Piura

After the rather unpleasant, but short lived drive around Talara, Piura was the first biggest town we’d really been in. Having driven through 9 other Latin American countries, we are used to the drivers. Colombia’s towns are inundated with scooters. They cross in and out of lanes as if they don’t exist and completely disregard any kind of traffic lights, signs or other road users. In Piura, it’s the tuk-tuks. This is even worse than a scooter, because while they drive with the same complete disregard for anyone but themselves, they are bigger and slower. If it wasn’t enough of a problem to constantly try and avoid the lunatic drivers, you also had to contend with a road that was completely falling apart.

We arrived at the main crossroads where we needed to turn left to our campsite. A bus pulled up next to us in the right lane, indicating left. Now it was anyone's guess what he’s going to do. An errant tuk tuk drove up around us on the pavement so that he could run the red light. As the lights changed, the bus cut straight across us to indeed turn left. Naturally we stopped, our way blocked. Then it was deemed by the cars behind us that we were going too slowly (as we couldn’t actually move), and so they all pulled around both sides to simultaneously over and undertake, except it was all blocked by the bus. From the other side, the tuks-tuks continued to drive over the red light and add to the fray, which was made more complicated by the traffic all trying to avoid a massive pothole in the middle of a carriageway that ran out of tarmac here in the centre of the city. A simple two lane junction turned into a mele of cars, horns and shouting. It was complete and unnecessary carnage. We both agreed, Peruvian drivers were the worst so far and it was no wonder that the entire rear corner of the bus was made of unpainted body filler.

Once we managed to extricate ourselves from the traffic, we drove out a short way to reach Porta Verde which marketed itself as an ‘Eco Country Club’. We spoke to Jair (I think, while Lee is adamant it’s Javier), he told us that it was 40 soles a night, but that it would also be cheaper if we stayed longer. We thought we’d stay a couple of days. He asked us whether our van would be able to cross a rather deep ditch to the spot he had pointed out under some trees, on the side of a football pitch. Gingerly we edged Ruby in and out of the ditch to park up in the shade. Our host brought us a huge hook up cable as despite the fact that we have three, all ours combined still weren’t long enough to reach. This was perfect as it was hot here and to be able to park in the shade and run off mains power was a luxury. He showed us to a sparkly new toilet block and told us apologetically that there was a shower, but it didn’t have a curtain yet. We were free to use the pool whenever we wanted and there was also a bar and restaurant on site. We spent a moment setting up the van and releasing the cats before Jair returned and told us that, Gonzalo, owner would like to meet us. We headed over to the bar and met the owner, drinking with a friend of his. The friend, whose name escapes me brought us two beers and we sat and chatted about our trip, alternating between Spanish and English. The beers kept coming and an introductory drink turned into a long night, it was the early hours of the morning before we headed to bed. 

Despite being a little worse for wear the following day, we did remember Gonzalo’s offer to use his workshop and later that afternoon we got him to show us around. We walked further up the drive to his private house. He showed us the space, and most importantly, the mig welder. Then he invited us into his house as well. He had ten cats, three dogs and several peacocks on a huge plot of land. He was in fact, dangerously close to having exactly the life we wanted. He told us that we were free to use the workshop whenever we wanted, as long as the gates were kept shut and that Jair could point out where the tools were. It seemed like it wasn’t a much used space anymore, at least not for its original purpose as an artist’s workshop. While metal sculptures were in and around the grounds, Gonzalo seemed to have moved into a different medium and huge paper mache statues of Avatar and Groot now dominated the floorspace. He still had all the tools though, they just had clearly not been used for a long time. 

The following morning, we decided we needed to head into town for supplies. We bought paint, filler and grinding discs to get cracking on the roof rack. We also managed to find some floor trims, another job to do. We decided to stock up on everything today and then use Sunday, the busiest day in the restaurant, to retreat to the workshop and make a start. 

It’s amazing how the time passed here. We spent nearly an entire day trying to persuade the neglected welder to work. The wire had rusted into the tip and the entire reel of wire was oxidised, causing it to stick in the sheath. After a lot of wasted wire, we managed to weld on the brackets for the off road lights. It was slow going. I had hoped that if the welder worked well, I would be able to also weld our rear suspension, but at this rate it wasn’t going to happen. 

Over the next few days, we had cleaned about half the roof rack and welded a few other weak points on the rack. Then it got left for a day or so as we headed back into town for more supplies and to buy a new welding tip. When we resumed our work, the whole thing had started to rust again. We spent some long days getting all the metal clean and sticking on a protective layer of paint before we tackled the crappy feet the other welder had put on. While they weren’t great, with extra welding and some filler I think I made them presentable. It had been a slow process, which still wasn’t quite finished as we needed to put on the wooden slats, wire in the roof lights and attach the shower. The metal work however was done and with our persistence, the welder was working well enough. Lee had to sit there and hold the feed tube in place, while I welded but it was working well enough for us to attempt the suspension.

We had heard that the roads in Peru weren’t the best and even on a smooth highway it’s probably inadvisable to drive without shocks and bump stops, especially when you’re as heavy as we are. Also, Mauricio had attempted to remove the one shock without success, which resulted in it being attached but very loose. The constant rattling was driving me completely mad and we decided that while we should be moving on, it was sensible to take this opportunity to sort out this major issue before we cause ourselves another problem. 

We had planned to go back the next day, but when we awoke that morning,  Aimee was nowhere to be found. We had been trialling out air tags on the cat's collars with mixed success; in the week she had been only a few metres away and we hadn’t found her. The only information we had now was that she hadn’t been near the van since around 6.30am. This is unlike her. While she does have a tendency to bugger off in the middle of the day she is always there in the morning to whine for her food, only to usually go out again without eating it. We weren’t overly concerned; Gonzalo has ten cats, there was no traffic. We tried to find her but no luck. By the time it had reached late afternoon though, we were not so calm. Having lost Lizzy we are now horribly paranoid about it happening again. One of our biggest regrets is not acting soon enough and while we had spent hours calling Aimee, there was little we could do. The undergrowth was thick, overgrown and near impossible to search. We spoke to the neighbouring camper in case she had climbed in there, something she also has a habit of doing, but she was nowhere to be found. It was also unlike her to be gone this long and while we couldn’t do much to find her, we couldn’t think of anything else. We sat there saying reassuring things to each other while ultimately each having a small internal breakdown. We couldn’t do this again. What kind of people lose two cats? I put our torches on charge, there was no way either of us would sleep until she was found. And then, just after 6pm, as we searched near the toilet block, my phone registered her tag. A second later, she wandered out of the bushes, completely unfazed. I have never been so relieved to see her and we resolved that we must get better trackers. Our stress levels couldn’t handle this for the rest of the trip. Now at least we could relax, and once more think about welding. 

Gonzalo seemed to be in a bad mood, accusing us of leaving his workshop a mess. We had left a few bits there as we hadn’t finished and the whole place was a mess anyway, but it didn’t seem diplomatic to say so. His friend, Darwin, was staying with him and he waived away our concerns. They seemed to argue a bit too and from spending a little time with Gonzalo it seemed like he was incredibly particular about how he liked things. From his workshop, to the position of campers in his parking area. We apologised, tidied up a bit more. He had now gone from regularly coming and chatting with us to basically ignoring us. So it was a little awkward, but nonetheless we asked if we could bring our van up to the workshop for the day to weld. To his credit, he agreed and so we drove Ruby up to the shop, reversed her in and got to work. 

We did the easy side first, where there already was a shocking missing. I think the system that VW used to attach the shock absorbers is incredibly bad. A bolt goes through the shock and into a square section of the chassis. On the back, a welded nut secures the bolt. If woe betide you, this nut snaps off, you can no choice but to either cut out the whole chassis section or remove the fuel tank and cut access holes. With the rust on our van, it was not the first time the tack welds on this nut sheered off, leaving us with a spinning, rattly bolt that couldn’t be removed. We had got a good fix in Costa Rica finally, after problems that had followed us all the way from England. The problem was that the bolt itself was not strong enough and had snapped off in the heavy duty welded section. Instead of cutting it out I decided I had had enough of VW’s crappy design.  We bought a stronger bolt, cut the head off, stuck it in the hole and welded it in. Enough was enough. As we were fitting air shocks, they needed a spacer to clear the chasses and so I welded some reinforcement pieces to this spacer before sliding it over the bolts and welded the plates to the chassis. This meant that it would be possible to remove the spacer if refitting standard shocks, but would add extra support on our very heavy rear end. The new shocks simply slid over the top and a nut went on the front. It seemed like a good solution and I hoped my welding was man enough to handle the roads we would we driving on and the weight would be put through the metal. 

It had taken us a whole day to do one side. We also couldn’t fit the new shock yet as we didn’t have the connectors for the air line. Annoyingly, in our rush to leave the garage in Ecuador, we had not reconnected the air lines on the front shocks and one of the connectors had fallen off. I therefore used the spare ones we had which should have been for the rear. Now that we had actually got around to fitting the rear ones, we had needed to order in another air line kit from the states. Expensive, but necessary. So on the second day of welding, I made a start in the garage while Lee went into town to collect the kit from DHL. 

The other side required cutting the chassis apart to remove the old bolt as this side had not snapped. I did this and then moved onto the removing the bonded metal tubes out of the bushes on the old shock as our new shocks only had one set and we needed to re-use our old ones to fit them. Another fun job for a hot day.  Lee was greeted on his successful return with the job of hacksawing through the remains of the bolt inside the square section where the grinder couldn’t reach. In the meantime, I set about making a patch for the bump stop. We had tried to fit them the day before only to find that the central metal piece that goes inside the rubber stop had rusted off. I made a new piece for this and then moved onto adding reinforcing plates to the spacer. It was getting late in the afternoon, but we powered on and as darkness fell I finished all the welding. The shocks were installed and the bump stops on. All we needed to do was put air in them and we would have proper suspension again. It was awesome to have this job finished and as Gonzalo came over we were happy to tell him we were done. We said we’d come back in the daylight to clean up the garage properly and before too long, we’d be able to leave. 

Back at the campsite in the dark, I thought I saw Aimee having a standoff with a huge, I assumed, toad. However, when I went over to see what it was, it turned out that it was no toad, but a large coiled snake. I didn’t really know what to do I had no idea if it was poisonous and I didn’t want to make any sudden movement in case it attacked Aimee. So, I yelled for Lee so that we could both stand there uselessly, as Aimee sat a few feet from it watching. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to run away and fortunately the snake didn’t seem to want to attack. That was lucky, as we looked up the type it was and it appeared that it was a Fer-de-Lance, the most venomous snake in Central and South America. It was apparently aggressive too and one bite has enough enough venom to kill 32 people, let alone a skinny cat. We kept the cats in for a few hours and the snake slithered off somewhere, not to been seen again. This wasn’t the only wildlife on the campsite, the other night I had found a tiny owl in the toilet block as well, which I had been very indignant as I tried to shoo outside with a broom.

The next day, Lee tidied the garage and I began to repack our roof boxes. We had just been living with piles of stuff all around us which we kind of felt bad for, as it looked like a right mess. Now finally we could start packing away. We fitted the slats to the roof rack, attached the shower and wired in the roof lights. We headed into town to air up our shocks as our air compressor couldn’t reach the back. After about 5 garages, we found one that actually had air and to our delight as we attached the compressor the back end raised up significantly, finally giving us proper clearance. We also gave her a much needed wash. Parking under the trees had been a messy affair. Now on our return to the campsite it was much easier to navigate the ditch. 

Before suspension lift

After suspension lift

We would probably have left the next day, if it had not been for Kartik and Sim. The final stage of completing the roof rack, was cutting and flat mounting our starlink dish. Kartik currently had the tool we needed to do this and I didn’t want to start until I knew we could finish the job. They had just crossed into Peru however, and planned to join us that evening. While we were aware that time was running out on our visa, especially as we had to leave in just one month (more on that later), we did really want to finish this final job. In the end, our friends arrived late after having a problem with their brakes after crossing the border. We cooked dinner and had an early night, tomorrow it would be time to stick a cutting dish into our £400 dish. 

It was useful that not only our friends arrived with the tool, but they parked next to us and then asked to use our internet. Despite the fact that they have the same system, it doesn’t work under trees and so they had to choose if they wanted shade or internet. This was the prompt we need to change our plan and make our system removable. While people buy nice sheets of perspex or pay for 3D printed mounts, we bought a big plastic box and decided to use the lid of that to back our dish. Budget is our middle name. I spent hours painstakingly cutting away the large plastic casing and motors to leave the exposed, but much flatter, circuit board. Lee worked on making a mount. By the time it was dark, it wasn’t assembled but we had managed to get the system to power on. We were so relieved that we hadn’t broken it by our radical chopping that we went and celebrated with some pisco sour cocktails at the bar. Jair introduced us to Algarobina syrup, which comes from the tree we were parked under, while Darwin gave us two of the local chili peppers. He was also very into cooking and we discussed recipes while sipping our cocktails at the bar. To round off an already good day, Sim cooked us a delicious Indian soup and we sat outside Ruby enjoy our dinner. If things couldn’t get any better, Kartik produced a bottle of 400 conejos Mezcal for a nightcap. Things were good. 

The following day, while we were nearly ready, we still needed to glue our Starlink and so we decided we would stay one more night while our friends headed out. After such a great start yesterday, now we had problems with the dish. We glued it and then had to unglue it when it didn’t work. The ethernet connectors are horrible things to crimp and we soon realised that the problem was in the cable. We spent a whole day redoing the connections and Lee ended up going into town twice to buy more as I got through so many. In the end, we got the cable to work and powered up the system of the old router. For some reason, we couldn't get our 12v power supply to work with it but we decided enough was enough and that this was something that could be tweaked on the road. For now, it was working again and we could move on.

We finally packed our roof rack and went to pay our bill. We weren’t quite sure what to expect. Lee had bought two lemonades in the week that had cost an extortionate £12 and we owed them for our cocktails as well as camping. We hoped as we had been there over two weeks that we’d get a reduced rate of closer to 30 soles. Although, we reasoned that if we didn't, the workshop access had saved us a lot of money and so we couldn’t complain. 

Jair went to chat to Gonzalo about our bill while we waited. He came back and asked if we’d be happy to pay 20 soles per night. We were more than happy, that’s £4 a night. It also turned out that cocktails were cheaper than lemonade and so our entire bill for two weeks came in pretty cheap. Gonzalo too seemed to be in better spirits and was happy to join in our YouTube video. We thanked them both, things had turned out even better than we had thought and now we were truly set to leave and begin to explore Peru properly. We rolled out the gates and went to face the horrible traffic in Piura one final time as we set off on a new unexplored road, south.