On days like today, it is easy to feel conflicted.
The beautiful desert near Chimbote
Until our next LRM article is published next month we have $42 Peruvian Sol cash, which is about 26 US dollars, or 17 pounds sterling. A gallon of diesel here in Peru costs just over five dollars, a cheap cafe meal for two is about nine dollars – if we shop carefully we have enough cash for maybe five days food and a gallon of gasoline to cook with. Luckily, we also have some supplies of pasta, rice and a few tins on board, so our resources may stretch a little longer – perhaps ten days or more.
Last night, we filled our water tank and jerry cans from a tap in a gas station, almost certainly not potable water, but we can at least filter it to make it drinkable.
With our journey only just over half way completed, and our second antipodean point at least 5000 kilometres and a minimum of three months away over the dusty tracks of Bolivia, Argentina and southern Chile, the scale of the challenge seems daunting, and we wake each morning aware of the pressing sense of impending failure, and yet still fanning the glowing embers of our determination to succeed. Which of the two flavours our day is largely a matter of willpower.
On the other hand, our current financial predicament has struck in a fortuitous place. Peru has a strip of desert lining its Pacific coast, and although large tracts have been bought up by large corporations hoping to make a killing by irrigating the desert and planting crops, the majority is still undeveloped, barren and isolated.
By taking a bumpy track west off of the PanAmerican Highway just south of Chimbote, we have found a spot to camp under the blazing desert sun for as long as we need. Our little campsite seems utterly diminutive in the vast sandy wastes of the desert hills and dunes that stretch to the horizon on three sides. In the east, on a clear day before the high clouds form around them, we can see the snow topped Andes in the far distance running north to south along the spine of Peru. To our west, just a few hundred metres away, is a sheltered bay out beyond which thousand metre peaks jut out of the Pacific forming offshore islands, and huge breakers crash relentlessly onshore just within earshot. It’s a stunningly beautiful environment in which to be stranded, and reminds us that the quality of our lives are shaped by many factors, many of which are easy to take for granted. In truth, whilst we are no doubt challenged in the longer term, and our ability to complete the expedition unbroken is challenged, for the next few days at least we have not only everything we need, but indeed, much else to be grateful for.
Our gratitude extends to my early training with the Ministry of Defence, which has afforded me the skills and confidence to make repairs to our truck that would almost certainly be outside the capabilities of most overlanders. Fortunately, my tool kit is quite extensive, and my ingenuity undiminished with age. In the last forty eight hours I’ve managed to reline our terminally worn brake pads and repair damaged shock absorber mountings. Both jobs would ordinarily require a garage visit.
Our predicament will afford us time to be stationary long enough to craft the proposals and bids that may open the door to some paid work further on, and to begin the technical work of editing and producing our first video and photobook for sale. The days of cruising along on our savings have long gone, and we are now consigned to making our living as we travel, which demands significant levels of optimism, creativity and courage. It’s like being self employed, but in a country where we have no contacts, no local knowledge, and have not yet mastered the language.
As the bright desert light shimmers in the heat, and the cooling onshore breeze keeps temperatures at around 30 degrees in the shade of our awning, we settle in to our days of productive laptop work – an office setting that many would give an arm and a leg to enjoy. No office politics, no telephone distractions, no real deadlines other than our determination to keep moving steadily towards our objective, and of course, our growing hunger to be back within the comforting community of our friends and family.
Before long, we are confident we will have resolved our situation for the short term, and be on the road again. But our deepest anxieties are about the medium and longer term challenges – shipping to Africa, and the long road home through a continent we have yet to experience or understand.
In all of this, there is something that I am most grateful for above all others.
My own life has been a series of adventures and misadventures, soaring highs and desperate lows, bold moves and spectacular failures – a life full of aiming high and then, most often, falling short of the target. I’ve learned to live with uncertainty, vulnerability, loss and scarcity, whist enjoying many forays into the world of confidence, achievement, frivolity and excess.
But through all of this epic adventure – this impossible dream – the endless newness of each day, the one thing I am most grateful for is the total devotion, love and support of Helen. Adventure is surprisingly not her thing, and prudence is her mantra. Risk? Exposure? These are anathema to Helen’s nature, and yet through all of it she doesn’t complain, and just knuckles down to do what has to be done. I am so grateful to enjoy the love of such a remarkable woman.
