I came prepared to Chiclayo: Two hotels with a more or less precise description of their locations. So what could go wrong? Chiclayo is one of Peru's major cities, so it has a decent size. And yet I was all of a sudden on a dirt road section in the middle of the city - in proximity of the second hotel already. At a bottleneck due to a parking car i had to make an evasive move. And boom, the road sagged, the wheels were spinning, no progress in neither direction...

I took a dirt road into the mountains. There is no vegetation and other than debris on these hills there is not anything. I've not seen such a vast landscape yet, with the roads being the only signs of civilization - not even fences. Sporadically a mining company claims property rights. The absence of water allows farming only in river valleys, which are often enough dry fallen. Thus settlements are rare. They always seem unfinished - with mud being the predom...

I wasn't 5k out of town when I run into a roadside check. And I realized that I didn't switch the daytime running lights on yet. I switched them on, but i knew, there's a law and hence I look forward to the conversation and the fine. (in Argentina they charge 300 U$.) The police officer obviously lectured me and I played the naive - it didn't work though. Fortuna on the other hand played nice: when the officer asked me to switch them on, he realized that the b...

And this is where I slept - the Gran Chimu in Chimbote. Not in this chair obviously. They had a bed to offer as well. But isn't it understandable that I was rather hesitant when I saw a location like this? Hence I didn't take at first. I left to try my luck elsewhere - Two hours and countless dogfights with taxi drivers later, I remembered that I saw a hostal dos Delphinos on my way in. It was quite a distance from the center, but I have a car for a reason. W...

This is where I ate last night - chicken fresh from the grill.