In the cold cold night

Feb 12th

I awoke to a rather frosty morning. My bike computer showed -1 degrees. Well I guessed I was camped in the desert. To avoid being seeing with the rising light of dawn, I took my tent down quickly and had to actually shake small smeets of ice from it. My breath had condensed on the tent and then frozen, repeatedly throughout the night. While I fooded, I noticed the temperature drop to -3 degrees, which I thought was a mistake, but somebody later told me it does that just before sunrise. Weird.

Frosty.

I got on the road again and rode through a beautiful day. Hills and valleys appeared and then peeled away continuously until the countryside opened up and I rolled down into a wide valley and San Vicente. A few tasty fish tacos later, I was picking up some supplies when a guy called Dan came up to ask what I was doing. Once I had explained, he suggested I visit an orphanage in a place called Vicente Guerrero, a little further down the road, and I thanked him saying it was just what I was looking for. I got going again, loaded up with 6L of water, which I had to buy in plastic bottles unfortunately, because nobody drinks the tap water here apparently.

I cycled. There were occasional headwinds, occasional drivers who seemed bent on running me off the road, but I could hardly remember them for the scenery...

I found myself at Punta Colonet at 4pm, and to get to Vicente Guerrero would put me a little too close to darkness again, so to avoid a repeat of the night before, I stopped and asked a random guy where I could camp. He pointed me to the town park, which was in front of a police station. I asked the police, and they were down with it, saying they would keep an eye out for me. Strange as it felt to pitch my tent while children played on the swings nearby, and people walked home from work staring, it was all in all a nice camp spot, and I slept well.