Hi everyone! This is Lucy. I haven’t posted a blog in like forever, sorry about that! I wrote this about 2 weeks ago, but never posted it. We are near Colon now, getting ready to head through the canal on Friday!
Yesterday was a crazy and fun day! We biked from 9:30 until 5 pm. We biked through the streets, walked (us and the bikes) through beaches, saw a sloth and monkeys, biked through the jungle on a possibly bike path, went to the natural Piscina (pool), got down poured on, had a few reealllllly muddy falls, and so much more.
It was a nice morning in Bocas del toro, Panama, the sun was shining, the fruit stores were thriving, everyone said, “Hola!”, and it was going to be a perfect day for a bike ride. We got to the bike store with our good friends from Lasgair, and chose our bikes. While trying out the bikes, two of the bikes pedals fell off. Don’t worry, we got new bikes. ; ) The rest of the bikes were great! All of the bikes had back pedal breaks, and (probally the bigger reason) we haven’t biked for a bit over a year, so we needed to practice a bit before we left.
The streets we went through at first were small, but then they got bigger. Soon, there was a lot of traffic! We found out minutes later wen we came to a big construction site. Yikes, I thought as the big construction machines roared through. The construction workers told us to go on the playa (beach). So we ended up walking our bikes through the really soft beach till a park that came back to the road.
Soon the paths had lush jungle on one side and a bunch of palm trees on the other side. It was truly beautiful. I looked back at the rest of us and smiled. There were nine bikes in a line and Poppy, the youngest on Lasgair, was side saddling the back of her dad’s bike. It reminded of the scene from the Sound of music went there were all biking.
The path was level for a bit then it started getting hilly. We biked up this pretty steeped hill. Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h-hhhh I screamed, the bumpy road vibrating my whole bike, as I accelerated to like 100 mph. The hill was going by super quick. Even when I had the breaks all the way on it was still soooooo fast. I got to the bottom of the hill very soon.
“Wasn’t that so-oooo fun!” Sally yelled as she came down. I laughed and agreed. It was actually a lot of fun. It felt like the fastest I’ve gone since the Grenada buses! ;p
Slowly the path became more in the jungle. All of the bikes in front of me skidded to stops.
“What is it?” I asked.
Heidi pointed to the tree right in front of us. I looked up and oh my gosh, like 10 feet up, it was a sloth. It was like the cutest thing. It was just like hanging out. It slowly turned it’s head towards us looked at us then went back to sleep. The sloth kind of looked like a chubakka, ET, and a cute puppy mixed together. After watching it for a bit, we started on our ride again.
After biking more we came to a sandy road. Hopefully this is not too soft, I thought. Seconds later, it was like someone put the breaks on. I tried to start pedaling again, and this time, the bike went on a super sharp turn then turned the other way. I was not expecting that, I thought with a laugh. All ahead of me, I saw everyone walking their bikes and I decided that was better and faster then swerving back and forth. Every once in a while when the sand was not so soft people would go fast and say, “I am coming through on your left!” so they wouldn’t lose their momentum.
We stopped to look at surfers on a beach break. They were very good. The surfers rode the face the whole way. The waves were huge. We watched them for a bit then biked/walked our bikes to the next spot.
A beautiful beach and sandy spot was in front of us, and we were all ready to take a little break. We agreed it was a perfect place to have lunch. We brought fresh bread from the bakery, cheese, oranges, tomatoes, corn chips, and cookies. It was all delicious. We ate, some people swam, and mostly relaxed, so that when we started biking a little more than an hour later, we would be ready.
The next part of the trail was crazy! There were pools of mud to go around, huge roots to go over, and multiple rivers to cross.
A strange howling had started up just as Heidi passed a tree. I stopped and looked around, and about 15 feet above us were howler monkeys. They were swinging from tree to tree. I was pretty cool!
“Look! Theres some howler monkeys!” I told the other people behind me.
“Whooooaaaaaa!” Fenton looked up and a just the wrong time. There was a huge thing of mud right there. His bike fell over, and left him in a huge puddle of mud. A whole side of him was covered in mud! It was very funny! He posed for a few pictures then washed off in the ocean.
We continued along with lots of laughing, bumping up and down, sometimes a few feet, and mainly having lots of fun. It started to rain minutes later. Heidi saw the sign for the piscina so Heidi, Fenton, and I stayed in one place while Mom told the others who were a bit ahead. We waited for a few minutes and no one came. The rain was getting louder. A whole group of howler monkey started howling then as well.
“This is a bit creepy.” I said as the tree stopped the rain less and less.
The others finally came back!
We stopped at the piscina then started back. We biked our way back to the rental place with not that much more excitement ; p
We came back ten times dirtier, ten times more tired, but, ten times happier! What a day, I thought as we went back to our boat!