To Tumbes – 5/4/15
May 6th, 2013 by rallyadmin
We plan on spending the night in Tumbes, Peru. We’re probably close enough to make Ecuador but we’ll be crossing in the dark and we could end up with a very late hotel search in Ecuador.
The road has really left the desert and the coastal fog. This area of Peru is on a large gulf that protects the land from the cold Humbolt current. Because of the location instead of deserts we’re surrounded by banana plantations. There’s still a lot of sand but this is a working agricultural region and there are plenty of small towns along the road and they all have speed bumps. The going is getting slower all the time.
There’s not much to see but we did stumble on a series of cement kilns. Lime has to be roasted before it can be used to make concrete. Every few kms, we’d come across an area where they’d take lime, pile it on the ground, build a fire over the pile and come back when the file was out and the roasted lime had cooled.
The lime was then dug out of the kiln and hammered by hand to break the large pieces into smaller pieces. The smaller pieces are the ground by a hand grinder and the result mess put into a bag. Presto! A bag of cement. The old fashioned way
We find a hotel in Tumbes. One of the best we’ve stayed in, the Costa Del Sol, a Ramada property. It’s a very nice place on a small city square with a pool and everything you could want except room keys. Their key writer is down so every time you want to get back in your room the same harried bellboy has to let you in with a passkey.
We spend a couple hours by the pool watching the clouds come in and the humidity sky rocket. Then dinner, a walk around the local area and bed.
Tomorrow, Ecuador.
Obi-wan
