Sea to sea Day 5 January 2, 2009

Siuna to Mulukukú

Each day there were two people who stayed behind to bring up the rear called sweepers. The support vehicles knew they had reached the last bikers when they saw the smiling faces of the sweepers. Aimee and I volunteered to be sweepers today. We figured it would be a nice break after adding a few extra K to our trip the day before. :-) I was thankful for the slower start today too as my stomach was not ready to down the gallo pinto and eggs that was served for breakfast. Thankfully a little pepto resolved the issue.

We took a team shot right before we left the hotel today because a newspaper reporter wanted it for an article that he was writing about us. We all look a little sleepy yet.

From Sea to Sea 2009

The hotel where we stayed was up at top of a ridge on the edge of town so as we started out we rode all the way through the sleep town of Siuna. We didn't make it out of town before we had a flat to fix. Thankfully Luis, Nestor and Wim were pro's and had Wim's tire changed in no time. Being at the back of the pack allowed me to visit with some of the other riders that I hadn't seen much. It also allowed me to soak in a little bit more of the scenery.

At one point we stopped to work on someone's bike. While the others worked on the bike I struck up a conversations with some kids that were standing on their front porch. At first they were really shy and were just giggling at us. We must have looked pretty funny wearing spandex shorts, helmets and matching jersey's. The longer we stood there the closer the children came to the road. There were 5 siblings and they were all taking turns holding their youngest sister. They told me what grades they were going to be in the upcoming school year and also educated me about what goes into the smaller old fashioned milk jugs on the side of the road. The children told me that is what they collect the yellow liquid that is left over after they have used all the rest of the milk to make cheese. They then feed this liquid to the pigs.

Chepe was our protector the whole day. I am not sure that he totally understood that he didn't have to be at the back all day. I tried to explain it to him in my poor Spanish but I am not sure I was clear. I don't think he wanted Aimee or I to be at the back by ourselves and was such a servant to all. He would listen to our bikes as we went along and then when we stopped would make and adjustment here or there. There was always a smile on his face and a friendly Pablo taking a ride on his handle bars. Pablo came from the CRWRC offices. One from Canada and one from the US. They traveled every bit of the journey with us. I hope that Pablo learned a thing or two from Chepe. He is such a humble servant to all he calls friend.

As we arrived into town after a 74km ride the group was housed in two different hotels because there wasn't room for all of us at one. Our daily routine when we arrived at "home" for the night was to wash laundry and take advantage of us much sun as possible in order to try and get things to dry somewhat before the next day. Some days the dirty clothes were sent ahead and washed in the river in hopes that they would dry. Usually we were left either wearing wet clothes to start out the day or packing some damp clothes. This night in Mulukukú there was quite a stack of laundry that was dripping wet brought up from the river at about 7:30pm We stung up lines and had clothes hanging everywhere. It was quite a funny sight to see.

In our tiny room was filled with laundry drying. I brought in my bike to help act as a drying rack. Someone had tied up a line previously but it had broken so we repaired it and had mostly dry clothes by the time we rolled out the next day. Praise the Lord for dry, clean clothes.