We were picked up this morning and taken a short way up the road to Kubar ATV Adventure. Give Aimi the chance to ride an ATV and that’s what you’ll find yourself doing.
No complaints here!
After a 30 second common sense safety briefing, we were let loose on the ATVs. Were we in the UK, it would have taken 20 minutes, a slide show, a slow procession along a flat car park and everyone would have to wear high vis. Its so refreshing to not be treated like a child. “This is go, this is stop, don’t crash”. It’s pretty obvious if you crash you’ll probably break your leg. These things are big and heavy, have power and move all over the place. Don’t be a dick and you’ll be fine.
It helps that Aimi and I have ridden motorbikes for a while, and we’ve ridden them offroad. We had no trouble handling them. But the guide started everyone off slowly and we toured through some rice paddy fields. Even so, an older chap must have wobbled and panicked because he shot off towards a ditch and only stopped at the last moment.
It was nice touring the fields, I’ve seen pictures of flat rice paddies but they are much deeper and muddier than I thought. Also, some are dry and some have a good foot of water in them. It seems, much like in Spain, there is a communal organisation of water channels that run along the edges of roads that get diverted and blocked to send water to different fields. But we had to keep our eyes on the trail as any pothole would grab your wheel and turn you off in another direction.
Once we’d had a tour of the fields, shit got real. We started off down a steep track, barely wide enough for the quads, and it just got steeper and steeper. I was wearing my gopro on my wrist and videoed it, but it doesn’t do justice to just how crazy steep this slope was. The tyres were skidding down the concrete and there was nothing to do about it. I was a little nervous about the 3 Australian chicks following me as they clearly didn’t have full control.
But we made it to the bottom and set off following the track between banana and palm plants. We followed this track to the bottom of a gorge where we suddenly entered a cave. Again, it was barely wide enough for the quads, flat ground under the tyres but the cave ceiling thinned to a crack high above us. Having made the decision to wear sunglasses while riding, now it was dark and I couldn’t see anything thru them. I opted to look like a disapproving school teacher; head tilted forwards, glasses on the end of my nose, eyebrows raised looking over the top of the rims. The cave path twisted and turned and at times I couldn’t see Aimi ahead of me it was snaking so tightly.
As we emerged from one tunnel we came to a momentary halt before those ahead of me moved off again. My engine just died so I started frantically yanking on the starting rip cord. I got it going again without too much trouble but now I had a gap to make up. Rounding a corner I found myself riding along the river bed of a deep gorge. There was about a foot of water flowing quickly over a solid but sandy river bed. It was great fun to thrash the throttle and blast my way up the gorge, sliding the bike around as it slipped on the loose surface and planed over the water. Quads ahead had pulled up so just before I had to stop, I drove halfway thru a waterfall that was tumbling into the river. I got soaked but it was hot and this was a wicked way to cool down.
I had set the gopro to take intermittent photos so I could just concentrate on riding. So these are the best ones that came out. Note: I’ve applied no filters to these. The blurry patterns are just the result of how bumpy the tracks were but I think they look quite cool.
Finishing the tour, we were led back to the compound via a shallow water bath. Probably mostly so the quads got a wash off, but it was fun blasting around here too. Aimi was scared I was going to overtake and splash her… but I’d never do that…
The rest of the day was spent relaxing by the pool, eating and sleeping. I’ve also caught up again with the blog and finished a couple videos which was fun.
We ended up eating dinner relatively early at 5ish. This was great because it was not yet dark, allowing us to enjoy the fading light. We could see lots of kites flying off in the distance. Our waitress said this is just for fun by the local children. Such a wholesome hobby. Tricky to get a photo of them, they just look like dots hovering in the sky. Some were impressively high up. A bit later on the bats started swooping around, followed by the “to-kay” sound of the geko’s.
