There are some major benefits to camping near the houses of people. It was late in the evening just north of the Honduras border and I was desperate to find a place to camp. I found a poor little farm house in a beautiful little valley where everyone was sitting in the yard as the turkeys and chickens scratched around. I asked them if it would be okay to camp behind their house and of course they said I could. I used every Spanish word that I know to talk to them, which is still not many, only a few hundred, but we had a grand time talking about cattle and farming. I took a look at their cattle which they told me they milked every morning. They asked me if I would like to join them in the morning and so I did.
As the sun greeted us, the little valley was filled with fog and a sticky feeling that seemed to make everything feel wet. So as I watched them milk the cows. They used a technique like one I had never seen before, they had no dairy barn, but milked the cows in the field. They penned up the calves the night before and then one by one they let the calves out where they would run to their mother after the calf cleared the tit, they then tied the calf up and started to milk the cow. They only milked a couple of gallons from each cow, which many milk cows in the states could give ten times this amount. After the cow is milked the calf is free to nurse. They then came from the little farm house with a glass and poured me a glass straight from the bucket. It was the richest milk that I had ever tasted in my life and after I had drank two 24 oz glasses I was almost drunk by the taste.
I had a good day of biking. I guess this is one way to put the weight back on.
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