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Tuesday March 16th – Pacasmayo was very pretty, kinda like La Jolla, CA, but nicer because it doesn’t have that sheen of money separating you from a genuine beach-town experience, and because it’s way less crowded. We had some brekkie on the terrace and then went for a stroll to look at the fishing boats and the little pier where early-rising fishermen were selling their catches. My ”hail-mary” destination for this trip was Lima, Peru …Panama was the original goal, crossing the Darien was the icing on the cake, but reaching Lima was my fantasy, given the ultimate need to return to work – and now we were only two days away from Lima, I wanted to linger in this happy place. The lads were ready to go, so after the last coupla photos of the three amigos, we saddled up and took the thru-town route back to the highway getting lost pretty good on the way. Once on the PanAmerican, we were back in the desert and immediately into a mini sand storm, with sand spread liberally across the roadway, and gusts pushing the bikes around. Ten miles out, Larry swerved violently onto the hard shoulder and came to a rapid stop – he’d picked up a nail in the rear, our first puncture in about the 20,000 motorcycle mile total of the three bikes. Luckily we were out of the worst of the sandy wind, and spent the next hour in the blazing sun putting a new tube in.

Tres Amigos

Tech note for KTM Adventure 950/990 riders – the rear tire bead is incredibly difficult to break and reseat – to break it we used Moe’s bike’s sidestand and it took almost the whole weight of the loaded bike before the bead broke – wow! Then, with the new tube in, the bead would not reseat even though we hand- and co2-pumped the thing to over 50psi, so we had to carefully ride the bike back into town and use a gas station airline at 90psi to finally seat the bead. While we were working on Larry’s rear, Moe found that he had a thorn in his front tire and it was leaking air, so he had to put a new tube in his front tire too – at least it was in the shade at the gas station.

After a quick, gas-station-cafe plate of lunch, we set out at about 2:30pm, determined to take a bite out of the remaining distance to Lima. The afternoon run down the coast was absolutely spectacular with giant sand dunes running from the raw-brown mountain range to our east, across our horizon to the water’s edge, and stunning turquoise seas breaking onto blinding white sand beaches. We stopped a few times trying to record the sights in our cameras, but such strong light contrast and large panormas are frustratingly difficult to capture.

We found ourselves another cute little fishing village to stop for the night – Playa Tortugas – and spent a pleasant hour over a super-tasty fresh fish stew dinner, chatting with a couple from Lima who were vacationing in their house up the beach, telling us in very good english about the sights to see in and around Lima.

Happy as Larry at Pacasmayo

Mad Dogs, Englishmen… and flat tire repairmen

Pictures can’t do this stretch justice

Sunset near Playa Tortugas