Well, here I am, dedicated to finally holing myself up in a computer café todo el dia to get some blog entries out to ya´ll. I want to apologize to those who have been loyally checking our blog, but finding nothing new for nearly a month. Wow! So sorry. We have been busily r
iding, investigating, surviving, etc…and we wanted to do it in Lima but were too busy bike investigating (which was awesome in Lima!). Now we are in Trujillo, Peru the major northern coastal city, and are staying with the famous Lucho who has a casa de ciclista (cyclist house) called “La Casa de Amistad” (friendship house http://www.geocities.com/casadeciclistasperutrujillo/). It truly is that! When we arrived a few days ago we were met by Lucho and Carlos, a cyclist from Argentina who is also heading north. The next day Tyson (from the U.S.) came up, also heading north. Wow, we thought we were the only locos who go South to North (the majority do the opposite). It´s awesome, it´s a party, hanging out with 2 other rocking cyclists and Lucho who is so energetic and so amazingly passionate about all aspects of the bicycle it´s contagious! It feels so awesome to be with other touring cyclists, to feel that we aren´t the only ones, but rather part of something bigger. Lucho told us about a German who has travelled about one million kilometors on his bicycle throughout his life… he is a living legend, he has bike toured just about everywhere in the world! Over 900 cyclists have visited Lucho since he started his casa de ciclista the year I was born, 1985. What do we do there? Well, we hang out and fix our bikes together, chat about bike movements worldwide, ride our bikes together, and yesterday we went to his family´s house for gaunabana juice, the best juice I´ve had in my life! Lucho and his family are so awesome and generous and I certainly understand why they are famous and why every single cyclist we met going south recommended that we go there. So we are here for a bit in Trujillo blogging, fixing our bikes, taking care of errands and trying to get in a little rest in before we start the final leg of the trip: the northern coast of Peru and ECUADOR! We are so close really… probably about 1,700km left to go. And we want to do it in a month. Wow! It´ll be some hard work…but si se puede!
But of course, I haven´t written since Cusco! So I´ll give you a brief summary of our journey from the southern sierra to the northern coast.
Peru is, compared to most other South American countries, quite large and amazingly diverse. We have biked in frost-bite, teeth-chattering, llama munching, hail falling, mountain looming sierras and also in sweat-inducing, sand-blowing (in mouth, eyes, ears), easy rolling, ocean staring, flies buzzing coastal desert. We were curious about the people in Peru, because 2 different cyclists we met near La Paz told us they were treated badly by Peruvians. But our experience has been quite the opposite… Peruvians have been some of the most open and friendly folks we’ve met on this trip. We are especially in-debt to the some odd 17 different fire-stations (estacion de bombero) we have stayed in throughout our tour in Peru. The bomberos in Peru are awesome, well-organized and always welcome us with open arms to spend the night, take a shower, cook up some food and rest so we can continue the next day. They have been utter life savers for us, and we are indebted to their kindness… We have also stayed in Churches, schools, and community centers. We have generally been able to pick up our pace here in Peru, now that we are more accustomed to the life-style and in better shape. We have also, in a sense, become accustomed to being bone-tired and feeling un-rested even after sleeping 8 or even 9 hours. I guess that´s what the accumulation of 5,300 kilometers in 5 months can do to you… I think I´ll sleep 2 weeks straight when I get back to Quito!
We headed out from Cusco on April 5th heading to the coast. We chose the Nazca route as we heard it was all paved and less hilly that the road to Ayacucho. We had some surprisingly big climbs in the first few days, and at one point had to hitch-hike in order to not be stuck on the top of a mountain without water one night. We also biked to the lowest elevation that we had been at since Argentina, or maybe even Chile, where bananas and papayas grew. What a treat to eat tropical fruit up in the sierra! We spent a day resting in Abancay (the bomberos begged us to stay more, they were so kind), and headed off to Chalhuanca to meet up with Andrea Mosher, a woman from MN who found our web-site in the fall and decided to come bike with us a bit as she is intereste
d in a lot of the themes that we are addressing in this trip. She found us en route as she passed in a taxi while we were bathing and clothes-washing in a rushing river close to Chalhuanca—and we were so confused at first, thinking some crazy gringa wanted to take a photo of us in the river! But it was Andrea! And we decided to meet up in the town. (Chalhuanca is where we first briefly met Carlos in fact, but who sped ahead as he hitched a ride up the major climb (7 vueltas) right outside of town.) It is a town full of ninos running around the streets, playing, and very curious about the 3 cyclists who just came into town. We stayed at the bomberos and tackled the 7 vueltas the next day… and just as we reached the top of this 12km, very steep climb it started down pouring and hailing, but luckily there was a small town and we were able to stay in a classroom. About 10 people watched us through the windows as we vainly attempted to light our stove, but we had been sold bad kerosene that doesn´t work (we thought it was the altitude but we tried it on the coast and no luck either). So we starved a little, amused by our giant audience, and went to bed early. We spent a good 5 days up in these mountains, subiendo y bajando many times… it was wicked cold up there, and the “altiplano” wasn´t exactly “plano” (flat). There was a layer of snow on the hills right next to us and in the ditches by the side of the road. But it was exciting because we knew in just a few days we´d be out of the cold mountains and down on the “flat” warm coast. In Puquio we stayed with a Priest named Rueben who was a cyclist and we had a great time with him, chatting about the German priests who come to Puquio and teach all the priests to ride in bici. We loved Puquio, it has to be one of the friendliest towns we´ve been in, and also very beautiful with trees and flowers and green things (something we haven´t seen a lot of lately). 
In a town called Vado we stopped early (2pm) because I was feeling awful, and some kind folks in a store and their relatives from Cusco took us in, gave me tea, and let us camp in their house across the street. It is people like these who touch my heart and inspire me to, in the future, give more, be more generous, and be more open to strangers. From Vado we reached Nazca in just one day… we did 115.34km, our new record! It included, of course, a 72 km downhill from 3,800+ meters above sea level to less than a few hundred. It was fast, exciting, exhilarating, and we saw one of the biggest sand dunes in the world. In Nazca the bomberos took me around in their ambulance to various doctors and testing clinics and finally got me in to see a head doctor at the hospital and bought me medication. Wow, I felt so cared for, 5 men running around trying to make me feel better. We cooked them pancakes in the morning and took off to the north…Lima! We zoomed up the coast, hitting 100+ km a few days in a row. As we had hoped, it really was faster on the coast (*note: on this specific part of the coast, it´s not true for the entire coast! Up north it´s mountainous…) We got a chance to see some of the Nazca lines by climbing up a little tower, el mirador. We also saw the effects of the earthquake and how some cities, like Chincha, are still suffering a great deal. In fact, neither the bomberos or the churches could take us in as they were still in reconstruction from the earthquake. It was night and we couldn´t find a cheap hostel, and we were walking around the city nervously with the captain of the firestation looking for something when we decided to ask the highway police. They very kindly took us in, and not only that but the boss took a liking to us and gave us free dinner and the next day breakfast as well (!) from their own personal restaurant. He took photos of us with his little girl, and ate breakfast with us. How kind! And later, when we asked him to sign our letter of recommendation (that we started with the bomberos in Abancay so we are more legitimate to the folks we ask to stay with—it now has about 10 signatures) he informed us that it was actually illegal what he was doing for us (for “security reasons”) so he couldn´t do us that favor. Wow, that the “corrupt” police in Peru do! Hehe. Anyway, needless to say we didn´t mind his corruptness…and I really wish I felt I could get that kind of help from police in the U.S. (Highway police have been nice to us, they helped me hitchhike when I was too sick to bike up a climb, and others gifted us crackers they had bribed out of a truck driver J) Well, we made it to Mala and Cristhian was feeling bad, hurting from his bike seat and needing to go slow, so we decided for that reason (and the reason we heard it was highly dangerous to bike into Lima), to take a bus from Mala (which, like Chalhuanca, has a woman as the boss of the firestation!) to the centro de Lima where we met up with someone that Andrea knew from Couchsurfer.com to stay in his house.
Lima was fun, we met up with Brendan again (whom we stayed with in Cochabomba, Bolivia) and had a grand old time. We spend many days doing the bici in
vestigation (read about it in the other blog entry)—interviewing, observing classes and participating in critical mass. I got to go visit a friend of a friend/ex-professor (Paul Dosh) named Jesus Valencia Silva in his invasion city of Villa el Salvador. This city is growing very fast, and it´s a group of invasions (meaning the people organize together and put up houses on un-used government property and then work together to get titles, water, electricity and create their new community) with communities as young as 1 year old (there is city now where 4 years ago there was just a sand dune!) The community consists of immigrants from all over Peru (the majority from the sierra) who have come to live near the capital looking for work. The people there have very good organization (each community has volunteer delegates...and Jesus is the president of a community of 40,000 people) and are fighting so that each neighbourhood has water and electricity and a decent life. It was very amazing to visit the communities, and I thank Jesus for being so generous with his time and showing us around. After 5 days of “rest” in Lima (but we were actually running around like crazy, or biking around like crazy rather) Cristhian and I said goodbye to Brendan, and Andrea (who took off to Arequipa) and headed up the coast.
North of Lima got tougher, the coast wasn´t so flat anymore (in fact there are quite a lot of small mountains to climb!) We had the luck to meet 3 very nice ladies (Erika, Nayra and Ana) in the street in Ancon who made instant friends with us, took us down to the beach to take photos and then invited us in to eat popcorn, tea and sandwiches and chat about our lives. Very lovely ladies, wonderful memories. After Ancon we stayed in bomberos in Chancay, Huacho, Pampamonga, Huarmey, Casma, y Chimbote. In Casma we were met on the highway by 3 road-bikers from Casma. They accompanied us about 30 km as we both headed to Casma. One of them, Alejandro, was a guide at some local ruins called Sechin, and invited us to come see the ruins the next day. We took him up on the offer, and had a very interesting experience. It´s always interesting to learn about the past cultures of a certain place, and I´ve always thoug
ht super important so we don´t forget the way of life of those who came before us, usually so we can strive to be more like them. However, this particular culture was… gruesome, cruel, violent. The entire ruins was a temple with pictures of decapitated bodies, bodiless heads, arms, legs, spinal cords and intestines, all with blood spurting out of it. Shocked? I was a little too…more so when our guide showed us this all with pride and told us he´s happy to know about the great Sechin and know that he has some of their strong warrior blood. Hmm. It sounds like not such a wonderful culture, they just liked to chop up bodies. They send buses full of school children to this site. Is this the cultural history the young generations should be learning… to be proud of their ancestors who were even more violent than our current culture? Which culture roots should we claim and be proud of, and which should we learn about in order to reject, and which are better to just not get too involved in learning about? The experience confused and disconcerted me, and if anyone has ideas please write me on this one… We do appreciate Alejandro for taking the time to show us around Sechin.
This stretch of desert has caused me to seriously try to cut all meat out of my diet (I was a vegetarian 10 years before this trip but I gave it up to be flexible to all situations in this journey) and Cristhian to consider becoming a vegetarian (Impressive!! Since he´s grown up being a major meat eater…). Why? The barren desert (it´s not like Argentina… there are absolutely no plants pure sand and sand and sand) is full of chicken farms which attract a million houseflies which land our your bike and you can pass right by the chicken farms and see them all squished together and chirping helplessly and each time a chicken truck drives by it leaves the stench of death and excrement in your nose… and to make it worse each port town has fish factories, Chimbote was the worse… I couldn´t breath when we entered the stench of dead fish was so strong, the smoke so thick, choking choking on this death, and the stench is every where you cannot escape it in that city, and imagine, people live there right under the smoke stacks every hour of everyday they breath the dead fish smoke… it´s a nightmare. So after these experiences the idea of eating dead flesh is more revolting than ever. And these experiences have reminded me of the politics of the meat industry, the fact that besides torturing and killing animals they pollute and contribute to global warming and make it so less humans can get the food they need (because the food that goes to feed animals to feed humans could go directly to feed more humans) and the list goes on. So! One more month of this tour and I will return to being a vegetarian, that is my promise. It is a very important personal choice that can affect the larger world greatly. If anyone reading this would like to talk about vegetarianism please write to me, I´d be happy to chat! In addition to the chicken and fish farms, I also noticed the intense use of industrial agriculture that seems to be growing here on the Peruvian desert coast. It´s disconcerting… you´ll be in the middle of sand dunes and then all of a sudden there is a valley covered toe to toe in green asparagus or sugar cane where there should be sand. My question is… where does the water come from? Does this use of land and water (and pesticides and herbicides) endanger people and ecosystem´s lives? It seems very probable. As Cristhian said, it´s like the mines we saw in the sierra, but more “pretty”. Speaking of mines, we were told by the bomberos in Paramonga when we asked why seafood was so expensive in this area that there is a mine down the coast a bit, and for that reason fish are scarce as the mine is killing them off. In addition, there are people who just won´t eat the fish anymore for fear of contamination. We learn these facts of death and with a heavy heart we pedal on, hoping hoping, always hoping… From Chimbote we biked to Chau and then to Trujillo where Lucho met us in the plaza and took us to La Casa de Amistad, and we´ve been here ever since enjoying thoroughly the casa de la ciclista! We will take off again on Monday with Tyson and Carlos and all 4 of us will have 2 or so days together until they split off to the mountains and we continue up the coast. We hope to be in Ecuador in less than 10 days! Here we come, Ecuador!!!
iding, investigating, surviving, etc…and we wanted to do it in Lima but were too busy bike investigating (which was awesome in Lima!). Now we are in Trujillo, Peru the major northern coastal city, and are staying with the famous Lucho who has a casa de ciclista (cyclist house) called “La Casa de Amistad” (friendship house http://www.geocities.com/casadeciclistasperutrujillo/). It truly is that! When we arrived a few days ago we were met by Lucho and Carlos, a cyclist from Argentina who is also heading north. The next day Tyson (from the U.S.) came up, also heading north. Wow, we thought we were the only locos who go South to North (the majority do the opposite). It´s awesome, it´s a party, hanging out with 2 other rocking cyclists and Lucho who is so energetic and so amazingly passionate about all aspects of the bicycle it´s contagious! It feels so awesome to be with other touring cyclists, to feel that we aren´t the only ones, but rather part of something bigger. Lucho told us about a German who has travelled about one million kilometors on his bicycle throughout his life… he is a living legend, he has bike toured just about everywhere in the world! Over 900 cyclists have visited Lucho since he started his casa de ciclista the year I was born, 1985. What do we do there? Well, we hang out and fix our bikes together, chat about bike movements worldwide, ride our bikes together, and yesterday we went to his family´s house for gaunabana juice, the best juice I´ve had in my life! Lucho and his family are so awesome and generous and I certainly understand why they are famous and why every single cyclist we met going south recommended that we go there. So we are here for a bit in Trujillo blogging, fixing our bikes, taking care of errands and trying to get in a little rest in before we start the final leg of the trip: the northern coast of Peru and ECUADOR! We are so close really… probably about 1,700km left to go. And we want to do it in a month. Wow! It´ll be some hard work…but si se puede!But of course, I haven´t written since Cusco! So I´ll give you a brief summary of our journey from the southern sierra to the northern coast.
Peru is, compared to most other South American countries, quite large and amazingly diverse. We have biked in frost-bite, teeth-chattering, llama munching, hail falling, mountain looming sierras and also in sweat-inducing, sand-blowing (in mouth, eyes, ears), easy rolling, ocean staring, flies buzzing coastal desert. We were curious about the people in Peru, because 2 different cyclists we met near La Paz told us they were treated badly by Peruvians. But our experience has been quite the opposite… Peruvians have been some of the most open and friendly folks we’ve met on this trip. We are especially in-debt to the some odd 17 different fire-stations (estacion de bombero) we have stayed in throughout our tour in Peru. The bomberos in Peru are awesome, well-organized and always welcome us with open arms to spend the night, take a shower, cook up some food and rest so we can continue the next day. They have been utter life savers for us, and we are indebted to their kindness… We have also stayed in Churches, schools, and community centers. We have generally been able to pick up our pace here in Peru, now that we are more accustomed to the life-style and in better shape. We have also, in a sense, become accustomed to being bone-tired and feeling un-rested even after sleeping 8 or even 9 hours. I guess that´s what the accumulation of 5,300 kilometers in 5 months can do to you… I think I´ll sleep 2 weeks straight when I get back to Quito!
We headed out from Cusco on April 5th heading to the coast. We chose the Nazca route as we heard it was all paved and less hilly that the road to Ayacucho. We had some surprisingly big climbs in the first few days, and at one point had to hitch-hike in order to not be stuck on the top of a mountain without water one night. We also biked to the lowest elevation that we had been at since Argentina, or maybe even Chile, where bananas and papayas grew. What a treat to eat tropical fruit up in the sierra! We spent a day resting in Abancay (the bomberos begged us to stay more, they were so kind), and headed off to Chalhuanca to meet up with Andrea Mosher, a woman from MN who found our web-site in the fall and decided to come bike with us a bit as she is intereste
d in a lot of the themes that we are addressing in this trip. She found us en route as she passed in a taxi while we were bathing and clothes-washing in a rushing river close to Chalhuanca—and we were so confused at first, thinking some crazy gringa wanted to take a photo of us in the river! But it was Andrea! And we decided to meet up in the town. (Chalhuanca is where we first briefly met Carlos in fact, but who sped ahead as he hitched a ride up the major climb (7 vueltas) right outside of town.) It is a town full of ninos running around the streets, playing, and very curious about the 3 cyclists who just came into town. We stayed at the bomberos and tackled the 7 vueltas the next day… and just as we reached the top of this 12km, very steep climb it started down pouring and hailing, but luckily there was a small town and we were able to stay in a classroom. About 10 people watched us through the windows as we vainly attempted to light our stove, but we had been sold bad kerosene that doesn´t work (we thought it was the altitude but we tried it on the coast and no luck either). So we starved a little, amused by our giant audience, and went to bed early. We spent a good 5 days up in these mountains, subiendo y bajando many times… it was wicked cold up there, and the “altiplano” wasn´t exactly “plano” (flat). There was a layer of snow on the hills right next to us and in the ditches by the side of the road. But it was exciting because we knew in just a few days we´d be out of the cold mountains and down on the “flat” warm coast. In Puquio we stayed with a Priest named Rueben who was a cyclist and we had a great time with him, chatting about the German priests who come to Puquio and teach all the priests to ride in bici. We loved Puquio, it has to be one of the friendliest towns we´ve been in, and also very beautiful with trees and flowers and green things (something we haven´t seen a lot of lately). 
In a town called Vado we stopped early (2pm) because I was feeling awful, and some kind folks in a store and their relatives from Cusco took us in, gave me tea, and let us camp in their house across the street. It is people like these who touch my heart and inspire me to, in the future, give more, be more generous, and be more open to strangers. From Vado we reached Nazca in just one day… we did 115.34km, our new record! It included, of course, a 72 km downhill from 3,800+ meters above sea level to less than a few hundred. It was fast, exciting, exhilarating, and we saw one of the biggest sand dunes in the world. In Nazca the bomberos took me around in their ambulance to various doctors and testing clinics and finally got me in to see a head doctor at the hospital and bought me medication. Wow, I felt so cared for, 5 men running around trying to make me feel better. We cooked them pancakes in the morning and took off to the north…Lima! We zoomed up the coast, hitting 100+ km a few days in a row. As we had hoped, it really was faster on the coast (*note: on this specific part of the coast, it´s not true for the entire coast! Up north it´s mountainous…) We got a chance to see some of the Nazca lines by climbing up a little tower, el mirador. We also saw the effects of the earthquake and how some cities, like Chincha, are still suffering a great deal. In fact, neither the bomberos or the churches could take us in as they were still in reconstruction from the earthquake. It was night and we couldn´t find a cheap hostel, and we were walking around the city nervously with the captain of the firestation looking for something when we decided to ask the highway police. They very kindly took us in, and not only that but the boss took a liking to us and gave us free dinner and the next day breakfast as well (!) from their own personal restaurant. He took photos of us with his little girl, and ate breakfast with us. How kind! And later, when we asked him to sign our letter of recommendation (that we started with the bomberos in Abancay so we are more legitimate to the folks we ask to stay with—it now has about 10 signatures) he informed us that it was actually illegal what he was doing for us (for “security reasons”) so he couldn´t do us that favor. Wow, that the “corrupt” police in Peru do! Hehe. Anyway, needless to say we didn´t mind his corruptness…and I really wish I felt I could get that kind of help from police in the U.S. (Highway police have been nice to us, they helped me hitchhike when I was too sick to bike up a climb, and others gifted us crackers they had bribed out of a truck driver J) Well, we made it to Mala and Cristhian was feeling bad, hurting from his bike seat and needing to go slow, so we decided for that reason (and the reason we heard it was highly dangerous to bike into Lima), to take a bus from Mala (which, like Chalhuanca, has a woman as the boss of the firestation!) to the centro de Lima where we met up with someone that Andrea knew from Couchsurfer.com to stay in his house.
Lima was fun, we met up with Brendan again (whom we stayed with in Cochabomba, Bolivia) and had a grand old time. We spend many days doing the bici in
vestigation (read about it in the other blog entry)—interviewing, observing classes and participating in critical mass. I got to go visit a friend of a friend/ex-professor (Paul Dosh) named Jesus Valencia Silva in his invasion city of Villa el Salvador. This city is growing very fast, and it´s a group of invasions (meaning the people organize together and put up houses on un-used government property and then work together to get titles, water, electricity and create their new community) with communities as young as 1 year old (there is city now where 4 years ago there was just a sand dune!) The community consists of immigrants from all over Peru (the majority from the sierra) who have come to live near the capital looking for work. The people there have very good organization (each community has volunteer delegates...and Jesus is the president of a community of 40,000 people) and are fighting so that each neighbourhood has water and electricity and a decent life. It was very amazing to visit the communities, and I thank Jesus for being so generous with his time and showing us around. After 5 days of “rest” in Lima (but we were actually running around like crazy, or biking around like crazy rather) Cristhian and I said goodbye to Brendan, and Andrea (who took off to Arequipa) and headed up the coast.North of Lima got tougher, the coast wasn´t so flat anymore (in fact there are quite a lot of small mountains to climb!) We had the luck to meet 3 very nice ladies (Erika, Nayra and Ana) in the street in Ancon who made instant friends with us, took us down to the beach to take photos and then invited us in to eat popcorn, tea and sandwiches and chat about our lives. Very lovely ladies, wonderful memories. After Ancon we stayed in bomberos in Chancay, Huacho, Pampamonga, Huarmey, Casma, y Chimbote. In Casma we were met on the highway by 3 road-bikers from Casma. They accompanied us about 30 km as we both headed to Casma. One of them, Alejandro, was a guide at some local ruins called Sechin, and invited us to come see the ruins the next day. We took him up on the offer, and had a very interesting experience. It´s always interesting to learn about the past cultures of a certain place, and I´ve always thoug
ht super important so we don´t forget the way of life of those who came before us, usually so we can strive to be more like them. However, this particular culture was… gruesome, cruel, violent. The entire ruins was a temple with pictures of decapitated bodies, bodiless heads, arms, legs, spinal cords and intestines, all with blood spurting out of it. Shocked? I was a little too…more so when our guide showed us this all with pride and told us he´s happy to know about the great Sechin and know that he has some of their strong warrior blood. Hmm. It sounds like not such a wonderful culture, they just liked to chop up bodies. They send buses full of school children to this site. Is this the cultural history the young generations should be learning… to be proud of their ancestors who were even more violent than our current culture? Which culture roots should we claim and be proud of, and which should we learn about in order to reject, and which are better to just not get too involved in learning about? The experience confused and disconcerted me, and if anyone has ideas please write me on this one… We do appreciate Alejandro for taking the time to show us around Sechin.This stretch of desert has caused me to seriously try to cut all meat out of my diet (I was a vegetarian 10 years before this trip but I gave it up to be flexible to all situations in this journey) and Cristhian to consider becoming a vegetarian (Impressive!! Since he´s grown up being a major meat eater…). Why? The barren desert (it´s not like Argentina… there are absolutely no plants pure sand and sand and sand) is full of chicken farms which attract a million houseflies which land our your bike and you can pass right by the chicken farms and see them all squished together and chirping helplessly and each time a chicken truck drives by it leaves the stench of death and excrement in your nose… and to make it worse each port town has fish factories, Chimbote was the worse… I couldn´t breath when we entered the stench of dead fish was so strong, the smoke so thick, choking choking on this death, and the stench is every where you cannot escape it in that city, and imagine, people live there right under the smoke stacks every hour of everyday they breath the dead fish smoke… it´s a nightmare. So after these experiences the idea of eating dead flesh is more revolting than ever. And these experiences have reminded me of the politics of the meat industry, the fact that besides torturing and killing animals they pollute and contribute to global warming and make it so less humans can get the food they need (because the food that goes to feed animals to feed humans could go directly to feed more humans) and the list goes on. So! One more month of this tour and I will return to being a vegetarian, that is my promise. It is a very important personal choice that can affect the larger world greatly. If anyone reading this would like to talk about vegetarianism please write to me, I´d be happy to chat! In addition to the chicken and fish farms, I also noticed the intense use of industrial agriculture that seems to be growing here on the Peruvian desert coast. It´s disconcerting… you´ll be in the middle of sand dunes and then all of a sudden there is a valley covered toe to toe in green asparagus or sugar cane where there should be sand. My question is… where does the water come from? Does this use of land and water (and pesticides and herbicides) endanger people and ecosystem´s lives? It seems very probable. As Cristhian said, it´s like the mines we saw in the sierra, but more “pretty”. Speaking of mines, we were told by the bomberos in Paramonga when we asked why seafood was so expensive in this area that there is a mine down the coast a bit, and for that reason fish are scarce as the mine is killing them off. In addition, there are people who just won´t eat the fish anymore for fear of contamination. We learn these facts of death and with a heavy heart we pedal on, hoping hoping, always hoping… From Chimbote we biked to Chau and then to Trujillo where Lucho met us in the plaza and took us to La Casa de Amistad, and we´ve been here ever since enjoying thoroughly the casa de la ciclista! We will take off again on Monday with Tyson and Carlos and all 4 of us will have 2 or so days together until they split off to the mountains and we continue up the coast. We hope to be in Ecuador in less than 10 days! Here we come, Ecuador!!!
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