Fun with Beach Cruisers

Seth and I decided Saturday morning we needed to head of Antigua for a change of scenery. After a few hiccups, we finally found a place that rented bikes--beach cruisers to be exact.

We felt a bit retro getting on these things--they look like something and out-of-fashion old person would ride on the boardwalk in Jersey--but the seats were incredibly comfortable. We biked south for about 40 minutes up the big volcano to the town of San Juan Obispo. We threw the frisbee on the town's basketball court for a while before starting up back up the mountain. We walked our bikes uphill for 15 minutes and were about to turn around, when we ran into two native kids...

Apparently I correctly asked for an open field to for frisbee, because they both said (in Spanish) that they wanted to play frisbee too. We were able to ride down the first part of the trail, but by the time we crossed a orchard full of apricot-like fruit the trail was too faint to be passable by beach cruiser. The boys, Juan and Manuel, gave us a handful of the fruit to try--it walnut-sized, light yellow, had large seeds, and was quite sweet. Just don't ask what the name was, cause I forgot in spite of asking at least three times.

After that, we had to basically cut through a coffee field. There really wasn't a trail by this point. When we were talking later, Seth and I found that we both were thinking, "I hope this kids don't disappear cause we won't be able to find our way out.

Eventually, we arrived at a giant dirt soccer field and started hucking the disc. Either because of the altitude or the humidity, the frisbee flew significantly farther than usual. Juan, was the big surprise of the day. He is an under-sized fifteen was throwing the disc easily 100 yards. It was quite the day.

The goodbye was a little bittersweet cause the boys asked us for money to buy a kite, and when we didn't give them any, asked for the frisbee as a gift. I can't figure out exactly why, but I just didn't feel comfortable giving them money. I had this impression that they may have thought that since we were obviously tourists they should try to get something out of us. We're still trying to figure out exactly how to really touch the poor people around us.

We had to carry our bikes across a dry creek to get to the road, but after that, we barely had to pedal back down the mountain to Antigua.