Okay, before I get started with today’s journal entry I need to recap yesterday afternoon and evening. We intentionally planned a short day yesterday (August 18th) as we didn’t want to get as far as Puerto Vallarta just yet (we didn’t anticipate cheap accommodations there). So we planned to only cycle 121km to Sayulita (from San Blas). On the whole the cycle was okay. We cycled through a lot of empty road, rolling hills and lush jungle. We saw lots of banana trees and jack fruit trees. Unfortunately they were all behind fences and the bananas were far from ripe so I couldn’t pick any. I’m keeping my eyes open for wild fruits, but they’re hard to come by since vines cover all the trees and it’s hard to see what’s growing underneath them. Anyway we eventually make it to Sayulita later than we would’ve hoped. For some reason the short days seem to always just as long to accomplish as do the long days, go figure. Well actually I guess I do know the reason it took so long, I got two flat tires that I had to fix. Neither were the tire’s fault, rather both were due to the crappy patches we’ve been using. They leak. I had a puncture two days before (I think, or on the day we left Mazatlan) and patched it with one of these self-sticking patches. It leaked and so I removed it and patched it with another self-sticking patch. It leaked a little later in the day after I hit a big pothole. I’m never using self-sticking patches again. We’ve had 6 flats between the two of us (including the two I just mentioned) up until this point and 3 of those have been due to these leaking patches coming off. I think they can’t handle the humidity or something. This time I used to glue based patches we just got in Mazatlan (the ones I’ve used before and I trust). Anyway, fixing those flats was the highlight of the day on our way to Sayulita.
The town seemed pretty touristy as we’re greeted by tourists saying welcome and have a great stay. Just over the bridge were tourists galore, several of whom were interested in where we were cycling. One girl was even from Vancouver and had done a cycle tour of Europe back in 2008. Small world. We stock up and go find the camp site which to Kevin’s dismay costs as much as a hotel (160 pesos). We stay anyway as we’re there and there’s not much else we can do. We chose to setup camp on the grass. The night before we were on the beach and we’re still getting the sand out of our gear, so we weren’t doing that again. We made sure we didn’t setup underneath the coconut trees as we didn’t want those falling on us. And we setup well enough away from the sea so as to avoid getting sprayed by the ocean sea water. Just like the night before it looked like a storm was coming. The night before we went through a massive rain storm complete with crackling thunder and bright lightning. It’s monsoon season after all. I came out of that unscathed while Kevin suffered some minor water logging and one of his tent zippers got stuck (probably due to the sand). Nothing major though and the tents held strong. We expected no different tonight.
I awoke in the middle of the night (probably around 1am) to loud thunder. Then a bright flash of lightning. I start counting the seconds to determine its distance. On… Bang! Crackle! Boom! Hmmm… that was pretty close. It must be right on top of us. No big deal, the lightning show the night before was that close too. I open my tent fly a little to see if I can see the lightning in the sky. Can’t see it through the tiny opening but I leave it open to get some air flowing through the tent because I’m roasting and the sweat is pouring off of me. I try falling back to sleep. What must have been a short while later I am awoken again to the sound of heavy rain. Really heavy. I close my tent fly and go back to sleep. Again I’m awoken to the feeling of floating. Hmmm… it must have really rained because my tent is trying its darnedest to float away. I staked out my tent pretty well so I’m confident it’s staying put, especially since I’m in it. I look at the water sloshing around outside my tent. No big deal. The tent has a waterproof rating of 1200mm and the water is only halfway up the tent’s waterproof barrier. I go back to sleep. I’m awoken again, this time to the feeling of water under my feet and dripping from the ceiling. I look over and the water level has risen to ¾ the height of the waterproof barrier. Ah, no big deal. My tent is still holding strong. The water inside must just be my own sweat and condensation is just dripping from the ceiling. I don’t hear rain outside so the storm has passed and the water level outside will start subsiding. I go back to sleep. Yet again I’m awoken. This time to the sound of howling wind and some people yelling outside. No big deal. The tent can withstand hurricane force winds. However, I’m not so sure about the tarp that we’ve put over the bicycles outside. It is getting whipped around pretty good outside. But I’m not about to put on my shorts and go outside and check it out. I don’t want to work up a major sweat doing so. I’ll probably just find the tarp stuck in a tree in the morning. No big deal. As for the people yelling, they’re probably some of the other car campers watching the show. Not something I should concern myself with. I go back to sleep. I’m awoken a short time later to find the bags I had brought in the tent with me are now floating around me. And what’s this I’m also floating on my inflatable sleeping pad. This is a big deal. I grab my bags and pull them onto the sleeping pad with me. So there I am straddling my sleeping pad with a bag in each arm floating in the middle of my tent wondering how am I going to sleep in this. And just as I’m about to go for a swim I hear Kevin calling to me with alarm, “Trevor, let’s go! We gotta get out of here now!” Now that’s an idea. Why didn’t I think of that? I splash into action. I unzip my tent and… hold on a second I don’t want to be running around out there naked. I let go of my bags letting them float while I feel around for my shorts. Upon finding them I slosh about trying to get them on. Now dressed I grab my two bags and jump out into knee deep water. I grab some of my other bags and follow Kevin to a covered area where we both throw our bags up on to. We both go back through the massive lake that’s formed over what once was a campground and grab our remaining bags. I grab one of my rear bags. Hmmm… that’s quite a bit heavier than I remember it being. No time to think about that now. I lug it to the covered area and throw it up. Next we go back for the bikes which have fallen over and are now submerged. We pick them up and carry them over to higher ground. Next we go back for our tents. This takes some work as they are heavy with all the water that’s in them so we tackle one tent at a time. First we tip it up to dump all the water out and then carry it to our area of refuge. While we save our tents Kevin yells to me to say his tent is fudged. It is completely trashed. We’ll deal with that later and get the tents to higher ground. As we’re hauling our tents I notice another tent in the pool of water that wasn’t there last night. Kevin tells me they were other campers who came later and were the ones I had heard yelling earlier as they escaped there tent and fled for their car. We don’t have the luxury of a car so we’ve fled to the porch of the house belonging to the owners of the campground. As we now each haul our bikes up to the porch I find one more surprise waiting for me. My rear tire is flat again! Doesn’t that just put icing on the cake? We’ll I’ll deal with that later. First I need to try and dry out all my wet gear. I lay everything out. Then I take a look at the damage done to my bags. Only one suffered water damage (because I didn’t really tie it up properly and left it sitting upside down overnight). It’s the bag that felt a little heavier than usual. I open it up to find it completely filled with water. What did I store in this bag I wonder? Hopefully none of my electronics. After unpacking it I find that it didn’t hold anything of much importance, much of which I was meaning to throw out anyway. So I go ahead and create a garbage pile with all that junk. Now with my bags and tent sorted I set about fixing my bicycle’s flat tire. So at five o’clock in the morning I flip the bike and set to work fixing the flat. It turns out that the new patch was still holding strong, rather it was the other self-sticking patch that failed. I rip it off and glue on one of the new patches. I do all this while Kevin sleeps in a chair not far from me. Lucky him. Well actually not so lucky as his tent broke. The zippers to the tent broke so he can’t close his tent and keep all the bugs out. He’ll need a new tent.
At around 6 o’clock the owner comes out to find us on her porch. She doesn’t seem to mind and heads back into watch the news. We start packing all our soggy belongings up. As we do the husband appears but says nothing. I get the feeling he’s not too pleased we’re on his porch. Whatever. We continue packing and by 7 o’clock we head out. As we wheel our bikes out to the street we find the front of the camp ground fared no better than the back. All the cars are sitting in knee deep water too. We wade by with our bikes to the road and find that the road is hidden under a river of water pouring down the hill. So we slosh through that too before making it to solid ground. We head into town for a morning breakfast where we find a repair crew already at work filling in the road with sand to keep it from washing away. They get there work done in short order. We pass them by and grab breakfast: a bag of Froot Loops and some milk. As we finish the sun appears and starts sucking up all the water for what’ll probably be yet another deluge tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment