The Day My World Colapses: lakeside to maizefield campsite

August 22, 2016

Today would end in uncertainly. Doubt in whether I'll be able to continue this tour beyond the city of Santa Cruz. This evening camped in a big maize field with about 69km remaining to said city tomorrow. Though it'll be touch and go if I make it there cycling.

By contrast the day starts so wonderfully, waking up where I'd camped near a lake with such varied birdsong.

Out of the sleeping-bag at quarter to seven. Breakfast, mat-tee, again. About the only thing decent, there being such a dearth of variety in shops. There's no such thing as real muesli, for instants. If you do find cereal, it'll be the extremely sugary type. Though you may find porridge oats. Anyhow, I'm glad to have mat-tee, being almost a meal on it's own.

I'm on the road for half eight. The same as yesterday, namely carefree bowling along on a good surface. Though not far on come a bit of a climb over a range of hills rearing up from the opposite lakeshore from where I'd camped.

About ten o'clock I reach a village, a long stretch where the road has shops, shops and shops along either side; two or three selling cloths, oh and there is a residencia (guesthouse), but all the rest sell only sugary soft drinks and crisps to passing cars and trucks. I pick up my daily 2L bottle of coke here and take a rest while drinking some sat on a bench in a tree shaded central reservation.

Just to the west of this village is a great range of jungle clad hills, which would be the last hills I'd see for a while, as going on, the hills would be behind me with a wide, dead level green horizon ahead covered with a thicket of low growing bushes. I suppose this is the Chaco: the level centre of South America, where temperatures can get up and beyond 50 degrees centigrade in Summer. The hot lowlands of eastern Bolivia and western Paraguay. The two countries had a border war over the region in the 1930s because it was thought to have huge oil reserves; during which more men died of thirst, insect borne tropical diseases and snakebite than in actual combat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_War

Further on much land has been cleared for cattle pasture estancias, or "Haciendas" as they're called here.

I reach another village of roadside eating-places at 12.30, and select the smartest looking one to stop to lunch at. Los Simpsons are on the TV-screen as I tuck into a soup starter. I laugh when Bard goes into a shop and sees a "Banned For Life" notice on the wall above mugshot-photos of people. I wonder what terrible act got them banned for life.

The woman of the place gives me the usual curious 20 questions, including, where do I sleep at night? I answer, pensions. She then goes on to say it's dangerous at night. "Oh?" I reply shocked. There are lots of road accidents.

Only 20 minutes on from my lunch stop, there's that familiar heaviness in the front wheel when steering. Another puncture. I make it to a kilometre marker post in the grass verge to lean the bike against while repairing it. The inner-tube fails to inflate when I pump it, whatever caused the puncture, the air's escaping too fast. I cannot inflate it in order to find a hole to patch, so have to resort to putting in my last reliable inner-tube, one of two spares, the other has a mysterious leak of air, thereby staying up (inflated) no time.

Where I punctured couldn't have been more untimely, with absolutely no shade to repair it, though what could I do.

The day rolls on a little less carefree than before, as I've been having an awful lot of front wheel punctures lately and I hope not to have yet another. Nevertheless, the tube I'd put in which had been repaired previously was holding and so the fear of another puncture dissipated as the afternoon wore on.

Later with an hour left before having to look for somewhere to camp, making good progress and thinking I'll have a short easy day to Santa Cruz in the morning, there's a sudden soft thump sound from the rear-wheel, followed by a continuous knock with each revolution of the wheel. I stop immediately, realising quickly the knock is the rim hitting the brake-pad, but know a spoke hasn't broken, because the initial thump sound would've been loud and abrupt. Then wheeling the bike slowly forward while looking at the rear wheel turn, see there's a bulge in the rim touching the brake-pad as I thought. The rim's splayed out; split due to too much braking wear.

There's a feeling that my world has collapsed, but I don't linger; instead, I open up the rear brake caliper so the bulge in the rim doesn't knock and let some pressure out of the rear tyre, to lessen the strain on the split rim, so I can keep riding, hoping I'll be able to do so to the city and be able to do something with it when I get there.

Though I only ride a few kilometres more when I come to a big field where a crop of maize had been harvested. There's an open gap in a thick hedge along the roadside front of the field, so once through the gap I am out of sight. There's no houses for kilometres around. Nevertheless, wanting to be away from the traffic noise, I start to push the bike away across the field following between two rows of maize stubble, about a dozen rows out from a hedgerow field-boundary running off at a right-angle from the frontal hedge, giving me cover from sight of passing vehicles once out across the field. The soil is loose loam, ie, a mix of sand and fine clay, which the wheels sinks into making it heavy going. I keep going for about a kilometre and a half, about a mile when I reach where the hedge swings out in a grove of thorns, along which is a level margin free of stubble where I pitch the tent.

So here I am this evening, feeling a bit low, hoping the bike will carry me to Santa Cruz tomorrow, with two-million inhabitants, there's got to be a bike shop. Other than that I'll have to order a new rim online.

Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 12,587 km (7,817 miles)

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