....and more of the same. Up until now we were able to get enough information about the road ahead and prepare mentally for the roads and conditions. All in all it is really hard to know what is waiting for us out there or - in some cases- the information we get is flat out wrong.....one of those incidents when the person we ask gives us the answer we want to hear instead of the facts. Wouldn't be the first time!
After a little ghost village named Ponto we kept climbing the next day- neither the maps nor the people we ask said anything about a pass. Climbing doesn't alway mean we need to ride over a pass, but here the climbing wouldn't stop and the landscape did indicate we are approaching a pass. Ok, so here we go..couldn't be too high, since there were no signs from nobody. But we learned real soon that this is an unmarked serious pass we are climbing...higher and higher - ill prepared and I am really talking mentally ...but actually come to think of it, somewhat physically for me as well because I am sensitive to altitude and I learned that I need to take it slow to get to higher elevations or I will suffer nausea and headaches. So, here we are following a river gorge, a cut through some pretty impressive mountains...snow capped in the background, higher and higher ...population became sparse...we seem to head closer to a pretty high looking, geographically interesting colossus
but the difficult dirt road turned left right in front of that thing and kept going up through another gorge just when I thought we ought to be done and heading down. Up at 3900m high, this just can't be true...no end in sight...seeing the road just climbing up higher and higher. We reached a little Alpine Lake and the road went further up from there, switching back and forth in long, long unending switches into the unknown... The lake was already at 4300m and my head started pounding. We talked briefly about camping by the lake but I started feeling the altitude and that I needed to get over this thing and down before my head exploded. "Up and over" wasn't until 4550m. Sure it was beautiful up there - a rare place to be and again all I could think about was getting down and done...such bummer, but true!
The top was fake ......we went down and shortly after that climbed back up again...my climbing legs were missing at that point, but I just knew there must be a "down" sooner than later. A few huts, horses and sheep revealed that some people are actually living in this environment ....I don't know how, but they do! Pretty happy donkeys roamed the amazingly grassy (for this high altitudes) area as well. Finally on the other side the area was rugged - harsh, cold and uninhabitable - those mountains are just rough looking. The road got really, really rocky and my head pounded - I could feel every rock with my head bouncing on my shoulder. It felt like my eyes were popping out and my ears about to fall off. All I could think is DOWN, but it sure wasn't very smooth by any means and fast wasn't in the picture either...but it was down and that was all I wanted, feeling nauseated and sorry for myself. A few hundred meters down we bumped (not literally) into some locals and our greetings were left with no response. Strange how the other side of a mountain makes such a difference. We also noticed that in all six hours of climbing we saw no more than two cars and no buses or other transportations. Maybe one side didn't like the other...hard to say, but the vibe noticeably changed!
Ok, down and around...the river flowing in the right direction (down with us). Around another bend and all of a sudden the road went UP...away from the river up, up, up...I could see it way, way around another bend possibly going up further around in the world of the mountains, where the mountains rule........ my head still pounding, my stomach still turning I sat down on the side of the damn, dusty, rocky road, head in both hands...... letting the tears flow. I CAN'T, I CAN'T, I CAN'T I hear myself say....it's too much for me!!! I wanna throw up ...puke this whole damn trip out and let it be. Get myself out of this rough stuff and far away, back to my world which is much more predictable and clean. I hear James next to me, his arm around me suggesting to find a camping place right then and there, but really, there was no reasonable place to camp - hostile locals around us and on top we were still too high for me to recover from altitude sickness. No choice, but up again follow the road and hope for the best.....I cried for a while longer, feeling trapped and ill and then I got up, back on my bike and pedaling. Soon the locals got friendlier, the road got less rocky, the dust settled and it flattened out after the bend and then it actually went down to the village we thought we could never reach the same day: Puńos. Exhausted, all four of us (well, it was actually Indre with the best spanish skills) begged our way into Municipal Building (the one and only hospedaje was not a hospedaje, even though the sign said so...) after 11 hours in the saddle we were DONE......glad to be somewhere, spend the night.
Llata is only 20km down the road and that was as far as we made it the next day. Started in the rain, but the skies cleared and the capital of the province harbored friendly people and a nice, cheap, clean place to stay to lick our mental and physical wounds, rest our sore bones and muscles. Lots of cute little stores to buy goodies, eat ourselves silly in the restaurants with their incredible soups and other local dishes and soon we feel like queens and kings again.
