It's not what you know; it's who you know.

Travel day from Playa Grande on el primo de julio. We headed back to Kike's for breakfast prior to heading off for Samara. Sharon and Kike's wife had been developing a relationship in our prior breakfast stops and during the dinner we had the night before. Their conversation included us leaving Playa Grande after breakfast and our new destination of Samara. Kike's wife then began a longer segment of corresponding with hand gestures to emphasize points she was trying to make. "Rio" and "road" were things I picked out, and upon not getting our full understanding, she brought another man who works there over to us to better explain what she wanted us to hear. Fortunately for us he spoke very good english and wanted to confirm that we planned to take the coastal "highway" to Samara--which we confirmed. Seeing we had our trusty map out--thanks again Wen!--he showed us; "here you have no problem...here you'll be ok..up to here ok; but with rainy season, here could be problema grande. He thought for a second and then said you go here and ask the men there, "es rio grande o pequeno?" While this conversation was occurring, Kike's wife was on the phone speaking with someone in the Samara area to find out what the river situation was with the roads we would be using. She ended the phone call and had a look that said, 'don't use the coastal route'. Our english speaking friend confirmed that our plan would need to change. We didn't need any further convincing to reroute using the interior roads to Samara.

      The countryside was beautiful as we progressed along nicely. I would say our speed averaged about 40 kph for the trip and very infrequently I'd hit 8o kph for a short time, usually downhill. Climbing mountains (these weren't hills), cornering curves and making sure I was all the way to the right of the road on those curves/corners; as oncoming traffic (especially trucks) didn't always share the road equally on the corners, kept our pace in check. The info from our friends from Kike's proved to be worth its weight in gold; as we traversed up a big mountain about 2/3 of the way into the trip we ran into a rain storm. Still raining as we hit the crest, we passed across 3 different water and red clay torrents that came across the road on the descent. The road had a runway alley on the side that was full of fast running water as we continued down the slope. Even more impressive were the motorcyclists that were driving in this rain. Twenty minutes later the sun was coming back out, and we were about a half an hour outside of Samara.
       We were coming down a pretty good incline as GG was telling us "500 meters your destination is on the left", and around a curve--out popped Samara. Whoooa! I forgot to mention that a truck was behind me the last 45 minutes and was usually on my bumper half the time. We safely navigated the last bit to our next location. Our hotel was near the "edge of town" and we pulled right in. As we got out of the car, I could see that the beach was about 200 meters down the road.

        Samara is much more "lively" than our previous two stays. A lot more people are in this 5 or 6 block town. We've met some great people here and are looking forward to continuing our explorations. ¡Hablamos!