Day Five, playing in the sand and listening to the discotech
So, its time to push on, we need to get to the orphanage. We are making good progress considering how many stops we are miking and for all that we have going on. But we could be doing better. I personally dont care though, because I am really enjoying the riding :-)
We ride on day five and its not fair to say it was "more of the same", but it was. The problem is, I hate to say that because it makes it sound not so good or boring, but that fact is, it was more of the same fantastic curvy roads and long desert straights with the most spectacular surroundings.
There were straights that were great because it gave you time to relax and think a little bit. I would think about life back home and how good we have it. I would think about my kids in comparison to the kids I was on a journey to meet. And mostly I would think about my wife. What and incredible person I have to spend my life with. God could not have put a more perfect person in my path. Smart, beautiful, witty, great mom and very supportive and understanding. Its a rarity to find someone that will support you in what you love to do, even when they sometimes hate it. See, my wife cant stand risk. Shes not real fond of motorcycles, and she's not thrilled that I am a bit of a daredevil. Yet here I am, in a third world country, on a motorcycle, in the middle of a desert and she only offers support. She is at home taking care of our (4) children, working a full time job, doing church activities and managing the house. I mean really, could a man ask for someone better? I think not. I really wish she was on the journey with me, but this would not be a trip one would want to do two up, or at least this one wouldn't. lol.
So as I sit and reflect on how good I have it, I would have to remind myself "hey Jim, pay attention stupid, your still on a motorcycle" lol. But that is one of the things I love most about riding like this. Its just me and my thoughts inside of this helmet. I can think, pray, sing, talk, scream whatever. It really is a great stress reliever.
We arrive at our next hotel, dont remember the name of the town. It was a very nice place. There was a pool out back, birds, outside dining area and the rooms were very nice. Simple as all, but still nice.
Behind the hotel was a HUGE sand dune, or sand mountain. There were these cool sand buggies at the hotel. They could seat about 12-15 people in these giant buggies and they would take people for "hold on for your life" rides through the dunes. The rides had stopped by the time we arrived but I noticed something else. I saw a kid with what looked like an over-sized skateboard without wheels. I asked what it was and I was informed that it was a "sand surfboard"! A WHAT? Thats right, a surfboard for the sand. I had never seen one of these things before, so of course I had to try it.
There was a place down the street that would rent the boards for what turned out to be $3.00/ hour. So I get one.
I return to the hotel with the board and everyone is like; "what are you doing?" well, sand surfing of course. "Have you ever done it before?" Nope, never even heard of it. In fact, Ive never surfed at all, of any kind. Ive never skateboarded either. So of course Neale grabs his camera and says "lets go".
Now, you could walk down the street and walk up the spine of the dune to get to the top, and that's what everyone was doing. But we thought that was just a waste of time, we would just scale the face of this little sand hill. WHAT AN INCREDIBLY STUPID MOVE! We didn't even make it an eight of the way up and had to stop and catch our breath. It was killing us. We ultimately never even made it to the top. We had to settle with about two thirds. ha ha. So that's why all those "stupid" people were taking the long way. Anyway, as I would soon find out, we were plenty high enough.
I strap the board to my feet (after waxing the heck out of the bottom for maximum speed of course) and I stand up to go. I start to gain a bit of speed and Ross yells "bend your knees" as he was able to foresee the inevitable outcome. Well, I bent my knees, all the way to the point of touching my rear end to the ground and I'm still gaining speed. I attempt to stand up and that's when it happened. Yep, the front of the board digs in and head over heels I go! The board ripped loose from my left foot as I tumbled repeatedly down the hill. Sand filled into crevices I didn't even know I had and I came to a stop on my rear end. That took all of about ten seconds, I still had a ways to go to get to the bottom. So I strap back to the board and give it another go only to be met with the same outcome. This series of events happened a total of four times before I eventually made it to the bottom.
Neale just said it was plain ol' ugly to watch lol. But it was fun.
After all the fun headed back to the hotel, cleaned up and grabbed some dinner.
Dinner was pretty basic, pizza for most and I had chicken, again :-) I do love my Peruvian chicken dishes. lol.
We all head off to bed shortly after dinner and around eleven PM I hear music. Its loud, but not loud enough to keep me awake. To the next morning..............
Day six, little sleep for Neale and Brandon and Jim plays with birds and the bees.
I wake up at my typical time of 6:00 am and head down to Neale and Brandon's room to give them a wake up knock. Neale confirms he is awake and I walk off. I get back to my room and I hear outside, "Hola".............."Hola"....................Hola....................HOLA! there is someone that keeps repeating the greeting with a massive sense of escalating urgency. Ross and I are both cracking up after we heard it repeated six or seven times. We had determined it was one of the birds outside and he appearently wanted someone to acknowledge his hello.
Ross and I walk outside and see that the bird is WAY up in a tree, however, there was another two birds down below. I decided to see if they were friendly. One of them, not so much, as he tried to remove a finger. But the other bird was great. I picked him up and sat him on my shoulder. He would look at me and say "hola" lol. So of course I took the bird to Neale and Brandons room to assist with the wake up call.
At breakfast Neale is looking a bit tired. Come to find out that its as a result of the music from the disco. Apparently his room was in a prime area for the repeated bass to bounce off his walls UNTIL 3am IN THE MORNING ha ha ha.
We start the ride and all is going good. We ride until about noon and as we get into a small town, things are moving kind of slow so I lift my visor because I'm getting hot. Just as we start to pick up speed, I'm in third gear, WHACK! a bee (or something) hits me just above my left eye and stings the heck out of me. I grab my face and sling off my glasses as I pull the bike off to the left side of the road. Ross gets my glasses off of the road to prevent them from getting run over (thank you Ross), and Neale pulls up to me and says "what's wrong?" I inform him that I think I was just stung by a bee and I am told to be highly allergic. Of course I have no epi-pen with me so I'm a bit freaked out. But again, I wasnt even sure it was a bee.
We get some Benadryl from the support truck and then its just a matter of wait and see. The eye started to swell a bit around what looked like the sting spot. We hung around at a fruit stand for about thirty minutes. Nothing got worse so we pushed on.
By the end of the day we had made it to Maquegua. Tomorrow we would see the kids and the orphanage.
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