Intro
The sun over Pallasca today was mostly sunny and lacked the aggressive bite of the previous week’s climbs, providing a necessary reprieve for my lungs. After days of hacking through high-altitude air that felt like wet wool, the paved streets and stable ground of town offered a chance to stop the forward motion and focus on the mechanics of the journey. This wasn’t a day for the saddle, but for recalibrating the hardware and the gut.
The Logistics of Probiotics and Signal
- I started the morning on a hunt for fuel that didn’t involve fried dough. In a small shop on the main square, I found a glass jar of yogurt with active bacteria—a genuine rarity here, as most Peruvian producers deactivate the cultures to simplify the warm supply chain. The cool weight of the glass jar in my hand felt like a small victory. I sat in the square and mixed it with mandarinas, oats, popped wheat, and banana. When I couldn’t finish the entire jar, the shopkeeper offered to store it in her fridge until tomorrow. It’s a level of straightforward hospitality that makes the logistical friction of travel feel much lighter.
- By 10:00 AM, I realized my current lodging wasn’t going to cut it for the digital side of this trip. I moved my gear to Hospedaje ‘Angie y Joseph’ specifically because the mobile signal and WiFi actually functioned. Between the move and dropping off a week’s worth of road-grime-caked clothes at a laundry—which, miraculously, had them clean and dry in three hours—I spent the midday hours troubleshooting the blog. My Telegram chatbot had crawled into a hole and died. I spent an hour digging into the backend before realizing it was a simple RAM allocation issue on the virtual machine. Once I bumped the memory, the system breathed again, and I could finally push through the backlog of four posts. The frustration remains with my Redmi Note 13 Pro, though; the GPS is so unreliable that I still have to manually redraw my ridden lines on the map using the laptop.
The Art of the Snip
- Walking through the Pallasca town garden is a surreal experience. It is a meticulously maintained space where the trees have been coerced into shapes that shouldn’t exist in nature. I spent a long time staring at a tree carved into the shape of a helicopter, and another that looked like a person cradling a baby. While I was standing there, I heard the rhythmic, metallic snip-snip of garden scissors and found the man responsible. We talked for a while; he doesn’t use power tools or complex shears, just a standard pair of handheld scissors to maintain the sharp edges of his sculptures. I made sure to praise his work—it’s the kind of quiet, dedicated labor that usually goes unnoticed by people just passing through.
- The afternoon was spent on mechanical preventative maintenance. I’ve been worried about my hydraulic brake pads, so I engineered a makeshift funnel tool that screws into the brake handle opening. It allows me to move the pistons sideways more easily without risking the internal membrane when I swap the pads. It’s a clumsy bit of engineering, but it works. While I tinkered, I received word that the parcel I sent ahead from Cajamarca has finally reached the Casa Ciclista in Huaraz. Knowing my gear is waiting for me a few days south takes a significant weight off my mind as I prep for the next leg.
Cookies, Horses, and Tuna Pizza
- As the light began to turn golden, I hit the shops around the plaza to stock up on trail supplies: oats, mandarinas, and more bananas. In one shop, I pointed to a tray of cookies I hadn’t seen before—two biscuits held together by a thick layer of Manjar blanco. The shopkeeper insisted I try one. The tacky stickiness of the Manjar blanco was exactly the kind of high-calorie hit I need for the climbs ahead, so I’ve marked that shop for a return visit tomorrow morning to buy a proper stash.
- While I was chewing on the cookie, a group of local kids started a traditional dance in the street. They were circling a wooden horse, sometimes hoisting it over their heads and parading it around with a chaotic, practiced energy. At one point, a child draped a small cloth over my shoulder. I didn’t realize until later that this was a silent request for a donation for a school event. I eventually made my way back to the pizza place on the plaza for dinner. I wasn’t in the mood for a repeat of yesterday’s order, and they were flexible enough to whip up a custom tuna and onion pizza for me. I finished the night at a different spot for flan and gelatin, watching the town settle into the dark. My lungs feel clear, the bike is ready, and the server is running.
Overnight
I moved into Hospedaje ‘Angie y Joseph’ in Pallasca. The decision was purely tactical; it offered the only reliable WiFi and mobile signal in the area, which was essential for fixing the blog’s server issues and catching up on data entry. Another plus was the desk with a view of the mountains in my room – perfect for laptop labor.
Reflection
A rest day is just a different kind of work; instead of moving the pedals, you’re fixing the systems that allow the pedals to keep moving.