What happened…

Andrew writes: I woke up when I heard movement and sound in the courtyard outside our room. It was still dark, but I was certain that I had heard Gareth moving his bicycle downstairs, and Jean was loading panniers onto their bikes. I snuggled into Amanda a little bit, just for a few minutes. When again, I heard noise outside our room, I sprang into action. We had to get ready too! I didn’t want to be lagging behind on our first day cycling with our new friends. I hurriedly got changed, and started to cook breakfast. Amanda lay like a lump on the bed, with the sheet drawn over her face to block out the light. “It’s not them, just take a deep breath, open the door, and take a look. You’ll see.,” she urged. So I did…and the courtyard was empty. Not a sound could be heard in the surrounding neighborhood except for the occasional barking dog. It was 0652hrs. Today was the first day of daylight savings, and it looks like everyone lost an hour, except me.

A little disheartened, I took my time getting the rest of breakfast ready, and by the time Jean and Gareth came downstairs to say hello, it was about 0900hrs and Amanda and I were reading books and enjoying our second cup of coffee. Everything progressed from there really. By 1000hrs we were on the bikes and cruising out of Tequis. Gareth and I had mapped out a route that avoided the main highway. What it ended up being was about 15km of old-school cobblestones. It made for a bumpy ride. The cobbles weren’t without excitement however; at one point Amanda says to me that she needs a new pepper spray bottle. I’ve never seen her use her pepper spray before but for whatever reason there she was, pushing the button down and nothing was happening. I took it from her, gave it a little shake and pushed the button myself. Thank goodness I wasn’t pointing it at either of us, and that the wind was in front of us. A small cloud of choking gas sprang out of the can, and we started to gag. I handed the pepper spray back to Amanda and we made a hasty retreat further upwind.

Next some of the little clips that attach to our panniers started falling out, and our panniers jumped off their rails because of the bumpy road. We lost a few of the clips, but fortunately I have spares. The eggs took the brunt of the assault. We started with four….and we were now down to three. There was still about 5km of cobbles to go. How many eggs would we finish with, would be a mystery soon to be solved.

We finally emerged from the cobble stone road and onto a road that was paved but not in much better condition. We stopped for lunch in Gando, where I bought a few more eggs; I now was back up to six. Amanda and I had wraps, while Jean and Gareth just drank “frothies”, which are powdered milk mixed with instant coffee. These guys are weird. They basically don’t eat all day until dinner time – then they eat two dinners. Jean snacks a little bit during the day on fruit, but except for the odd 1L or 2L of milk of yogurt, these two seem to run on some kind of fuel source that I can’t identify.

Just down the road from Gando is “El Geiser”, which is exactly as it sounds. It’s a hotel/resort/pool complex built around a natural hot spring. Feeling somewhat ballsy, we all cycled right past the uncaring attendant at the ticket window, found a palapa and went for a swim in the 80F pool. It was about as fun as it sounds, bathing in 30C weather in a pool that’s even warmer. The geyser itself has been modified so that rather than spraying straight up into the air it comes out two directions from a pipe. Weird.

After about two hours of lazing around by the pool, we climbed up out of El Geiser and then made our way towards El Palmer. We wouldn’t make it though. Everyone sort of ran out of gas when we got to the small town of Pathe. We sat in the shade there, enjoying some cold cervezas, and decided to just camp nearby. We found a field just outside of town. When we went to set up our tents, we found the ground littered with hundreds, nay thousands, of goat-head thorns. These multi-pronged, barbed thorns can make short work of a bike tire. They can make short work of our inflatable sleeping pads too. After ensuring our tires were going to be OK for the night, Amanda and I decided to forego the sleeping pads and just try sleeping inside the tent on the ground, with some of our clothes and blankets and whatnot as padding. Adventure, yay!

The rest of the evening was uneventful, as we all enjoyed dinner together, and sat around watching the stars come out. Gareth had ridden back to Pathe for some more beer, so fun was had by all!

Amanda writes: As far as first days go with new friends this was pretty good. It was very interesting to see how people do some things differently and other things so much the same. We travel in a similar fashion as it relates to the things we carry and the amount of things we carry. As Andrew mentioned the eating schedules are markedly different. The great thing about it is that their eating patterns seem to work well for them and ours work well for us. I couldn’t imagine riding without eating in the morning, but it didn’t slow them down one bit. They’ve been doing this as long as we have; Gareth for longer and they seem to be excelling in their methods.

As Andrew mentioned the cobble stones were less than enjoyable but the views looking back were lovely. I did pull out my pepper spray because there was a dog eyeing me up and not wagging his tail at all. He was just inching toward me with a fierce look on his face. I hope I never have to use my pepper spray, especially on an animal; but I as I had my staring contest with the dog I was left wondering if it works.

Going to El Geyser was fun, although a bit disappointing as it spewed out of a pipe. When we first arrived I had hoped that it would more like Yellowstone National Park with natural water formations, but that simply wasn’t the case. I still think it was a nice break. By the end of the day I was super stoked that we all seemed to ride the same pace. For those of you that have ridden with me you know that I ride slower than most and Jean and Gareth didn’t seem fazed by it at all.

Today’s Photographs