Biking Adventures

As tired as we were from our adventures traveling the previous day, we decided just to sleep in and see how things went when we got up.  We ended up sleeping until about 11:00 am.  We probably could have slept longer, but I think the worker at the hostel noticed us shuffling around and knocked on the door to see if we wanted breakfast.  She was such a sweet lady during our whole stay, and I feel kind of bad because I don't even know her name!  I'm not even sure I ever knew what it was.  But she knew mine from day 1 and was always helping me out and chatting.  She is actually from Bolivia--I think she has gone back now, too.  She comes to San Pedro for three months at a time (the time of a tourist visa) to get short jobs at hotels and such to earn money to send back to her family.  Anyways, she insisted on making us breakfast, and wouldn't even let me make my own coffee!  We were surprised that the hostel included breakfast--I had thought that I had read that it did at some point during the reservation process, but I wasn't counting on it, especially at the price for the room.  But it did, and it was actually pretty good (in size at least)--We were each served six (yes, 6) pieces of toast with butter and jam, an entire package of saltine crackers, a large bowl of fruit salad, and unlimited amounts of coffee and tea.  Not the most exciting breakfast, but definitely filling and a good start for an active day. 

After consuming as much breakfast as we could manage, we headed into town to see what sorts of things we could do.  We discovered that most of the most famous "San Pedro" attractions are actually located between one and four hours away, so unless you have your own car or are in incredibly good shape, the only good way to see them is to pay for a tour company to take you.  Of course, the companies take great advantage of this fact, and many of the tours are quite expensive (I believe the cheapest one I saw was $16 for a 2-hour excursion to an attraction that turned out to be only 2 km away from the village in the first place).  We decided to do a little more research on the tours before committing to one, and instead thought we might explore the area ourselves at first.  We found one of the more well-know bicycle-rental shops in town on the main street and went for a half-day rental ($7 for 6 hours).  We'd initially thought we would head towards Valle de la Luna or the ruins that were supposed to be nearby, so the worker at the shop gave us a map and pointed us in the right direction.

He actually should have pointed us to the left, because we headed off in the completely opposite direction of the ruins.  I have absolutely zero sense of direction, so I just went with it.  Scott did say some things about the sun being in the wrong place in the sky considering where we were supposed to be headed, but it all sounded Greek to me (and he mistakenly believed that I had actually understood the directions given to me by the worker), so we continued in the same direction away from San Pedro until we came to a highway.  This was the first time we had really seen the mountains without a ton of buildings or smog blocking them, so we stopped to take some pictures.  We were beginning to get a bit nervous that we had misunderstood our directions, so while we were stopped, we pulled out the map and tried to figure out where we were.  Unfortunately, there is a sad lack of large landmarks in the desert, so this turned out to be a much more difficult task than we had anticipated.

Luckily, a passing taxi driver noticed our confused looks and stopped to ask us where we were headed.  We said we didn't really know, so he took the opportunity to suggest that we head towards Laguna Cejar and pointed us into the direction of the salt lake (which happened to be in the exact opposite direction of where we actually intended to go, but were in the same direction that we were actually heading).  We couldn't find the lake on our map, but we figured that if a taxi driver couldn't be trusted to tell us where things were, no one could.  We got back up and headed out into the desert.  It is at this point that we discovered that bikes are not really meant to be ridden in the desert.  Especially not on sand dunes.  After a couple minutes of trying, we were forced to get off the bikes and walk them across the sandy stretch until we reached the next road.  

At that road, we decided that going to the right was as good a choice as any (mostly because the sun was shining from the other direction, and even with sunglasses it was pretty blinding).  After about fifteen minutes, we saw a sign on a road that forked off of the one we were on, and headed over to check it out.  It indicated that we should follow a dirt path to get to Laguna Cejar, or that we could continue on a paved one to get to "Beter."  Since the Laguna was mostly an attraction for swimming and we didn't have our suits, we decided to check out this other attraction and see what it had to offer.  I'd remembered reading an article a few days before about "hidden gem" villages around San Pedro, and I though I'd remembered something with a name like "Beter" on it.  We figured it might be fun to head to a "quaint, little town," on our first day and get a view of the authentic life in the desert.   

So we headed out towards the mountains and pedaled away.  And then some more.  And a bit more.  We were beginning to get a bit discouraged because it seemed like we were just going around in circles.  Up ahead we saw that the road was blocked, and as we got closer, we noticed that there was a large "Do Not Pass" sign, along with another that noted that the detour was back in the direction that we had just come from.  We were about to give up and just go back to the town when we noticed that there was a small dirt path off to the right of the road.  A bit further down on the path was another sign indicating an attraction, so we followed the path to see what the sign said.  It said "Beter," so our hopes were once again awakened and we continued on, feeling that it couldn't be too much further to our destination.

Soon the road began to wind excessively, and we even rode through a small "forest" (or the closest you can get in the middle of the desert).  At the other end of the forest was a barbed-wire fence and a small, deserted (although very new-looking) house.  There didn't seem to be anything else in any direction for miles.  It was starting to get late and we knew that it would start to get cold soon, so we decided to end our search for the mysterious quaint town and head back to San Pedro for dinner.  Of course, before we could go we had to stop for a water break and photo opportunity.  Turning around to get a better view of the forest we had just passed through, guess what we saw?  Yep, welcome to Beter!