And now, the end is near...

First a quick apology. It has been bought to my attention that after having titled my last blog entry "the Casino" I then didn't say anything more on that subject. So just to finish up that thread we stayed in a Casino/hotel two nights ago, which was nice. I won about 60 pence on the roulette wheel and then made the mistake of having a ciggy with the doorman, who tried to get me interested in a range of not to lovely prostitutes.

Since then we have been taking a bit of time for ourselves, seeing ancient ruins in and around Trujillo (whilst Patrick and I got the mototaxis fixed) before powering another 200k up the Pan American. This morning finds us only 215k short of the finish line in Piura, which we may well be sitting astride by this evening.

The driving has been very reasonable, the landscape is usually quite arrid and hot, although there are green strips of growth along the major waterways.The duchess has been (fingers crossed) behaving wonderfully. She always sounds about 5 minutes away from a breakdown, but, apart from a couple of thrown chains yesterday and a loose mudguard, we have had no major problems to report since hitting the coast. She only needs to give us one day more of good driving and I'm a happy man. Hope my next update will be from the finsish line.

All the best

Ollie