To Mancora… And Then There Were Five…!!

I left Nuanchaco soon after breakfast… I had a 600 km ride ahead of me and wanted to make sure I got to Mancora with enough light to find the hotel where Nigel was staying…

Breakfast at the El Malecon Hostal... Two cups of black coffee had me wide awake and ready for a long ride...!!

I had covered over 200 km before I reached this sign, and hardly taken any photos of the area I had ridden through....!! There was basically nothing of interest to record...!!

My first intended stop was Chiclayo, where I would need to refuel before making the final long run in to Mancora…

The northen reaches of the Peruvian desert enveloped us as we headed due north…

This is a bleak part of the country, with towns situated far apart… There was hardly any traffic about and all I could do was sit back and let the Big Fella chew up the miles…

There's just no escaping the Coke marketing team...!! Even out here in the most barren parts of Northern Peru....!!

Confirmation that there is not a helluva lot to see in these parts...!!

After refueling in Chiclayo, and not finding a place to have a cup of coffee at, I decided to ride on towards Piura in the hope that I would find a small place somewhere along the Panamericana Norte to stop at…

An hour and a half and 175 km later, the midday sun convinced me that I should now stop and take a break… I was not riding with any water, which was not the most clever thing to do out here, and was desperate for something to drink…

This place was advertised a "turisto" stop, but for the life of me, I could not see why a busload of tourists would want to spend any time here...!!

I had already zoomed by a number of smaller roadside “restaurants”, but most of them were either closed or abandoned…

The one I did stop at sold oil, brake fluid and coffee in equal quantities from the same counter… It had a large eating area under a corrugated iron roof, which made it only marginally less comfortable than being out in the sun…

I asked for a cup of coffee and a sandwich… I was told that they had no bread, and was offered fried eggs instead, which is as close to a sandwich as I was going to get in these parts, I guess…

While I waited, I wandered over to what looked like the kitchen…

"Excuse me madam, but do you recall the health inspector ever visiting these premises...?? No...?? I thought not...!!"

The seed pods from an Acasia-like thorn tree that seemed to gorw only alongside the road, were about to be boiled to extract whatever ingredient they contained, which went into making the "tonic"...

Standing out on a table was the final product... I was tempted to take a sip...After all, tonics were supposed to be good for you.... Right...??

My eggs were being fried in a pan that had seen as much water as the Atacama Desert sees in a good year… The “stove” was just a narrow trench in which an open fire was blazing…

I noticed some large bags that contained seed pods standing behind the stove and went over to investigate… Two large pots of boiling water were standing ready to receive the seed pods, and the old duck busying herself with my fried eggs, explained that they were making a “tonic”…!!

I asked if I could try a sip to see what it tasted like, but a truck driver who was sitting nearby, slowly shook his head when I caught his eye and silently asked his opinion… The look on his face clearly indicating that I should leave the stuff well alone…!!

Lunch was a rather spartan affair... After seeing the kitchen, I decided not to see if there was anything else on the menu, or if there was indeed a menu at all...!!

Stuck in the tunnel in Piura...

I rode on to Piura, where the only thing I can recall about the place, was getting stuck in a tunnel for 20 mins, while we waited for a huge truck to make a turn on the bridge ahead of us… It was dumping material for a team of workers making repairs to the bridge…

Although the tunnel was filled with diesle fumes from the cars and buses around me, I could have been worse if we had been out in the scorching sun…!!

Once free of the tunnel, I got back onto the “highway” and headed north-west for the pacific coast, trying to work out if I had enough fuel to get to Mancora…

I made a few mental calculations based on the by now huge amount of data I had collected on my fuel consumption both at higher altitudes and at sea level, and quickly relaised that it was going to be one of those “skin of my teeth” days…!!

I set the speed control lower than I would have liked and watched the empty desert drift past me… Up until that point I had been riding at 120 km/h, trying to get to my destination well before sunset…

Closer to the coast, the landscape began changing from flat scrubby desert, to broken hills and small mountain ranges… From time to time I could see the ocean off to my left, but the winding road through the last range of mountains that led down to Mancora, kept me focused on matter at hand, namely staying on the road and hooking the bike into the many hairpins bends that rushed to meet us…!!

A welcome change from the empty world I had been riding in for hours...!!

A short distance before we reached Mancora the Big Fella cleared his throat to remind me that he was about to have another birthday…

150 000 km on the clock, and begging for fuel as usual...!!

We spluttered into town, searching for a fuel station and as luck would have it, had to ride right to the far side down the busy main road to find a service station… The Hotel Mediterranea was not on the GPS and when I asked a scooter-taxi driver for directions, he offered to show me the way…

Nigel was at poolside when I got there, suffering not only from sunburn, but a wrenched shoulder which he received when he was dumped by a large wave the day before…

He introduced me to Jamie and before long we were sipping on beers and getting to know each other better…

The hotel was fully booked but I managed to find room at the place next door, and when I came back to collect the bike, I saw yet another two bikes parked in the same courtyard where our bikes were standing…

I recognised the two bikes I had seen at Chan Chan the day before, and introduced myself to the two guys standing there… They were both Italians and had many many rides around the world together… Fabio rode a much different looking BMW1200GS than mine, and I was later to discover that the bike was a one of a kind that he had built himself and was “testing”…

Fabio's GS gets to meet the Big Fella...

Tommaso rode the KTM 950 Adv, with the “ZA” sticker, which he had collected when they had ridden from Italy to Cape Town a few years previously… When he gets to the United States in a few months time, he will have completed his Round the World trip and ridden on all six continents…

They checked into the Mancora Bay Hotel with me, and after a shower, we went over to see Nigel and Jamie… I handed Nigel a tube of Deep Heat and a few Voltaren to ease the pain in his neck and shoulder, and then we walked into town to look for a restaurant which Fabio knew of from a previous visit to this area…

We discussed our plans for the coming days and weeks, and discovered that we were heading in the same general direction… Over a few beers and a great meal of Cervicche, we agreed to ride together until Montanita in Ecuador and then see how things panned out after that…

And then there were five...!! The GBWT just took on a whole new complexion...!! From left to right; Jamie, Nigel, Fabio and Thomaso... A line from AC/DC's song "T.N.T" came to mind...."You better lock up their daughters and lock up their wives, lock up your front door and run for your lives...!!" The GBWT Posse is coming to town...!!

Cerviche...basically various raw seafoods, covered in olive oil and lemon juice... Despite my misgivings, I actually enjoyed this typical dish from this region of Peru...

Fabio who is the same age as me, casually mentioned during dinner, that he had competed in FIVE Dakar Rally’s and had finished THREE of them…!! This was in the days of the REAL Paris-Dakar, and not the current picnic that takes place in South America…!!

There was a brief silence as we digested this bit of information…!! We were in esteemed company and talk of Dakar Rallys took up much of the conversation after that…

The one thing I will not forget about Mancora, was the mosquitoes… The attacked in squadrons, covering our ankles and any other exposed piece of flesh they could get their little drills into…

Moving about did not help at all, as these particular mosquitoes are a determined lot…!! I went out to dinner wearing shorts, and by morning, I could have sworn that my lower legs looked a lot thinner than they had before I arrived in Mancora…!!

The next day, we planned to ride into Ecuador, the 90th country on my journey…

Tomorrow's ride of 550 km will take us from Mancora in Peru, to Montanita in Ecuador...

Nigel and Jamie seemed a bit dubious about covering that much distance on their smaller bikes in a single day, but were willing to give it a go anyway…

We figured on a very early start, much to their horror…!! They were used to starting their rides at around 10.00 am each morning…!!

“Hell, by then I’ve usuallu covered 200 km…!!” I told them… “It’s no wonder you never manage more then three or four hundred km in a day…!!”

Jamie just grinned and said, “We’re on holiday…!!”, which you can hardly argue with…

I went to sleep after sitting up quite late with Fabio and Tommaso, but before I did, I reminded myself that from tomorrow, things would change… Riding alone, and riding in a group were two different things entirely… Concessions and consideration would have to be made…

It was going to be interesting to see how we rode together… This was the biggest group I would be riding in since setting out in 2010… And we were essentially three different sets of riders coming together for the first time…

©GBWT 2012