Day 31 Cerro de Pasco to La Oroya

I had not slept very well with a lot of noise outside the room until at least midnight and starting again at 5.30am.  Yesterday had been the third test in a week of riding at altitudes over 4000 metres and I had been lucky each time not to suffer from Altitude Sickness.  Sadly some of the others had, and had either given up at the lunch stop or in the most frustrating case get in the truck, that had gone back out about 1 hour before dark, with only 10K to go to the finish!
So all the riders left this morning feeling very tired from the day before but relieved that this days route would actually end with us being down at about 3700 metres.  We had to climb back out of the town and continue on the road we had left yesterday to get to Cerro de Pasco.  We then started to drop down about 200 hundred metres but this time the rain came early after about 10K and gave us a really good soaking for at least 10 minutes!!  So now cold and wet we continued on a gentle drop until we crossed a plateau at around 4100 metres for 50K.  It was also made harder, apart from our tired legs, by a nagging headwind and also the fact that at these altitudes even taking a drink takes all your breath away!  The lunch truck was a bit before halfway and had parked up in a roadside cafe carpark, the owner happy to have the potential of supplying hungry cyclists with extras to what we would already get from the truck.  It was also a good place to shelter from the cool wind blowing outside.
After lunch we had to gently climb 100 metres before we finally dropped 500 metres in 30K to our destination.  This would have been so much more pleasant if the wind had dropped or become a tailwind, instead we had to pedal downhill most of the time which is something that really annoys cyclists.  I managed on a really long steepish stretch to get up to 67kph, but that would have been much higher without the headwind.  So we had covered just over 132K and were now back down at 3760 metres.