Ride and River Tour: The Last Ride, Day 3

After Marcos's french toast and fantastic, homemade chocolate sauce, we headed out of our quaint abodes and piled back into the jeep for a final round of biking.  This day's ride was shorter than the previous, but no less impressive-- in its own way, of course.  Now, we were in "the belly of the jungle," according to another rider.

 

The bugs were out, but so were we.  I must say that it was difficult for me to get back on the bike for the soreness that had worked its way into the lower half of my body and my forearms and hands.  (Eventually, I'll learn to stand for longer periods of time while riding a bike.)  Though the tropical setting provided a wonderful instigation for my curiosity, the small streams and clusters of large rocks and ruts that broke up the trail were enough to keep my mind focused on the task at hand.  At this point of the ride, there were uphill and downhill sections and, from my estimates, I was consistently about two minutes behind the group for the majority of the day.

 

Then again, I don't normally like being very close to others, so I preferred being in the back.  Granted, there were occasional times that I would creep up and pass (even more rare) some riders.  In general, I preferred to be behind.  No one seemed to mind; they were pretty used to me by then and had accepted me pretty well.

The section of trail that we hit right before lunch I actually did hit.  It was as Marcos put it, "more aggressive".  This meant steeper, downhill shoots with sharper curves and large stones (one section looked like a stone wall had participated in a land-slide down the trail).  The large stones were what claimed me, in the end.  I grew in confidence on the bike, especially after having passed a few people, and went around a turn a bit faster than usual.  I was able to slow down just fine, but when I got to the mosaic of stones, I was crawling over them on my bike and my back tire grabbed on the wrong way and tipped me.  The slow-motion, hard-fall was a bit embarrassing and I was glad no one was around me at the moment.  I was able to get out from beneath my bike in time for others to show up and feigned walking my bike over the stones, which I did do for a bit afterward.  No one seemed to know the difference and I hid the scrapes of my bleeding forearm pretty convincingly-- still the ever-proud newbie.

We stopped in a village for lunch and unfortunately for me (and fortunately for the dirt that had nestled beneath the abrasions on my forearm), Michael noticed my slight looks of pain, asked me what was wrong, and I exposed my pride in response.  Thankfully, the scrapes were very shallow, so there was no need for concern.  After lunch, he walked up to me with cleaning supplies and wrestled my protests with professionalism before scrubbing the area to loosen all of the debris.

Truthfully, at this point I was considering hopping on the jeep because the muscles my forearms were totally shot by this point, sending pain signals (like smoke signals) to communicate with my brain every time I breaked.  But, one of the Frenchmen in our group convinced me otherwise.  (It didn't take much convincing --just someone who had faith enough in me to offer encouragement.)  Thus, I began the impending uphill with the group.

A short-lived team-building exercise to help the jeep gain some traction... after helping one another get bikes across the rainwater river.

As you may have noticed, the jeep did not need assistance from mere mortals.

Mudslides and flowing rainwater made various segments of this uphill particularly challenging.  It wasn't long before the whole of our company was entirely muddy.  I was a bit farther behind the group than I would have liked to be, but I still rode steadily.  Slow and steady.

The support vehicle was never far behind.

Mauricio's jeep was a constant accompaniment for me on this steady, steepening incline.  In fact, about halfway up the hill, I was so sore and tired that I was in agreement with Marcos when he, gently, put me in the jeep.  After acknowledging my curiosity of how far we actually had ridden up the hill, I was 100% sure that I wanted to finish the hill in the jeep.  No shame.  Not to mention, Mauricio, the driver, was just as kind as he was skilled.  He encouraged me to practice my Spanish with him during the remainder of the day.  That is, we practiced intermittently between dialogue with another rider who had taken today to ride in the van due to sickness.

When particular hill crested, a river was flowing.  It gave us all a chance to cool down from the day and rinse the mud from our... well, everything.

The ride didn't end here, though.  After about a half hour in the jeep, Marcos and the guys jumped out of the jeep to complete a final push to the town we would stay in that night: Mapiri, a trading center for the various mining towns we passed.  It is the busiest area we've seen in a couple of days.  As it happened, the owner of our lodgings for the night (a motel that looked to be still under construction) was also the owner of a restaurant down the street.  He would also be our riverboat captain for the next three days; thus, Marcos fittingly introduced him as "the Donald Trump of Mapiri".