Desierto de Sechura, Chiclayo and Trujillo

Cycling through the Desierto de Sechura is definitely one of the most uniquely, and unpleasantly difficult things I've done.  My makeshift alarm failed to get me up at 5am as desired, so I didn't really hit the road until more like 7.  I made pretty good progress until 11ish when the wind began...  The first 90 km or so were just more arid scrubland, but that gradually gave way to proper desert with sand dunes and everything.  Almost nothing alive out there save for a few lizards and the odd condor scavenging, stopped for lunch about 95 km into the day, and was feeling pretty confident I'd make it through in good time. Between about 11 and 1 the wind went from a light breeze to a solid force 6-7, about 50 kph of relentless headwind.  South of my lunch stop all the thorn bushes and sand dunes gradually disappeared until I was on a ruler straight road with absolutely no features in any direction all the way to the horizon.  With the headwind I was working flat out to maintain about 10-12 kph and I had about 6 hours of that to get me over to the other side.  There was nowhere for about 180 km to buy food or water but I'd filled about half a pannier with cheap biscuits and chocolate (I reckon I took on about 8000-9000 calories that day) but after about 12 hours of flat out cycling I was a handful of kilometres short of the first town on the other side of the desert as the sun was going down.  I stopped to turn on my lights only to find someone had robbed them in Piura.  I guess that's the price you pay for leaving your bike in very cheap hostels, but by that point I was so emotionally and physically drained that it seemed to just knock me out.  Had to walk the last kilometre into town in the dark and then found a cheap shoddy hostel (it was a cheap shoddy town), definitely the highlight of the day was then finding almost a complete family sat out on the street at about 8pm selling bread out of baskets.  Ate a load of that and then passed out comatose for a few hours.

The next day I had a much gentler cycle down to Pacasmayo to stay with a Peruvian guy called Jose who I met through a site called warmshowers.org which is basically like couchsurfing only for touring cyclists. Anyway he and his family were lovely and fed me and gave me somewhere to sleep.  The actual cycling that day was depressingly more desert, and more wind.  I wobbled the first 30 km into Chiclayo on some pretty aching legs at about 6 am, and then spent about 3 hours sat in an awesome cafe eating just about everything on the menu, including some passable coffee which was an absolute luxury, and an excellent fruit salad (I hadn't eaten vegetables for a few days).  After that it was about 100 km more to Pacasmayo which I took pretty gently as I still wasn't feeling too great.  I managed a minor victory over the wind by tailgating a tractor for about 15 km.  Tractors are great because a) they're massive so have a huge wind shadow and b) go sufficiently slowly that you can keep up with them, so that was nice.

The next day I set off with Jose who cycles to work, and then continued on about 130 km to Trujillo, the scenery is getting better (the litter is just as bad though) and the wind is lessening, it hasn't been anything like as bad as it was in the desert.  I did have to cycle through Paijan which is supposed to be super dangerous.  There were police stationed at either end of town checking all the vehicles entering and leaving, and I was kind of hoping for a police escort (I know they've done it for other cyclists) but no luck, that said I didn't have any problems and just passed straight through.  My target in Trujillo was Lucho and the Casa de Ciclistas.  Lucho is something of a legend amongst touring cyclists, as is his house.  He's invited passing touring cyclists to stay for the past 25 years and has over 1200 signatures in his book, it's definitely an essential for anyone touring in South America.  It was also a great place to meet some other cycling tourists.  I hadn't seen any on the road yet but there were quite a few kicking around the house, including another french couple on a semi-recumbent tandem this time.  It was pretty handy to be able to swap route info/tips etc with other cyclists, apparently quite a few people had been held up at gunpoint in Paijan, but I reckon it's probably much worse at night.

Next blog will probably be from Lima in a few days time.