Last night, as we were too tired to put our food away properly, Tyler said, "in the REAL wild, we'd have to be a lot more careful about what we do with our food, or animals would come and eat it." We proceeded to talk about various ways of hanging bags of food from trees, and realized neither of us had ever done anything like that. No matter, we weren't in the "wild" and our stuff was fine as it was.
…we woke up to find this:
A crafty little squirrel or mouse really went to town on our tupperware! The poor thing was obviously hungry, but alas he or she didn't really get to chew on anything but plastic. I give whatever it was an "A" for effort!
After eating our dinner leftovers for breakfast (since their containers were now full of holes) we pushed out of our park free-camp and made a plan for the day. Tyler said he was feeling a little better so we decided to hit the road. I probably should have ignored him and insisted we stay put, because it wasn't long before he was feeling awful again. We took it easy, riding slowly through what has become typical deserted beach town scenery before stopping in a slightly inhabited village to buy some fruits and vegetables.
Right by the fruit stand, with the sun beating down on us, Tyler said he felt like he needed to sit down or pass out. I wet a special bandana (filled with cooling plastic beads or something) that my friend Julia sent us, and wrapped it around his head so he looked like the karate kid. Sitting on a walkstool in the shade, head laying on the other walkstool, we discussed what to do. There was a coffee shop nearby; we would sit in the shade, try to cool off with some gelato, go swimming, and then find a nice campsite. Our daily routine has been very repetitive lately (ride, coffee, ride, gelato, swim, ride, camp) but we enjoy it immensely.
Cooled down in the shade with homemade gelato, Tyler felt much better and we continued for awhile before finding a good beach. Leaning our bikes up against a wooden railing, we clambered down the stairs and enjoyed the Mediterranean yet again. There was only one other couple on the beach; October really is the time to be here!
After a quick 4:00 "lunch", we rode on and found ourselves, unfortunately, in a much more populated area. Nevertheless we were able to find a nice free-camp in the woods off the side of the road. Tyler braved an awful cloud of mosquitoes to make us a deliciously peppery potato and onion soup in chicken broth. It was just what the doctor ordered. As we sleepily watched an episode of the Sopranos while finishing up the soup, we felt for a moment like we were leading a very normal existence. We weren't thinking of where we were heading tomorrow and we certainly weren't "biking around the world" —we were just another average couple eating dinner while snuggled up in front of the TV.
