Day 23 - Hotel Las Olas, Puerto Escondido

It was a late start for us this morning, well actually it was afternoon before we really started to move around. We had aimed to start the bike maintenance early so that we would avoid the heat of the day, but after the session with Action Jackson, neither of us were particularly chipper, but the bike maintenance needed doing, so we headed up the street to collect our laundry, grab some food and then get started on the bike work. It was about 2pm once we got ourselves organised and the plan was to check and clean the brakes and bleed out any air that might be causing them to be spongy, and they were not great, Cassy was worse than Jules. Once this job was done, we would tackle the valve clearances, which hadn’t been done since before we left Lake Tahoe, about 3,500 miles earlier, and if we still had the energy, we would give the girls a wash. The temperature was already nearing 40 degrees centigrade by the time we got busy, ridiculously hot, but we had set ourselves up next to the pool so that we could just flop into the cool’ish water to revive ourselves when it got too much. It quickly became evident that we had a problem. 1 of the 2 screws that hold on the cap to the master cylinder for the front brakes was starting to strip as we tried to undo it. This happened on both bikes, which is a bizarre coincidence, particularly as we had topped up the brake fluid less than a week before in Jocotepec. We either tightened 1 screw too much when replacing the lid on the front cylinder, or it has somehow seized up. Anyway, we tentatively tried to loosen the screw(s), but it was not going to work, not without stripping the head completely and with no replacement screws, I was very nervous that we might end up with a situation where we had no front brakes at all. This is not an acceptable solution for the bikes as about 70% of your braking force relies on the front brakes. So, we held off bleeding the brakes and instead just gave them a thorough clean with brake cleaner and put them back together again. All of this only took about an hour to do on both bikes, but it now meant we had to tackle the valve clearances. Based on our experience of doing this back in the comfort of Jorik’s garage in Lake Tahoe, we were not looking forward to this very fiddly job, but as we had already done it, we were expecting it should be a lot easier. To be fair it was easier but doing it in the crushing heat was not fun. Thankfully the pool allowed us to cool off every 20 minutes or so and as we were not going to ride the bikes that afternoon, we were also able to sink a few cold cervezas whilst working through the steps. Bikes sorted to the best of our abilities in the circumstances, we headed out for the afternoon to watch the surfing at sunset. Unfortunately, there was only 1 surfer and a body surfer braving the waves that afternoon, but we managed to get some great drone footage and it was very chilled out on the beach. We had dinner in the restaurant across the street from the hotel, which was very reasonably priced, and even got in a couple of games of pool. They must have had 50 pool tables in the place, and only 2 were being used. It is clearly the off-season as why would you have so many pool tables when there were such a limited number of people about. It was great that Puerto Escondido is not overrun with backpackers and tourists, but at the same time, there were less people about for us to meet and interact with. And of course, the meeting and people and interacting is the thing that I like most about doing these crazy trips. Following dinner, both of us were pretty wiped out. The night before had taken a toll on us and spending the day in the heat working on the bikes for a few hours had also sapped our energy. Whilst dinner and a few beers were all that was required, we felt it necessary to pop into Jackson’s Bar to say goodbye as we would be heading off the following morning. As we arrived at about 08:30pm, it was all closed up and Oscar’s missus said that Jackson hadn’t opened the bar all day and was nowhere to be seen. We both breathed a sigh of relief as I was dreading further Jackson’s specials when I was so knackered anyway. Being old and partying like it was 1995 is getting tough on us. So, we headed back to the hotel, had 1 last cerveza to say goodbye to a wicked spot, and got to bed early. Thanks Puerto Escondido, you rocked!