What happened…

Andrew writes: Waking up this morning, sipping my coffee, and looking out over the river and various other green bits of the valley I kept thinking to myself that this would be a nice place to put a house…and then I finished my coffee and started to ride back to the coast, and to the Pacific Ocean which I hadn’t seen in over a month. There was a “surprise” climb to start the day. I spent it talking to my Mom on the phone since it is Mother’s Day. It was a nice conversation, and a great way to spend the climb. Fortunately it was in the shade, and after my call with Mom, having reached the top, I sat and read my book waiting for Amanda. Then it was down, down, down, once again; definitely a regular occurrence these past few days. In fact, I had expected to be able to coast all the way down to the water, but was surprised when we hit some foothills about 15km out of town. So we lunched in Limon, and ended up chatting with some of the good old boys, who had finished playing soccer earlier in the day and were enjoying some early afternoon cervezas. Well, actually, I talked to the guys, and glancing over at Amanda, saw she was talking with a couple of young girls, and their mom. That seems to be the way of it here, guys with guys and gals with gals.

Upon reaching Puerto Escondido, I had some trouble getting ahold of our Warmshowers host on the phone, but we found his house; except it didn’t appear that anyone was home. We had a neighbour downstairs let us into the compound and when I knocked on the door to his upstairs apartment, it was answered by a sleepy looking man clad only in his boxer shorts. Zach is a cycle tourist, just like us. He and his friend Yusuke are from San Francisco and are heading south, also like us. They’ve spent the last few days here in P.E. recovering from typhoid. Ick. “I hope it isn’t contagious”, I say, as they invite us in. We were unexpected, and Jim, our host, hadn’t mentioned that we would be coming. The timing seems to work out since Zach and Yusuke are hopping on the night bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas. We spent the afternoon shooting the breeze with these two and went exploring the neighbourhood for dinner after. There was still no sign of Jim by 2000hrs.

The Boys from the Bay headed down to the bus station and Amanda and I just took it easy in Jim’s living room. I don’t remember the exact time, maybe a little bit after 2100hrs when we heard Jim coming up the stairs. It was a weird welcome. Here we were, two strangers in his living room, sitting in near pitch dark. Jim was in a bad mood, and it made those first few precious minutes of getting to know one another awkward. Amanda wanted to pull the plug and find a hotel, but Jim insisted that his bad mood was due to car troubles ruining his field trip to a nearby beach. Jim is friends with Santiago, our WS host from Mexico City, and he has a great sense of humour, just like Santi did. We gave him some time and space, and by the end of the night we were thick as thieves the three of us.

Amanda writes: While the ride included more climbs than we had anticipated I still enjoyed it. Maybe it was knowing we’d be getting back to the coast. As Andrew mentioned our welcome at our hosts home was a bit awkward but we worked through it. I mean I get it, I’ve been there. When Andrew and I used to host there would be some days where I’d want to come home and just be alone and then Andrew would tell me we had guests; never ideal. Andrew always takes care of communications with warm showers hosts so I don’t know what he had told Jim and the possibility exists that there was a mixup on the days. In any event Jim warmed up after his meal and he seems like a genuine guy who I’m looking forward to spending some time with. He always happens to have a beautiful apartment overlooking the ocean with fabulous humming birds.

Today’s Photographs