Early to bed and early to rise. In Colombia, I started with early departures as a way of beating the afternoon heat. In Ecuador, the mornings had less chance of rain. In Peru, it will be the wind that picks up in the afternoon.

It was cloudy and overcast when I left and stayed this way much of the morning. It never got much over 30C (86F) in afternoon so this was also a bonus. Fishing ships moored offshore in Macala.

Climbed over a low hill and followed the coast to next village of Los Organos. Today had fewer villages and also a lot fewer tourist type hotels along the coast. After Los Organos at 13km, the route also went more inland.

This was just before the largest hill of the day, climbing almost 300m (1000ft) in a six kilometer stretch.

Halfway up one could still see one of the smaller coastal settlements. This one was advertising whale trips between July and October.

Flatter near the top without much vegetation. The wind also slowly started to pick up here. A diagonal cross-wind that was more head wind than tail wind.

A number of these small pumper oil wells in the area.

Sign suggests they’ve been pumping oil here since 1952.

Good example of a small settlement near the top: an oil truck, a simple church and a closed restaurant.

A pipeline to right of the road and wind turbines higher up on the hill.

Another view of those wind turbines, they were definitely producing power when I cycled past.

At 72 kilometers there was a road junction and turnoff. Just over 8km away was town of Talara. Talara seems to be an air force town with the road going around a large runway and several airplane mock-ups at road intersections. I cycled down to the coast and found reasonable hotel here. Tomorrow will need to ride back up the hill and to the road junction, but still nicer to stay in a hotel than to camp at the road junction.

Early to bed again tonight.