Waiting.......and waiting......

The day started so promising. We left Da Lat at 7:30am and headed over to the Gardens on the north side of the city. To be honest we could have skipped them, Fota has the place beat hands down. We walked out of the gardens to see the end of a girls marathon and some father carrying his girl over to shade as she had fainted straight after finishing! Talk about hard core running.

The night before we met one of the Easy Riders working in Da Lat who told us about a new road to Na Trang which has some great views and was 50k shorter than the older road. So we hit that trail about 8:30 and started through the mountains, I put my new camera to use and took some pictures but they don't do the views justice. Its just too much. We stopped a few times for photos and eventually took breakfast around 10:30 by a breathtaking cliff. To set the scene, mountainous backdrop topped with clouds, sheer cliff in front of us and a giant waterfall off to the side. Best breakfast yet!


We headed off again at 10:50, and as we were descending we passed a bunch of bikers heading up the other direction. It reminded me I had forgotten to get a puncture repair kit the night before, but sure what are the odds of getting one up here on this new road. Turns out they are pretty high, almost straight away Alan got a flat. In case you were wondering why I kept mentioning the time, it will start to make sense now. So Alan got the flat about 11, nearest town was 23km east or 56km west. Colm went east, I went west. I found a police station about 4km back the road and once again using hand gestures managed to get across that we had a guy with a flat along the road. Two of the cops followed me back and had a stab at fixing the tire. Fail.

Colm had come back at this point and the cops pointed us in the direction of the town 23km away, so Col set off for that. This was about 11:50, Al & I wheeled his bike into the shade and sat down to wait. Col made it back at 1pm but with a Vietnamesse guy instead of a repair kit! The Vietnamesse guy gestured that he was going to ride the bike back to the town so Alan jumped on Col's bike and I took his bag. The 23km took about 1.5 hours & the wheel was in bits by the time we got to the town so it took another 30-40 minutes to replace it. We eventually hit the road again at 3:30! Four hour delay from forgetting to get a puncture repair kit! Aggggg!!!



We had intended on making up some of the lost time by flying down the road from here, but what the Easy Rider never told us was the new road was so new that it wasn't even finished! The next 20km was a pot hole filled dirt road with construction going on all around us. We were covered from head to toe in dust with 2 minutes. And I really mean construction going on all around us, the workers don't care that people are driving on the track, they keep going. I drove under 2 digger arms while they were scooping and almost got squished by a stream roller but unlike the guy in Austin Powers I got out of the way in time.

The days drama continued on this road, when Colms bag fell off the bike going over a pothole, then his bike started acting up and refused to go up hills. Pretty unfortunate when driving through the mountains! Some locals fooled around with the bike for a bit and got it going again but then he ran out of petrol! He switched onto the reserve and thankfully we made it a fe

w km up the road to get more petrol. We finally made it off the dirt road and back to tarmac after an hour, but once again Colms bike refused to go up a hill. More tinkering and some "help" from locals and Col set off to try again. He left only about 15 seconds ahead of myself & Al but tore off so far ahead that when we couldn't see him we assumed he must have broken down and we had passed him. Thus began the final drama of the day, I drove 10km back to the village but couldn't find Colm, so I went back to Alan. Then Alan drove the 10km back and also couldn't find him. This took about an hour of searching with no results so in the end we decided to just keep going to Na Trang and hopefully we'll see him along the way. Fail. Alan's back tire got punctured again.

At this point I think it was almost 5pm, in 6 hours we had covered about 40-50km, had 3 breakdowns and lost Colm. It was all looking pretty bleak, Al was on the point of abandoning the bike and getting a taxi the rest of the way when a Easy Rider pulled up along side us and said he had met Colm along the road to Na Trang. So with the second new tire of the day and the sunset only an hour away we started on the last leg of the journey. Thankfully we had no more problems and made it to Na Trang about 6:30pm. We found a hotel and then found Colm via the internet. Day complete, in the end it took us 11 hours to complete 145km and I spent about 5 hours just waiting.

We headed out that night and met a bunch of people from Mui Ne and even one guy from as far back as Kampot in Cambodia. Many many drinks were had, utd beat liverpool and I woke up this morning with arguably the worst hangover I have ever had. I realise now I never talked about Da Lat, in summary it was a really nice place, high up and cold at night. The views were great, the town was pretty but we spent most of our time there fixing Colms bike and looking for a camera for me. I did finally get a camera though!

Will probably be spenting a couple of days in Na Trang so will post again after.