Finally, I can honestly say that we enjoyed absolutely everything about today, this is what our cycle touring dreams are made of.
Ok so the breakfast place I'd hung all my hopes on didn't actually open at 9am (and was still fully shut at gone 10 when we finally left), but we found very tasty pastries in a local bakers, and were on the road soon enough.
And what a road it was! Fairly quiet, and FLAT! Surrounded by mountains to still provide the amazing beautiful scenery that we've been spoilt with. We had enough energy to chat away all morning (all day in fact!) and came across another cycle tourist from Columbia, travelling from Puno to Lima, great to stop and have a quick chat.
The first 50km were absolute heaven, we travelled at over 20km/h for most of it and even got up as high as 35km/h at one point! Glancing around at the beautiful mountains all around us (we were clearly in a plateau) and really enjoying everything. The scenery, the cycling, the ability to chat, the relative lack of traffic, the llamas who appeared every now and then, the smiles and waves we got from the traffic that passed, the wide margins they gave us when they passed, and the speed that we could easily travel at and actually make progress on the smoothest tarmac ever!
We then turned off the main road for the last 26km towards Lampa. All we knew about this road was that it took us to our destination, climbed high then descended into the town. We had no idea if it would be gravel, tarmacked, well kept, busy etc. Turned out it was even smoother tarmac, newly laid probably, we were pretty much the only people on the road except the odd group of children on bikes riding home from school (and super excited to see us!), many many llamas, the cutest llamas ever (this led to a discussion about which are our favourites, llamas or alpacas, and made us revise our previously formed decision that alpacas win... Not so sure now!), and all of this made for an amazingly tranquil and pleasant first 5km of the climb. We even had enough puff to sing! Then the road turned steeper and limited our vocal ability, but strangely we were both really enjoying the challenge of the climb and ever so grateful for the lack of gravel!
If the climb was peaceful and beautiful, the descent was flowing, fast, but gradual enough to barely touch the breaks and simply sail around the corners. My favourite part was when the mountains opened up to reveal a glorious view of the entire wide valley and it looked like our road simply dropped of the end... Of course it didn't, but it really was spectacular! Then the last few km rolling into town and we had our standard apprehension.
Will there be hotels, will we get hot water, will anywhere be open. Yes yes and yes.
A lovely little hotel with feather duvets (OMG!), a super lovely owner (who's gonna cook us breakfast in the morning!!!!) and hot water.
The town itself is a really cute old colonial centre. It has a glorious church and square and some beautiful paving in the main street. The roof tiles look about 300years old and are an architectural work of art! Everyone seems extremely friendly (even the lady who Ant was about to buy milk from told him not to buy it as you can't drink it without heating it up... Should have seen his sad little face! He thought he was getting choco ball cereal this evening, bless him!). But we do have a tin of condensed milk, could be a new culinary delight.
We found our new favourite beer in the shops, and enjoyed three portions of chicken and chips for supper (accompanied by some nutritional and flavoursome green soup).
What a fantastic day! Literally, the best day ever. Tomorrow, you have a lot to live up to!
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