The many faces of Peru


This is Lima



So is this


This was my hotel in Lima.  Looks not too bad right?  Inside though, there are jails with less security.  You get in by knocking on a door, which is unlocked electronically if you are allowed in.  You can`t get in or out unless the invisible man with the button lets you.  Nevertheless, with all this security, somebody got into my room and pilfered my cell phone, and all my USB and SD cards with photos on them.  Fortunately I have already mailed my backups to Alberta, so I only lost a few hundred Peru pictures, and my cell phone which did not work woth a tinkers damn anyway.  Did I mention that Bell Canada sucks? It does, just like all the other cell phone companies.  If ever there is an industry crying out for regulation, this is it.  Anyway no biggee, life goes on.  If this is the worst thing that happens than I will have been lucky.

Southward Ho.  This part of Peru, the coast,  looksmostly  like a giant kitty litter spill 100s and 100s of kilometers.

The west coast is extremely dry,   this is a Sahara style desert, the only thing that grows are sand dunes.  There is agriculture only where there are rivers coming down from the mountains, otherwise it all looks just like the picture on the right.  In places dunes that may drift across the road like snow drifts.

I could not resist leaving a bit of Canada behind.

If you like sandy beaches, you will love Peru, the beach must be about 50 kilometers wide.  Today I am in Paracas, a resort town with luxury hotels where they only take dollars and gringos for guests.  I am not a guest here, my hotel landlady promised me internet, but hers did not work, so she got me into this place to use their PC, the best internet connection I have had since starting this trip. :-)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A new era

Image
This year I officially became a 'senior', or 65 years old.  So the 60's have been a lot more fun than the 30's, but there are also some indications that things are going to change.  Take last summer, I was riding my KTM 640 Adventure down a quad trail by myself.  The front wheel fell into a deep rut going up hill and down I went.  No biggee, except I couldn't pick the bike up.  This had never happened before.  I have dragged that bike out of mud and sand on its side, and picked it up numerous times.  This time it was staying down, and I was not even sure why.  With the help of a nearby fisherman I was able to get the bike up and out. So, no more solo off road excursions, the reason I still had the KTM, which truth to say was never the greatest highway bike. Since I started riding well over 40 years ago, I have always been more interested in performance, not necessarily all out extreme by the numbers performance, but motorcycles that did someth...
Read more

A tale of two XTs

Image
Over the years I have almost always had more than one motorcycle at a time, but never really had a collection.  Collecting stuff has a lot in common with activities like recreational drug use or gambling, it can be fun, but watch you don't get hooked.  In my case the wake up call arrives when I can't get into the garage anymore, and then it's 'everything must go!' until the garage is empty.  After which, like coat hangers in a closet, a bike creeps into a corner, and another and another. The collecting bug does not discriminate, people collect all kinds of shit, from buttons to military tanks. I never saw my random moto acquisition binges as an investment, I was mostly sucked into buying old bangers through the motorcycle price-age curve, a tool used by economists to study the demand for rusty old crap. As you can see in the graph below, the actual selling price of a motorcycle descends very swiftly the moment it leaves the showroom, mostly because the dealer...
Read more

I'm baaaack

Image
Wow, a long time since I posted here, my 9 followers must be getting anxious.  So, since I last posted about trying cruiser-dom, I really like the Guzzi, and have added nearly 20,000 km to its odometer. The only thing I don't like about it is the buffeting.  Buffeting for those who haven't experienced it, is a type of vibrating wind blast common to large handlebar mounted windshields on motorcycles.  It occurs at speeds above 100 km ie highway speeds.  At first you don't really notice it, but after a few hours it wears you down.  I tried a larger windshield, no joy. I tried cutting some openings into the windshield to reduce the low pressure behind the windshield, a little better, but not much.  Changed helmets, which did not work until I changed to a very light weight three quarter jet style, which worked best of all the things I tried.  So that's why cruiser guys prefer beanie style helmets, who knew?  Not really an ideal solution though, I li...
Read more