't it?

BUT,everything wouldn't be THAT boring yet, since right across the border we ended up in a small town called Tumbes. Here was our first encounter with beep, beep, honk, honk .... "WHAT DO YOU SAY? WHAT?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!". We disappeared in the lovely smoke of cars and buses, lost ourselves in the incredible noise of mototaxi engines and miscellaneous honking – since of course, whoever you are, as soon as you jump in a car, you have to honk. Because if you don't honk, then, well... ehhh... why do they honk, in fact? Good question! Thank you...! We still look for an answer!!

 So anyway: welcome to messy, chaotic, disorganized (any more?) TUMBES!!

Mototaxis: "Beep, beeeeeep, beep, beepbeppebnepepbeppbepenppbepepppe"

So. This is a perfect moment to talk about this general pattern you will find everywhere in the universe: when you get honked, you get hungry. Boy, we have been soooo honked!!

So, we decided to have our first (lovely) Peruvian dinner... it was delicious AND ...

After one day in this discotheque of engine noise (believe me, it's enough), we escaped and went on biking along the coast of Peru, following the Pacific Ocean.

20-30 km more and we actually saw the beach... As strong as we were, we have persevered until we saw a village which 'felt good'.

Calm, relaxed and enjoying the sun (well, not on the pictures below)... okay fine, there is sun, but I, Arthur the magnificent, don't see it.

Shut up Anaelle, I'm writing, so this time I am the boss. ;)

 Anyway, we had arrived in...

... Zorritos!!

A panoramic shot of a place close to our tent in Zorritos

As always, we looked for a place to set up our tent, this time on the beach, but hidden...

 Hey, what about this?

A shelter, yellow sand, the Pacific Ocean right in front of you, palm trees and enough sun to get roasted. That was perfect!!!

 And we truly enjoyed it :-)))))))

All settled, we decided to visit the city center of Zorritos.

To do so, nothing better than local transportation! Well. I had to talk Anaelle into this and as you might see, she does not look happy in the... mototaxi!

And that was nothing in comparison to the maniacs who drove us later, in our Peruvian experience...!

Apart from the beach, Zorritos is a very little village with nothing especially charming. Still, we liked our trip.

Zorritos was so nice: we cracked. This has been the best beach place we enjoyed in Peru and as you can see on the pictures, it looks lovely. We stayed here for about one week, on ze beach. And guess what, we got ourselves busy!!

Back to food-hunting

Firstly, we planned to prepare BBQs. That's when I decided... to hunt my diner!

I spent at least 30 minutes throwing my fishing line. Well. “Nice try!” would be the final word... Yeah well, at least, I tried!! So we grabbed our Peruvian soles and went hunting for pieces of chicken in a tienda somewhere. Found them! Bought them, prepared them in a marinade and... patiently waited for the evening...

YUMMMMMYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!

Fighting for a connection...

Secondly: I (Arthur) decided to look for an improbable Internet connection. Who knows...? Guess what: I found a very good one! So here we were, all in nature, mastering South American roads, fighting for survival, defying the Pacific ocean, resting our soar (beautiful) muscles when suddenly... we were on Skype chatting with our families. Eeaassyyyy!!!

 What else? Well, we also kept ourselves busy being sociable! We even shared food!! (Wow! Impressive Joey!!)

Indeed, we met some guys from Tumbes and had a couple of nights with them enjoying the camp fire on the beach – and observing them getting drunk from 11pm till 3 am!

In the mornings, we went to places where we found decent cheap breakfast while enjoying a perfect postcard view - please have a look below:-) - and where we also negotiated a price to take a nice warm shower - smell ooooouuuut!!!

Looking back, we should have stayed longer here, in lovely Zorritos, but at that moment we decided to continue biking south. We arrived in a place called Mancora. Many Peruvians speak great words about this place, but to us, it is an over-touristic and over-crowded beach place.

We looked at it for 5 minutes... and decided to continue biking to a place we would like more and which gave us the opportunity to camp without being robbed or bothered by drunk tourists – ah! Those stupid tourists!!!

The No-name-beach

Anaëlle working on the tent, while I'm resolutely working already on our future blog.

We then reached what we will call the No-name-beach, a punishment to us, as you can see :-). And we really enjoyed this great feeling of sleeping somewhere on a beautiful lost beach, the calm nights over there, nicely cradled by the sound of the waves. Aaaahhh.........

We stayed there one night and continued down the Panamericana Norte.

Between No-name Beach and Los Organos

Along the way, we could see a recurrent sign: "propriedad privada".

...

Ok...?! So... what?

Well. It starts being surprising when this sign is planted in the middle of an empty dry land. That's when you wonder who would be interested in such a land to claim it as his property.

Not sure if the following is true but this is the explanation we got from a journalist we met. What happens is that because these lands are dry, indeed, no one is interested in it. However, these lands may have lots of potential. First, they are very close to the Pacific ocean, in a very warm area. Maybe a future touristic place...! Moreover, the ground is known for having oil. Cling-cling-cling!!

As far as we understood, some 'smart people' buy for nothing / claim ownership of a piece of land, apparently without any legal rights, plant a sign "Propriedad privada" on it (MINE-MINE-MINE!!) and build something on it - this would be mandatory to be able to keep it. That's why you can see small wood shacks popping up here and there on empty lands!

A sexy biker, hair in the wind... (ok no link with the current subject. Still, sexy!!)

Already time for a pause! A wooden tienda, some fresh fruits juices and delicious cakes: yeehaa!!

We finally reached our next punishment:

LOS ORGANOS

An amazing place, Los Organos, where a couple of rich families have built beautiful houses.

 The only disadvantage over there was the wind! But ok, fine, we accepted to deal with it.

After these beautiful beach places, it went figuratively speaking down hill. The roads became straight as far as the eye could see. The strong wind was not in our favor, there was nothing to see but desert and thrash.

One positive event though, was that we got advice from two policemen and an American girl, Amy - Amy and her incredible Texan accent!! They all confirmed one thing: if we wanted to get into trouble, then we should cross the Peruvian desert dead center.

And indeed, this area is so empty, that gangs of robbers wait for buses and tourists, stop them in quite convincing manners and you come back as you can in your underwear, nothing more.

Ok, got it. We would go on by following the other unique road...

We biked and biked and slept with our tent in the middle of nowhere.

The “best” moment was in this gloomy city we had to stop at. We were biking for hours and couldn't find a decent place to set up our tent. The sky was getting dark and we would soon reach our limit before setting up the tent or finding a hostel for the night. Looking at the city we had entered, we both agreed we needed to find a hotel in this place. We felt soooo uncomfortable in that city. As many other places we saw, houses and buildings were in a very strange shape. As if a couple of months earlier, someone had decided to build a whole living area when suddenly, for whatever reason, they had to stop the work. So, along the main road, you can see an incredible amount of half-way built houses, and most of them are not used. Below an example (picture not taken in that specific city since we didn't dare to take out the camera!).

We asked several locals for a hostel. There was one... but closed. Outch! No choice then: we had to set up our tent. But where?

That's when we met these two policemen, a man and a woman. We asked them if they could help us. The woman instantly accepted and suggested that we could sleep in the police office. Unfortunately, her colleague didn't like the idea. We had the feeling he faked by isolating himself and 'calling' his boss. He came back saying it was no possible. The police woman looked really surprised but as far as we saw, she had nothing to say. Thankfully, she sent us to a gas station – or what was left of it. Behind it was a hidden/trash area where we finally set up our tent.

"No se vende" is tagged on the wall, meaning not for sale. Well, who would ask to buy it?!?

Niiiiiice!!!

No need to show you more for you to understand that this was a real trashcan area. We didn't feel that safe. But well. Nothing happened!

SULLANA - 4 CEVICHE AT BREAKFAST :-) OW YEAH!

After two long days of boring-biking, we arrived in Sullana, a copy of Tumbes, messy, noisy, good food, but architecturally and naturally nothing to offer... 

... except good fun watching the traffic and the poor conditions of cars and roads!

Well. It depends how you look at it. In fact, maybe on the cultural side, it had something to offer. I mean, this *is* Peru as it is out of the touristic areas.

And yes, Peru is poor and messy but alive. And offers great markets which provides a lot of food to go or to eat where you stand.

Well. with my sweet thrash can, you guess what happened :-)

One morning we ate four times ceviche as breakfast. Boy that was gooooooood!!!!!!

Ceviche is sliced raw fish 'cooked' in lemon and other spices: delicious!

Still being tourists, we miraculously found a live music pub, so time for a cold and refreshing beer. Boy, we were happy. :-D

Although we would have loved to eat ceviche every morning (mega-yummy!!), it was time to leave and continue down south. However, we realized that all those straight, windy, dirty and dangerous roads were not for us. Thus we opted for a bus to reach Chiclayo, our favorite city of Peru... NOT ;-D

Curious? Good! Soon to come, but for now...

That's all folks!

Big kisses hugs from