What a beautiful nights sleep, 30 feet from Pacific waves singing their crashing melodies all night. We’re up at 6 and watch the sun rise. Big black pelicans cruise the water while huge prehistoric friggot birds surf the morning thermals amongst the boats bobbing in the harbour. Peru is running out fast. 60 miles along the coast and the temperature is rising with each km as we inch towards the equator. One of the riders has been attacked by midges and has comedy ankles that he can hardly walk on so I have the pleasure of his girlfriends company. I’m getting to like this pillion lark. The heat is too much for her unfortunately (or my riding is too bad) and she takes the support truck after a couple of hours. I think it went over 100 degrees today and very humid, just the conditions you need for crossing borders in a mobile leather solar panel.
Out of Peru is easy peasy. Passport to Ecuador is easy. Bike into Ecuador is like having someone with a tiny pin hammer driving a rusty 6 in nail through your knob. It’s absolutely sweltering and we’ve reached ‘wait central’. This is where I’m going to send my waiting holiday reps for training. It’s so depressing. What ever you do, don’t sell up everything, move to South America and spend all your life savings setting up a clinic specialising in RSI. You’ll get less than one customer…ever. The border has a computer again but it appears to be run on a combination of AAA batteries and a hampster/wheel arrangement. The hamster is on a tea break, sat in his chair watching telly, scratching his balls and belching. You can see a huge queue of people in front of you. You multiply the number of people by the processing time per person and you might well spend the rest of your life here. In fact they have a retirement party for the clark whilst we’re waiting. He was only 17 when we arrived. Continue reading Ecuador