Whoppers

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A rest day. AT LAST! I´m a wee bit knackered again, but in a wholesome sort of way. I finally said ta ta to Highway 5 on Thursday (via a sign to Inspector Fernandez) and headed west on an infinitely more interesting road and I´m in the Lake District. Less trucks and getting towards the hills again. I´ve had a couple more secret campings and more ´ripio´gravel roads, slowing me right back down and giving me a puncture, but they´ve got kids drawing type mountains, perfect cones with snow on them and the one closest to me now even blows smoke out of its lid. Its supposed to be a great climb up to the crater and a slide back down through the snow on your backside, but I know I´m not going to bother. Cycling dampens the athletic spirit for extraneous activities. I´m up past 3000 km for the trip now and am officially dead hard and mostly smelly. The route around the mountains has been chock full of monkey puzzle trees and random horses dotted about. My daily thoughts dwell on when I can eat/drink/stop/sleep/avoid falling off and as such avoid much in the way of creative or finer matter, which I´m a bit miffed by, but hey ho. And I´m still misjudging the scale of where I am. It took me 3 days longer than I expected to arrive here, for example, and a day to realise what I thought was 30 km on the map was nearer 70. Hence some of the secret camping. Anyway, I anticipate things will continue along a similar vein for a while as I need to ´pop´back across the Andes in the next day or so to see if the new tyres I ordered from England a month ago are at the hostel I addressed them to in Argentina, before crossing back again to continue south. If I had followed the advice of the bike shop in the first place none of this would now be happening........ Siesta, pasta and wine beckon later. Chau chau.

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