After stuffing our faces with eggs, beans, and toast, certain that we wouldn´t be eating a good meal during the next couple of days, Omer and I set off to La Mosquitia in search of adventure. Each of our bikes had two extra gallons of fuel on board, along with a pack of survival cookies. (generic Oreos)
We took a paved road south out of town, to a really dusty but smooth gravel road that took us east. After passing through a couple small Garifuna towns, we came to a point where the road was flooded. The Garifuna are people of African descent and their ancestors came to the new world as slaves. A couple of guys offered to take us across in their rowboat, but a woman fording across confirmed that we could ride it. Only a couple hundred meters further down the road, we came to a lagoon that was too wide and deep to ford, so we put our bikes on a barge made of barrels and wood, and two men pulled us across using a rope that was strung across the river.
The ride had been really easy up to this point, but all of that changed when the road became a beach. Our map depicted the road more inland, but this was definitely the route. Within the first 50 meters of deep sand, I realized that this was going to be a nightmare. I have never ridden a motorcycle in sand before, let alone a fully loaded bike. Omer, who rides sand dunes in Israel, made quick work of the beach. Within the first 30 minutes I had dropped the bike several times. Don´t let the pictures fool you, those were my best moments on the hard packed stuff. The reality was that I was either picking up my bike or trying to get it moving forward again about 90% of the time. A couple of miles down the beach, a soft sand road diverted from the beach to a small village, and I began rejoicing at the thought of getting out of the sand. The happiness was short lived though, as the road dumped us back onto the beach 2 minutes later.
Things didn´t get any better. The intense fear I´ve had of breaking my legs on the panniers only became worse when the bike came down on my right leg. With aluminum panniers it´s best to keep your feet on the pegs, but in sand (at least in my experience) there are times when placing your foot down to keep your balance happens whether you consciously want it to or not. If the foot stays down for a millisecond to long, the pannier runs it over and breaks your leg. Again, a skillful rider may not see this as an issue. The oppressive sun and heat, made worse by the riding gear and lack of airflow from riding so slow, really drained the energy out of me. The bike seemed to get heavier each time I picked it up or tried to maneuver it. For those of you who know me well, you can imagine how happy I was when I wasn´t able to ride sand like a pro in the Dakar Rally.
Finally, about 20 miles from where we first hit the sand, we arrived at a lagoon that made the beach impassable. There was a Garifuna village there, where we spoke with several boat owners who bring people across the lagoon and to points further down the coast. After listening to the sales pitches of the boaters, and the input of locals hanging around the launch site, we decided that this was as far as our La Mosquitia journey would go. The deal breaker for us was the boats: Picture an over-sized canoe with a motor. Neither of us could fathom getting the bikes in or out of the canoe, let alone placing it on-board in a way that wouldn´t capsize the thing in the middle of the lagoon. This wasn´t going to be a one time thing either. The road we had wanted to take through the heart of La Mosquitia was impassable, and we would have to take two more boats to bypass it. So with all of that in mind, I swallowed the reality that we were going to have to ride the god-forsaken beach back to where we had started.
There was no accommodation at this lagoon-side village, and I didn´t care for the vibe there to begin with. There were two strings of gunfire in our immediate vicinity while we were chatting at the launch site. It was probably just someone trying to unsettle the gringos, and I wasn´t going to give whoever it was the satisfaction of looking concerned. I just continued on with my conversations, and pretended to not notice anything, even though it was probably no more than 30 yds away.
We made our way back down the beach. I had gotten better at not dropping the bike, but my pace was still really slow. We took one of the paths off of the beach to a Garifuna village we had passed through earlier that day. I asked a man on horseback if there was accommodation there, and one of the boys that had gathered around to check out the bikes, offered us a place to stay. He led us to his family´s home, and his siblings, mother, and a few neighbors were hanging around outside. Before we could even put our kickstands down, they had brought us a bucket of water to drink, ad they were making arrangements with a neighbor to use his water pump to wash our bikes. After treating the water with my steripen, I chugged down several bottles of water. I have always felt awkward when people in remote places offer me water and I have to treat it first. They probably think nothing of it, and I do my best to explain why I have to, but it still seems awkward, especially when my water purifier resembles a glow stick that I stir the water with.
The boy showed us our rooms, which were in a storage shed of sorts, but there were two mattresses. This place was definitely rugged. In a town of 200 people, the only place with electricity was the local store. After showing us our rooms, the boy asked if we would like dinner. After seeing a portion of some variety of fish hanging on the clothesline next to a couple of t-shirts, I had some reservations at first, but how could I say no to a home-cooked meal.
Dinner was great. We went to the family´s home, where they had two plates of food and some tea waiting for us by candlelight. The meal consisted of fried plantains, and some sort of fried and breaded fish with cheese. The cheese in the fish was a little unique, but edible. When the mother dropped an additional block of cheese on my plate, I asked Omer if he would like to share it with me. He gave me a quick ¨No thanks, Jeff¨ and suddenly took a lot of interest in his food to hide a grin. I eventually made it through the cheese, and washed it all down with the tea made from grass, which was surprisingly good.
I awoke in the middle of the night to the deafening roar of rain on the tin roof, and to water dripping on my face. Several hours later the storm subsided and I squeezed in another hour of sleep. Within seconds of being up and about, the son was at our door offering us coffee and bread for breakfast. We enjoyed the quick eat and packed our bags. I asked the son how much we would like for the accommodation and the food and he said that he didn´t want anything. Omer and I left the family some money, but I couldn´t believe that he didn´t ask for anything.
The rain from the storm made the beach much easier to ride, by firming up the sand and smoothing our the ridges. We were making good time up until a point where a lagoon/river was flowing with last night´s rain into the ocean. Without walking across on foot first, Omer drove into the river and almost completely submerged his bike. Before I could even take a picture of what is now a hysterically funny situation, I was running into the water to help. The current was really strong and Omer did a good job of not loosing the bike. For the next 15 or 20 minutes we tried to muscle the bike out. Each time we wiggled the front wheel r stopped moving, the bike would sink into the sand, the same way your feet do when walking in the surf. If he or I were solo in the same situation, the bike would have been lost. We eventually got the bike out, but it wouldn´t start; not that we expected it to. While Omer worked on the bike, I removed my panniers to lighten up my bike, and carried them across the river. As much as I hated the idea of subjecting my bike to the same thin, we had no choice, and the tide was coming in. With the engine off, we pushed my bike across (much easier said than done), and since there was no water sucked into the engine, it started up right away. Eventually we got Omer´s bike to start as well. After having a good laugh, we loaded the bikes up and made our way back to Trujillo.
Although we didn´t have the trip to La Mosquitia that we had hoped to have, we knew going in that we may have to turn back. In all honesty, the first day on the beach was the most exhausting thin I´ve done in a very long time. The experience with the family and the village was priceless, and it was almost worth turning back just for that. So even though the jaunt was a short one, I certainly found the adventure I was looking for.
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