What do you get when you combine 85+ Diego Garcia residents, a ferry ride, 36 miles of muddy trails, dirt road, paved road, rain showers, blistering hot sun, humidity, bugs, birds, rats, coconut crabs oh and bikes ... you get an epic event of muddy proportions (or something silly like that).
This Saturday Jared and I participated in the Diego Garcia tip-2-tip bike ride. In a nutshell we woke up a 6am, had a quick breakfast, rode our bikes down to the Marina, took a ferry ride across the lagoon to the other side of the island, rode our bikes (mountain bikes that is) on 10 miles of dirty, muddy, coconut laden trails, then 8 miles of compact dirt road, followed by 18 miles of road. The entire trip took us 5hr 15min, in which we saw amazing things (coconut crabs, red footed boobies, beautiful oceans), took a ton of pictures, and tortured our bodies. A few lessons I have learned after this ride ... when you travel always bring with you a pair of bike shorts and your bike gloves (you never know when you will need these things, and my butt and my hands REALLY wish I had them on this bike ride), bring more than one pair of shoes (poor Jared only has one pair of shoes ... and they are not doing so great right now), Gatorade is probably one of the best drinks in the world (haha, if you have ever worked out with me Anna, then you might know that I really dislike Gatorade, but on this ride, I really think that I finally learned how amazing a beverage it can be).
The following is my photo journal of the event ... sorry for the length of this post (but it will mostly be pictures!)
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| Map of Diego Garcia Tip-to-Tip Bike Ride |
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| Early morning breakfast - fuel for the day! |
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| Loading up the bikes - right one for bikes, left one for us! |
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| Me and Jared before getting on the boats - yes it was already raining. |
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| GRRRRRR...... |
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| On the Boat ... somehow I couldn't stop thinking about Saving Private Ryan |
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| On the boat, looking awesome in our life vests |
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| Made it to the other side, on the beach waiting for our turn to hit the trails! |
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| Getting pretty excited!!! |
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| Red Footed Boobies!! - These birds were like "humans what are you doing here, we live on this side of the island so that we don't have to deal with you" oh and they smell pretty bad ewww |
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| The trail! |
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| More of the trail. (It was raining at this point) |
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| Coconut obstacles! |
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| Here I am ... looking hot and sweaty (and my helmet is always lopsided!) |
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| Trails + cool trees |
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| And the mud begins ... hahahaha (better to ride through it sometimes) |
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| Coconut crabs on the Beach! |
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| More Coconut crabs! |
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| Red Footed Boobies! |
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| This is where the fun really began ... rode down the middle of this and got stuck, haha! |
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| More muddy trails! |
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| The Indian Ocean :) |
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| And then we hit the road ... 18 miles of HOT HOT HOT. |
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| Super tired at this point, wanting to be done! |
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| Yay the finish!!!!! Just a little muddy ... |
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| OK a little more muddy this way! |
All and all, it was a fun trip. And now the only places I am sore are my butt, my shoulders (from my pack) and my hands... which were rubbed raw from the handle bars and sand!
Oh and just for you non-believers or those of you who are saying "those trails don't look so bad" ... at times when I was riding I was literally in water mud pits that reached my waist ... while I was riding eek!!! So fun :)
It looks like you had a lot of fun but it is definitely something I never want to do haha. I like the map you made at the beginning and the bird pics. Good job!
ReplyDeleteWow, what an adventure! Great red-footed booby photo. So, how big are those coconut crabs? You should try to take a picture of one next to a coconut.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like such an adventure!! Glad you enjoyed some gatorade, it has saved me on many a long ride :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe when you get back we can go on a ride one day ... one day when it's actually nice though!
Anna ... yes please lets ride! Do you still be long to raintree? maybe we can take a spin class together!
ReplyDeleteI was in the Airforce and a friend and I woke up one day and decided to grab the rusty old bikes at our tent village and ride to the coconut plantation ghost town on the other side. Super cool to see they are doing organized bike rides. Our trip, we found out later was not approved but luckily we did not get in trouble. So cool to see a post about it on the web.
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