Fresh laundry, a solid sleep, and breakfast with blackberry juice. The fresh juices here are thick, delicious and diverse. On my way out of Baeza there was a police checkpoint – I think they were looking for drugs. Didn’t find any on me though!

I also found a rear spoke broken and my back tire flat. And upon getting out my patch kit, my glue was congealed and useless. Fortunately there happened to be a “vulcanizadora” just down the road from the dairy. Unfortunately the patch isn’t holding 100% but it’s a slow leak and I can just pump it up every few hours.

I arrived at Papallacta and realized that the hotel I’d booked was up another couple kms on a very steep side road. I did some walking. The hotel is pretty amazing, and was worth the extra effort. I chose a place where the hot springs are in the hotel, and there’s a stone thermal water bathtub in my bathroom, and someone came in the evening to light a fire in my fireplace! There’s a couple options of thermal pools inside the hotel courtyard, which are also really clean and delightful, and there aren’t many other guests here. Which seems weird, but I’ll take it! What a glorious reward for my tired legs.

F