Chiclayo
We were expecting an eight hour journey to Chiclayo, so left Huarmey early and made good progress through the desert. After an hour or two we passed a sign saying we were coming to a ‘zona de curvas’ — basically a little wiggle up a hill and another little wiggle down again. We turned a corner on the way down to find an accident so severe that around ten cars had stopped and everyone had got out to have a good gawp. A lorry must have been going down the hill too fast and lost control, smashing through the central reservation and colliding with a bus coming the other way. It wasn’t immediately apparent it was even a lorry — some of it looked like it had been through some sort of compressor. It was lying on its right side, so the driver presumably swerved to try and avoid the bus at the last moment. The bus wasn’t too badly damaged, but I was shocked by the damage to the lorry. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
We stopped for coffee in Trujillo, hoping there might be something available that wasn’t disgusting given that it was a big city in comparison with the other little towns we passed through. Google suggested Starbucks and it wasn’t the time to be picky. When we arrived, we realised it was in a shopping centre — something google had failed to mention — and we would have to pay to park there if we were there for more than half an hour. I was disgusted (I’m disgusted by pretty much everything now, I’m fucking fed up to the back teeth with travelling, it’s fucking shite). We parked and some bloke came over to tell us the motorbike area was the other side of the virtually empty car park, which I was also disgusted by. Glenn Gonzalez went into the shopping centre to get a couple of coffees and I went and parked in the motorbike section and sulked. In the end we left before hitting the half hour mark and pissed about in Trujillo before eventually getting back out on to the Brian Blessed Panamericana.
We were travelling at around 110km/h a few kilometres from Trujillo when the bike started violently swerving from side to side in a random sort of a way. It’s difficult to remember my exact thoughts, but I immediately assumed the back tyre had blown. The back of the bike felt like a tail thrashing around and we swerved several times across the two lanes. Fortunately they were both empty — I think I was aware there was no traffic around us and therefore knew I had the whole width of the road to use, rather than trying to keep to one lane, but I’m not completely sure of that. I don’t think I would have been able to stay in one lane. I didn’t brake at all, fearing that touching either the front or back brake would immediately cause us to skid and crash; I just tried to counter whichever way the bike was swerving and keep it upright. It seemed to take forever to slow down and there were a couple of moments when I wondered whether I should accept my fate and just brace myself for impact with the road. Glenn Gonzalez stayed completely silent throughout. We eventually stopped next to the central reservation.
The first thing that occurred to me when we stopped was that I wasn’t particularly shaken up by what had happened. I asked Glenn Gonzalez to get off the bike and get out of the motorway as quickly as he could and then got the bike off the road. Sure enough, the back tyre had blown. Fortunately, we weren’t in the middle of nowhere and there was at least a scattering of small buildings around. A mototaxi was about 50 metres away and the driver and a couple of passengers were watching us. Glenn Gonzalez asked them if there was a vulcanizadora around and as luck would have it, there was one only a couple of hundred metres away. We made our way there, Glenn Gonzalez on foot and me on the bike with the flat tyre. It was closed. It was a fucking Sunday.
We looked on google maps and found another place a few miles away. Glenn Gonzalez called them and incredibly, they were open. We unloaded all the luggage into a mototaxi — yes, they have mototaxis on the motorway — and Glenn Gonzalez went ahead and I followed on the bike in first gear.
It was immediately apparent the vulcanizadora actually knew what he was talking about. He even had the right tools and machines and set about getting the back wheel off while I went over the road to buy some cold beer. When I got back he had found the cause of the problem: the inner tube on the back wheel was the wrong size. This could only mean one thing. Rather than replacing the knackered inner tube on the larger (in diameter), front wheel with the spare inner tube I gave them, the mechanics in Lima had replaced the perfectly good, relatively new, smaller inner tube on the back wheel. Therefore I had been left with a knackered inner tube on the front wheel and a new inner tube on the back wheel that was completely the wrong size.
I paid the vulcanizadora to take off the front wheel and tyre so I could verify the knackered inner tube was still there. I made a video of him doing so and then tried calling the Royal Enfield people in Lima, but there was no answer because it was a fucking Sunday. Instead I sent them a series of messages and the video I had just made and said I’d be calling for a chat about criminal negligence on Monday.
Luckily, the vulcanizadora had a spare inner tube for the back wheel. It too was the wrong size, but not by much. He said it would at least get us to Chiclayo and I trusted him. Glenn Gonzalez and I got back on the road and rode at 80km/h for the rest of the way to Chiclayo. There were numerous examples of appalling driving, including one incident when a car nearly hit some pedestrians because the bloke was so keen on getting passed us that he swerved off the road when undertaking us. We were in a town where the traffic was heavy in any case — he had nothing to gain from passing us and we passed him again almost immediately at the next traffic light anyway. I am so tired of this.
We were approaching Chiclayo when a wasp flew through my open visor and lodged itself between my helmet and the right side of my face, stinging me repeatedly as I pulled over to stop and tear off my helmet. I wasn’t at all happy about it. I had had enough of everything and just wanted to go home. I’m feeling like this a lot at the moment.
We checked into our hotel without incident in Chiclayo and then took a taxi into the centre to do some heavy drinking. We found some decent IPA and managed to relax a bit. I found a shop selling bike tyres and inner tubes and spoke to them on the phone that same night. Incredibly, they had both sizes of inner tube in stock, which I arranged to collect in the morning.
Glenn Gonzalez and I woke early the next day and went out to pick up the inner tubes. I bought two of each and had one set fitted straight away at a place in the street down the road. I watched the bloke very carefully while he did the job, checking he got the sizes right and explaining all the problems we had had before. I really didn’t want to have to be going back for yet more repairs. I just wanted to arrive in Zorritos and do nothing for a few weeks.
