Nate and Kara Buchanan rent a motorbike and ride 1.5 hours through local villages to explore tidal rock pools and swim through a cave pool with a guide. They navigate nervous moments, friendly locals in stilt houses, and small payments to guides, calling it the trip's best day.
$4 (they handed a lady $4).
About $1 per person ("like a dollar a person to get in").
About 15 minutes.
About an hour and a half.
We got it.
We got it.
There we go.
This is going to be by far my mom's least favorite walk.
It didn't have any helmets. I'm sorry.
Sorry, Mom.
I've driven a dirt bike once in my life. I think I was like, seven. I just got some lessons in broken English on how to drive this because the only guy that speaks good English here is still asleep. And it's almost 11. 11 o'. Clock. I'm pretty sure I have the turn on properly. The shifting gears and stuff.
Nah, prefer to be not on the motorcycle when Nate is learning to drive it.
Oh, good. I already finished. What the heck?
I feel like you have to, like, kick something.
Yeah, she said if the key doesn't turn, maybe the key.
We're having trouble.
Do you know how to turn it on?
Hold that down.
All right. Thank you, ma'. Am.
This is going well. He got it.
All right. Almost took the side out. How you feeling about this?
There he goes. I'm nervous. I hope he comes back.
All right.
Here we go.
You have to do your best not to freak out, okay? I'm not saying you should trust me. You have have very little reach. But I just think freaking out is not going to help anything.
Let's pray. Dear God, please keep us safe on this motorbike.
Okay.
So I'm just driving till I see the R and then taking a right and then. Okay. All right. I get a little bumpy, a little tight.
Do you have a preference where I hold?
Good.
Yeah.
Which way to pilar?
Pilar.
Pilar.
Thank you.
Welcome.
So pretty.
I can't believe we didn't get lost.
I knew we'd make it. No problem. That was, I think, by far my favorite part of this entire trip so far. That was awesome.
Jumping off one of those. For sure.
Totally.
Ah.
We made it to the rock pools. They are amazing. But even if they wouldn't have been, the drive here was totally worth it.
It was so gorgeous.
Had they been closed, I wouldn't have even cared.
I would have cared.
It was a stressful ride. It was beautiful, and Nate did a very good job driving us, but I could not relax on that thing.
You have to pay, like a dollar a person to get in. Just filled with these deep tidal pools where the ocean water is just, like, slowly rushing in, where it's low tide. And then some of them are really deep. And then this one that we're in is like three or four feet. The further you go down the beach, the less people there are in each pool. So we have this one all to our.
I liked that.
What'd you land on?
Successful afternoon at the pool. Now we're going to try to find a cave.
If we make it back safely, this will be a great day.
Here we go.
Which way?
There any animals? No.
Bats. All right. How you feeling about the cave pool?
A little nervous, a little cold.
How far did we go? How far?
15 minutes. Okay. Wow, this looks so scary.
Huh, Victor? Ah, yeah.
You can't see all right.
Yeah. Cool. Victor. Got it. Me? Yep.
This is my first time in a cave like this.
S your first time on a cave? No.
Sir. Very nice. Yes, it is.
Yeah.
Can we get out that way?
What is that? Exit.
You good, Kara? All right, I think we're ready.
No, thank you.
We go out. Okay, thank you.
Are there any rocks right here?
Yeah. No.
Oh, look at that.
We just swam in the cave under the road, I think.
Started over here where the motorbikes are, and we came out somewhere over there. Thank you.
Thank you.
See you later. Well, that was an experience.
That was crazy.
I cannot believe that just happened.
No, that got sketchy quickly.
You know where Kara, what's your name?
Hi. Nice to meet you.
Got some gas. Whoo. Good to go.
We know what the red bottles are. I thought they were drinks.
We are off roading.
Very dangerous.
Trying to keep us upright. We're going very slow, Mom. It looks faster in the video.
Well, we lived. We made it back.
Today was awesome.
Today was so much fun.
By far the best day on the island. It was the coolest drive of my life. Like, you go through all these little towns, and then the further you get, like, you go up this mountain, and then there's, like, this mangrove lake on top of the mountain. And then after that, you get to a rice field, and you've got these, like, tropical hills up behind the rice fields.
The rice fields are gorgeous. They were so great.
Then one of the cities was built on stilts. Like, it set over the houses, sat over the water on stilts, and every.
Single person you drive by would wave and smile.
The people got way friendlier the further out you go.
There are no tourists, no hotels, no bike rentals or anything. We drove, what, an hour and a half?
Yep.
To the other side of the island. And the further we got, the more local it was. I mean, people were just out working, and it was so cool.
Kara, tell them about the cave.
So we see a sign on the side of the road that says cave pool. So we stop and we get out, and we handed a lady $4 and then followed these two strangers down this trail to this pool. We thought we were just gonna jump in and poke our heads in the cave and then leave because caves are really cool. So we thought we would check it out. I thought these guys were just taking us down to where the pool is, and they're gonna lean, and they say, okay, jump off this rock. This is how you get in. So we jump off the rock and follow them in. And they. Then we swim into the cave, and they have these flashlights, and they're like, okay, come on.
Come on, sir. Come on, man. But we couldn't see where we were walking. Turns out it was a tour that we paid for a dollar for. And one guy stood in the front, and then it was Nate and I, and then the other guy stood in the back, and we just kept going deeper into the cave and deeper and deeper and deeper. And I think the guy said It'd be like 15 minutes was at least that long.
They were walking with the flashlights, like, looking in front of their own feet. And then you were just kind of trying to feel around, hoping for the best.
He would look at Nate and he'd say, sir, come.
And I was like, it's dark. I can't see anything. I can't come.
I kind of thought they were leading us to our death.
Oh, they did smell really bad. Like, alcohol is. Yeah.
Who knows what they were smoking? But they were very nice and tried to make it helpful. They kept pointing to the stalactite, saying, look, picture. And then finally, it opens up into this little pool pond area. All of a sudden, we're back at the road, but on the other side of the road that we started.
It ended up being a cool experience, but, like, halfway through, I was regretting the decision. That was kind of a rash decision. We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into. And then one thing led to another, and then next thing I knew, I was way back in a cave. Yeah, we had no idea what we were doing.
I'm glad we did it, though.
Probably shouldn't have shot this clip on the beach with all the wind. We'll remember it for next time. Sorry if it's annoying. It was Kara's idea. She really likes the beach. I told her it probably wasn't going to go well.
You got it.
Come on. Hey, remember how much of a weenie you look like in Mexico? Give it a good jump so you don't look like a weenie.
I just want to give you a little tour of our bike.
This is what we've been sporting all day.
Think they gave it to us because we're American?
Not although.
