Day 15

I spent the last few days just lounging on the beach. That’s literally all I did for 10 hours a day. I threw in some ceviche two times a day and a few Pina coladas with 2-3 ice creams a day and just read my book while I baked in the sun. I needed that so bad and now that I got 4 full days of it I’m ready to get back on the bike and get beat up a bit. I’ve needed a week on the beach for a while now and I’m happy it’s finally out of my system.

I did some research on Northern Peru while I was laying on the beach and came up with a little plan for northern Peru to break up the ride to the south. There isn’t much to really see up here so it’s going to be more for the riding and scenery. The towns I’m going to visit aren’t really anything nice or special from what I saw.

I was in no rush to leave today so I packed up and left around 8AM. I checked the weather for Jaen and it says it’s a high of 88. I decided to just wear my jeans and boots with my jacket. Might get a bit toasty for full riding gear that’s all black. Gps said 10 hours to get to Jaen and I had to make a stop in a city to get a new SIM card because all they sell here is a max of 3GB per refill on the sim which sucks pretty bad.

Most of my ride in the beginning was just sort of ugly desert along the coast with trash everywhere. I thought New York was dirty but this is on another level. After about 2-3 hours I stopped in a city called Piura to refill my Sim card. I didn’t have cell service on my phone nor did GPS work anymore about an hour away from Piura, so that worked out perfectly.

I hit a few drops of rain heading towards the mountains but thankfully it didn’t turn into much. The weather was pretty wild. I thought it was going to be cold at least a bit on the ride but the temps got up to 98F and stayed there for a while. The roads and scenery today were my favorite so far this whole trip but I’m not surprised because I haven’t rode that much in new places. I didn’t know this part of Peru was mostly desert. I love the dry hot air where rain isn’t a thing. The scenery was slowly changing the whole way. I came to an overlook and all I saw was a dry desert land for as far as I could see.

Today was one of those days where I turned airplane mode on and just listened to music and enjoyed the views. I didn’t stop to take many pictures because it was so damn hot and I just wanted to enjoy today for myself. Up ahead the never ending desert turned into mountains which were huge. There was a raging river running at the base of the mountains which I followed for nearly 4 hours today. At the base of the mountains where the river was running it was a very bright green where it looked like there was rice growing everywhere. There was so much vegetation next to and only next to the river. It felt like I was back in Morocco riding into an Oasis.

There was a ton of road work today where they just cut the road out and was ready to put down new pavement and I was riding into 150-200 parts where they cut the road out and were waiting to fill it in. I’m surprised I didn’t blow out my front tire as the edges were pretty sharp on a lot of the cutouts. We were stopped at roadblocks for maybe a total of 1 hour today which was annoying as hell sitting there in all my gear in 96-98F sweating bullets. But I never want to take my gear off because who knows when they will tell us it’s ok to go. I just sit there and suffer.

Lots of thoughts going through my head today. I felt very vulnerable being in the middle of nowhere especially because my bike is cutting out again when I started it up this morning. I turn it on and it shuts right off maybe 5-6 times until I rev it up a bit and hold it then it will run. I pray I don’t get into any issues here with that. It’s a long ride to get towed to Lima. I also forgot my tools to take my rear wheel off and break the bead in Cuenca I just found out two days ago too. So praying I don’t get a flat where I have to take the rear wheel off till I get to a bigger city to buy some tools.

Anyway I eventually made it to the city of Jaen. Honestly it’s a shit hole. I thought it would be way nicer but it’s pretty ghetto! Most of the streets are really bad dirt roads and it’s just filthy everywhere. I stopped at about 2-3 hotels I found on IOverlander and none of them were still there. Big Surprise. I found a hotel in the center for about 40 Soles for a private room.  It’s got some indoor parking for my bike which I’m happy about. I went out for some food and a big jug of Maracuya juice which barely filled me up. I haven’t eaten all day until dinner. I also went out for dinner with only 60 Soles on me in case I got robbed so I tried to keep it cheap. Dinner ended up being only 33 Soles which is $8.

I walked back to my hotel which was a mile from the city plaza where all the food is. Not like there was much anyway. I’m gonna call it an early night. I’m taking a long route over the Eastern part of the Andes mountains tomorrow to get to a city called Cajamarca. The riding on the other side should be pretty nice but it’s 14 hours. I’m praying I can cut it back to 11 but if I stop to take pictures and eat I doubt I’ll cut that much time off considering I barely cut any time off today’s ride but we will see what happens. Hoping to pass out early tonight so I can get up at 5Am to hit the road!