After leaving Guayaquil and heading towards Peru, the climate starts to change from tropical to desert. I made my way down to the Peru border and fortunately crossed with no issues, having received my official paperwork. Once heading into northwest Peru, the landscape turns to complete desert. Between the cities of Piura and Chiclayo is a large and particularly barren stretch of desert. For 3-4 hours, there are no towns, no people, no trees, no bushes, not even grass. Just sand and wind.

And the coastal wind blows across the desert at 40 miles an hour. This is epecially difficult when heading south into the wind like I was. Not only does the wind blow you all over the road, but it’s blowing so hard against you that your gas mileage drops significantly. Remember how I said there was nothing for 3-4 hours? No gas stations either. I had filled up with gas before trying to cross the desert, but with the headwind I ran out about halfway across the desert. I rolled up to one of the very few houses scattered across the wasteland and the lady told me she sold gasoline. I agreed to buy it at the very inflated price because I had no other choice. It was either that or try to summon a sand worm. A few minutes later she came back with a gallon of gas in an old bucket and a funnel. She poured it into my bike and I was back on my way.

I barely made it to Chiclayo and spent the night. The next day I continued down the coast of Peru, still going through desert, but slightly less desolate and slightly less remote than the day before. At one point I came across this sign as I entered “The Dune Zone.”

I saw a few small dunes but didn’t think much of it. I saw a mountain range in the distance and I was heading towards it. A while later as I got closer to the mountains I thought they looked strange, a light brown color you don’t usually see in mountains. A while later as I got closer, I came to the terrifying realization that they were not in fact mountains, but mountain-sized sand dunes. I didn’t know sand dunes could even get that large but the scale of them was truly mind blowing.

The Dune Zone indeed.