Lima

So have been in Lima the last couple of days, it's mostly sold itself to me in the form of good coffee places, ice cream, juices and bike shops, especially the latter.

I left Trujillo with a couple of french-canadian guys who'd set off from Montreal at the beginning of September (photo below), although it wasn't quite that simple.  We were going to leave then they had some mechanical problems and as I was still toying with doing a big day I headed off, only to get thoroughly lost in the outskirts of Trujillo, managed to get out in the end and got my head down to climb a long but fairly gentle hill out of the city.  I was then overtaken by a truck with said french-canadian hanging off the back, literally.  They were still on their bikes but with a hand each holding the tailplate and being dragged up the hill.  I though this was pretty mad but gave it a try anyway, so ended up spending the rest of the day cycling with them, was nice to have some company and someone to share the headwind with, so it ended up being a fairly gentle day to Chimbote which, again, I found out afterwards is supposed to be amazingly dangerous, but wasn't.  I did then get a chance to try their fairly unique way of finding accomodation.  Rather than try a hostel or campsite they would turn up at the local police station and essentially beg a bed for the night off the police (or firemen, or whoever else).  After a couple of false starts we found a friendly church and they gave us some kind of meeting room to sleep in for the night, more free accommodation which is always good.

The next morning we ate about 2 kg of oats between us and then headed off south.  About 25 km into the day we split because they were heading up to Huaraz in the mountains and I was continuing down the coast.  Following on the theme I found out when I got to Lima that Huaraz is experiencing pretty serious civil unrest so I don't know how they'll get on with that.  Oddly enough the people who told me that were more french-canadian cyclists who'd been cycling with the other french-canadians in Colombia, I'm pretty sure the cycle touring world is quite small...  Anyway I carried on to Casma for lunch, and after lunch climbed about 10 km out of Casma through more desert before having another inner tube related mare.  Basically had so far been completely unable to find the right size inner tubes in Cuenca, or anywhere else on the way and so had been riding on skinny inner tubes which were massively overstretched inside my fat tyres.  Despite having been holding up pretty well, they both perished in quick successsion leaving me somewhat stranded which was a bit of a problem, since the next town wasn't for about 50 km.  I tried flagging down a bus for a lift but they weren't having any of it, so freewheeled most of the way back to Casma on a more or less flat tyre and wet and bought a bus ticket to Lima.  Obviously that wasn't really ideal, but I'd been planning on getting a bus the last bit into Lima anyway because apparently it's an 8-lane highway, but still feels a bit like cheating.

Thankfully I've now find some inner tubes of the right size so should be mare free for a while at least, tomorrow I'm heading off down the coast to Paracas national reserve, hopefully for some penguins, then turning inland to begin the climb to Cusco.  Have had a little look at the map and there are a good number of passes over 4000 m so I reckon it'll be pretty tough, hoping to make it to Cusco for Christmas though.  Will be passing through Ayacucho which is supposed to be quite a nice traditional andean town and, according to the peruvian guy I went for lunch with today, they only eat guinea pig there, we will see...

p.s. have added photos to most the old posts.