Pan American Highway (Part 2)

A motorbike is more intense. Traversing and therefor absorbing goes faster. On average I have to process more motorized vehicles passing by, which adds up to more stress. Remarkable enough, the sound of our own motorbike does not disturb me. I also have to deal with more scenic camp spots in a shorter time lapse than being on a bicycle. This luxury position translates into the need to write and photograph. In short, I have more incoming imagery than a mode to digest. The route may contain less beauty in comparison to the Andes, I still see more beauty than ugliness.

What I try to get from traveling is nature and culture. I want to be in nature. To end the day at a garbage dump does not enhance my mood, especially not when the route went along electricity units, hydroelectrically-power plants, mining areas, whatever sort of factories, oil refineries, gasoline compounds, drill platforms, ocean tankers, cruise ships and all else a human need to enhance life (including mine).

A traveler, being it on a bicycle, is not excluded from this list. We are all to blame. So, cruising further along plastic, Geo tells me he is not impressed with South America so far. I do not share his opinion, but the coast of Peru is better to be avoided indeed. The most idyllic patches along the coast are not accessible. The ones which are, are dump area’s.

I remember my previous Peruvian Christmas spot vividly, and wish to camp there again with Geo but when we pass that very spot, it is 12.00 am.

‘It’s a paradise,’ said the Argentinean motorist we’d met on the route. He mentioned only Lima and Trujilo as tricky. And while traversing the traffic in Lima certainly goes beyond every thrill-seeker’s dream, I can not call the route ‘paradise’. Big exceptions are the camp spots one may find along the way.

On the other hand, when we sleep at an undesired spot, I explore the shore and am always pleased. The bird-life is just fantastic.

I learned long ago to focus on the details and this blots out the bigger picture, and suddenly, life becomes very beautiful. Though, I am not able to practice this technique in the Netherlands.

The Pan American Highway is an example of extreme road engineering. Also, I would have enjoyed the desert landscapes, which are at some point spectacular, more would I have cycled it. Slow traversing through a desert is always better. Now I sit on average 200 kilometer a day, simply because we can drive faster on a good asphalted road. Sitting so long and not getting off is a drag. I don’t feel the work I did, as I don’t do any work. I gain no success. There is no real physical challenge. I am feeling an admiration for the Kenton and for Geo his patience and driving ability, but I feel nothing for myself. No challenge. No success. No work. No gain.

Often, on long days of riding, I start at 4 PM with narrowing my eye sight. Like a very slender lens opening I try to spot an out of view camp spot. The desert near to Nasca offers a great choice of those, though we need a hard surface to reach those somewhat secluded spots.

Hard surfaces in the desert of Peru are not. So, then, camping in a pit of sand where the zipper of Big Agnes tent continues to derail, where the tent picks up the wind while I try to stake it down, and where overhanging electricity wires make a sizzling sound, I once again declare it not the best finish of a not overly great day. I come to the conclusion that there is no victory without a challenge. While fighting the tent, swirling all over the place, Geo needs to calm me down: ‘Your tent can not possible be blown away when we stake it together. I don’t believe it is of such a low quality that it can not withstand a simple wind!’

Some people still praise us, but I don’t understand so well why?

The Cumulus sleeping bag of many a year needs repairs here and there.

Though, it is also equally true that I long to step on the back of the motorbike each morning. The feeling of exchanging a sunny, warm, sweaty place for the wind surrounding my helmet. I like to sit and watch the nature passing by, the elements as a constant witness. Even when the camp spot is exciting and has a lot to offer, very often there comes a point I want to start moving. That are the moments I can look forward to the next exciting camp spot.

One such moment is camping in the outstanding beauty of Paracas national park. I looked forward to it and when we arrive we have to pay a fee more than a 3 star hotel room would be. That is much for a dirt-free camp spot. We opt for the free little-dirty beach front opposite an oil refinery.

When the excitement of where I am falls away, what’s left? The Pan American highway near Nasca continues in resembling a garbage dump. It only gets worse with a high peak once in Lima. But when in the residential parts of Lima, all is kept clean and swept and taken care for.

My diary shows an ongoing of negativity about the dirt, the ugliness and how the coastal Peruvians seem to have lost their identity, dressed in Lycra leggings and stretchy T-shirts, keen on showing less lean body’s. I am annoyed by my own mind. That I am constantly thinking of how a heap of trash the Pan American highway is.

I am annoyed because the Peruvians have no sense of beauty and order and basics. I am annoyed because I am not the one who has set ‘order’ and ‘beauty’ and ‘basics’ and yet I can not get the negativity out of my head.

When we have lunch in Chilca several people come by in the restaurant, trying to earn a meagre living. Elderly selling peanuts, mental weak selling chewing gum, poor selling key hangers. When we see an old man in a wheelchair approaching, Geo goes over to him, offering him a meal. The man, missing one leg, scrapes forth with one foot pushing, accepting the offer. He moves terribly slow and when he enters the restaurant, pushed by Geo, the smell can be described equally: terribly, slowly filling the area. The poor soul has a huge bulge under his abdomen, infested with flies. He might not have had a shower for many months. When we part, he tells me he lost his leg due to a little insect bite. It all went wrong in the hospital. When Geo has pushed his wheelchair without rubber around the wheels back on to the street, the man pays respect to God, with a wave of his hat, up in the sky.

When Geo finds out about the route to the jungle, I use the toilet for a selfie

I decide to plug earphones in, play music, on top of the droning sound of traffic, coming closer to Lima. I choose ‘Los Angelos Azules’, a Mexican cumbia band. Low and behold, I can appreciate everything a bit more. The dirt, the rubble, the clothing; the Lycra and the fat bubbling over and through, the chosen ugliness. It all fits with cumbia.

Even though I think of many Peruvians as only caring for their own interior and throw all else outside of it. The fact that menu’s say things they do not serve or advertise simple bread as artesenal wood-oven baked. Though, at the artesenal bakery we meet with a man who can sharpen our machete old style!

Ladies who run towards you when coming to a halt to choose one of the 10 roadside restaurants. The mass production of chickens. The enchantment for television. The trucks. The flimsy wooden mats functioning as building material. The huts made of plywood and cheap stone. The portraying naked ladies on car-wash advertisement, as if they have instant orgasms by soaping a car with their enlarged breasts and implanted bottoms?

Driving through Lima is an absolute nerve testing experience. We came out with a face literally smeared black from fumes and a stress level needed to cool down for a full day, but with all 4 limbs in tact. Driving in Lima is not so much about traffic rules, more about interacting with your fellow road mates. See it as a game of chess, with triple the amount of players on a board without visible squares.

We stay in Los Olivos, a part of Lima about 20 kilometers removed from the center of town. We stay with Adriana, a 45 year young beauty, childless by choice and single. She and her 77 years old widowed mom both love dancing and swirl around the kitchen. The two heartwarming ladies have changed our perspective about Peru in an instant. Again, it is our thinking, our own lack.

Adriana and her mom host us in their apartment, an Airbnb place for a ridiculous low price. It’s so low we voluntary pay extra, as the breakfasts are delicious, copious and worth the price by itself. I think Geo and I lack socializing. Our way of traveling disables us to interact much with locals and here at the breakfast table we meet with friends of Adriana and talk about Peru. Here, too, we get to know the Peruvians warmth, bigheartedness, happiness, positivism and shiny character. Though there is a lot of harsh sounds and screaming voices when Latina’s meet…

Geo and I get out for a walk around town. To avoid the city itself we raise ourselves above it. We find a heap of rubble to start from, having tried a few exits in very shady parts of town where illegal houses grow as far as possible into the rock. On my Barefeet sandals it’s rather unstable.

Standing on top of the mountain was getting an idea how heavily disturbed a crazy mind might work. Its a constant ongoing of sound, lifted up to higher ground, mixed into a soup of troubles. Not a single moment, not a speck of a second there is silence. Its madness. A human anthill gone berserk.

Illegal houses keep being built. Lima is growing by the hour. The rich in legal ocean-view condominiums. The very poor in huts tucked away where is some space left, others on top of the hill. The hill which is littered in dog poop and seems to be covered in a sort of greasy looking dust. The better-off live in a combination of a shack and a stone hut, with right alongside the middle class, where we stay. The streets of the middle class are secured with a heavy metal gate where boys are hired to be vigilant.

Peru is loud. People honk their horn when passing, trying that as close as possible when we’d come to a standstill. Television is always showing screaming, synthetically made up women with enlarged breasts who seem the need for only one thing: to be desirable to men. If not, many let it all hang and tie some Lycra around it. Bellies sticking out, fat matter hanging underneath, visible for all. The cultural importance of dress code is gone; cheap Chinese mass production is what suits them best now.

Cultural differences… they can not be taken lightly. Dutch people for example don’t close their curtains, so everyone can look into their houses. Peruvians, and perhaps most South Americans, don’t bother too much with how they live, their houses an unfinished building construction, never meant to be finished, often only the front is plastered. Where Europe once stood, now South America stands: there is a great lack of knowledge about sugar intake, nutrition, usage of plastic and disposing of trash.

What is culture? It think it is a set of habits, thoughts, convictions and actions we are brought up with. Climate, provisions from nature and traditions rooted in history are all part of culture. On the other hand, Peruvians seem to be satisfied from the core, family minded and with morals and normality more in place: there is more clarity about gender, about structure and spirituality in general.

Now, let’s see how the jungle works out. We are going to skirt the Amazon, Geo looks much forward to it.

December 2019. Atico, Nasca, Paracas, Pachacamac, Lima