Day 56: Ica to Nazca

It’s useless to quantify my sleep or put a number on the times I woke up to go to the bathroom. My night exists as a fever dream. There were times that I fell asleep on the toilet, there were times when I fell asleep on the bathroom floor, and there were times when I fell asleep in my bed. My bedroom and bathroom were both quite cramped. There was a small step down from my bathroom into the bedroom, which doesn’t quite make sense because you would think you would want the bathroom to be lower than the bedroom in case of some sort of septic overflow. Anyway, that’s completely beside the point. Every time I woke up to go to the bathroom, I would stumble half asleep to the toilet. I would try not to open my eyes and I would stumble back into bed with my eyes shut. Every time, without fail, I would forget about the little step down from the bathroom until my foot was falling through the air when it was expecting to meet tile. Mid fall I would remember to curl up and lean forward so I could strategically land on my bed and splay out. By early morning, it was muscle memory that I would just fall into bed coming out of the bathroom. I think I finally fell asleep for an extended period of time at around 5 AM because I could hear the roosters crowing and the sky above the bathroom window looked to be lighting up just a little bit. I woke back up at 8 o’clock. I tried to open my eyes, but everything was crossed. My head spun and my muscles ached from all the cramps. My mouth hurt and my throat ached from all the acidic bile. I drank some water at my bedside, but all I tasted was vomit. I rolled over and went back to bed. For the first time in 56 days, I didn’t care about the time. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get out of bed at all today. I was worried that I would have to take a zero-day. I went back to sleep and woke up a little bit before 10. I didn’t feel any better. As I walked around the room everything was spinning. I figured that at the very least I should get out of the hotel and go look for some medicine. If I was going to leave the hotel and go to the pharmacy then I might as well go to a pharmacy to the south, so I could make a little bit of progress. I kitted up and got on my bike. It took me about five minutes to walk down the two flights of stairs because I felt so weak and dizzy. It was like walking on the deck of a ship being tossed around in the middle of a violent storm. I found a pharmacy and got some Imodium, Zofran, and something else that the pharmacist recommended. I’m not super sure what she gave me, but she told me to take it immediately and then wait five minutes before taking the other two. Most people in Central and South America go to a pharmacist before a doctor. It’s much cheaper to explain your ailments to the pharmacist and then have the pharmacist give you something than it is to go to the doctor just for him to charge you and tell you to get the same thing. Since you don’t need prescriptions for anything, there’s not much of a point in going to a doctor for simple illnesses. Thus, the pharmacists here are usually quite knowledgeable, even though I’m sure they haven’t really been trained that formally. This lady was very nice and very understanding. I didn’t know how to explain all of my afflictions, but I bet my illness isn’t that uncommon for tourists in this part of Peru—not that there are tons of tourists here—and she seemed to have quite a good grasp on how I was feeling. I took the medicine right on her stoop, then got back on my bike and kept going south.

I biked for about 10 minutes before the world began to tilt upside down and I felt like I had to stop. Everything still hurt and I had to go to the bathroom again. I hadn’t eaten—or at least I hadn’t kept anything down—in about 20 hours so I decided to try a little bit of ice cream since that is my go-to and comfort food. I was feeling pretty hollow, so I also got a protein shake and two electrolyte drinks to try to start replenishing my stocks. I sat on the curb and broke into my ice cream. The cold felt good on the roof of my mouth, but I was still dizzy, so I laid back on the sidewalk and splayed out. I laid there for about 30 minutes, periodically munching on my ice cream and taking small sips of my drinks. Eventually my head started to feel a little bit better so I forced myself back on the bike. I figured that at the very worst I would just stop at the next gas station 5 miles down the road. Perhaps my fate for the day was just to go on an ice cream, electrolyte tour of gas stations in southern Peru, stopping at every possible gas station, eating and drinking, a little, throwing up en route to the next gas station, then repeating the process all over. Thankfully, that was not to be my fate. I began to feel a little bit better hour by hour. I still felt drained and weak throughout the day, but my head slowly began to return to normal, which was honestly the worst part of my sickness. I threw up a time or two, but by early afternoon I was pretty sure I was done throwing up. It was only 28 hours after the first time I’d thrown up, but it felt like whatever sickness I had was running its course. It’s going to take me several days to get back to where I want to be, maybe even a week to catch back up on my sleep. To be honest, I probably won’t fully recover from this before I finish. I’m not going to give myself enough time to recover, and that’s by design. I want to push myself as hard as possible from here to Argentina.

I genuinely don’t remember much of the day. I was feeling a little bit better in the afternoon, but I was starting pretty close to rock bottom so better is a good start, but still pretty grim. I just stared at my legs and the white line as I biked under the pounding sun. I do remember some pretty steep hills in the late afternoon. I was glad to see some mountains again since the section from Lima to Ica was pretty miserable and flat and boring.

At around two, I had stopped to eat a banana and an hour and a half later, I hadn’t thrown up. I was feeling ravenous, and my body was starting to get tired since there was absolutely nothing in terms of fuel for it to run off. I had completely purged all the digestible calories out of my body. When I came into a small town with a string of nice open-air restaurants right on the roadside, I knew I had to stop. Even though it was almost 4 o’clock, I hadn’t been riding that long. I knew it had been slow going and I knew that my mileage was well under 100 even this late in the day. I also knew that if I didn’t stop to eat real food, I would eventually break down again. I told the waiter to cook me her favorite dish, but absolutely no spice. That’s not what I needed in my stomach. I also made sure to be very clear that the dish was to have no tapwater and no produce of any sort that had been washed with tapwater. She seemed to understand why I was so adamant about the water, so she kind of laughed and promised to give me something good. Indeed, she did well. 10 minutes later, she came out with a lomo saltado, complete with cooked veggies and rice. I haven’t had good tomatoes and onions in longer than I can remember, and they were dripping in the sauce from the lomo. It was absolutely magnificent. My stomach was very happy to have some real food in it once again.

I rode out of town and up a climb into the area that is home to the Nazca lines. I went to plug in my earbuds for the first time since last night, but they wouldn’t work. I don’t know if their time had finally come, or if the mixture of my vomit and tears had aided their demise, but either way, they were dead. Not having earbuds is a pretty big blow for me. One of the things I look forward to the most, and one of the things that I would say grounds me the most are the calls that I have with my friends and family. Without earbuds, I can’t take calls on the bike. I of course can pull over and take a call, but it’s often difficult to coordinate schedules and planning ahead is nearly impossible because I never know when or where I’ll be or have service. When I’m on the bike I am much more flexible. The ability to call people makes me feel much less isolated and it really helps me work through a lot of my thoughts. Sometimes I’ll be on the phone with people for 30 minutes or an hour so I can’t just stop and waste that much time. My phone calls will have to be less regular and much shorter from now on. Perhaps just as big of a hit as not being able to take phone calls is that I can now no longer listen to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. I already have plenty of time to think out here, I don’t really savor the idea of having nothing to listen to, or think about other than my own thoughts in my head for 16 hours a day every single day. I like riding in silence for a couple of hours each day, but it gets really boring and mentally challenging to ride in silence all day, day after day. In addition, especially as I become more sleep deprived, my earbuds are a lifeline of safety. Listening to people talk in audiobooks or podcasts keeps me alert when I start to zone out. In past endurance events when I found myself pushing on through the night, podcasts are the best remedy I have found for my sleep deprivation. As I get into the last weeks of my journey, I’m going to push myself with less and less sleep, so not having my earbuds as a crutch to lean on against sleep deprivation will come back to bite me. Hopefully, I can find a pair in a big city somewhere. I have very little faith though. It’s incredibly hard to find earbuds in South America and earbuds with a lightning adapter that is compatible with Apple phones are nearly impossible to come by.

The Nazca lines were just a kilometer or two off the road to my right. I knew the hummingbird was right there, but as I looked across the desert I couldn’t see anything. I crested a climb and passed a roadside observation tower. I stopped because I figured it might be worth a quick glance. I’ll probably never be back to this section of Peru so today was my time to see the lines if I wanted to. When I found out that I had to pay to climb the tower, I just jumped back on my bike and kept riding. I knew that even from the top of this little tower, I wouldn’t be able to see much. The sun was about to set. My mileage was adismally low. The last thing I needed to be doing was climbing multiple flights of stairs, and increasing my stoppage time.

I have so many questions about these lines. I remember reading about them in National Geographic as a kid, but I don’t remember much of what I read. It is unbelievably desolate in the area where they decided to make these drawings. I assume these images have some sort of religious significance because I have no idea why else an entire society would decide to move around rocks for so long. People always talk about it being impressive that the shapes are so well drawn out. What I find impressive is that the Nazcans had the time and resources to play with rocks. This is one of the most desolate and harsh landscapes that I have ever seen. Nothing grows here. I have no idea how people were able to survive in this region, much less find the time to draw monkeys and hummingbirds, and all sorts of things in the rocks. Taking time to invest in the arts is a luxury that only the most stable societies can afford, so the Nazcans truly show incredible resilience and stability just by virtue of their attempts to draw in the earth.

It was dark when I entered the town of Nazca. I was pretty bummed to be in Nazca. I remember looking at the map a couple of days ago and I knew that Ica and Nazca were not far apart. On a normal day, Nazca would’ve been my breakfast stop, not my destination. The silver lining was, that I felt much better, and I had the opportunity to get a good night's sleep. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep longer than seven hours, but I knew I was bound to have a quality seven hours of sleep.