Chiclayo Peru

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DAY 37 Another hot & lazy start to the day by the beach before re-packing for a lunch time trip back to the Tumbes bus station for another 8 hour trip down to our next stop, Chiclayo. 3 hrs later the bus went past our hostel, an unfortunate waste of time but just the way the bus system works here.

Back on the Pan American Hwy in a very comfortable Double decker bus mainly following the coast with the blue Pacific on one side and vary bare desert hills on the other. Initially past some very basic villages each with a flotilla of boats anchored offshore. Pelicans were doing what they were meant to be doing, dive bombing for food, instead of like the ones at home who seem to sit around tourist areas waiting for a feed.

Leaving the villages behind, the outlook was quite arid and mostly flat with commercial salt pans on the sea side and later numerous small " nodding donkey" oil wells on both sides of the hwy. While uninspiring we need to get through these travel legs to get to the more interesting Peru sites.

Suddenly out off the desert we come across vast plantations of sugar cane, then rice & bananas. Water for these crops is pumped from the rivers which are fed from the highlands, but our guide doesn't think its sustainable.

One of the most disappointing aspects about Peru so far is the amount of litter & apparent rubbish dumping beside the roads, compared to Equador and it seems very difficult to change attitudes. It is particularly evident in the outer slums of all the main cities & throughout all villages yet strangely the the central city areas are clean & could be in any western city.

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