Intro
The morning in Lima arrived with an overcast, leaden sky that seemed to press the humidity right into the floorboards of the Casa Ciclista. There was no rhythmic clicking of a derailleur today, just the static gray light of the coast and a paved street outside that I had no intention of riding.
The Whir of the Digital Backlog
- I spent the better part of the morning hunched over a wooden table, my back protesting the lack of a saddle. The air here is a thick, humid soup that makes everything feel slightly damp, including my keyboard. For hours, the only sound in the room was the high-pitched whir of my laptop fan, struggling against the heat to process the photos and text I’ve been hoarding since Huayllay. It is a strange kind of exhaustion, sitting still while your mind retraces a thousand kilometers of gravel and thin oxygen.
- I managed to hammer out ten blog posts in a single sitting, a massive digital housekeeping session that felt as heavy as any mountain pass. There is a specific, jagged satisfaction in hitting the ‘publish’ button and watching the progress bar crawl across the screen. I updated the route map, tracing the line from the high Andean plateaus down to this sea-level sprawl. Seeing the elevation profile laid out in pixels made my knees ache in sympathy for the person I was three days ago. By noon, the digital clutter was cleared, leaving me with a clean slate and a buzzing head.
The Gritty Reality of the Two Heaps
- After lunch, I moved from the table to the floor to begin the ‘Two Heaps’ audit. This is the unglamorous part of the expedition’s first parts end—the partitioning of a life lived out of four bags. The floor of my room is now a border zone. On the left, the Germany pile: electronics, the good down jacket, and the few clean clothes I have left. On the right, the Lima storage pile: the heavy-duty tools, the spare tires, and the camping gear that doesn’t need to cross the Atlantic.
- As I sorted, I kept catching the gritty salt-film texture on the outer skin of my panniers. It’s a rough, sandpaper-like residue left over from the coastal mist and the sweat of the final descent into Callao. It gets under my fingernails and reminds me that these bags have been through more than I have. I spent an hour scrubbing them down before packing the storage bags. There is a strange finality in zipping a bag and knowing you won’t see its contents for a month. The room looks like a disaster zone, but the piles represent a plan, and the plan is the only thing keeping the post-ride jitters at bay.
Carbs on Carbs at the Casa Ciclista
- By 8:00 PM, the light had completely died behind the Lima fog. Fernando, the landlord and unofficial patron saint of passing cyclists, poked his head in and suggested a run to the local supermercado. Walking through the aisles felt surreal after a week of roadside stalls and mountain kiosks. The yeasty, warm scent of the bakery section was overwhelming, a thick cloud of flour and sugar that made my stomach growl instantly. We loaded up on pasta, cream cheese, and a bag of fresh ciabatta rolls that were still warm to the touch.
- Back at the Casa, we cooked up a massive pot of spaghetti drowned in a heavy cream cheese sauce with diced tomatoes. It was a white-on-white meal, devoid of anything green, exactly what a body wants after a week of exertion. I watched Fernando with genuine curiosity as he prepared his plate. He didn’t just eat the bread on the side; he sliced the ciabatta open and used the spaghetti as a topping, creating a starch-heavy sandwich that defied every nutritional logic I grew up with. Carbs on carbs. I followed suit, pressing the creamy noodles into the bread. It was heavy, efficient, and exactly the kind of cultural quirk that makes sense only when you’re sitting in a kitchen full of bike frames and half-packed bags.
Overnight
I’m staying at the Casa Ciclista in Lima, a legendary hub for international cyclists run by Fernando. It’s a place where the walls are lined with maps and the floor is always covered in someone’s gear.
Reflection
The physical labor of packing and the mental weight of digital chores are just as draining as a headwind on a mountain pass.