Perú - North Coast

Jul 23, 2018

2 min read

23rd June and a Saturday afternoon on the road towards Peru, with a plan to cross the border on the Monday. We made good time...... Let's cross the border now. We pass the ´Welcome to Peru´ sign and arrive at Peruvian Border Control. Well where is the exit to Ecuador? We need to exit! We get sent back 4 miles to an office, followed by another 4 miles and a different office. Now all three offices in correct order.... the process would be easy with the simplest of signs along the road.

By the time we enter Peru, it is dark and we experience legendary Peruvian driving. About 20% of drivers appear not to bother with or have lights, which may account for the high percentage who appeared to be attached to our bumper - possible sharing our lights.... Then there are the unmarked speed bumps - bone rattling. We ended up at a scrubland campsite overlooking the Pacific. Not a bad place to wake up!

The following day we moved to Mancora in search of kitesurfing. The wind didn't arrive, so we continued south to Cabo Blanco making a brief detour to see giant sea turtles and buy some fish from the local fishermen. Having arrived at Cabo Blanco, we met Danny and Flavia, fellow kiters we´d met in Colombia and Ecuador. We settled down for a few days wild camping and kiting. A beautiful spot, fishermen out on their rigs everyday and very safe due to the security for the nearby on/offshore oil facilities.

28th June and it was time to move. We drove towards Piura, taking a chance that the coastal track would eventually join a main road. This was a wild and woolly 7 hour ride along sand roads and dirt tracks, passing salt marshes and nodding donkeys, with one of the highlights being our arrival at Punta Balcones, the most westerly point in South America. Fun driving, but we only made it down the coast to Colán. From Colán we turned inland to Piura, with the aim of heading to the mountains. No, wait a minute - a change of plan as we turned towards the east - let's go back to the jungle...