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streets, with their buildings and majestic churches that are hundreds
of years old, have resisted the cheap office blocks, strip malls and
apartment blocks that have engulfed the rest of the town. Trujillo has
an interesting history: it was the first Peruvian city to break from Spain
and become independent, and ever since it has been a place where
revolutions and insurrections have been plotted.
After emerging from the town, there was again nothing to see
apart from the vast expanse in which nothing, not even a cactus,
grows. The day has been mild, but after leaving Trujillo I was running
into a strong headwind of 60 kilometres per hour.
We have a major problem. Bernie has done the sums, and, run-
ning at my present rate of 90 kilometres a day, we will finish between
14 and 16 days too late for the flight to the South Pole. To make it on
time to Tierra del Fuego, then get to Punta Arenas to meet up with Eric
and fly to the Antarctic to start my final run to the South Pole, I would
have to run 120 kilometres a day from now until December 29: two
months. That would break me. I can't do it.
I have asked Greg to fly from his base in Los Angeles to Lima in
about a week's time, for a face-to-face crisis meeting with Bernie and
me. We need to thrash out some issues. I've tried countless times to
have a phone meeting with Greg, but the communications are deplor-
able, and either I can't get through to him, or he can't reach me, and
when he
is
on the line the connection invariably cuts out. (It's not just
Greg suffering from communication breakdown: some of my planned
live links with Channel Nine's
Today
show have also been unable to
take place.) The only thing to do is meet in person; together we need
to come up with solutions.
Sir Edmund Hillary faced terrible obstacles climbing Mount Ever-
est, and he overcame them. I take strength and inspiration from that.
october 30
I am now just 450 kilometres north of Lima, and, frankly, Peru has been
disappointing. I expected a more exotic, colourful, friendly place. All
I've experienced so far are the desert, which is forbidding and desolate
except for the odd scraggly gum tree, and a threatening atmosphere.
Again, guns and drunks are ubiquitous. I'm running for 16 hours every
day, finishing after eleven o'clock. The highway is littered with dead
