21.9 mi / 7.4 mph / 1308 ft. climbing
Home: Hospedaje Maron

When we got rolling at 6:30am a couple mornings ago, our bikes were simply sitting on a patio under our hotel room, and even if the external doors were closed, I knew we’d be able to open them on our own to “escape” (it turned out our hostess was up and cleaning and had opened the door for us anyway). Here in La Esmeralda, the bikes were stored next door, in the courtyard of the house owned by the family who runs the hotel. So last night we’d had a brief conversation with our host, and while Rett wanted access by 6am, he only repeated “6:30” several times. That was close enough for me (and much easier than bringing them up to our 2nd-floor hotel room for the night), and by the time we got our bags down the stairs it turned out the restaurant/store was being opened up well before 6:30am anyway, so we were able to roll out right on target.

After overstuffing ourselves at dinner last night, I woke up still feeling a bit bloated, and Rett had had trouble sleeping for the same reason. The cold boiled-egg and onion sandwiches we assembled for breakfast weren’t as tasty as they had been a couple days earlier, partly because the bread we found wasn’t as good, but probably also because we weren’t as hungry.

By the time we started rolling, I was feeling about 85%, but Rett’s stomach wasn’t behaving as nicely. After 10 miles of riding, she chewed some Pepto Bismol in the hopes that would settle things down.

The Pepto did not help. Two miles later, she stopped, and rather than asking me to hold her hair, asked me to hold her bike while she moved to the side of the road and vomited up an enormous amount of liquid, which somehow still contained portions of last night’s dinner, eaten some 14 hours earlier.

She received the immediate relief that often comes as a small consolation for the body’s violent convulsions, allowing her to get back on the bike and continue on, but it quickly became clear that it wasn’t just a one-and-done, all-better event. One of biggest fears and stresses of bike touring in South America had finally landed: we were struck with a gastrointestinal illness. And while it wasn’t the worst possible place for it to happen, it was still a bad situation, with the nearest hint of civilization still more than 8 miles away. That town, Mayocc, became our sole goal for the day; there was no hope of completing the 40 miles to our original target of Huanta, especially since the overall downhill ended at mile 30, and reversed up into a 10-mile, 1500 ft. climb.

Luckily, I had improved to nearly 100% by this point, which was a bit of a mystery since we had essentially eaten the exact same things over the last couple days. Rett demonstrated an incredible amount of fortitude, pedaling onward even when I know that her stomach was sucking in all of her energy and flushing it into a black hole. The inevitable uphills demonstrated the limits of her strength though, bringing her to a standstill on slopes that, if healthy, she probably would have ascended with three or four gears left to spare. Thankfully, she for once didn’t put up a fight when I took over and ferried both of our bikes up the hills, while she trudged up in the increasing heat, otherwise unencumbered.

Even though we hadn’t planned on stopping in Mayocc, I knew that it had at least one hotel because I had checked it out when considering our itinerary options a few days ago. We quickly found the place, but it was unsurprisingly locked up (due to our early start, even with our slow finish, it was still well before noon). In the hot sun and under mosquito attack, Rett took over WhatsApping the posted phone number from me, and instead sent me back the half-block to the main road to find a cold drink for her. That’s when I noticed that the bodega had a sign that also said “Hospedaje”, so I had the man quickly show me his three rooms upstairs. The one that had an ensuite bathroom looked good enough, even though there was a barrel of water inside required for bucket-flushing the toilet, and most-importantly it was available immediately with a bed for Rett to collapse into. So I called her back and got her into a slight bit of comfort.

One sip of the flavored water I bought told Rett that her stomach wasn’t ready for such things, so I acquired a plain, refrigerated, but uncarbonated one. Our host also made up a matecito tea for her, promised as a stomach-settler.

But her stomach refused to be calmed, and the bucket-flush toilet was suddenly valuable, because the bucket was called into use to catch her second (and then third) round of vomiting. The amount of liquid she was losing (and finding impossible to refill) was quickly becoming a concern, especially since expulsion out the other end was now beginning, with multiple rounds of diarrhea.

In between, she was stricken with body aches, and presumably some level of fever. The latter came perhaps with a silver lining, making her unable to detect that our sun-heated room at 7200 ft. had heated up to 80F, a temperature that healthy Rett would have found unbearable.

Our host went up to the roof to turn on the water so we could take showers (cold, but fine in the warm room). But an hour later the faucet went dry again. When there is vomit and feces exploding everywhere, a room without running water is not an ideal place to find oneself, especially when the bucket used to scoop water out of the barrel has been vomited in. There was no uncontaminated tool to clean things with. But I suppose it’s still better than a tent at a waterless camp at 15,000 ft.! And Rett had enough brain cells still firing to remember the hand sanitizer we’d been carrying for a situation just like this. The town had only one “botica” and neither it nor the several bodega I checked had mouthwash. Luckily the WiFi worked well enough that she could stream Harry Potter movies, even if she could only rarely muster the energy to look at her phone while writhing in pain.

But by bedtime, the explosions seemed to have settled, though a couple bottles of water was all the intake she would risk to avoid relighting the fuse. Hopefully sleep would come and give enough relief to allow another step tomorrow.