Soft Tyre: first puncture in months

August 16, 2016

I didn't sleep too well, the tent on hard ground. At one point I awoke with a start, someone or thing having violently thumped the top of the tent, sounding like a large rodent running over the top.

This morning I've just packed up the tent and am fixing it on the back of the bike, when along come an indigenes woman and two daughters, the youngest a girl of four with a bad cough. We greet each other and she asks me in an amical manner, did I sleep here. I reply yes. Was it not cold? No. Where am I from? etc.

I catch them up just as they've reached the road above where a collectivo (bus) will pick them up. I say goodbye and she returns the gesture and wishes me a safe journey. Simultaneously, or barely a moment later, I hear a loud fart. Maybe a further politeness, who knows?

The way would drop down through the gap, left of centre.

The road climbs a little further before dropping steeply down into the usual hole between hills to climb again: this time cresting the hill to descend to the town of Tarabuca, a popular Sunday market where backpackers and tourists come on excursions from Sucre to see the locals sell things, and maybe buy a craftwork souvenir, but today fairly deserted. I fill up on water at the petrol station out by the main road, then head into town on the bumpy cobblestone street to find supplies for the day.

The shops all front rooms of dwelling houses stacked with sugary soft drinks, crisps and junk food generally, with nothing of nutritional valve. Though at least my blood sugars will be kept high, as I manage to buy a 2L bottle of coke at one place, also bread from a woman sitting on the street selling stuff.

The road onward stretch out across a plateau plain for the first ten kilometres, followed by the rest of the morning steep descending. It feels good to effortlessly pedal again.

I reach Zuclanes about 1pm. This is a better town than Tarabuca, there being lots of roadside eating places, where I have soup at one place, then buy a load of fruit at a stall.

By this time the temperature is getting up, not helped by the road onwards being a stifling climb in the open. Its difficult finding anywhere to stop in shade, but a few kilometres away from town, I push the bike in off the road underneath a thorn bush, where I sit down for over half an hour.

I remain until after three. Then on the push back to the road I notice how there's cactus growing along the ground just about everywhere, the thorns of which make me worry for my tyres. For sure as I start riding, climbing further up the hill, the front tyre feels sluggish, soft when I turn the handlebars. Then cresting the hill the rim begins bumping on the road. I've a puncture and make it to a crash-barrier, providing a smidgen of shade, where I lean the bike to do a repair.

I find and patch two holes, put the inner-tube back in the tyre and pump the wheel up hard. But, three kilometres further downhill, the front tyre is soft yet again, so I put a spare tube in, pump it up hard and continue.

I ride for another half hour, by which time it's coming up on five, time to look out for a campsite. Not hard as I'm on a section of recently straighten road, cut through hillsides, with old road loops curving off the newer road, out of sight round the hill to rejoin the newer road a couple hundred metres further.

Old road loop: a common campsite option.

Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 12,157 km (7,549 miles)

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