9th February Lima – Chimbote 264 miles

Today we are continuing North on the Pan Am but it takes us 11/2 hours to shake off the City traffic with buses trying to take us out at every opportunity. Its amazing the lights change and a bus in the left hand of 3 lanes, turns right with a passenger standing in the doorway with his hand extended, also when they pull out from bus stops they do just that regardless of what is coming.
Finally we are on the Pan Am away from the City traffic and progress is suddenly good, the road is dual carriageway for 100 miles and then we hit a sew raod works where the building of a second carriageway continues. We have a couple of short diversions over mud but as I said they are short and only a brief interruption. One horrid part was where they had scoured the surface layer of the road away and had left grooves in the road running the way we were travelling, well on two wheels the wheels just follow the grooves and then change to the next set, it was awful.
For most of today we have followed the Pacific coast from near to about half a mile away and it is the largest beach you have ever seen. We are travelling through desert and it just looks like a never ending beach from the water’s edge and for miles inland, with massive dunes.
As we approach Chimbote we stop and check out the guide books, they are not very complimentary so we just run in the last few miles and find a hotel reasonably quickly which has secure parking.
Pushing on further North tomorrow and we should be in striking distance or the border with Equidor.