Day 35 - Childbirth

Santa Maria to the middle of (insert swear word) nowhere (80km) Thursday 22nd September


As well as my strange obsession with daily travel journals, the reason I wanted to write this blog was to give a more realistic view of the cycle touring highs and lows. So many blogs out there scream how wonderful the place/trip/cycling/food/mountains/kit ( You name it) is, but the reality is of course slightly different. I suppose like childbirth, with time you forget the horrible bits that make you scream and throw rocks at the road and just remember the awesome accomplishment and beautiful scenery, so for me it's important to record the days as they pass.
Today was a day that needed time before I could even bring myself to reflect on it! For a good 24hours post event all I could come up with was a sentence that involved a LOT of swearing and something about going home. But time has passed and rose tinted glasses have been found, so here's my attempt at recording today...
It sucked... It sucked big time!
From the start my head was down (I think I needed food), and I was struggling to see the good in anything (sever case of hanger). After a few pastries and a sandwich early on I lifted my spirits enough to match the gleaming optimism of Ant and we cycled through the first 30km of small towns and villages, chatting away and watching the lunch places pass (another 10km under the belt then we can stop).
The scenery was nothing to shout about but a world away from ugly; desert, sandy, mountains but still trees initially.  As what we would later realise was our final lunch opportunity (shabby little unappealing hut advertising sandwiches that we contemplated stopping for but held out for better) came and went, so did the trees and signs of life (except bugs and the occasional bird).
We were cycling along a river (dried up of course) with sand dunes on our left and mountains on our right...  Cue Stealers Wheel. This was still nothing too bad. We'd picked up enough supplies for lunch from the bakers this morning so could eat those, its just nice to have food in reserve... Just in case and all...
We had to climb a hill to get out the valley and onto the plain that would yield 50km of flat for us to plug on through, before the promise of hot springs and a camp site (which may or may not have supplies).
It was this 40km where the labour started... A head wind like no other head wind struck us. I don't think either of us has ever fought so hard to cycle at 6km/h, even up a hill. At times the wind was so strong it would almost bring us to a standstill and leave us gritting our teeth.
As we ground our way along at snail's pace knowing the only way was forwards as there was literally nothing behind us except hills for over 10km and definitely nothing ahead for at least another 40km, things just got worse. We'd never cycled through a sand storm before and to be honest I think neither of our lives would have felt empty if we hadn't been blessed with this experience.
It was horrible.
Sand hitting you at what was probably 50km/h with every gust, wind stopping you dead, scenery disappearing into a sandy mist in all directions. The speed we were travelling at was akin to cycling up a 6-7% gradient for 5 hours.
I can't even begin to describe the feeling of knowing you have another 30km ahead, knowing your legs are at their wits end, knowing your mind is going to lose every ounce of positivity soon, knowing that those last few bits of positivity are the things that are keeping your legs turning, knowing that you probably don't have enough water to wild camp and shelter it out and even if you did, getting the tent up would be impossible, knowing that you're both suffering but looking to each other for anything positive to cling on to, knowing that at the very least you would be reminded of this for weeks when you find more blasted sand that had somehow worked its way through the panniers and inside the camera case?!!
By this point we were taking it in turns to lead the way, the other one sheltering in the draft to get a little rest (Ant later told me he was giving me 2minutes on the front each time because he'd worked out it was about 30s longer than he needed to recover and about 30s shorter than it would take for me to blow up physically and mentally!). The km markers on the side of the road seemed to take an age to show themselves... Would 4200 ever go away? (Routa 40 counts down all the way to Tierra del Fuego). After about 10minutes we could rejoice... 4199... It was insane how long it took for one measly km to pass. I remember thinking it seemed impossible that we would ever get to the next big town at just under 4100, our original goal for tomorrow (and a town named 'Belen'...by this point I'd taken to adding a 'D'... He he he).
We were stopping every now and then to give our heads a rest... They needed the recharge much more than our legs... And try out a new mantra... For Ant: "if I can run 100 miles I can cycle another 20km into this"; for me: "one more step along the road I go, one more step along the road I go..." sang in its entirety, on repeat, in my head (Ant is thankful for this!), with each pedal stroke as my metronome. I'd found my mantra only worked for limited repeats at a time and was interspersed with exhaustion and hunger driven anger followed by tears... Many many tears (note tears, sand and not much water not an ideal combination!). Ant just reminded me of the (now hilarious) moment I threw down my bike grabbed the nearest rock an hurled it into the distance telling the wind to just "fucking fuck off".
In the 30km we cycled, we saw only two shacks that almost resembled houses. One of them actually had people in it (on horses rounding up cows, sheep and goats... Where did these animals come from and why do they live HERE?!!) who were thankfully kind enough to give us water, though just like every pick up we'd attempted to flag down, were equally uninterested in our plight and happy to let us battle on through.
Was it in our heads or was the wind easing slightly? It was still hell, but we were now sometimes travelling at nearly 10km/h and not quite getting pushed to a stand still. There was a distinct possibility. Perhaps, we thought, this was one if those winds that would ease up after sun down... (we'd later realise we were wrong!)... So when we finally turned left of the ridiculously long straight road, but still into a head wind (you try and work that one out!) and still 20km short of the next dwelling (likely 3hours away at this speed) our aim was to keep cycling into the dark and hope it eased.
About 10 minutes after we'd agreed this plan a huge just of wind crashed me mentally and I started to talk of finding a camp spot here and continuing our suffering in the morning... I just wasn't sure I could take any more. About another 10minutes and what felt like 10mm up the road, and Ant was in the sane head space. "fuck it, its not going to be fun but I'm fed up too, it's probably sensible to stop".
So we started to hunt for a sheltered spot in a very unsheltered area. There was a slight upward slope in the road and a few bushes that promised a little let up, and we even found some sandy patch hard enough to peg out the tent.
Our home made, our bellies empty, we ate what was left in our food bag (a couple of pasteries, two day old blue cheese that we wrapped in tortillas, plain tortillas once the cheese ran out, and a handful of crisps) and snuggled down for the night, listening to the wind very much NOT letting up, and mentally preparing for the next two days of doom (figured it would take us that long to get to Belen(d) now).
Remember this is my version after 48hours so the actual events were probably a lot worse!!!