November 15, 2015

What happened…

Amanda writes: We were on a mission! Maybe looking for a reprieve from our tension or a distraction or whatever you want to call it. We woke at 2:30 a.m. with no problems. We packed up the tent and headed out toward the bus stop. Technically it was Sunday morning but because it was so early there were still the lingering people around from Saturday night. In fact when we arrived at the bus stop the local bar was still going strong with karaoke. They closed the bar down just after we arrived and the last few people stumbled out and into their cars to head home. I was quickly reminded of another reason we don’t like to ride in the dark. After confirming with some locals that we were in fact in front of the bus stop we settled in to wait for the bus.

The first bus that stopped near 4:00 a.m. was for local workers heading into nearby towns for work. Andrew confirmed with the driver that the other tourist type bus would be along shortly. We waited a bit longer and then we saw the bus pull up; it as packed! Andrew spoke with the driver and told him it was two people and we had a few bags. The driver opened the lower compartments to see about getting the bags in. They were totally full. Then Andrew told him we had two bikes as well. The driver enthusiastically shook his head no … no room. We remembered speaking with our couch surfing host in El Pescadero about putting bikes on buses, and he told us that once a driver tried to tell him no room until he insisted on seeing the other compartments. With that memory Andrew opened the next compartment to look for room … not a chance. And with that the driver got back on the bus and drove away.

Four days of gruelling peddling, missed scenery and high tensions so that we could be awake at 4:30 in the morning. We actually weren’t that upset about the situation, maybe after some time on the road we’ve learned to roll with it. So here we were in a small town on a Sunday morning in the dark. Too dark to ride, too tired to pull out our cooking gear and because it was Sunday; nothing was open. And so we settled in to a park bench and rested our eyes.

After a few hours we managed to find a place that was open and grab some coffee, pastries and some breakfast. After that we headed out on the road. We had no idea where we were headed knowing that we missed the ferry. We peddled at a more leisurely pace. We were know becoming more aware of our surroundings. On our left was a sign for some pyramids or something. We hadn’t heard anything about it in any tourist materials nor had any locals mentioned it. We pulled up to the turnoff but the sign didn’t say how far into the desert the pyramids were so we figured we shouldn’t risk it. We ended up stopping at a small fishing community to make sandwiches for lunch. Then we headed down the highway again and saw a sign for an RV park that promised hot showers and wifi. We both steered our bikes toward it without saying a word to each other.

We were greeted by a very mild mannered dog which was nice. This was followed by a greeting from the host and she was very nice. We walked around for a bit and just got a really nice vibe from the place. We decided this would be a home for a couple of days and we settled in.

Today’s Photographs