Oh How The Tides Can Turn…

We started our day early to head for the mountain pass. After long and heavy rain during the night, most of our things were wet including my toiletry bag, which I had stupidly forgotten outside the evening before. That had never ever happened to me before, but of course it just had to happen on the night that it was going to pour down in buckets for four hours. I know that this really is my own fault, but I do feel a bit unlucky this vacation. Apart from being sick SO many times, a perfect example is something that happened at Machu Picchu but I think I have not yet mentioned on the blog: As our frequent blog readers are aware, I had caught a bacterial infection in Aguas Calientes and hiked up to Machu Picchu with a fever. The day we went back to Hidroeléctrica, the train I had wanted to take to spare myself hiking through the jungle with a fever too, didn’t match our bus’s schedule so I had to hike three hours through the jungle all the same. You’d already think that’s enough bad luck, but nooo. Because what happened next? I was shit upon by a bird, I kid you not. It was on my shirt and in several places in my hair, which was absolutely disgusting. But I had to continue walking for 15 min until we reached a river where I could get my head into the ice-cold water to literally wash that shit out. In Germany they say “Pech im Spiel, Glück in der Liebe”, so maybe it is some kind of compensational karma: having bad luck on this trip (not strictly a game, but oh well) but being very happy and lucky in love.

Anyways, back to Aguas Calientes. We packed our wet belongings and got going slowly but steadily up the slope, creeping closer and closer towards the mountain pass. We got a lot of cheering and respect from bypassing cars, which felt quite nice. A slight compensation for breathing in the black plumes of their exhaust gases. The further up we went, the more impressive and majestic the snow-capped mountains looked. An additionally majestic and dramatic visual effect was added by the slight mist and deep, dark clouds looming over us. All in all, it looked and felt very impressive and surreal. After a bit, we had finally reached La Raya, the mountain pass at 4,338 m. We rolled down the other side, which despite warm clothes was very “refreshing”, for several kilometers until the Altiplano did its name justice and the road turned level on the large flat area surrounded by mountain peaks on all sides. Eventually, we reached our destination: Santa Rosa. It was quite strenuous for me because for some reason I physically didn’t feel so good, had low energy and was very tired despite cycling on a flat surface. Something a Dutch person should be more than used to. For lunch, we sat in the nice sunny town square and ate our home-cooked quinoa salad and only added some freshly bought tomatoes to it. It was very tasty and nourishing!

Up to that point it had been slightly windy but nice and sunny, but now deep, dark clouds promising heavy rain and thunderstorms were closing in from all sides. We hastily got back on our bikes to look for a campsite next to the riverbanks far outside of town. We found a decent spot, set up the tent, and while the guys took care of some chores, I went to take a nap because I was feeling progressively worse. A few hours later the pleasant sunshine and wind-still weather were replaced by heavy rain, accompanied by strong winds, and I didn’t only feel bad but properly sick. I had a fever yet again, diarrhea was back, but because we were camping in the wild I had to get out of my warm sleeping bag to go out into the bitter cold, stormy rain to do my business. A few hours later, all three of us lying asleep in the tent, my stomach cramps and nausea reached their climax as quinoa salad made an unwanted reappearance. It bummed me out that such a nice day could turn into such an unpleasant one so quickly. If I hadn’t gotten very sick during our family vacation in Laos in 2015, this would have definitely been my new low. It continued raining and storming heavily the entire night. Literally until around 5 AM.

But a new day brought new promises. On the 18th I still wasn’t feeling well, but now Göran was sick too and it was also the quinoa salad that didn’t sit well. In hindsight, we suspect that the fresh tomatoes maybe hadn’t been sufficiently washed and they could have had a bacteria or something else on them that made us both sick. Jacques was still taking antibiotics, which is why we suspect that it didn’t hit him as hard as us. We slept half of the day to recover and Jacques was a champ in taking care of us. Around mid-afternoon more rain clouds darkened the sky and it began to trickle down. Because the rain of the previous night had significantly raised the level and ferocity of the river we were camping next to, we decided to evacuate our campsite as a precaution. We cycled back into Santa Rosa and found a good, clean hostel through iOverlander. All of us enjoyed the hot shower which the hostel luckily had. After a nice warming cup of tea from the landlady, we all went to bed early, happy that we were in a warm and dry place.