Day 6 Sona to Las Lajas 80 something k
So its been a few days since we made this ride, but I will try and recap it as best I can. You can break this day down into three parts. I dont have access to my photos right now,so I wont be able to put them up but soon. I promise
So we wake up to what sounds like a fricken zoo of birds. I cant even count how many different types of birds were singing, and cooíng and what not outside of our hotel. I took a video of it, and hopefully hte sounds of the birds will come out alright. It was wild. It sounded like applause. We woke up right before sunset, and having packed the bags from the night before, we were ready tp rol. We stop and get some breakfast and then head out. We have about 18km to go before we get to this town called El Maria and there we gotta get directions, and figure out which way to go. It starts out good enough, and we encounter some rough roads and what not, but the scenery is still georgeous. The going is slow thouhg because at certian points the road is bad, and we are constantly climbing hills. constantly up and down, up and down. they were pretty steep. After probably an hour of riding or something like that, Aaron has us pull over on the side of this little country road, cause he needs to adjust his handle bars. At that point, he realizes he has a flat, so we need to fix that as well. So we pull over, and its all nice and shaded, you can hear running water down the hill next to us. Nobody drives by, its beautiful, and peaceful. Aaron and I work together to fix the flat, and once I finsih it up, and get it on, Aaron says no no no man. The tread is going the wrong way. I am like are you serious? does that matter. Apparently to aaron it does, so I take it off, let the air out, and do the whole thing over again. Only this time, once I am done, I let him pump it up. Right right, I know what you´re thinking. Aaron isnt supposed to touch any more air pumps or fill up tires after what he did to mine. So I am singing Counting Crows Mr Jones in the middle of the road, and dancing around, and I stop and I ask aaron if he wants to hear a story. Just when I do this, and am turning I hear this explosion of sorts, the sound of rushing air, Aaron screams like a litlte girl, and is falling over the tire trying not to fall on it so he doesnt bend it, and I realize what has just happened. I immediately fall on the ground, right in the middle of that country road, and am laughing SO HARD. I couldnt stop for a few minutes. Aaron got up, and was laughing to, though not as hard as I was, and he is like what the fuck happened. He looks at the pump, and sees that he broke the air nozzle right out of the tube. OMG he showed me that and I broke out in fits al over again. So, yet again, I had to fix the tire, and fill it up, andput it on. To date that was the funniest moment on the trip. IT takes us nearly 3 hours to go those little 18km to El Maria, and it is hot as shit outside, and we are tired, and thirsty. We stop, and grab a gatorade, and talk with the people there for a bit. We get a photo with some of hte locals, Oh yeah, nad while we were fixing the tire, I got a photo of some cowboy going by on his hrose. He was kind enough to stop and pose. He looks quite cool if you ask me. So after that we finsih up our gatorades, and head out. We´re about an twenty minutes into this ride, and the roads are horrible. Aarons bike is rattling, and its just bad. This is when we encountered Santo Victor. Good Ol Saint Vic. We didnt realize it at the time, but life was conspiring to help us out. Victor rolls up with a taxi cab Truck! perfect right, and he is yelling at Aaron to stop, and telling him that the road is not passable with bikes. Aaron, already worried about his bike asks the guy how much for a ride to the interamericana. 15 bucks. Its about 30km . So he goes and drops some stuff off, we rest in the shade, and he comes back to pick us up. We put our bikes in the back, and away we go. At first, I Was a bit pissed thinking to myself that we could have done that road. We could have done it if we did the road the day before. Be in the moment I told myself. We got the cab. just let it be. nothing can be done about it now. The roads are petty bad in some places, and decent and OK in others. When we get to the highway, and get dropped off, we get on our bikes and get ready to go again. St. Vic as he was to be known later in that day, was a great guy, friendly, taught us some Spanish. he had a sister who lived in Pennsylvania. That was the first part of the day. We were on the road at sunrise, and it was almost noon now, and we were just getting to the interamericana. The ride Vic gave us probably shaved about 4 hours off our ride that day.
So once we get on the highway, we´re moving along pretty well, but we quickly realize we are going through some damn mountains. Not hills, but mountains. Holy Shit!!!! WE seriously climbed up some of those ascents for about 45 minutes straight sometimes. Then going down hill, you think oh they can just fly cause they got bikes. No. I gotta keep on my breaks, cause all my bags are jimmy rigged to the back of my bike wiht straps, and it fish tails easily and gets wobbly, and I dont want to crash. So we climb, and climb, and climb. At one point, we stopped cuase I was bout to fall over, and got some water. A big rig comes up the hill and it is so stepp it is going like 10 miles an hour. It took us about five or six hours to make it to the turn off for Las Lajas. We stopped and got some food at one point, not really sure hwo much furhter we had to go. My hands were all grubbed out cause of fixing the flat, nad I forgot to wash them before eating, cause I was just out of it. Well I licked one of my fingers and got a mouthful of grease, and so I walk outside and spit out hte food. I come in and tell Aaron what I did, and then go wash my hands. I come back, and am sitting there, and watching Aaron get irritated as all hell with this dog that is sitting there beggin for food. He wants it to go away, and he turns and looks at it, and he says ¨hey my friend just puked over there, go gucking lick it up¨ At this point, we were so fricken tired already, and hearng him say that just made me bust up laughing. So after lunch we ask how much further we have to go and get three answers from three people. We get anywherew from five minutes, to 20km. We ride for hours more, and at certain points I jsut want to stop. I am really just pushing it to make it. Its gotta be coming up, but every time you think you are there, its just another damn hill to climb. The sun is getting low, and we finally get to the point where you turn off the highway,and head down the road to the beach and through the town of LAs LAjas. We stop, and get a gatorade, and relax for a bit, and aaron says that according to his lonely planet book, we have 13 km to go down a paved road, before we get there. So away we go, just hoping we can get there quickly becuse the sun is getting low, nad gonna be going down in a couple hours. about 10 minutes into our ride, maybe 20, the nice paved road we are on turns to gravel adn rocks. The riding gets slower and more laborious, and we are just like DAMN, where is the beach!!!! Riding through the fields where cattle were grazing and horses were hanging out, probably grazing as well, the sun started to drop`and shine through the trees and it was beautiful. I mena, absolutely spectacular. After riding donw that damn road for close to two hours, we finally, finally, made it. Just in time for hte most amazing sunset. WE put our bikes down adn ran out onto the beach, and took some photos. Some turned out great, others not so much, but the view was truly such a great reward for such a tough tough day of riding.
The third part of the day is us getting there, and riding around for a bit and trying to find a place to stay. WE end up getting a camping spot, right on the beach for 10 bucks, and set up our tent in the remaining light. We are so exhausted, we dont even change out of our biker shorts, or jerseys and walk over to this restaurant, that a German guy named Dirk and his wife run. Turns out they had just bought it four months ago, and were renovating it. Aaron adn I ordered some fish. The food took a bit of time to come out, but when it did it was so worht the wait. It was so good. Easily the best meal I had since I have been in panama, even if ti was a bit more expensive. I think for the meal it was 6.50 or something. It would have been like 25 or 30 bucks in the states. We finsihed up and decided we would celebrate with some cigars. WE lit up some cubans and just leaned back and chilled. We talked about different stuff, and then some canadians and australian came and sat with us. WE all bullshitted while they ordered and ate. Aaron was getting some drinks, they were having some beers, and it was just so nice to be sitting there. We ordreed ice cream, with whip cream and chocolate syrup, Dirk let us put on some music of our own tastes, and we listened to some Michael Franti and Spearhead (http://www.spearheadvibrations.com/ if you arent familiar) and we were dancing around to the Barrack Obama song, and a few others. IT was just the perfect ending to such a long and physically challenging day.
We rode our bikes basically from sunrise to sunset. We rode through the countryside, and saw a taratulla (sp?) saw bamboo huts, saw kids playing, we climbed mountains with our bikes, we talked to dogs, laughed so hard so many times, danced in the street, and sang out loud, fixed flats, met St. Vic, picked each other up at different points when the other was struggling to keep going, saw an amazing sunset, at great food, met good traveling friends, listened to Spearhad and danced, and fell asleep to the sound of hte ocean waves hitting the shore. IT was a great day. A challenging day but just amazing. It is easy to be optimistic when you´ve finished a day like that. Which was the days dedication. More on that in a different post. .
Just on a side note. I am calling him st vic, cause without him stopping us, and coming to our aid we would have ended up camping on teh side of hte road somewhere. WE didnt like the idea at the time. I was a bit bitter. I see now though that it was yet another exmple of how life is working to bring us what we need to do what we gotta do. Life is working on our side during this thing and it is easy to recognize it when it comes up and offers you a ride.
So we wake up to what sounds like a fricken zoo of birds. I cant even count how many different types of birds were singing, and cooíng and what not outside of our hotel. I took a video of it, and hopefully hte sounds of the birds will come out alright. It was wild. It sounded like applause. We woke up right before sunset, and having packed the bags from the night before, we were ready tp rol. We stop and get some breakfast and then head out. We have about 18km to go before we get to this town called El Maria and there we gotta get directions, and figure out which way to go. It starts out good enough, and we encounter some rough roads and what not, but the scenery is still georgeous. The going is slow thouhg because at certian points the road is bad, and we are constantly climbing hills. constantly up and down, up and down. they were pretty steep. After probably an hour of riding or something like that, Aaron has us pull over on the side of this little country road, cause he needs to adjust his handle bars. At that point, he realizes he has a flat, so we need to fix that as well. So we pull over, and its all nice and shaded, you can hear running water down the hill next to us. Nobody drives by, its beautiful, and peaceful. Aaron and I work together to fix the flat, and once I finsih it up, and get it on, Aaron says no no no man. The tread is going the wrong way. I am like are you serious? does that matter. Apparently to aaron it does, so I take it off, let the air out, and do the whole thing over again. Only this time, once I am done, I let him pump it up. Right right, I know what you´re thinking. Aaron isnt supposed to touch any more air pumps or fill up tires after what he did to mine. So I am singing Counting Crows Mr Jones in the middle of the road, and dancing around, and I stop and I ask aaron if he wants to hear a story. Just when I do this, and am turning I hear this explosion of sorts, the sound of rushing air, Aaron screams like a litlte girl, and is falling over the tire trying not to fall on it so he doesnt bend it, and I realize what has just happened. I immediately fall on the ground, right in the middle of that country road, and am laughing SO HARD. I couldnt stop for a few minutes. Aaron got up, and was laughing to, though not as hard as I was, and he is like what the fuck happened. He looks at the pump, and sees that he broke the air nozzle right out of the tube. OMG he showed me that and I broke out in fits al over again. So, yet again, I had to fix the tire, and fill it up, andput it on. To date that was the funniest moment on the trip. IT takes us nearly 3 hours to go those little 18km to El Maria, and it is hot as shit outside, and we are tired, and thirsty. We stop, and grab a gatorade, and talk with the people there for a bit. We get a photo with some of hte locals, Oh yeah, nad while we were fixing the tire, I got a photo of some cowboy going by on his hrose. He was kind enough to stop and pose. He looks quite cool if you ask me. So after that we finsih up our gatorades, and head out. We´re about an twenty minutes into this ride, and the roads are horrible. Aarons bike is rattling, and its just bad. This is when we encountered Santo Victor. Good Ol Saint Vic. We didnt realize it at the time, but life was conspiring to help us out. Victor rolls up with a taxi cab Truck! perfect right, and he is yelling at Aaron to stop, and telling him that the road is not passable with bikes. Aaron, already worried about his bike asks the guy how much for a ride to the interamericana. 15 bucks. Its about 30km . So he goes and drops some stuff off, we rest in the shade, and he comes back to pick us up. We put our bikes in the back, and away we go. At first, I Was a bit pissed thinking to myself that we could have done that road. We could have done it if we did the road the day before. Be in the moment I told myself. We got the cab. just let it be. nothing can be done about it now. The roads are petty bad in some places, and decent and OK in others. When we get to the highway, and get dropped off, we get on our bikes and get ready to go again. St. Vic as he was to be known later in that day, was a great guy, friendly, taught us some Spanish. he had a sister who lived in Pennsylvania. That was the first part of the day. We were on the road at sunrise, and it was almost noon now, and we were just getting to the interamericana. The ride Vic gave us probably shaved about 4 hours off our ride that day.
So once we get on the highway, we´re moving along pretty well, but we quickly realize we are going through some damn mountains. Not hills, but mountains. Holy Shit!!!! WE seriously climbed up some of those ascents for about 45 minutes straight sometimes. Then going down hill, you think oh they can just fly cause they got bikes. No. I gotta keep on my breaks, cause all my bags are jimmy rigged to the back of my bike wiht straps, and it fish tails easily and gets wobbly, and I dont want to crash. So we climb, and climb, and climb. At one point, we stopped cuase I was bout to fall over, and got some water. A big rig comes up the hill and it is so stepp it is going like 10 miles an hour. It took us about five or six hours to make it to the turn off for Las Lajas. We stopped and got some food at one point, not really sure hwo much furhter we had to go. My hands were all grubbed out cause of fixing the flat, nad I forgot to wash them before eating, cause I was just out of it. Well I licked one of my fingers and got a mouthful of grease, and so I walk outside and spit out hte food. I come in and tell Aaron what I did, and then go wash my hands. I come back, and am sitting there, and watching Aaron get irritated as all hell with this dog that is sitting there beggin for food. He wants it to go away, and he turns and looks at it, and he says ¨hey my friend just puked over there, go gucking lick it up¨ At this point, we were so fricken tired already, and hearng him say that just made me bust up laughing. So after lunch we ask how much further we have to go and get three answers from three people. We get anywherew from five minutes, to 20km. We ride for hours more, and at certain points I jsut want to stop. I am really just pushing it to make it. Its gotta be coming up, but every time you think you are there, its just another damn hill to climb. The sun is getting low, and we finally get to the point where you turn off the highway,and head down the road to the beach and through the town of LAs LAjas. We stop, and get a gatorade, and relax for a bit, and aaron says that according to his lonely planet book, we have 13 km to go down a paved road, before we get there. So away we go, just hoping we can get there quickly becuse the sun is getting low, nad gonna be going down in a couple hours. about 10 minutes into our ride, maybe 20, the nice paved road we are on turns to gravel adn rocks. The riding gets slower and more laborious, and we are just like DAMN, where is the beach!!!! Riding through the fields where cattle were grazing and horses were hanging out, probably grazing as well, the sun started to drop`and shine through the trees and it was beautiful. I mena, absolutely spectacular. After riding donw that damn road for close to two hours, we finally, finally, made it. Just in time for hte most amazing sunset. WE put our bikes down adn ran out onto the beach, and took some photos. Some turned out great, others not so much, but the view was truly such a great reward for such a tough tough day of riding.
The third part of the day is us getting there, and riding around for a bit and trying to find a place to stay. WE end up getting a camping spot, right on the beach for 10 bucks, and set up our tent in the remaining light. We are so exhausted, we dont even change out of our biker shorts, or jerseys and walk over to this restaurant, that a German guy named Dirk and his wife run. Turns out they had just bought it four months ago, and were renovating it. Aaron adn I ordered some fish. The food took a bit of time to come out, but when it did it was so worht the wait. It was so good. Easily the best meal I had since I have been in panama, even if ti was a bit more expensive. I think for the meal it was 6.50 or something. It would have been like 25 or 30 bucks in the states. We finsihed up and decided we would celebrate with some cigars. WE lit up some cubans and just leaned back and chilled. We talked about different stuff, and then some canadians and australian came and sat with us. WE all bullshitted while they ordered and ate. Aaron was getting some drinks, they were having some beers, and it was just so nice to be sitting there. We ordreed ice cream, with whip cream and chocolate syrup, Dirk let us put on some music of our own tastes, and we listened to some Michael Franti and Spearhead (http://www.spearheadvibrations.com/ if you arent familiar) and we were dancing around to the Barrack Obama song, and a few others. IT was just the perfect ending to such a long and physically challenging day.
We rode our bikes basically from sunrise to sunset. We rode through the countryside, and saw a taratulla (sp?) saw bamboo huts, saw kids playing, we climbed mountains with our bikes, we talked to dogs, laughed so hard so many times, danced in the street, and sang out loud, fixed flats, met St. Vic, picked each other up at different points when the other was struggling to keep going, saw an amazing sunset, at great food, met good traveling friends, listened to Spearhad and danced, and fell asleep to the sound of hte ocean waves hitting the shore. IT was a great day. A challenging day but just amazing. It is easy to be optimistic when you´ve finished a day like that. Which was the days dedication. More on that in a different post. .
Just on a side note. I am calling him st vic, cause without him stopping us, and coming to our aid we would have ended up camping on teh side of hte road somewhere. WE didnt like the idea at the time. I was a bit bitter. I see now though that it was yet another exmple of how life is working to bring us what we need to do what we gotta do. Life is working on our side during this thing and it is easy to recognize it when it comes up and offers you a ride.
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