Entering Peru

Much to my displeasure, Lee roused me less than four hours later at 8am, to cross the border. As the camper was such a complete mess there was no hope of coffee. We hadn’t even been able to brush our teeth the night before and I pulled back on yesterday’s clothes in the muggy morning before crawling out of the cab. We grabbed a slightly warm cheap energy drink from a nearby vending machine, that would have to do. Happy Birthday to me.

After wrestling the pop-top back down, we went to cancel our vehicle permit. We were clearly the first people and the officers were not bothered about us standing waiting. Eventually they told us to pull the van around to this side of the car park so it was visible from the office. That done, we stood and waited while they finished their lengthy second chat. Finally, we were waved into the office. 

We handed over our paperwork and a frown crossed the guy's face. He stood up and went outside to call his colleague back. It was at that moment I realised we had stupidly given him our first permit, now three months out of date. After quickly handing over the right document, he waved the other guy away and gestured for us to sit. Clearly glad we weren’t going to be a pain in the arse to deal with he asked us to show him a photo of the number plate as he couldn’t be bothered to go outside and look at it himself. He gave our photo a cursory glance and then stamped everything. Compared to the normal checks, it was over in a few minutes and we were free to leave. Normally, you cancel your vehicle papers and stamp out your passport on one side, before going to the other side to get your new papers. This border is unusual in the fact that it’s only the vehicle paperwork done in Ecuador. Everything is handled in Peru and so we got back in the van and drove over the river that acts as the border between the two countries. 

It’s probably one of the longer crossing in terms of distance, normally everything is within walking distance but this required a couple of minutes of driving before we turned up outside the offices for Peru. Ruby turned in, went over a speed bump and promptly died. Some kind security guards pushed us into the nearest parking bay and we decided that we would sort out our paperwork before dealing with the van. Firstly, we headed to immigration where we got stamped out of Ecuador and then went to  the next window over for our entry into Peru. There was no real queue and it only took about ten minutes. The lady even wished me a happy birthday in English! The vehicle paperwork was just as easy. Normally they at least want to see the car and check the VIN number. This guy asked where we parked and when I pointed to the far end of the car park he shrugged and went ahead with it anyway. After a few minutes he gave me the piece of paper and pointed to the insurance booth next door. 

While I dealt with this, Lee had gone back to the van to see if he could find the problem. Normally the vehicle paperwork takes a while, we often wait up to two hours for it. Ten minutes is unusually quick. Then insurance took about the same time. I couldn’t quite believe how quick and easy it was, clearly us turning up on a big national holiday had been a good, if completely unintentional, idea. As I walked back to the van, I saw Lee sitting in the cab and a second later, the engine came on. We were back in business. Apparently the speed bump had caused our suspension to bottom out and cut through the fuel pump wire. A piece of duct tape would be good enough to get us out of here. It was going suspiciously well. We had made it through the border in less than an hour, a record for us. It must have been some kind of birthday present and I was so happy that we had made it, after all we had been through that I forgot how completely knackered I I was for a moment. We thought maybe we should try and get the cat paperwork as the bank was closed. We had heard that in this situation before someone had got it for free. When we asked though we were told we had the wrong paperwork and we had to go back to Ecuador. We told them that it was shut on that side and that we’d come back the next day. The guy nodded knowingly at me. We both knew I wouldn’t be coming back, but he clearly didn’t care and waved us through the final barrier and we drove off into Peru. 

We made a quick stop in the border town to get a bit of cash out, before heading a short distance down the coast. Already the nice smooth tarmac roads of Ecuador were gone and we bumped along through Zarumilla.

We had found a hotel that lets you park in the car park and use the facilities including pool side service. Nothing sounded more appealing after months in cold, damp Machachi than lying by a pool in the sun and having a nap, followed by a cocktail. It was my birthday after all. 

The Blue Point hotel turned out to be a pretty great spot. I think the first thing I did was sleep. Then we swam in the pool and enjoyed some rather good Bailey’s cocktails. It was roasting hot and the girls lay in the shade by the van next to the heaps of our stuff we had taken out in order to actually get inside. We spent two nights here, getting ourselves together, eating out at the restaurant next door that evening as we were in no position to cook.

We washed our horrid wet garage clothes, packed a few more bits and fitted the roof rack in place with a ratchet strap. Although we didn’t trust it to hold our stuff, at least the shower and rack were now not inside the van, meaning it was possible to actually get inside. One of our first jobs would be to find a welder. With this in mind, we packed up and left the hotel after staying two days. We thought we’d try the next large ish town, Zorritos. 

One of the problems with not having our roof rack done, was that our starlink dish couldn’t be mounted. This meant that until we bought a local sim card, we didn’t have any internet as soon as we left the hotel. When the place that we had preloaded on our map as the nearest welder was shut, we pulled up on the side of the road in the town trying to figure out if there was another option. Another kombi pulled up in front of us and got out to say hello. He told us he knew a welder and that we could go there with him, unfortunately it was the same guy. He then invited us to park with them overnight, so we could go back in the morning. We drove a few minutes to a small shop so we could grab some water, before continuing on to where they were parked. It was street parking, but directly on the beach. They had made an arrangement with the family who owned a small strip of beach to use their shade, chairs, water and electricity. We figured we may as well stop the night here and so we spent an evening getting to know Eleonore and Manolo, they even cooked us pizza which was lovely. Normally, we're the ones cooking for other people.

The welder didn’t seem to be around in the morning so we decided to move on. Lee had checked to see if there was a welder in Lobitos instead and it appeared there was. We had heard nice things about camping here. An abandoned military base provides a huge flat expanse of free camping, right on the surf break. We hadn’t got our surfboards down in over a year and it seemed about time. A week relaxing and enjoying the hot weather on the beach sounded right up my street. We loaded all of our piles of stuff back into Ruby and set off to the tune of the ratchet strap that held the empty roof rack in place, as it hummed loudly in the wind. 

We drove through Mancora, not quite understanding why it was so popular with tourists, and on to Organos. We decided to stock up at the local market. This turned out to be a pretty sad affair. I was disappointed by the limited and sad looking vegetables. They were selling small avocados for over £1 each and most of the stall seemed to feature just some tired fruit, onions and potatoes. There wasn’t a lot of green. After Machachi’s huge bustling market this was a let down. We did manage to find broccoli and tried to negotiate with our limited change. Rather than haggle, the man systematically stripped florets of it until he deemed it worth our money. Then we tried to get a drink and Lee broke one of the ladies' glasses so we had to pay for that. The only redeeming feature of the market was that we managed to find a gas refill canister for the soldering iron for a fraction of the price that we had paid in Ecuador. We walked around the corner to grab some drinks and then set off again to cool the van down, none of us were used to this heat. 

Our friends had sent some awesome looking photos of a free spot just south of here and we went to have a look. While it was an ok spot, their photos were better than the reality and so we stopped for a drink and a snack but decided to keep driving. 

Following the sat nav, we turned off the highway. A few minute down the road we arrived at a guard and a barrier. We asked him if this was the way to Lobitos; which he confirmed it was. He looked doubtfully at our camper, the road was “muy fea” he told us, “very ugly”. Just then, a 4x4 arrived from the other direction and as he passed us shook his head, indicating we should turn around. There was another route on the map and so we decided to try that instead, driving on through an almost lunar-like landscape apart from the fact it was green.

After filling up with some very expensive fuel, we turned off on the other route. This lumpy dirt road headed out into nothingness. The only thing here that moved were the nodding donkeys. We bumped our way gently along, ever aware that the rear suspension was partially non-existent. Our new tyres, however, blasted across the sandy sections with ease, and soon we arrived in the tiny town of Lobitos and drove around a bit to see if we could see the welder. We ended up down a street that had completely been washed away with no luck finding anything at all. The whole place seemed kind of deserted. 

As we had no internet, we headed to the beach to park up where we could check again where the workshops were. Perhaps a job for tomorrow. Once on the beach, we piled our heaps of stuff outside. Shoving most of it under the van to try and look a bit less trampy and still making a right mess. The roof rack was definitely top of our priority list, followed shortly by the suspension.

I had heard that it was windy on this beach, but perhaps we arrived at a different time of year for the night was still, and silent. Just what we needed. While the daytime temperatures made walking on the sand or sitting in the sun unbearably hot, the nights were cooler. We watched the surfers come and go, it looked like some really nice waves, but somehow the surfboards remained on the roof still.

It was hard to relax and think of enjoying ourselves and surfing when there were still so many outstanding jobs to be done. In the end, we blobbed around over the weekend before packing up and heading out to Talara. It turned out that this bigger town is actually where the welders are, not where we were staying at all. After a wrong turn that ended in another ‘quebrada’ or completely washed away road, we found Talara. It is not a nice town. It’s the kind of place where people shout ‘GRINGO’ at you as you drive past or just stare, unblinkingly while you smile and wave. While it’s not nice, it’s useful. It had the first proper supermarket and also a huge DIY store, as well as several welders. Shopping at the supermarket done, we headed to the welders. The first one didn’t want to do it, and waved us to the end block where there was another welder. He didn’t want to do it either, and tried to send us back to the other one. We told him the other one sent us here and then he rather grudgingly agreed. He needed to make some kind of clamp that would hold the rack into the gutter, as well as put some kind of foot on the hollow ended tube sections, so that they would sit in the gutter nicely. While he went about this, we went in search of some hinges to weld on. This would be the first step in permanently mounting starlink on once the rack was complete.

Things progressed fairly quickly until we got to the point of testing the clamps on the gutter. This did not go well, the clips were too free move and when you tried to tighten them they simply slid off the gutter. I suggested putting another metal piece above so that the bolt was held in line. He kind of did this, but it was a pretty sloppy job and as the sun started to get lower in the sky, it became sloppier and more and more rushed. We also had the problem that when they had replaced the gutter in the garage they had not left space for the roof rack clamps between the gutter and the door. While we could clamp them on, the door wouldn’t now open or shut. We had little choice except to take a big hammer to our new paint and make space. This seemed to be the go ahead to the welder to hit anything that didn’t fit with the hammer. It wasn’t great, but at this point we wanted to get out. The cats had been stuck in a hot van for hours without proper access to their food or water and it was time to move. As the sun finally set, the roof rack was attached at least. It wasn’t pretty but it was fairly functional. We would have come back the following day to finish it off better, but we had no desire to camp in this town. We went to the DIY shop to buy the remaining things we needed to finish it off ourselves before heading very slowly back to our nice camp spot in the dark. 

We had planned, now that the welding was done, to spend time on the beach sanding, painting and finishing off our roof rack so that when we left we could load up our stuff properly. However, a morning inspection proved that while it was attached it was going to need access to a grinder and probably another welder to tidy and finish up some of the finer points. The other problem was that while we had left Ecuador with clean metal bars, a week near the coast had coated the entire thing in a thick layer of rust. It needed some serious prepping now, before it could be painted. Not only this, but the waves now had picked up. This was probably the nail in the coffin to our week of fun beach surfing. We found a campsite around three hours away in the town of Piura which looked like it might have a workshop we could also use. If not, we’d be close to a much bigger town and we could finish off things properly as well as get the suspension sorted. Driving these roads with no bump stops or shocks was not to be recommended. With this new plan, we retraced our steps carefully down the bumpy dirt track and set off on a new road once again.