Desert

Here are some photos of the desert that started after we crossed the border from Ecuador to Peru. It’s amazing how quickly the landscape changes after the border. Suddenly there is only brown sand with poor brown villages and nothing else. Even the ocean looks pale.

Good bye Ecuador. We crossed the border from Macara, which is a small and sleepy town with very little traffic. We chose Macara just because of that, as the other border crossing place near Machala is said to be busy and full of hustlers. Macara, instead of that, was very mellow and everything went well with the paperwork of the van.

Soon the desert started. There is hundreds of kilometers of straight road with just sand around. Felt like in Sahara.

There are villages in the middle of nowhere.

The sand is eating the road. I guess they have to use plough to keep the road clear.

Poor sand and wind beaten houses. Some of them don’t have a roof at all. The dump of the village is usually the highway passing through. All the banks of the road are full of garbage. Sad sight.

Here we slept. Ol’ Karma was our shelter against the sand that was flying everywhere. In the morning the car didn’t start. For a while we were having some serious thoughts about how much water we had with us and what to do. Luckily the problem was only a loose battery cable and soon we were doing miles again.

Fishing fleet. The small villages by the sea make their living fishing and building boats. There is usually a stinky fish factory nearby.

The northern Peruvian coast is full of empty surf breaks. Nevertheless we didn’t want to spend too much time there. Quite hostile place generally. Once we tried to get to one remote surf spot, but it was conquered by Petro Peru, and the access was prohibited.

Rugged mountain on a horizon.