Bienvenido a Peru

Rolling out of Guayaquil through the mountainous, lush terrian of Ecuador, we were sad to leave, yet excited to be heading to the epi centre of our trip.
Ecuadors landscape is reminiscent of driving through to Palmerston North...rolling hills, lush greenery and then wide open desert...
North Peru on the other hand, is like nothing I have ever seen!
Miles of sandy desert, sweeping around the coast we careened, clinging to the cliffs of sand, literally coasting cliff high on sand dunes all spiralling down to raging ocean...then inland, mountains of dirt and sand...everything blanketed in thick dust and mud.  Brown the only colour to be seen, even the buildings, all low slung slinking in the silt, are indistinguishable from a distance...just more lumps limping through the bleak terrain.
Like looking through a dirty camera lens, everything is a dreary hazy beige...like a scene from ´Mad Max´...it is surreal, horrible yet utterly captivating.
Cities and towns literally built on hills of dirt and rocks, no cleanliness, no white, no colour.  Half finished buildings everywhere, all poised ready to expand up, are the homes here.  Foundations of brick and cement with reinforcing steel poles jutting skyward...laundry blowing in the breeze like flags atop the poles of steel..everything half buried...
No beauty...more like the remnants of a monstrous sand storm...
And enter Lima...a sprawling, raging metropolis...