After more tea de coco, it was time to put the bikes together. Using all my non-existant bike construction knowledge, I managed to put together two bikes which at least looked like everything was in the right place, although I'm not sure how we are going to take some bits apart again to take home. We were later to discover that the forks weren't attached properly and they rattled a lot, luckily I had brought a bike maintenance book (should probably have read this first!) and the bikes were then as good as when we picked them up.So now the test ride! We decided that the hostel was too expensive so we were going to cycle across town to another guesthouse which we had discovered the day before. This was the first time we had cycled the bikes fully loaded and they weighed a tonne! We could hardly lift them down the stairs. My bike with bags weighs approx 40kg with Amanda's slightly less. This was the first time it dawned on us what we were actually hoping to achieve, nothing short of a miracle.
After arriving at the new hostel (lovely place around a courtyard), we decided that we couldn't possibly cycle with all that weight and it was time for a second round of economising, the first being a review of Amanda's gear before we left. For Will this meant losing a couple of pairs of boxers and a pair of socks (leading by example). For Amanda this meant a torturous couple of hours deliberating which tops and trousers had to go (from a starting point of 10 tops and 5 pairs of trousers compared to my 5 and 2). We eventually settled on shedding the following:
- A fake leather purse
- A passport holder
- Box of tea bags
- 3 Tops
- 2 pairs of shorts
- pair of trousers
- various girly toiletries
She stood her ground on the heavy glass moisturiser bottle. Painful.
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