The road into Lima was pretty dull. It was however very hot and sticky all the way. It is quite difficult to build up speed in Peru. There are always things happening on the roads whether it be taxis, colectivo buses, three wheel moto-taxis, cows/sheep/goats/pigs, dogs who want to race you and think it is fun to bark at your ankles, pot holes, and other drivers. But the most annoying thing is that Peru must hold the record for the number of speed humps. And they are everywhere from cities to countryside to motorways. All of them, at one time, had yellow chevrons painted on them. Most of them are sign-posted. Some of them are in perfect condition. Not all of them have enormous pot-holes immediately before or after where the big lorry wheels have pounded the tarmac. They are annoying because they work. You don't bounce over these things.
Anyway, Lima. It simply doesn't rain in Lima. Ever. It is very humid. After two hundred kms of the various obstacles thrown in our way on the way to Lima you get snarled up in the traffic when you get there. And the noise is incredible, as everybody uses their horns whether it is a 'get out of my way' blast, or a 'I'm coming through whatever' honk to a 'hi, do you want a taxi' call?
So we were a tad tired at some traffic lights on arriving and all of a sudden about twelve policemen ran out from our left and acosted somebody who didn't seem to be doing anything in particular just in front of us. And all those warnings people gave us came flooding back. So we were very happy to get to the hotel in one sweaty piece.
With our free guided tour we did visit the historic centre of Lima with its UNESCO status the following day. It was quite nice and, as always, especially during the day, quite safe. It was basically a walk between two main squares. All the buildings are sort of protected. There are no high rises in the historic centre. All shop fronts have to use black writing in a certain font; including Starbucks, KFC and McDonald's - the yellow M hidden inside behind a window. There was a changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace - no royalty here - and the soldier's manual was clearly based on John Cleese's exploits in Monty Python.
Paul is often very cynical about Politics. He often talks during election campaigns about politicians offering free beer if they get elected and some voters being stupid enough to believe them. Well they went one better in Lima. It seems that during one mayoral election campaign, the water was turned off on the 17th century fountain in the main square and replaced with Pisco of Pisco Sour fame. And it happened again in the next election campaign. It is apparently on YouTube. Not being too cynical, it is interesting to note that the last five Presidents of Peru are all currently in jail. The last one tried to dissolve the government whilst he was in power, thus giving himself total authority. When he sensed it wasn't going to happen as he had planned, he made a run for the Mexican embassy in Lima to escape the consequences. But he got stuck in a traffic jam and now he is currently in jail.
We visited the ex Harley dealership in Lima because Paul is worried about the clutch. They couldn't do anything. It was rather sad to see the shop now selling small Chinese motorcycles. Harley pulled out of most Central and South American countries at the start of the pandemic, more to do with import taxes making the bikes too unaffordable rather than the pandemic itself. There was nothing the guys could do to reassure Paul - normal really as this was only the third Harley PanAm they had seen - but it was nice meeting them - and they warned us too about Lima. We just have to get to Colombia now...
Getting out of the centre of Lima was hard work, but not too bad. Getting out of the northern Lima shanty town suburbs or Nuevos Pueblos - on the 'motorway'- was a complete nightmare and took a further hour. So 90 minutes in humid heat in total before we could get into 4th gear. Traffic lights on motorways. Broken down lorries. Only two lanes - both blocked. The kerbside lane full of taxis and buses stopping willy nilly to pick people up. The central lane full of people trying to sell things to the stopped traffic. And when you get through all this you hit the desert. We just weren't expecting large tracts of Peru to be desert. Clearly Paddington was from elsewhere in the country.
Always heading North we arrived at the beach resort of Barranca. It was nice to see families enjoying themselves at the seaside. The road there was pretty grim. The scenery is often grim. There is nowhere to stop, not even at the side of the road, as you get blown all over the place when the big lorries pass and all this is made worse by the heat. And the rubbish. Sides of roads are strewn with rubbish especially just outside towns of any size. It's this that makes you realise where you are. We just tell ourselves it would probably be worse/harder for us in India.
Back to the mountains and we climbed back up to over 4,000m to stay at Huaraz, the climbing and trekking capital of Peru. The idea was to use Huaraz as a base and visit a number of things. However neither of us was 100% and we only managed one excursion before we decided that we would make a move. Our demeanour wasn't helped by our miserable and depressing accommodation - we don't always get it right. So there are things we wanted to do but missed - a shame but we can't do everything.
Next stop Trujillo. There are a number of Trujillos in the world and we had driven through the one in Spain which was where Pisarro, the conqueror of the Incas came from. Presumably he named this one.
From Trujillo we managed a day trip to see some pre Inca archaeology from the Moche and the Chimu. Both were fascinating adobe brick structures. The Moche one included the Temples of the Sun and Moon where quite interesting frescos had been discovered. The Spaniards had destroyed a lot of the pyramids looking for gold and silver. The adobe bricks were in panels with gaps between the panels to help with seismic resistance.
The Chimu one was called Chan Chan and was reportedly the largest adobe brick city in the world. Both were reminiscent of remains we had seen in Turkmenistan that had been gutted by the marauding Genghis and his family. It was also interesting to compare these with Roman mosaics and structures which were from approximately the same time period.
We also visited a nearby surfing beach with massive waves - but never saw anyone master one, either on a surfboard or the reed boats the town is famous for.
Prior to the visit to the archaeological sites themselves we visited some sculptures which were enormous oversized replicas of Moche ceramic pots that had been found. It seems that the Moche, 1,500 years ago, were world leaders in pornography, though they called it worshipping fecundity. Please contact us separately if you want to see more explicit photos.
We also visited the tourist trap potter who was actually quite good fun and we tried to imagine a meeting between him and Grayson Perry - perhaps a new TV programme, Grayson meets potters from around the world?
As we mentioned we feel our time in Peru is coming to an end; we have been here nearly a month. The road heading North isn't going to be much; desert and dusty shanty towns between the cities of Chiclayo and Piura before setting up camp just short of the Ecuador border - but it's the only road we can take. The only excitement comes from seeing paddy fields and sugar cane... And the cities will have their obligatory Plaza des Armas with some remaining colonial buildings, where we will find coffee and cake shops to moan about the roads. One of the things that hadn't dawned on us was that in places where there is no rain, roofs tend to be very flimsy and not very acoustically insulating. So in Chiclayo we ŵere fascinated listening to the salvation stories from the evangelical Church next to our hotel. On megaphones. In Spanish. Starting at ten o'clock at night when it was getting slightly cooler as they were clearly working up a sweat. Luckily we were tired and can't confirm when they finished...
As we mentioned there are things we have missed in Peru that we would have liked to have seen or done. We will probably never come back, but if we did it would be interesting to see whether the roadside rubbish had increased or decreased, whether there had been a consolidation amongst petrol stations and whether any of them now served coffee - Argentina, all is forgiven.
