Day 36 – Tuesday, March 3, 2026

he small settlement of Quilca was pretty - the view of the nicely lit church could have been in a Spanish town, too. I woke up once and took a video of the valley lit by the moon - then another one at 6:30, in sunshine...so much green!.. ...ans so much white! The salt residue was everywhere, making a Valley look like an Alpine (Andean...) ski slope. Literally the first thing that crossed my path was a pig. It got a but foggy afterwards, as I was riding in an area with actual signs of human settlements - in sharp contrast to the pervious day. There were small villages, a factory, a restaurant or two and large beaches with a mega car-park - which was completely empty at this time of the day. I reached the seaside settlement of Samuel Pastor with a huge Mary statue, and close to it was a municipality event for the elderly, right on the beach. I stopped for breakfast and had to wait a long time for a rather sorry sandwich. Soon I reached Camaná, a bustling district capital. I had the feeling that every square inch is used for commerce, early every building is sone kind of a shop, then the streets are mingling with food vendors, shoe cleaners, etc. This was authentic Peru - and yet again, apologies if I am hurting anyone's feelings - I felt a strong resemblance to Asia. Here I found a bike shop and had my front brake disc replaced. The town is surrounded by fields of wheat (yeah!) - it is March, so harvest was going on. Then it was back to the barren Atacama deserto (lots of contrast...), where on a rather busy road (which shall stay busy for the remaining 800 km or so), I got to the nicely organized small settlement of Ocoña. I found a place to stay and stopped at a home restaurant for a soup. Similar to Camaná, I had the feeling there are more shops and restaurants than inhabitants - Peruvians seem to be quite the entrepreneurs. I had ridden just some 100 km this day, with about 1,000m of climbing.