42.1 mi / 9.1 mph / 2800 ft. climbing
Home: Hospedaje Geminis

When I carried our panniers down from our 3rd-floor AirBNB unit, I was surprised to see two people with loaded bicycles at the sidewalk entrance. Had they just arrived? No, they were loading up and preparing to leave just like us, having stayed in another one of host’s units. Huh! It just seemed like we should have known that they were staying there, but since we had all taken our bikes into our units, how would we? The last time we had (knowingly) stayed in the same place as other bike tourers was in Baños, two months ago, and this was much more of a coincidence, since there are many more options in Sicuani. Even more of a coincidence, we were heading in the same direction, and had the same likely destination for the night, so with luck, we would see more of these northern Italians, Roberta and Nicolo.

Even though we’d had some scary-sounding rain battering the plastic roofing over our AirBNB light-shaft for brief periods in the evenings during our stay in Sicuani, rain and clouds are still fairly transient here, and there is usually sun not long before or after rain. But something about the deep blue skies today was just different. It was the kind of day where I barely need to make adjustments to my photos, since the natural light was just so generous.

Maybe it was the influence of the beautiful day, but it felt like we were discovering a whole new part of Peru. Even though we had a 24-mile, 2600 ft. uphill to start our day, that’s less than half the slope of the up-and-down mountain-climbs that had seemed to be the only way to move through the Andes, so perhaps this new type of valley contributed to the novelty (and a tailwind made the climb even easier). Our first couple days out of Cusco had been quite nice, but this is the day where we would have felt like idiots if we had decided to take the bus to Puno rather than ride. There is still so much wonder in Peru before we reach the border, and the seat of a bicycle remains the best place to see it from!

As much as I was loving the day’s scenery, my gut was preventing me from giving it 100% of my attention. I’d had diarrhea in the morning, and while I didn’t feel nauseous and was able to eat my peanut butter sandwich for lunch, there wasn’t a moment when my intestines didn’t stop telling me that I had something ugly going on down there. After lunch, there were times where I just had to put my head down and put all my attention into sticking to Rett’s rear wheel in front of me, partly due to the ever-increasing slope of the climb, but more because the battle in my gut was beginning to steal energy from my muscles.

The Australian bike tourer we met a few days ago had recommended staying at Aguas Calientes, a hot spring where they let you pitch your tent and you could enjoy the thermal baths all night. It sounded like a cool thing to do, but it didn’t work out great distance-wise for us, and settling our internal debate over whether to stop there or not was actually part of what made us stay an extra day in Sicuani. But eventually we had made a decision: skip it, and go directly on to Santa Rosa (despite the accommodation options there not sounding great).

But with my struggles, Rett re-opened the debate one last time: maybe we could end the day early? Especially since our fear of freezing and wet weather at the 13,300 ft. hot springs had been a big factor in our decision to skip it, and the current warm and sunny afternoon made that threat feel far more distant. But I figured I’d feel bad overnight in either place, and thus wouldn’t really be able to enjoy the baths anyway, so we continued past them (and the loads of cars and buses and trucks parked there!) without stopping.

The downhill started with a similar slope as the end of the climb, but then eased even sooner, dropping us to only 13,000 ft. before effectively flattening out onto the Altiplano for our final three days to Lake Titicaca. There had been an intermittent or fairly-rough shoulder on the way up, while on the way down it was smoother, but annoyingly the main road had been repaved and sat nearly an inch higher than the shoulder, and every half-mile or so that repavement widened out to cover the shoulders, forcing us to bump up and down, or just stay in the travel lane anyway. Either way, even with a good amount of buses and truck convoys, traffic was light enough that they rarely had an issue moving into the oncoming lane to pass us.

Santa Rosa had only a couple hotels known to Google or iOverlander, but we passed at least three more. The difference at our target, Hospedaje Geminis, was that the friendly (just as reported!) woman was sitting at the entrance to her shop when we rolled up, and immediately walked through the back to open the courtyard gate for us and the bikes (all the other places, as is common with Peruvian hotels, looked so closed-up you question whether they’re actually in-business). The “downside” was that the shower was shared, but that was really no problem, since it was right next to our room, no one else was sharing it, and we had a sink and toilet in our room. And, as also reported, everything was quite clean. For ~US$10, a great value, and it shows that we’re definitely out of Cusco!

Arriving at the hotel showed that I had no reserves left, and I immediately flopped down on the bed and laid there motionless for quite some time before I could do anything. And even after the rest, simply carrying my panniers up the one-level spiral staircase completely exhausted me, making it appear that my cardiovascular capacity had been chopped in half. I was encouraged when I was able to take a shower without falling over, so that inspired a quest to find dinner, which was as challenging as it usually is in small Peruvian towns, especially when we’re looking to eat relatively-early. We finally found a hole-in-the-wall chicken place open on the Plaza, and Rett wisely ordered salchipapas (french fries with sliced sausage) for us both, something perhaps a bit smaller and simpler for my stomach. It went down ok, though she still needed to finish off my fries, and I probably should have skipped the carbonated Coke!