Left Lima a couple of days ago, took a bus for the first bit to dodge more motorway/general sprawl, apparently Lima has an official population of about 9 million but about the same number living around the edges in pretty grim looking shanty towns. Anyway by the time I'd waited for the best coffee shop to open to get my last respectable caffeine fix for quite a while, and negociated my way to and then through the bus station I didn't end up getting a bus til noon, which then took an unbelievable 4 hours or so to cover about 150 km during which one was subject to the torment of low budget comedies dubbed into spanish - horrible. Moreover there was no air-con, or open windows, so I picked up a stinking headache and probably some interesting bugs on the bus. I cycled the rest of the way into the reserve just in time to be treated to an awesome sunset, though by this point said bugs were beginning to bit and I could feel myself going down with a fever, spent the night in my tent sweating it out, evidently hampered by an increasingly volatile digestive system and so didn't really get any sleep (although it was an excellent camping spot, right on the flatlands in front of the sea, and with a great view at about 6 am). For my troubles I also got a tent full of mosquitos so got fairly well mauled by them too.
Anyway very very slowly wobbled my way back to Paracas pueblo the next morning, laid siege to the local plumbing for a while, then found I'd missed all the boat trips to the Isla Ballestas (penguins) because it was off season so they were hardly running any. Wasn't really in the mood to hang around all day to take the following morning's boat so decided the penguins were going to have to wait for Patagonia and headed off for the mountains. Racked up about 90 km and 1500 m of climbing which felt fairly respectable given that I hadn't eaten more than a couple of cereal bars or slept. Unsurpisingly was fairly utterly shot when I arrived, found a cheap room, and tried hot food, went through my system more or less as Newton would have predicted, probably slowed slightly by the vagaries of the small intestine, thus got a terrible night's sleep again, fever but less mosquitos this time though.
Set off early the next morning, still shattered and with a lot more climbing to go, had racked up about another 1500 m climbing before trying my next hot meal, slightly more success but still a far cry from successful, more climbing fuelled by cereal bars on a deteriorating road surface, bits of the road were just wet, sticky tar which coated my tyres and then picked up gravel and dust rendering my incredibly expensive rubber useless. The lack of traction coupled with a couple of day's fatigue had a fairly predictable result. I crashed quite badly and managed to wrench my shoulder part way out of it's socket. Was kind of in the middle of nowhere at this point so ate some oreos for the shock and cracked on, another 10 km of climbing and I topped out at somewhere over 4000 m. At that height I was cycling in the cloud and it had got pretty cold. Some mix of shock, fever and fatigue meant I was completely unable to retain any body heat, so put on everything I was carrying and luckily found a little village a couple of kilometres on. Went and hid in the 'restaurant' there which was little more than the front room of someone's house. Drank soup and sat huddled in my sleeping bag (it was barely much warmer inside than out) watching low grade Peruvian soaps. After a couple of hours of that I had realised that I had actually done a fair bit of damage to my shoulder, and still wasn't that warm, so persuaded some friendly peruvian truckers to give me a lift to Ayacucho, anyway 7 hours spent fetal-like under a blanket in the back of a truck cab later I arrived at Ayachucho, at 2 in the morning, found a cheap hostal and went to sleep. Unfortunately it was on a pretty busy street so i only got about 4 hours sleep which seems to have been the perfect amount to make me tremendously grumpy this morning, although that only lasted as long as it took me to find Via-Via, which is an excellent cafe/restaurant overlooking the Plaza de Armas here. They did a great breakfast which after not really having eaten for three days has pretty much sorted me out.
Won't be cycling for a bit though because of the shoulder, am getting a bus to Cusco tonight and will probably spend a week or so there sleeping lots and will see how the shoulder feels/get some long-distance physio. Definitely don't think my stomach, improving as it is, will handle guinea pig, am really craving a good pizza so am off to see if I can find one.
Now with added sunsets/sunrises.
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