It’s cycle day so we got up at 5:50 AM, packed our bags, enjoyed one last warm shower (because it will probably be the last one until we reach Samaipata), and had the hostal breakfast. It consisted of fresh fruit, delicious fresh cheese empanadas, buns, jam and, for some weird reason, blue jello with pieces of banana. I had already noticed often that people here are really into jello but even then it’s a bit weird as a breakfast dish in my opinion. Anyhow, I obviously gave mine to Göran because of the gelatin.

After brushing our teeth and getting the bags on the bikes, we said our goodbyes and were out on the road again. Although nothing comes even close to being as bad as El Alto was, not even the terrible traffic in Juliaca, I always hate cycling through cities. It’s not only dangerous with the traffic but it also really stinks to inhale the smoke coming out of those old cars. After cycling next to a lot of traffic you can not only see a thin layer of dust on our skin but also black particles coming out of the exhausts. A dreadful thought to be inhaling that. I’m pretty sure that many of our readers are familiar with the German stop-light coloured sticker system which either allows or prohibits you from entering an environmental zone (“Umweltzone”) such as large cities. A mediocre attempt at reducing smog in cities. But for the unlikely case that some of you don’t know: the worst sticker you can get is red and it means you cannot enter many cities or suburbs because your car is so polluting. The cars here? I bet you they would even fail to get a red sticker. That is to say: I am convinced that the shizzle coming out of the exhaust of a red-stickered car in Germany is cleaner than what many of the cars here exude when they huff and puff up a mountain or accelerate after the traffic light turned green.

Once we were out of the city though things were quite alright. We cycled on for 28 km until we had our first break for the day to enjoy some watermelon and Coca Cola (although be sure that only the men enjoyed both, I truly hate Coca Cola/Pepsi/Fanta/Sprite/… you get the idea. I find them disgusting and way too sugary too). After our refreshing break in the shade, we cycled on until we reached Punata, where we aimed to do groceries for the upcoming days as we would no longer pass any cities. So far, the road had been very good. It was paved with smooth tarmac and was a joy to cycle on once we had left the city’s bulk of traffic behind us. However, the last stretch to Punata wasn’t paved and I can tell you that I would have preferred a dirt road over this nightmare. The street was paved with cobble stones but not the nicely shaped ones that old German streets are paved with. Nooo, these were REAL cobble stones. They just took large stones of various shapes and sizes and stuck them in with wide spaces between. Some stones stuck out a lot, others only a little but all in all it was SO incredibly bad that I truly feared for the wellbeing of my bike.

After that nightmare of a road, we had a tasty lunch in Punata, bought food at the market and headed on. All the way to Punata (except for the cobble stone nightmare) we had gone at a pretty good pace but this changed after lunch. We were faced with ferociously strong headwinds which was already straining and annoying enough, but after a few kilometers the climb started. We had to go quite a long and steep stretch uphill but once on the slope, the winds got so bad that particularly strong gusts pushed me off my bike and Göran as well and also pushed us into oncoming traffic. It was really dangerous and I decided to step off and push my bike because that way I had more control over it. Meanwhile the men bravely pedalled on but were struggling as well with the stormy winds. Some gusts coming from the front were so strong that I could barely push my bike against them.

We all agreed that this was dangerous and we shouldn’t proceed once we reached the small village behind the first mountain pass. We had another problem though: with these strong winds we would not be able to set up our tent, so we looked for a different place to stay. And we found one: the school that had been newly built in the town. The principal passed us by chance and gave us permission to sleep in the sheltered hallway and so we did. We had dinner and went to bed early so that we would be up and gone the next morning by the time the first students would come in.

We were a bit startled late in the evening when suddenly two boys showed up, but luckily they were more scared of us than we of them and Göran easily managed to scare them off. I didn’t sleep that easy anymore after that because I was afraid that people were going to rob us. Spoiler: they didn’t.