Journey to Arequipa

We headed south again from Nazca, the road headed out to the coast again and then South to Camana through more desert. About 50km out of Nazca and about 30km from anywhere I suddenly spotted a man lying on the edge of the road. In fact it just looked like a bundle of rubbish but I was so convinced it was a man that I slowed down, turned around and went back. It was a man, half dead from exposure and dehydration, he didn't move when we spoke to him. He had a thick jumper on but no shoes, socks, trousers or pants, we put a bottle of water next to him and out came a hand and all the water was guzzled down. We tried to talk to him but he just didn't respond even though by now he was half sitting up. We left him another bottle of water and some fruit (that was all we had) and drove on determined to get him some help. We noted down the nearest km marker signs and then continued. About 5km further down the road we came across some traffic police and stopped to tell them about the guy. Their first response was 'yes, he's a mad man.' That really got me angry; we said that he may be mad but that didn't mean he should be left to die; they said they would go and investigate; I hope they did or he surely will die.
When we got to the coast we found the worst roads yet, just when the driving conditions needed better. For the first time we were on twisty, winding, roads that followed the contours of the coastal hills or compacted dunes, or perhaps they were sandstone hills, and the road was full of cracks and pot holes and desperately slow lorries; some travelling slower than 10km/h up the hills.
I was on the point of overtaking one of these slow coaches when I saw a police car with lights flashing coming up behind us so I pulled over. All the police who have stopped us so far in Peru have just said hello, asked us where we were from and where we were going and then waved us on our way, so I wasn't at all worried. However, this time, the policeman approached with a book and pen in his hand and told us that he was fining us because Celso was not wearing a seat belt. We protested because he was wearing his seatbelt but he also had a shirt wrapped around his shoulder because it was getting burnt in the sun. He started saying things such as we shouldn't call him a liar, and, did we think he was blind; however we kept on protesting our innocence and so he changed tack and asked to check all our papers. We have had them checked before so we handed them over feeling a bit more comfortable. But after looking at all, even our travel insurance, he told us he was going to give us an 800 Sol (about £180) fine for not having a Peruvian insurance policy. We asked him to help us out and finally he said we could give him some money to buy some coffee! 20 Soles got him off our back - our first encounter with corruption that is suffered by many, and we got away quite lightly.
Later we got to Camana and found a hotel. Camana is just a place to stay the night on the way to Arequipa, we can't find anything of any interest here at all. However we did go into town and ask about whether we needed to have a Peruvian insurance policy and found out that 'yes', we probably do or we need to get a stamp that indicates that our travel insurance will suffice.

The only places of interest that we stopped at on this 5 hour drive were a small museum in the middle of the desert that houses an 'in situ' fossil of a now extinct whale and loads of Megladon shark teeth. At this place we had to drive about 3 km into the desert, the last km of which we were accompanied by a dancing, barking dog; who insisted on trotting in front of the car making it a very awkward journey.
The other place we stopped for a couple of hours was Puerto Inca, a small cove in which there are a large number of Inca ruins and now a modern hotel where we ate some lunch. The Inca ruins consist of hundreds of well-like storage holes in the earth and several other buildings, warehouses and processing rooms for the fish and other sea life that was caught and processed and then transported to the Inca capital Cusco.
The only other impressionable site on this journey was an incredibly green valley that we came across in the middle of the desert. It had a full river and hundreds of rice fields. It took our breath away after the blandness of the hundreds of miles of sand that we have passed.