We had a few emotional moments in Tumbes this morning as Nina thought she had lost her ATM card, and then for a few moments feared the ATM had eaten the card she borrowed from me. While all finished up ok it was not a encouraging start to the day, but .. things improved from there.

For much of the morning we drove along the dry coast of northern Peru with ocean on the right and dry, brown, barren, crumbling hills on the left. The road regularly passed through small ocean side towns/villages which looked poor, in most cases the highway was the only paved street in the town and often the other streets were not even graded, just simple paths between buildings. The buildings were a mix of adobe bricks, mud and stick walls, and woven bamboo. In many cases even the roofs were adobe?. Many towns had a river bed running across the highway to the sea, but things were so dry that the riverbeds were being used as roads, and looked like that had been the case for many years. However, many of the towns also had very large drains/culverts beside the road which suggested that some times they get a lot of rain. Later in the day we saw highway bridges that had been washed away during the last El Nino confirming that every so often there is very heavy rain.

We stopped to do some shopping in the town of Mancora, and lunch on the beach in Los Organos.

The road then headed away from the coast towards Sullana and eventually Piura. Our first taste of the inland was a strange mix of incredibly dry land interspersed with large areas of irrigated corn fields and rice paddies. In Piura we tried to find a hostel mentioned in our guide book but the road system and lack of street signs defeated us; thus we continued on from Piura into the Desierto De Sechura for about an hour before stopping for the night. This first phase of the desert had regular settlements of very poor looking dwellings, very dry looking low shrubs and a sprinkling of greener shade trees. We were wondering how the people that lived here made a living; but a few herds of goats gave us (we think) part of the answer to that question. We still don't know how they get water.