Southern Exposure

Sunday, November 30, 2008

We awoke early to search for breakfast. Since it was too early for out of town tourists to have arrived, none of the restaurants were open yet. We returned to the room to do some reading and packing, and then went back into town at 9. The employees had showed up, but they were still not serving. Down at the very end of the street we found the one restaurant ready for business. Fortunately for us, this was also the restaurant that Evan worked and fished for.

We had decided overnight that these were the kind of opportunities to take advantage of, so we were set to spend the first half of the day snorkeling, but then head out in the afternoon. This town is very dull after dark, and even if we only rode for a few hours, it would be a few hours we didn’t have to ride tomorrow.

Evan was a very cool guy, with the best English we’d come across in many days. He was clearly a guy with hustle, and everyone in town seemed to know him. I heard a “Hey bro” while we were eating breakfast, and I turned because who else would be expected to answer to that? He wanted to show me the fish that had been caught this morning as it was being cleaned. We arranged for him to take us out not too far from shore, to a small group of rocks where we could snorkel while he worked.

He took care of getting us snorkel gear, and once the tide had gone out a bit, we were off. A friend would take us to the rocks, drop us off, and then return to pick us up later. The boat we were using had just come in from with a nice catch of lobster from the island area. The boat ride lasted all of about 5 minutes, and we were in the water and the boat was gone. Evan had an inner tube with a dive catch bag attached to it. We could hang on to it to take breaks as needed.

The water was probably about 20 feet deep where we were snorkeling and clear. The fish were the same kind here, but larger. I had been scuba certified years ago so I was very comfortable diving down, but Inna had trouble clearing her ears. This eventually became a problem as she got water in her ear and could no longer dive down. The imbalance in her ear was making her a bit dizzy so Evan & I swam her into shore. I went back out with Evan for another short stint as he searched for shells and clams. The lobster were already cleaned out by the previous users of the boat. I didn’t last too long out there. After swimming in, out, and back in, the combined 2 hours of swimming wore me out. Sitting on a motorcycle all day is not a cardio workout.

As we walked back into town, we chatted further with Evan. He made his money managing apartments in town, and by selling fish and lobster to the restaurants. At one point he had tried his hand at professional surfing. He was a funny guy, with good stories and insight into the life of the town. He prepared some of the clams for Inna, as fresh as it gets, but I still won’t touch them. He demonstrated to Inna how to make a skin cream by scraping some mother of perl from the inside of the shell with a knife and adding some lime juice to make a creamy concoction that helps heal scars of all sorts.

After saying our goodbyes and cleaning up, we were ready to leave. Fatima, the young niece at our hotel, was adorable as ever. She made Inna a little collage-card showing her & I from cutouts from a magazine. She helped us pack the bikes and we bought her a little bracelet from one of the wandering beach vendors. We were off further south, as always.

We rode for a few hours, and as the sun was setting we came into the town of Armería. It was an industrial town on the highway, lacking any charisma. We stayed on the hotel on the highway at the entrance to the town. I initially negotiated a price of about $18 for the room, and while it was better than some, it was near the bottom of the list so far. It was tiny, and very stuffy. While a grandmother stayed behind the counter of the 24 hour convenience store attached to the hotel, her 11 or 12 year old grandson and his posse took care of showing us our room choices. He arranged for us to lock the bikes in a courtyard behind the hotel so they wouldn’t be visible from the freeway. Strangely by the time we had to pay the price was down to 150 pesos ($11), our cheapest yet.

We began to walk into town for dinner, but it was sketchy, so we turned back to eat at the taco stand/restaurant next door to the hotel we had initially passed on. The guy running the taco stand turned out to have lived in the states for 10 years. He had lived in California and Ft. Lauderdale, and still had two daughters in the San Jose area. He had been born in this down, and had returned to take care of his mother when she fell ill. He had remarried and was working 6 days a week from 3pm to 3am at the taco stand while he helped raise his new wife’s teenage daughter. The tacos were as good as the conversation. I really savor meeting people and hearing their stories on this trip; it’s the best insight into a people and culture you can get.

We didn’t sleep very well that night, as the road noise was loud. A train went by very slowly in the night what felt like 10 feet from the door to our room. The long rhythmic vibrations whoomp whoomp whoomp of the huge diesel engines gave me strange dreams about alien motherships landing. We were both happy to be leaving this town in the morning.