Last night we went to our little town’s Carnival, but we were too late, it was only the noise, police and a few hawkers closing their stall down.
I f you look to the right of the stage you will see big tanker Truck. Every town we passed yesterday and today had several tanker trucks lining the main road or little church square, but the police had closed off every towns main road and we were re-routed past the back of the trucks, I could not figure out why there were trucks???????? But wait, it was soon revealed. We found a little Pizza Take Away with some seating and ordered 3 pizzas, each had a water, it was going to be an early night, we were all going to sleep well and catch-up some sleep we thought, our rooms were very cheap but we had our 1st swimming pool and we had a long swim.
Milsy crashed before I could even say Good Night, by the time I came out of the shower I knew I was in trouble as he was snoring very loud, not like him to do so. I was still lying in my bed wondering how I was going to fall asleep when Rocky knocked on our door at 7h15, he had gone for a walk and found some good Panama Sock coffee and a few bunches of grapes, plus we had the three slices of left over pizza from last night. During our late breakfast we hear that the air-con in Pie and Tex’s room did stopped during the night, Tex went for a midnight swim and when he got out he slipped on the tiles and fell, hurting his back, resulting in this photo Pie took when he woke up to go to the toilet.
See the pool and our rooms in this photo:
Look at his beautiful tree, the road today was lined with them, the leaves are almost like wrapping paper:
We decided last night to take the Fastest Route to the town of Las Tablas where we hoped to make the last of the Carnival and hopefully witness the “Burial of the Sardine.” I took the lead and soon had us on the main road, with two lanes going in each direction, still going through towns and passing through Traffic lights, it just had 2 lanes on each side. I stopped at a fruit-guy and we bought sone fruit:
By the time we left Milsy and Tex had hijacked the fast route and had us on the back-roads doing a Kronkel. (Twisty Road.) It turned out to be very interesting as we passed small little towns, all with the main road closed and loud music, lots of police and lots of trucks visible. But I could see were a day late as the floats were now being broken down and stripped in the back roads we were forced to take:
In the small villages you could see there were lots of action the night before, the rich guy in the village had a little Ferris Wheel or Merry-go-Round in front of his house where the little village kids could come and ride. Lots of people were sleeping off their hang-overs while swinging in the breeze from within their Hammocks.
We had a nice ride and it was a small twisty road snaking through villages and past the houses (everyone stays on the main road.) The people were a bit slow but the dogs were angry as they have not slept last night and they took their anger out on us as we rode through their village by chasing after us as we rode through.
Tex got us lost a few times but Milsy was having a good-day and rescued us several times.
Then all of a sudden I saw that we had just traveled 100 000km since we left London in 2012, 319 days ago, so I stopped at a spot next to the Macarena Dance Hall where Rocky who has suddenly mastered the language of Spanish spoke to the guys at the Tyre Repair Shop asking where we could go for lunch in the town. Sadly he could not understand them as they were no longer speaking Spanish but were speaking “Lawn-mower” after drinking for a few days. We will celebrate the 100 000km tonight.
I stopped at a Grave-yard and it looks like the people are buried above the ground and then sealed in under bricks, cement and stone.
We eventually reached the Main Carnaval but never saw any sardine, I only saw thousands and thousands of people, moving to the music, wearing their swimming costumes and then air saw that the prime spots were on all of the trucks from which the crowd were being sprayed. The music was coming from many sides and it was chaos with fire-works going off in the day, vendors cooking food on every corner, cocktails mixed all over and floats going around the town square.
We got drenched !!!!!!!! several time today.
Nice and healthy, the bad cousin of Viennas.
There must have been 20 trucks spraying the crowd, each building had people standing on the balcony’s and plenty of scaffolding everywhere along the route.
We eventually squished our way to the centre of the town square where all the Food Stalls were, we found a tree to sit under and watch the people walk past.
Most kids had water pistol (see below) or big water guns which they filled with ice water from all the cooler boxes which they also sprayed at the people walking past, making you jump as the ice cold water hits the back of your neck or the side of your face. Most kids pitched their tents where they sleep for the 4 days of Carnival. which are the 4 days before Ash -Wednesday.
I am starting to feel a lot better and my health is on the mend, (from all the coughing my stomach muscles are in spasms but at least things has “dried up” on both fronts.
However, my phone was pick-pocketed today at the Carnival, it was like in the movies, a young boy and his grandfather worked together and I did not expect it. We were passing behind a water-truck and a float came past, blocking us walking further. The old man was standing in the gutter flowing with water and clogged with plastic, he pretended to be picking up the rubbish and was wearing gum-boots. to my left was the young kid who was under the belly of the water tanker and kept on speaking to me which I ignored. I held my hand in my one pocket on our groups Kitty (our combined cash used for daily purchases.) With the other hand I was taking photos for this blog, showing off my new I phone. We started to move and I passed the kid, but the old man was now in the way, then Pie started shouting at the poor old man and I decided I will have to chat to Pie about his unacceptable behaviour. The next minute the kids was in front of me again and then he went behind me, when I TURNED AROUND HE WAS GONE !!! He had gone through to the other side of the truck by going through underneath it. I then knew something went down and when I felt my phone was gone from my shorts pocket.
Pie tried to take a photo of the Grandfather-master-mind, that he almost slapped into Kingdom Come. But he missed the face and only got a photo of the empty rubbish bag in which we suspect my phone was:
Sadly I had a lot of photos that I took on the phone but I had also just paid for our accommodation in the town next door on booking.com and was waiting for the confirmation by email to get the address. So todays Blog is missing all the photos I took that would have captured the Carnival, and even moire sad is the that the team just took videos, of which they sent me a few screen-shot, but as they say “it is what it are.”
We rode the 34km to the next town and luckily I remembered the hotel’s name started with a “B” and it made no sense. I looked on my GPS under accommodation and saw a name of a hotel in spanning starting with a “B” and the name made no sense, and then followed the GPS to the hotel and it turned out we were at the right place.
I luckily brought my old phone on this trip (as it happened to me once before when we were still in the USA that my phone broke and then I bought a new phone but forgotten my Apple Password and for 2 days it was hell to get the Blog up-and-running,) and charged it during the ride to our hotel, so the minute we arrived at the hotel I got onto the hotel’s Wi-Wi and went to Find My Phone, where I saw the phone was still switched on and still on-line. It was chaos, I just sat sweating next to the wifi and got to work, however the entire group wanted my attention, “what is the wifi password, which room am I in, is your aircon working, what is the plan, where do we leave the bikes????? etc. etc. etc. ) The owner of the hotel was perplexed as Booking.com never sent him our booking and he wanted my ear, he wanted to see my emails and I just went into “the zone`’ and like Kung-fu Panda focused on the job at hand to wipe my phone and cancel my cards.
So I wiped it and as my Credit Card was loaded on the phone under e-wallet I decided to cancel my card as well, but todo that I needed to get the Private Wealth App working again on my old phone and then canceled my card.
But as you can see, the blog is out and I am up-and-running again. I will in future carry my phone `’there were the sun don’t shine”
Rocky is now roaming the streets in search of something we can cheers our good fortunes with of
riding 100 000km.
Tomorrow we head to Panama City and find our agent to fly our bikes across the Darien Gap. We plan to go to the Panama Canal Museum and get all the history on it. So watch this space !!!!!
And once again the aircon in pie and Tex’s room is not working, and this is Anaconda Country, you can’t sleep with your room door open, so many technicians and the owner has now been summonsed, A room costs $37 per night for two people, so “top Dollar,” it has got to work!!!!!!
Regards
Fleisch
Congrats on the 100,000km mark fellas. Way to go !