Recovering at Our Second Casa Ciclista
On the 21st Jacques arrived in Juliaca on his bicycle and Göran and I by motorized transport. The latter had been quite the hassle to organize so I was once again very glad that Göran’s Spanish is so good and that he was kind enough to stay with me out of safety, giving Jacques the opportunity to do what he really wanted: to cycle at his pace and as far as he wanted. The bus had dropped us off on the outskirts of the pretty big city so we cycled to the Casa Ciclista which was insane with the traffic conditions. I have to admit that Iván had laid the bar for a Casa Ciclista pretty high in Ayacucho with how kind he was and how at home we felt at his place. There was no need to worry though because neither the Casa Ciclista nor its owner disappointed in the slightest way. Luckily, the Casa Ciclista is in a calmer part of Juliaca but still quite close to the centre. When we entered we were greeted by the sight of beautiful, colourful cycling-motivated murals, a small garden with roses in it, a Hollywood swing (which I sort of annexed while I was there), a large seating area outside and two concrete sinks – one for doing laundry and one for doing the dishes. While the murals and the swing already sold me on this place, the owner Giovanni managed to do so even more. He is a very kind, welcoming, open-minded cycling- and travel enthusiast. After sitting in the garden and chatting for a while, we got our rooms ready, had lunch (thanks for the stomach-friendly mashed potatoes dad! Finally something my stomach could take other than soup with mushy noodles from the restaurants). Afterwards I am not sure what happened because I napped on the Hollywood swing for two hours. Afterwards, we had dinner, decided to make the next day yet another rest day for the sake of my health and went to bed.
The following day, Jacques got up early to cycle to a beautiful lake with Inca and pre-Inca ruins between Juliaca and Puno while Göran and I had a lie-in and had ourselves a lazy day. Göran worked on his laptop and I sat in the sun, getting my diary up to date, made an itinerary for the Bolivia vacation with mom and Bill, planned Christmas presents, and caught myself watching some brainless but funny YouTube videos. Göran and I had promised to take care of grocery shopping which we wanted to do at the ‘hypermercado’ which lay in the shopping mall. Too lazy to cook ourselves lunch, we decided to have some in the mall and I have to admit entering the mall brought back sweet Changchun memories. All in all Juliaca seemed pretty wealthy as both the hypermercado, the shopping mall itself, and other ‘fancy’ buildings around town were not that common in Peru. That morning I finally felt alright again stomach-wise despite heavy cramps from dinner. I could tell that my body hadn’t been able to take much sustenance and that soup and mashed potatoes weren’t much to go on because I was properly hungry. As in full-flash food cravings. You will be able to imagine my happiness when among all the five fried-chicken stores in the food plaza of the mall I spotted a Pizza Hut. A place that would actually put sauce on their pizzas and have a vegetarian option in store. While Göran got some food at KFC, I gave in to my pizza cravings and boy it didn’t disappoint. A crust, fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside, a good layer of tomato sauce, a mixture of proper vegetables and mozzarella cheese. While I usually don’t rate Pizza Hut very highly, I was in food heaven at this point. Göran also thoroughly enjoyed his fries, chicken burger and fried-chicken pieces while I indulged in my cheesy, crispy guilty pleasure. Because my caloric desires were not yet met, I also treated myself to a vegan Mocha Frappuccino from Starbucks, because why not. With my cravings satisfied we went grocery shopping with the idea to buy ingredients to make nachos with guacamole to invite Giovanni to.
Back at the Casa Ciclista Jacques was back as well. He had had a really nice trip to the lake with impressive cultural-historic sites and he had brought some apple Danish pastries for us 🙂
We invited Giovanni for the nachos and dinner, which Jacques and I set about to cook: curried whole-grain rice and vegetable stir-fry with lentils. Both the guacamole with nachos as well as the stir-fry turned out very tasty and we had a great evening eating and chatting with Giovanni. He even treated us to a bottle of French red wine which was very tasty. Unfortunately I didn’t have much as a precaution for my stomach. That evening, we went to bed happy about how we had spent our days individually but finished it so nicely together.
