September 16-19
Rest day, 40 miles, 13 miles, 53 miles
Bargaining, Beaches, and Stingrays
Although it goes against my non-confrontational nature, I have had some success in bargaining for lower rates at the places where we stay. After lowering the rate from 500 pesos to 450 for a night for Kate and Spencer, I successfully got the same rate for Tanja and Meno. Here they are trying to avoid carrying bags up the stairs. Personally I think this looks like more work, but it was definitely more fun.
On the second night of our two night stay in Santa Rosalia, we walked along the shorefront area and along the streets. The streets were surprisingly busy. There were cars bumper to bumper going along the two main one way streets. I'm not sure what they were doing, but the streets were so narrow, the cars so many, and the sidewalks so close to the cars that by the end of our walk my lungs were noticeably irritated. At the end we also got food at a nice little restaurant. It was a most enjoyable time!
The sign said 100 pesos for a night (just under 10 dollars) and we decided that was too much. It was 25 pesos more than we had ever paid in Mexico for camping, so we agreed if I could get it knocked down to 75 we would probably all stay there. After back to back nights of successful negotiating, I was feeling lucky so I went to see if I could get a better price. I told her that 75 was a better price for us, and she after she thought for a second, she said "Okay, 70 pesos."
And that is how I negotiated a lower price than my initial offer.
And I wasted no time to begin splashing in the ocean!
And we had a nice sunset. Unbeknownst to us at the time we paid, there was a little party going on at the restaurant behind our little palm hut things. So the music went from Mexican/Carribian/Latin themed music, which I was really digging, to 80's rock and pop, then to party pop, and finally hitting rock bottom with Sexy and I Know It and I'm Too Sexy. It was super loud, but I somehow managed to fall asleep shortly after they transitioned back into some Latin based stuff.
Sleeping is difficult in Mexico because of obnoxious dogs that snarl and bark and yelp in the middle of the night no matter where you go. So even when the music died down, we had to endure two dogs fighting throughout the night. Fortunately sleepless nights on the Mexican beach can be remedied like this in the morning:
We swam in the ocean for an hour or so in the morning before getting back on the bikes. We rode for a whopping 13 miles before stopping at another beach for the night.
We stopped at a restaurant/cabin rental place owned by an ex-pat and what I think may be his wife, but I'm not entirely sure. At any rate the woman was rude and mean. We asked if we could get some water, and she told us that we could not because they had just driven 30 miles into town for it. Then when we requested to pay 10 pesos for the internet password (which the sign made clear was available to us for the price as long as you didn't stream, download a lot or otherwise use a lot of bandwidth) she accused us of plotting ot have one person pay and then share the password with everyone else so we could all download high definition, two hour long videos of child pornography porn. She actually did accuse us of plotting to share the password, but not the porn part. I added that part because talked and acted as if that is what we were doing. She was crazy.
The ex-pat was a cool guy though, and as laid back and nice as she was crazy. "I have plenty of water, don't worry about it," was what he said while she went off on a rant about why we should wait until tomorrow to bike 20 more miles to get more water. He also told us about how to find clams in the water in front of his place. Jason, Daisy, Spencer, and I went to give it a try.
We found nothing except for Jason's 2 rocks. Then Jason yelled "Ouch!" very loudly. Turns out he stepped on a stingray!
The proper cure for getting stung by a stingray is to immerse the stung body part in 113 degree water, scalding hot. This temperature is a happy medium that is hot enough to break down the chemicals in the poison, but cool enough not to destroy flesh. It just makes everything swollen. Here is Jason suffering while mellow Ex Pat tells him how he will be fine in the morning. The man talked about Jason's dire condition in the as if it were a bump on the head. His even keeled nonchalance was almost annoying, and probably was extremely annoying to Jason, but I guess he just knew better than all of us that his voodoo-witchcraft-medicine technique actually worked.
As Jason recovered we mad a pot-luck dinner of lentil/carrot/cabbage soup with chicken broth with sides of rice and cucumbers. It was delightful.
Stingray beach.
On October 19, we rode from BuenaVentura to Loreto. This required us to cycle inland a little bit and see some beautiful mountain ranges.
In town I met Eduardo, who explained to me how gearing works, and figured out what all the cables are connected to. Sharp kid.
He also was our tour guide. It was fun talking with him, and I think he enjoyed the company. When we left, he laid on my back saddlebags and said "Don't go! Don't go! Don't go!" Spencer has a picture of it and I'll post it when I get ahold of it. Right now we are at Hotel Posada in Loreto. Tomorrow we head for La Paz, where I will hopefully partake in kayaking and snorkeling!
And now for the daily Mexico fail: This poor dog did not move more than 10 feet at a time until 9:00 at night when the sun had been down for hours and the temperature began to cool. Pet owner fail.
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