Back to sea level

It took us 5 hours (with a couple of toilet stops) to descend 3500 metres to sea level.  The sun was shining and it was a very pleasant 12 degrees warmer than when we left Huaraz early this morning. 

We stopped for lunch (we had our pack up) and then continued on the coast road to Lima.  We still had 200km to go.  We couldn’t see much of the surrounding countryside as it was very misty.  However, as we got closer to the capital, there were more settlements.  Many of them had the appearance of shanty towns with thousands of shacks tightly packed into a small area.

Lima is a huge sprawling city.  We were still 28km from our hostel when we got caught up in the Friday afternoon traffic.  Those last few miles took us almost three hours!  We finally arrived at our hostel in the Miraflores district of the city at around 8pm.  We couldn't leave the truck anywhere near where we were staying, so we just had to offload our stuff, and then Ritchie and Nikki had to go off to the truck park near the airport.  Ritchie ended up staying with the truck, and Nikki didn't make it back to the hostel until gone midnight!

We ended up having a drink in the bar with some of the others and turned it in at around 10.30pm - late for us!Read more