Peru, Trujillo - Macará to Trujillo

Unravelling Peru

As me and Nuno walked the shore, our footsteps marked the dark sand and the small waves refreshed our tired feet. I felt an emotion hard to describe, almost childish like...for the first time I was feeling the water of the Pacific Ocean touching my skin, the largest extension of water on Earth, and that made me acknowledge that dreams do come true, that other oceans and other seas will have my footsteps marked in their sands!
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Cuenca was now many kilometres away, the last days of cyclism had been very happy ones. Finally I felt the symbiose between me, my bike (Marin Muirhoods), my travel buddy Nuno and all that surrounded me. Me and my bike rode the mountains and the deserts with pure happiness, in a mutual effort - my energy used on its mechanical pieces as a way of propulsion towards the destinations that we slowly reached.

All the human contact in Cuenca had build up my confidence and recharged mybatteries, and with renewed energies, it was also easy to harmonize with everything else.

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In Loja, 200 kilometres from Cuenca, where after 5 hours on a bus anda sinuous road, I met Nuno, we decided that he would be the "leading man". It seemed that when we studied maps together we could not agree with the routes and destinations. I personally felt that the balance of our relationship as travel buddies depended on each of us focusing on different aspects of the journey and therefore I was very happy to let Nuno analyze maps and choose routes. I admit that my passivity might not be ideal, but on this trip I am just happy to be lead, more than to lead, I want to be to a passenger. I get to the conclusion that my life in London was always made of decisions and choices (well I guess life always is) but it feels good for a change to let things happen randomly, and not to plan more than a week in advance. It was Nuno who
taught me that is more important to live the way than to arrive to the destination, after all, I am not that keen in just collecting entrance tickets to ruins, touristic places or cycled kilometres.

Now that we were "beating to the sound of the same drum", the first day of cycling was rewarding. We left Loja under a scorching sun, and we climbed the first mountain, descending to Catamayo to a valley on the other side of the mountain. We arrived there at the beginning of the afternoon and probably ate the thinnest, hardest and most horrible grilled meat of the whole journey - this was apparently the local speciality, it was called Cecina and if these people enjoy it I dread to think what other niceties they enjoy. After the "delicious" lunch we climbed another mountain on a real challenge to my determination, curve after curve I could see my effort as I ascended the mountain and saw the valleys way below my feet in vertiginous drops.

For the first time on my journey we had to admit that we wouldn´t find a place to camp, we were surrounded by cultivated landscape with impenetrable fences. We took a side road in the hope of reaching a house and ask permission to camp in their backyard. The surprise of the forced hosts was visible, they had never seen cyclotourists on those parts and could not quite believe that our bikes were not motorbikes, but they let us stay for the night. The children took great joy in watching us cook and to play with us. We set the tent onw hat we found the next morning to be the pigsty, as we woke up to the sound of the pig´s hoinks.

The following day rose grey with an endless climb, we left just after breakfast. The rain that was at first only shy drops became heavy and every inch of my body was soaking wet, but not even that took my determination of enjoying my regained energy. We reached the last
village in Ecuador before arriving in Peru, in the afternoon, Cotacocha, and stayed there two nights in the hope that the rainwould stop. The rain didn´t stop and we headed south under frizzly rain. To our surprise the rain was replaced by sunshine and clearviews over the green valley as we descended the mountain.

Jeff

Slowly the small dot became an unmistakable silhouette. He was climbing the mountain as if he carried the world on his bike, but itwas 70 kilos of luggage spreaded between a whole lot of spares, tools, clothes, food and not the world that Jeff was carrying. Each cyclistis a unique being with distinct needs, after all!

In Cotacocha we had agreed to meet him on the way to Peru since we had chosen the same route. Jeff has got very big green eyes that sometimes become blue but who always look shy. His hair is long and burnt by the thousand hours spent under the sun on his bike. With his long hands he holds the inverted handlebars in a position that seems to challenge his back´s health.

His bike is his body extension and it was made to measure, to fit his long legs and his thin body. His height, he says, might be a consequence of the almost 10 months he spent in his mother´s womb. His childhood was spent in the woodlands in Canada and in his youth he was a bass player and a singer in a heavy metal band. This peacefull and calm human being released his anger shouting and screaming to the frenetic sounds of the heavy metal. His joy for music extended to the radio station at his university where he was responsible for the radio programmes. Jeff´s great dream became to cycle the world although he hadnever left Canada whilst he was a teenager. He lived a spartan life for the last 4 years before his trip to save enough money to make his dream come true. His work as a geographer might explain the meticulous way with which he plans his journey. For Jeff, mountains and the places he passes by are a collection of altitudes, kilometres and coordinates. The human aspect doesn´t come easy although he is an extremelly kind human being. How different must Latin American culture and habits seem to him?

One day he asked for seafood soup, he is vegetarian but since being vegetarian can be tricky in these countries Jeff has convinced himsel fthat it is easier to just eat what there is to eat...or maybe not,when he saw some whole prawns, a piece of octopus and some other sea animals floating in his soup he said:-"I cant eat this - my soup is full of cockroaches!"Nuno laughed and ate his delicious cockroaches! It was good to meet him again on the road. We shared the last kilometres from Ecuador to Trujillo in North of Peru. Jeff was expecting Peru to be full of thieves and people trying to con him, but slowly he also started to discover a more human country with less dangerous landscapes and more surprising ones than first expected.

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Crossing the border

The first thing that stroke me when crossing the border of Ecuador in Macará to Peru was the stinky smell of dried faeces. We had to stand the smell in that border crossing for longer than we wished for because Jeff´s wheel was starting to demand a lot of attention and he had to keep mending the tyres due to the constant hole punctures he was getting. After all the bureaucracies that involve crossing a border were dealt with, my senses were distracted by something that was happening in the Rio Calvas who at that time of the year was brown with very strong current: children, some of them who weren´t older than 10 years, fighting against the rebel river, swimming with barrels of petrol from one bank to the another. Later I found that petrol is more expensive in Peru hence the smuggling. The "closed eyes" of the guards from both borders shocked me not for the obvious failure of their duties to the laws of international trade but their cold indifference to the value of these children´s life who daily challenged death without anyone seeming to care.

The stink and the poverty is something that one has to get used to when travelling in Peru. Around the colourful markets that can be found pretty much everywhere in any village or city, the intense smell of the myriad of fruits, vegetables, meat and fishget´s mixed with the smell of those products in an advanced stage of decomposition disposed on the floor sometimes right next to the freshproducts. It is without a doubt a journey of the olfact and sometimesnot a particularly good one! Often in Northern Peru I saw signs askingthe populations to fight the fruit flies, but with the amounts of rubbish that gets thrown in the streets it seems to me that this fight already has a winner - the flies!

And the thousands of children that can be seen everywhere sellings weets, singing in the colectivos (vans tranformed in local buses), cleaning shoes in the streets, doing acrobacies in the middle of the chaotic traffic. Their faces are dirty, their clothes are old with holes and the look in their eyes is sad. Why cant they have a normal existence? Why cant they receive love and affection everyday? Why dont they have food? Why dont they have a safe place to sleep? Why do they have to beg in the streets?

- Because as long as we live indifferent in our daily comforts refusing to realise that our comforts often result in other's discomforts, specially when we buy cheap products, when we elect corrupt and careless politicians, and above all when we keep living an aphatetic and ignorant way of life, nothing will ever change and we will continue to be partially responsible for these childrens lack of hope!

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Other travellers had warned us about the dangers that awaited us once we crossed the border to Peru: the money would be fake even when taken from cash machines, robbers would be at any corner waiting for the right moment to rob us, camping outdoors would be impossible because surely someone would come and rip the tent or do something worse, the plethora of dangers seemed endless but on the forth day in Peru we were still alive, in good health, and with pretty much all our goods when we arrived in Chulucanas a city with 70 400 inhabitants. We were looking for a place to stay for the night, a lady and a young man on a motorbike started talking to us saying that she was a teacher,married to an archeologist and that it would be a pleasure to receive us in their house. We suspiciously followed the lady, where was she taking us? But her contagious smile, her sweet and brown eyes, thealmost childlike voice and her human warmth, vanished any doubts. This being full of light and her husband Mario had a genuin interest in receiving us. Rosita, as I called her, was a teacher who had inherited a private school from her mum and she had the gift of kindness and generosity.

We set our tents in the schoolyard, it was the school holiday, so no screaming children first thing in the morning. Mario, her husband, was an archeologist who worked for the council doing research of the arqueological wealth available in the region and he was also responsible for its promotion in the hope to attract visitors. He took us in his mototaxi to the local ruins and other places that were supposedly of turistsic and cultural interest, however, to my eyes,the tumbs of the Pre-Inca Moche Culture resumed to an abstarct pile of earth like the surrounding ones. The ruins of Piura a Velha, the first city founded by the spanyards in Peru and destroyed centuries ago due to the effects of the El Niño was just a group of decrepit stone walls like the ones that can be seen anywhere in the world in any old abandoned village.

I get the impression that Peru woke up too late for the importance of its history and past, perhaps inspired by Machu Pichu and the resources that it brings to the region, however most of the ruins tha tcan be found in Northern Peru were built with a very perishable construction material - adobe and one needs either to have a great interest in local history or a big imagination, to be able to see the beauty within those silent destroyed stones and walls.

Mario was a man with a very strong character. Big brown eyes occupied his face and his skin was the colour of chocolate, he used to open his hands when he spoke as if he wanted to received the world in them. He was very found of his space, his books and his archaeological discoveries, from there originated some of the ceramic that he so carefully reconstructed bringing them back to life. Our interesting conversations often resumed to monologues where Mario let his mind run free to the many subjects he had interest on such as the meaning of life, spirituality, history and politics, however I had to bit my tongue more often than I would have liked because despite being a man of culture and in a certain way, of science, he was also a very chauvinist one and some comments made specially to his wife, remembered me that I was in the hearth of Latin America were the Macho culture its pretty much "alive and kicking"!

One of Rosita´s main worries was the menu that she kindly would presents us with. Day after day, she would cook us Peruvian delicacies making us travel around the flavours of Peruvian food! On the fifth day we left, not because we wanted to, but because we didn´t think it was decent of us to stay any longer. Once again I said goodbye with tears in my eyes. I felt real affection and love for that family, those friends who had welcomed us from the street,those strangers who became as familiar as someone from my own family...They will remain in my heart and my mind as the proof that Peruvian people are composed by people with good and true intentions,very genuine, very warm and welcoming. The robbers and the bandits may well exist like in any other part of the world but they are fewer and less noticeable than the nice people!

Sechura, the desert

Everything was flat. Everything was yellow. Everything was infinite: the road, the heath, the sand. The blue sky, one or other truck that sounded its honk in the infinite and lost echo of the Pan-Americana. Inconstant intervals we read a sign indicating "Perigo de Morte - Área de Exercícios Militares" (Danger of Death, Area for MilitaryExercises), at a distance of no more than 20 metres from the road. It occurred to me what a sad death it would be if one had to go to answer nature´s call and died doing pee whilst being the target of a military aircraft! Nuno actually wanted us to camp there and experience the Peruvian desert, but neither me or Jeff were willing to prove the threatening sign´s veracity!

Interesting to see how all the villages and cities in Northern Peru were built on the several oasis of green originated by the rivers that flow down from the Andean slopes leaving a trail of green in the dry yellow that dominates the landscape.

Our final destination, to complete this stage of cyclism was Trujillo,the third biggest city in Peu with 768 300 inhabitants, and where we were expecting to be welcomed by a mythical figure amongst the ciclotourists who cycle Latin America - Lucho.

- Hola, es possible hablar con Lucho? - I said a few days before wearrived in Trujillo, anouncing our arrival on the phone.
- Si, un momento... - a feminin voice was heard on the line and then ascream - Lucho es para ti!
- Si, soy Lucho - a coarse voice answerd on the other side of the line.
- Mi nombre es Joana y soy una ciclista de Portugal, estoy con mas dosamigos uno de Portugal, y otro de Canada, y es para saber se podemos quedarnos en su casa?
- De Portugal?! Claro que si, son los primeros ciclistas de Portugalque recibo! Y poden venir quando quieran, seran muy bien venidos.- Bueno entonces hasta pronto, ya nos veremos breve! - I answered in my basic spanish.

A few days later and not in the way that we would have liked to have arrived after such great days of cyclism - we had to take the lift from a van of some engineers stoped by the police and forced to take us and our bikes due to the danger of us being robbed in a village 40 kilometres from Trujillo called Paijan.We arrived to Trujillo safe and sound and when we passed Paijan all we could see was another village on the road like many others that we had passed before. Who knows maybe the bandits were having a siesta...

Casa de la Amsitad is the name that Lucho gave his house, well in reality it is his mum´s house. He rents a room there where he receives cyclists and other adventurers alike. Already 900 and odd cyclists stayed there and left the stories of their adventures written on the visit books. And in reality there are a lot of stories from fake cyclists, to cyclists on tricycles, handicapped ones, cyclists with children and even a walker from Colombia who was supposedly walking to promote Universal Peace, he was there when we arrived, but who was visibly more interested in himself and his adventures than in Peace itself.

I was the 934 thcyclist to stay in the house and the first Portuguese one!

Lucho was indeed a very warm, funny and welcoming man, low stature and brown skin, it was hard to see how old he was because he has a rugratt look on his face. He his very young at heart and is joviality is contagious. One could say that he lives for his passion for bikes and cyclism, he used to be an elite cyclist, but he had more talents awaiting to be revealed. One night we invited him for one of our home cooked meals that funnily enough was seafood rice (the same food that Jeff detests) and after dinner Lucho opened the room where he keeps hisracing bikes and instruments and presented us with an absolutely fantastic drum kit performance. No one escaped from giving their musical contribution: I had to sing, Jeff had to play the bassguitar, Lucho`s friend (a professional singer) had to sing, obviously, and Nuno clapped his hands.

I also took advantage from the fact that Lucho fixed bikes and left my bike (Marin Muirhoods) in his capable hands, after it my bike was brand new and he liked my bike so much that he called it Negrita. Negrita, or Marina as you wish to call it was so pleased that she survived without a scratch to the next part of the trip, but that is for another story.

We remained in Trujillo for three weeks, much longer than we had planed to stay, the weather forecast for our destination wasn't great, some areas were closed due to heavy floods and landslides, on the other hand my bum was being tortured with painfull injections to cure a recurrent urinary infection. We walked the roads of Trujillo back and forth countless times, there is not much to do in Trujillo apart from enjoying the colourfull buildings of the Plaza de Armas thatlook like an electrified rainbow!

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Who knows if those lazy days in Huachaco, a beach close to Trujillo that attracts surfers and backpackers were the last ones where Iwould see the Pacific Ocean on this journey? Huachaco was a smallfishing village where its inhabitants ventured the big waves in small boats called "caballitos de totoro". Now the boats are kept on the seaside, and according to Lonely Planet, they can still be used. I didn´t see any in the sea but they are there witnesses of a past of brave fisherman who in times challenged the waves of the Pacific. Me and Nuno let the sun burn our skin on a lazy afternoon spent at the seaside. The next pedal strokes would takes us to the Andes and the rain would probably keep us company, so we just stayed there and enjoyed with pleasure the smell of the sea, the sound of the waves caressing the sand, the seagulls flying free and the photographicsunset at the end of the afternoon.

Follow my journey through Nuno´s eyes on http://www.ontheroad.eu.com/ and Jeff´s on http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/jk