Aneel's Travelogue

I'm back home. Most of the rest of the camping was hanging out, eating (Aaron made some tasty chili), and seeing a movie in Sebastopol (Melissa and Aaron don't get out to the movies much anymore). This morning we got coffee (well, I had chai) at the place that had been closed on Saturday, and had brunch at the corner of Canyon Seven and Canyon Two. Then we broke camp and headed our separate ways.

The motorcycle ride back was generally fun. I should have done more route planning (and brought a paper map!). The Treo with the GPS software on it kept crashing, so I had to find my way the old fashioned way: following road signs. I had planned to just ride down RT 1, but it was so foggy that I headed inland towards the 101.

I arrived home in the early afternoon and treated my motorcycle to a chain degreasing and rewaxing. Why do they make chain wax smell like coconut? It shouldn't be so tempting to eat. It's hard to believe that I've owned this bike for more than five years now.

While I was working on the motorcycle, Dave and Jenny invited me to join them on a bicycle ride. Dave had to drop out because of brake problems, but Jenny and I did a nice ride to Tiburon, where we discovered that the ferry back to the city doesn't run very often. So we had some tasty Mexican appetizers at one of the restaurants on the pier and waited for an hour. I suspect this is the first time I've taken a bicycle on a ferry.

I managed to sleep in until 8 this morning. It turned out that Rachel and Darren were the ones who were supposed to bring the coffee, so we had to go into town to get the caffeine addicts their fixes. The first place we stopped was closed. What kind of coffee shop is closed at 8:30am on a Saturday? We passed a couple more closed cafes, and ended up at a place near the middle of the main drag in Guerneville.

Weirdly, we ran into Quincy there. His softball team was in town for a game and had ended up at the same coffee shop, probably largely because it was the only one that was open.

Back in camp, we had some pancakes with blackberries picked off of the bush three feet away. The blackberries are battling a grapevine, but the grapes aren't ripe yet. Washed it down with some rum and limeade. This is how breakfast should be.

We decided to go canoeing before lunch. The campground rented us a canoe and three life vests, but they would only let us have two paddles (they were afraid that a horde of canoers would descend on them and rent their other dozen canoes, it seems).

The campground is on a creek which feeds the Russian River, so we launched in shallow water and had to wade through murky, slimy water until it was deep enough for us to actually get in. Once we reached the river, it was much more pleasant. The water was warm in the shallows and bracing in the deeper, faster sections.

The canoe rental specified that we were only allowed to go upstream from the creek, so we headed in that direction. It turns out that neither Aaron nor I is a natural at canoeing, so we bounced from bank to bank a lot at first, and ran into the trees on the banks more than a few times. The river was also shallow enough in places that we had to get out and pull the canoe.

We were in one of those shallows when we saw the waterfall around the bend. The river was completely dammed, and there was about an eight foot drop from the lake above the dam to the river below. Aaron tried to convince me to help him portage the canoe up to the lake, so we could continue on, but I wasn't having it.

It rapidly became clear that we'd forgotten one of the most important supplies for canoeing: beer. We paddled back to the creek, provisioned ourselves, and drank a couple each on our way back to the dam. Somehow, the lake didn't seem like such a bad idea at this point, and Aaron convinced me to help him carry the canoe up.

As we got near the top of the dam, we noticed an unfamiliar smell that rapidly intensified. We speculated a bit about what it might be, before we agreed that it was probably the rotting deer carcass that was floating in the lake a couple feet from the point where we were about to put the canoe back in. Ew. And, of course, this was just upstream of where we'd just been swimming and canoeing. Ew.

The lake plan was quickly forgotten, and we paddled back down to the creek. We decided that, rather than go back via the murky creek, we'd just carry the canoe back to camp. Carrying a canoe turns out to be pretty easy.

Flor de Caña Black Label (5yr): surprisingly sippable. It's not as smooth as the Centenario Gold (18yr) that I had in Copán, but much better than the Gold (4yr) that I had in Roatan. Mixes really well with limeade.

Camping with the side cases on my bike is totally decadent. I didn't even have to try to pack carefully to fit all of my gear. I even had room for food and drinks this time. Of course, I was counting on my camping buddies to bring such necessities as fire and cooking utensils.

Unfortunately, our advance party (Rachel and Darren) arrived at Willow Creek to discover that all of the campgrounds there were already full. They tried some other local places, but to no avail. They left a note that I found when I arrived a few hours later.

As I reached RT 1, heading back to Bodega Bay to see if I could get cellphone reception, Aaron and Melissa drove up. We decided to forge on. We're now at the Maribel campground, just north of Guerneville.

We have beer and rum and limeade, and bockwurst cooked over an open fire. Bats are flying overhead. Bullfrogs are chirping.

So far so good.

Also decadent: iPhone coverage in my tent.

Monster Black Slurpee: awful. Like grape gone horribly wrong.

I don't have my pictures up yet, but here are Dan's and Gina's.

I'm home and I've slept. I feel so dry. Dessicated. I saw wildfires burning as we flew over California. It's a physical shock to move from a land of sun and rain to a land of fire and fog.

Maybe I'll go someplace dry next. Then, perhaps, I'll come back and feel refreshed.

We're flying over a lightning storm. The sky above us is clear, and the moon is shining down over the clouds. There's one small cloud above the general sea of them, and it's spitting bolts of lightning down into the storm. Beautiful.

(No, I was not over the British Virgin Islands when I wrote this. But I'm amused enough that the mapping software chose a place for "Above the clouds, below the moon" to not fix it.)

Ran into the veterinarians again at the Roatan airport. I accused them of following me around. Sure enough, one of them is going to be in San Francisco in a couple weeks.

San Salvador airport is actually fairly different when the stores are open. Maybe the sameness of airports only holds in the off hours.

Semita de Guayaba (Guava Pastry Treat): Like a giant crumbly jam sandwich cookie. The package contains two blocks of pastry, each one about 5in x 7.5in x 0.5in thick. Breaking off chunks makes a bit of a mess, but it's yummy. Sweet, but not too sweet.

After breakfast, I saw a four foot long Green Moray Eel just under the dock.

Mona and Jenny and I went on a final snorkel this morning. It was pretty awesome. Tooled around the front yard and saw a barracuda and a lizardfish. Went over to the top of the reef and looked at more coral and fish. Lots of parrotfish and angelfish. Swam over to the shipwreck and practiced free diving. I got down to the top of the bow, about 30feet down.

On the way back in, we found a school of little squids. There were a couple dozen swimming around, wiggling their fin edges. They mostly swam in a linear formation, but there was one zooming around, nudging them back into line and seeming to change color.

This was a nice way to close the week, because Jenny and I had snorkeled the first day and ran into a couple who were on their last day. They asked us if we'd seen the school of squid, but we hadn't. Now we have!

I've managed to pack everything, using Dan's spare backpack, even the four-foot hammock bars. I feel a little like I'm cheating by not being able to pack everything into my carry-on, but that's what the flight home is supposed to be like, right?

When you dive, nitrogen builds up in your blood. You can't fly for 24 hours after diving, to give the nitrogen time to be removed. So this is the last day of diving for me.

We did a couple more shore dives to Newman's Wall and the shipwreck. I tried to take some pictures of the puffer fish, but, ironically, they let me get too close, closer than the camera would focus. And moving further away and zooming in didn't really work either. The second dive was my longest to date: 54 minutes. A combination of staying a bit shallower and being more relaxed. Jenny had her camera, not me, which might have helped too.

After lunch, we went on an island tour. It was mostly interesting because the guide seemed to know pretty much everything about the island and had lots of stories about who lived where, and what they did.

We stopped by the iguana sanctuary, which was a bit disappointing. Mostly just iguanas sitting around. Not much in the way of information about them. Not even signs.

We also stopped at the Botanical Garden, which was surprisingly good. The guy who started the place and has run it for the past 25 years gave us the tour. He talked a lot about the histories and uses of the plants. Allspice smells really good.

Our last stop was at West End, the town that tourists stay in if they're not at an all-inclusive resort. It's pretty much entirely dive shops, bars, and souvenir shops. I got a chance to try one last local soda, and to pick up a couple hammocks. Packing one of them is going to be a trick. It has 4ft long wooden bars.

Link Piña Colada: oddly, less like a piña colada than Link Agua de Coco, and less good.

It's a heartbreakingly gorgeous night out. There's a bright half-moon over the water, lighting Fantasy Island with a quiet glow. There's a light breeze blowing, making the temperature perfect. The hammock on the porch of my cabin is about 8 feet above a calm inlet of the Caribbean. I can hear the crash of the waves on the reef. I have a couple of tasty tropical drinks in me. I feel so alone.