{"id":2440,"date":"2026-04-22T19:56:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/?p=2440"},"modified":"2026-04-23T02:10:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:10:34","slug":"day-254-2026-04-18-potholes-and-perol-finding-my-breath-on-the-3n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/2026\/04\/day-254-2026-04-18-potholes-and-perol-finding-my-breath-on-the-3n\/","title":{"rendered":"Day #254 – 2026-04-18 – Potholes and Perol: Finding My Breath on the 3N"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Intro<\/h3>\n

I finally pulled out of Cajabamba at 9:45 AM, my lungs still feeling like they were lined with wet wool after two days of hacking through a cold. The sun was surprisingly aggressive for a mid-April morning, baking the gravel of the 3N into a pale, dusty ribbon that stretched toward the horizon. It was a late start, but with 1,000 meters of climbing ahead, I just needed to see if my chest would actually open up.<\/p>\n

The Slow Tax of the Ascent<\/h3>\n
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  • Just outside the city limits, I hit the first major decision point of the day: a short, steep wall of a climb or a route 1.5 kilometers longer that promised a more gradual grade. Given that I was still clearing my nose every twenty minutes\u2014the mucus finally turning from a dry, scratchy irritation to a slightly more manageable slimy texture\u2014I opted for the long way. Even the ‚gentle‘ slope felt like a heavy tax on my system. I could feel the thin air scratching at the back of my throat, reminding me that Cajabamba hadn’t quite finished with me yet.<\/li>\n
  • About forty-five minutes in, I started a game of leapfrog with a local guy in a tiny, battered lorry. He was collecting old household items for a foundation, pulling into side tracks and farm gates only to rumble past me again five minutes later. The sound of his rattling engine became the morning\u2019s metronome. Every time he passed, the truck gave off a metallic shudder as it hit the ruts, and I\u2019d catch a whiff of old exhaust and sun-warmed plastic. We must have traded places half a dozen times before the grade finally leveled out. It was a slow, rhythmic crawl that suited my recovering pace.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The Advantage of Two Wheels<\/h3>\n
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    • The 3N is supposed to be a major Andean artery, but the surface is a catastrophic wreck. It is a minefield of potholes, some deep enough to swallow a wheel, which probably explains why the traffic was almost non-existent. However, on a loaded touring bike, I found a strange sense of superiority. While the occasional truck had to slow to a literal crawl to negotiate the craters, I could weave through the debris, picking the thin lines of solid earth between the holes. The scenery opened up into valleys that weren’t particularly deep but felt vast in the midday glare.<\/li>\n
    • As the afternoon wore on, the road signs became a recurring joke. They were completely sun-bleached, the yellow and black paint peeled away by years of high-altitude UV rays until they were just blank, silver rectangles. They didn’t warn of sharp turns or speed bumps anymore; they were just textures of flaking metal standing guard over a road that had been largely reclaimed by the mountains. I stopped at a roadside tienda in Chaqilbamba after finding the local restaurants either packed to the rafters or out of food. I sat on a wooden bench with a view of the valley and ate a tin of tuna with a raw, peeled cucumber. It wasn’t the hot meal I wanted, but the crunch of the cucumber was the only thing that felt clean in the dusty heat.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      The Laguna and the Soup<\/h3>\n
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      • The final seven kilometers into Laguna Sausacocha were a complete reversal of the day\u2019s struggle. The road suddenly smoothed out into fresh pavement, and the grade tilted downward. I let the bike run, the wind finally cooling the sweat that had been drying on my skin all afternoon. The Laguna itself played a game of hide-and-seek, tucked behind the folds of the hills until the very last moment when the water appeared, dark and still under the late afternoon light. I rolled into Yuri\u2019s restaurant on the south side of the lake at 6:30 PM, just as the sky was beginning to bruise with purple and orange.<\/li>\n
      • Yuri was there to meet me, and I didn’t even ask about a room. I just needed a place for the tent and something hot. He pointed me toward a carport that was still under construction\u2014a solid roof over a floor of thick, grey dust. After a quick sweep with a borrowed broom to clear a space for my sleeping mat, I headed back to the tables. The Trucha Chilcano arrived steaming\u2014a light, clear fish soup that felt like it was physically scrubbing the last of the cold out of my chest. My mood, which had been flat and tired for most of the ride, finally shifted. The soup was salty, hot, and exactly what my lungs needed to stop their whistling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Overnight<\/h3>\n

        I camped in a dusty, under-construction carport at Yuri\u2019s restaurant. It required some aggressive sweeping to make it habitable, but the solid roof provided a sense of security against the mountain night, and the proximity to a hot bowl of fish soup made the dust irrelevant.<\/p>\n

        Reflection<\/h3>\n

        The 3N is a road in name only, but a bicycle is the only vehicle that can actually maintain a rhythm through its craters.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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        Route summary<\/h2>\n
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        • Date: 2026-04-18<\/li>\n
        • Distance: 43.05 km<\/li>\n
        • Elevation gain: 989 m<\/li>\n
        • Elevation loss: 477 m<\/li>\n
        • Duration: 9 h 7 min<\/li>\n
        • Time in Motion: N\/A<\/li>\n
        • Average Speed: N\/A<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n
          \n \n <\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Intro I finally pulled out of Cajabamba at 9:45 AM, my lungs still feeling like they were lined with wet wool after two days of hacking through a cold. The sun was surprisingly aggressive for a mid-April morning, baking the gravel of the 3N into a pale, dusty ribbon that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441,"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions\/2441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spokesandshoes.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}