Desafío Sapucai

So unbeknownst to me at the time (a few weeks ago) I signed on to one of the most difficult bicycle races in Paraguay: Desafiío Sapucai. As in I thought we were going to be taking a little paseo through the campo. Which is definitely not what happened. What did happen I will document below. 

Tio Felix from Asuncion came to visit a few weeks ago, and very kindly offered to let me tag along with him and his friends on a bike race. Of course I took advantage of this opportunity which is how I found myself waking up at 5.30am in Asuncion this past Saturday to drive out to Paraguari (a city about two hours outside of Asuncion) and bike up and across and down a mountain. 

At 10.00am the race started (just when the Paraguayan sun is starting to turn on full blast- later I learned that it was around 105 degrees when we were racing- and it wasn't until 2.00pm that I finally, finally finished. A very anti-climatic finish, might I add. This guy holding a clip board was like, You're done. And I was like, Really? That's it? Because I felt like I'd just finished biking to the moon and back.

Basically the beginning was a cliff. Just barely less than a cliff. I thought Tio Felix was exaggerating about the mountains, because until then I had seen no sign of any hill, let alone a mountain in Paraguay. The closest things we have to mountains here in Pilar are speed bumps. But Tio Felix was definitely not exaggerating because I ended up pushing my bike up this ginormous, incredibly bumpy, and rocky path  which took about 40 minutes, even though I'm fairly sure it was no more than a mile, because when I tried to bike my wheels wouldn't grab the ground and I just kind of bounced and treaded dirt. That's how steep it was.

After that initial bit it got less vertically challenging. I think we were more or less on top of a mountain, except there were all these rolling hills and strategically placed and very aesthetically pleasing sheep and other quaint country animals. It reminded me of Hawaii a bit. Partly because of the scenery, partly because of the SAND that was EVERYWHERE. After practically crashing (I was going down this tiny, tiny hill and then my wheel got stuck in some sand and WHOMP, just barely avoided a major side scraping) I learned that the best way to bike through sand was not not bike through sand at all. I probably ended up walking my bike around eight miles because of the excessive amounts of sand. 

And I have yet again another example of Paraguayan time. About two hours in I asked how much longer. "En seguida, un ratito!" I was told. Ok. Forty-five minutes later I was still pedaling.. 1.00 and there were still no signs of any finish. And then another half an hour. And then another half hour. I kept on asking the few fellow bikers I had how much longer, and their response was always, Un ratito. You'd think by now I'd have learned that un ratito does not mean 15 minutes. In this case it meant two hours. But I was like, come on people, 15 kilometers in (15 more to go) and you're telling me we're going to finish in "un ratito" ??? No. I guess it was to my advantage, in the end, because I went the entire second half of the race with the false hope that the end was near.

Then we finished the race at the same place we began so I rode the breaks four about 12 minutes, all the way down the hill and finished. And drove back to Asuncion and I ended up taking an 11.30pm bus back to Pilar on with the sketchy bus company all by myself but that is a different story.

One last thing before I post the pictures. Among the cute farm animals were cows. Dumb cows. Cows that would just stand in the path while you were pushing your sweat slicked bike through death sand. And they'd just be all like, Moooooooo. wifjsdfaskljflksdn BAD COWS

POST RACE with the fake gold medal that I am never, ever, ever parting with.

Looks easy? THINK AGAIN.

Flora, Tio, one of the Tio's friends who went with us.