May 10, 2016
Road Report: km562 to km647.
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The sky is clear blue and sunny. Such a relief from battleship grey of yesterday.
Not much to add except there are disused railway lines to the side most of the way today. Perhaps this is how route 5 began. The railway was built around 1900 and a way for wagons was cleared alongside. And in time a continuous track developed used by motorcars and trucks, which led to improvements until it could be called a proper road.
Nowadays the trains no longer run and the road is in the process of being extended to dual-carriageway. Most of which is completed. There is one section on from where I'd camped, passing a mining village, at which point the traffic filters back to a single lane either direction, no central reservation road, where to the side there is the hum of dumper-trucks and hammering of excavators and a lot of dust from a second carriageway being built. But this is only for a few kilometres until I'm back on recently constructed wide shouldered dual-carriageway. The riding is near enough effortless, even though steadily uphill through a narrow valley all morning, steepening to a serious climb out of the valley where the gradient has been greatly reduced by the use of long switch-backs zip-zagging up a mountainside.
Lunch after a few kilometres of gradual descent the other side, as it would be for most days ahead on 5, is at a "posada". A family run roadside café serving a menu of the day, usually a soup starter, meat and mix salad, rice or potatoes main course and costing 3500 pesos (£3.50): a price that couldn't buy the ingredients in a supermercado, and mainly used by truck drivers.
Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 9,238 km (5,737 miles)
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