The north coast of Peru - reuniting with Sheri and hanging with the boys

The landscape changes dramatically as you leave Ecuador and enter Peru. Gone are the lush mountains and flat plains filled with banana plantations, and in its place are flat dry deserts with the backdrop of the western side of the Andes. And a beautiful coastline (except for the garbage along the roads). I spent my first night in Peru and the popular town of Mancora, known for its beautiful beach and surfing. Enjoyed a great dinner of ceviche and calamari as I watched the sunset.

Next day on to Trujillo to meet Sheri at the airport and enjoy some luxury at a hotel and excellent meals. It was a long drive across flat desert landscapes to get to Trujillo. Trujillo is a nice city, very clean with a pretty city center. Not many tourists. Also got my first taste of driving in Peru. Crazy. No one gives way - just stick your nose out and hope no one hits you. And horns, OMG, Peruvians like their horns.

A few days later we met Zach (our son) and Zach (our "adopted" son) at the airport and headed to Huanchaco. Zach and his friends that he has known since his freshman year at University of Utah were getting together to go surfing, and were kind enough to allow us to tag along. Some say Peru was the birthplace of surfing as the people along the coast would build boats out of reeds and go back and forth across the surf to fish.

It was so nice to get together with them in Peru. A great group of guys - Zach, Zach, Dylan, Walter, and Sam. Sam is in medical school and is taking a year to work in Lima researching epilepsy, so it was an opportunity to reunite with Sam. They rented a nice AirB&B, while we slept in the truck parked outside. We enjoyed watching them surf and having some meals with them. We also celebrated Zach's birthday with a couple cakes from the local bakery.

We left after a few days to meet them again in the mountains in Huaraz. On our way out of town, we stopped at Chan Chan, an archaelogical site near Trujillo. Chan Chan was the capital of the Kingdom of Chimu, a civilization that arose along the northern coast of Peru between the 10th and 15th centuries. Chan Chan is reknown as a marvel of urban planning and the second largest adobe city in the world (first is in Iran). At one point, the city was home to about 50,000 people. The Chimu were conquered by the Incas in 1470, after which the kindgom declined. Because it is adobe, it is subject to erosion, particularly from weather events due to El Nino.