Distance: 110.92 km
Ride time: 5:10:24
Average: 21.44 km/h
Max speed: 52.18 km/h
Total: 30840 km
I was somewhat nervous as I left Trujillo and continued cycling up the Panamerican highway. I would be passing the town of Paijan which has a very bad reputation in cycling circles. On the internet you will find several reports on people getting robbed on this stretch of road. On the other hand I also read about people who had cycled through without problems, and the bad incidents seemed to be a couple of years old.
I thought that if I just cycled straight through the city without stopping, the chances that something would happen was quite low, so that would be my strategy. In fact the town looked like any other town I have been cycling through along the coast, and luckily nothing happened even though I was looking back over my shoulder more than I’m used to.
On the other side of Paijan I entered a 35 km stretch of desert which also has a bad reputation. This is not a place where you would like to camp at night, but I again I found that as long as I was cycling through as fast as I could without any breaks, the risk that something would happen would be very low.
It was a relieve to reach the next small village after having cycled through the desert. I thought it was now safe to take a small break and have a late lunch – I was getting hungry by now. In the city of Pacasmayo I found a nice hotel. The friendly lady in the reception said the price would be 30 soles which I found was cheap enough. Then she changed her mind and said she would give me the room for 25. After thinking about all these stories about robberies the whole day, it was nice to end it with actually meeting some very friendly people at the hotel.
