The Long Walk

When we woke up the following day our plan was to rent a scooter to get around.  That way we could visit Anne, Kirk, and Cory and also go into town when we wanted.  We discussed that 20 dollars a day was what we were comfortable paying and that we could get one for three days.  Everyone out here rides around on quads or ATV’s (Alison- remember our camping trip in Pismo).  I have seen up to 5 people (mostly families with small children) on one quad.  ATV’s are pretty perfect for a place where the roads are really bumpy, narrow, and dirt is flying everywhere.  Actually that part of the roads make riding on one of these vehicles awful because you breathe in all that dirt.   But we wanted to experience Mal Pais as the locals do so we went out to acquire one of these vehicle.

We took a cab into town and went back to our old last hotel because the owner of that hotel also rented out quads.   We had seen a little scooter there and hoped that it would fit what we were looking for.  However, the cost to rent the scooter was 40 dollars a day.  Which I think is ridiculous.  We tell him that we would like it for two days but we could not afford this.  He sits and looks at the numbers for awhile and says that he could let us have it for 46.  This is much better!  The problem now is that we need to give him one of our passports, which we didn’t bring, to rent the scooter.  Thankfully the owner said that one of his guys could take Sebastien back to the hotel to get his passport.  So that is what Seb did while I sat and chatted with our old neighbor.  When Sebastien returned the owner started to fill out the paperwork and put the total to be 76 dollars.  WOW!  Sebastien told him that this was too much and that we were under the impression that he said it was going to be 46.  The owner said “no” and we told him that we didn’t have that much money in which he replied, “Don’t come here if you don’t have money.”  We obviously left after that.  I found it pretty amazing that people actually rent these out on a daily basis.  The quads were $70 a day.  When a car is $80 a day I just don’t get it.  We found out later that a bike was $20 a day.  Though you could find some for $7 a day.  Crazy!

So after that fiasco we ended up walking to Santa Teresa.  This felt like miles!  We luckily did this walk on the beach instead of the smelly dusty street.  I felt exhausted and crabby about 20 minutes into this walk.  Every step felt like I was dragging a 10lbs. weight behind me. But here are some pictures of that hell…

When we finally got to Esencia, where Anne, Kirk, and Cory where staying they were not there.  So guess what… we walked around to find them… We finally found them surfing.  Anne was coming in when we got there and so I took her board out just to cleanse myself from all the crabby energy I had been accumulating.  The good thing that came out of that session was that I found my next surf board.  Anne rides this fun 5 something fish that she rides.

So we finally spent sometime visiting with with Anne, Kirk, and Cory at their place.  Which was a little house fully equipped with kitchen supplies and had a nice home feel to it.  After eating some amazing guacamole, that Cory had made, we all called a cab and headed back to the break near our hotel.  Here is a picture of that beach.  Unfortunately we didn’t take any pictures of this break when it was breaking but maybe Anne did so I will check into that and post them if she did.

When we got back to this beach Sebastien and I went and grabbed our boards and headed out to surf.  I had a few fun left rides but I also  had a intimate relationship with a few jelly fish.  The jelly fish in this area are pretty small and clear.  So you don’t really see them and one of them (maybe more) got into my swim suite bottoms.  Luckily peeing helps the stinging go away.