Chiclayo – 5/3/2013
May 4th, 2013 by rallyadmin
The Panamericana through Peru has run in the coastal plain along the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it diverted inland a ways but it always comes back. And almost the entire way the road has gone through desert that may be statistically less arid than the Atacama, you would not believe it when if you saw it.
The only respite from the barren desert have been the small towns along the road. In the south of Peru, the towns have been almost exclusively small fishing ports. Farther north, the towns have been primarily farming oriented with irrigation water provided by aqueducts from the distant mountains.
The upside to the northern towns has been the greenery. Avacado farms, rice farms, cattle ranches, sheep/goat farms. Some huge factory farms but most small plots with workers digging by hand and plowing with horses. All a rock throw from the desert ready to be reclaimed by the blowing sands.
When we first entered Peru, we left the border area and headed back into the Peruvian extension of the Atacama. The small amount of civilization around the border area melted away and we were back to the emptiness of the coastal desert. Then, suddenly, we started seeing these very small houses on the edge of the highway.
The houses were very small, maybe 12 feet by 12 feet and spaced every 100 meters or so, on both sides of the highway. At first, all we saw were these small structures (calling them a house implies much more than what these are) some with no roofs, others with small, flat, woven-thatch roofs. They all looked empty. There was no electricity service along the road and definitely no water available. But there they were, miles and miles of them.
As we drove farther north, more of these little structures were made of adobe, red brick or cement block, some just woven thatch. And some appeared to be occupied. Every so often, there would a group of several, some times up to maybe a 100, of these structures in a make-shift community with no signs of activity at all. It’s very strange.
We haven’t been able to what they are. They have all the earmarks of a homesteading or land redistribution project. That would make sense in a country of 28 million people where 7 million of them live in the capital city, Lima.
I can understand why people would take free land and put up a small structure. But why they would live here is beyond me. There is nothing here that we can see from the road. In the desert of Chile there are the mineral mines and the jobs that they provide. But here there are few mines and no water so no farms. It’s very curious.
We’ve been driving in South America for a couple of weeks now and we’ve passed well over 100 police check points. They’ve barely noticed us and we’ve yet to pulled over. These are officially document checks but are probably also stealth DUI checks. We don’t know and we really don’t want to find out. Plus for the last 2 days, we’ve been driving in Peru without “obligatory” insurance. See previous post. And yesterday, we’d tinkered with finishing Peru without getting insurance which we thought at the time was a thoroughly lousy idea.
We’re leaving a small town and driving slowly, boringly slowly. We round a corner and there’s a police check point. One of the officers takes one look at us and motions for us to pull over. I’m driving and slowq to a stop and back up a ways to the police officer. “Ola. Licencia. Suguro, por favor.” Hello. License. Insurance card. The third thing out of his mouth is the insurance card which through the good graces of whatever is looking out for these two old farts we had just purchased the day before. See Lima post.
We tell him that the doc is in the back and John rummages around in the big metal box for the doc folder. As soon as John pulls out the Mapfre envelope, the expression on the police officer’s face changes. I’m sure that he was expecting the “what insurance card?” response. But here’s the two old gringos with perfectly adequate insurance.
He immediately gets very friendly. When we explain that we are headed back to California after driving around the world, he just shakes his head and smiles. I offer him an Altoid which he looks at suspiciously. After I eat one, he takes one gladly. He probably would have taken the whole tin if we had let him. He smiles an even bigger grin and waves on our way. Bien viejo. Good voyage.
We’re still slogging our way north. The road is just as empty as the road through the Atacama in Chile and the wind is blowing across the road. The wind is also carrying sand just like a few days ago in Chile. And here, the wind blows the sand over a rocky ridge line and forms beautifully sculpted dunes of the leeward side of the ridge. Beautiful undulations of sand with small windrows on larger windrows on larger windrows. Every so often, a dune crosses the road and we pass through an opening in it like a plowed path through a snowdrift.
Later in the afternoon, the road becomes cluttered with small towns surrounded by irrigated farmland. The traffic slows down. Every town has a very slow speed limit, maybe 35 kph, and at least a couple of speed bumps to enforce it. At this point in the trip, after all the damage we’ve unintentionally done to the suspension, we take each bump as slowly as possible.
That’s the ones we can see. Some of them have warning signs. Other only have some heavily worn paint to mark them. Others are nearly invisiblee until we are almost on top of them. Hard thresh-hold braking to avoid the sometimes almost vertical sides of these stealth speed bumps. Speed bumps are sometimes called “sleeping policemen” (well, that’s what David Hobbs calls them). These are more accurately called “sleeping assassins”. Smash into one of these monsters at speed and we’ll be looking for another welding shop, at least.
We’re planning to stop for the night in Chiclayo, still 400 – 500 miles from the Ecuadorian border. Finally, we get to our destination with the sun up. Traffic is a mess but that’s to be expected here. Chiclayo is the hub of this area and it’s also overrun with taxis and moto-taxis, all with the same aggressive driving style we’ve seen in Lima, Ica and Arequipa.
We find the hotel we’re looking for, the Intiotel (you’ve got me) and check in. Circle around several blocks to get into their parking area. Shut down the car, GPS and Spot.
We check email on a ridiculously slow Internet connecion, have dinner and go out on the street for some shopping. Right down the block there’s a supermarket. We get some supplies consisting of cookies, water and wine.
The checkout is another exercise in madness, 4 lines and lots of waiting. A woman who looks like a transplanted, gringa earth mother is in front of us in the line and she’s buying cases of canned milk (must be on special or she has dozens of kids), bags of Tide detergent (I’m leaning towards the “dozens of kids” explanation), bundles of paper towels or toilet paper (hard to tell from where I’m standing) and assorted canned goods.
Plus, while she’s keeping an evil eye on the checkout girl, her accomplice (who really looks like her Peruvian sister-in-law) is shuttling back to the store to add things to the shopping cart that doesn’t ever seem to empty. Every few items the checkout procedure stops and the “bagging” procedure.
The most remarkable thing about all this is that the Peruvians behind her in line are taking it all in stride. No one seems very upset. They’re just standing there stoically waiting. I guess there are some upsides to that Inca genetic heritage that Peruvians all seem to have.
Me, however, I’m just enjoying the spectacle and noise in a “stab my eyeballs out” kind of way. I’m amazed but very tired and I just want to pay for our little order of cookies, water and wine and get back to the hotel.
But the earth mother show isn’t over just yet. She still has to pay and the we get to the piece d’elegance, the piling of her massive purchase into one shopping car. Not two or three but one. “Can she do it folks?” “Yes, she can, Bob. Those years of experience of buying out entire smaller supermarkets in one rush hour have paid off, Bob. We though at first that she’d have trouble but she did it, Bob.”
She and the apparent sister-in-law, using some advanced form of balanced technique obviously learned from multiple black belt shopping cart packing master, have successfully gotten everything into one cart that looks like an overloaded sugar cane truck and are trundling out of the check out area.
In the wrong direction. Everyone but them seem to know that but the rush is on to get checked out and out of the area before the pending shopping goods avalanche happens with the attendant horrific human casualties. We do our check out, pay the bill and hurry to the exit.
Back up the block to the hotel. Some football highlights on the telly. Then bed.
Obi-wan