I am in Peru, at last.

I left the Andes, the rain and the cold, for a first day of blue sky and sunshine since month almost. Shortly after the border the landscape changed totally. From green it turned to brown, I entered the Sechura desert. Although I was back to sea level, and that I was passing a desert, temperatures did not exceed a very comfortable 25°C. For some 600km in traversed this beautiful sand desert on a good road, but quite bothered by very strong side winds.

So far for the good news.

Christmas is coming. This probably motivated the display of my GPS to start changing colors. After trying all the possible colors of the rainbow, it finally decided to turn black, and stay black. I will have to travel without now; not a big loss, but it was quite useful in big cities, I have to admit.

R.I.P.

So far for the bad news.

Now the very bad one:

Yesterday I noticed some strange noise coming from my bike. At first I thought that some screws went loose, and that it was merely some vibrations in the protection of my engine. But after a while it became clearly the rattle of a bud working valve, soon turning into that of a dying valve. I lost some power, but not much. Driving slowly for 500 km, I reached Trujillo. Meantime the noise was so loud, that people in the street turned around to see what was coming up. The next BMW service is in Lima, another 600km away. I have an appointment there, and try to reach the city tomorrow.

If my bike does not die until there…

Quite a change from the rain of the last months

Strong sidewinds