Day 64, part 2

I went to the parking lot of Echo Lake and saw two men chatting close to their cars. I asked if any of them was going to South Lake Tahoe. Nope.

They suggested me what I was already considering: going back 1.4 miles to the highway and hitch there. On the road, almost all cars are going to South Lake Tahoe so in theory it would be easier to hitch there. At the parking lot, people could be going anywhere. Another possibility would be to be persistent at the parking lot. Eventually I would get a ride, one of the men said.

Where are you from? The older man asked. He was unloading some construction material from a very old and beaten truck. I am from Brazil, I replied. “Oh, você fala Português? Vamos conversar!” he said back!

The man, Christopher, invited me to his cabin and I also met his son, Julian, mid-20s who had just finished his studies in Barcelona. They were there for a few days to repair some things in the cabin and enjoy some mountain biking.

We talked for almost two hours. Christopher explained me that he started studying Brazilian Portuguese because he likes the language and he was clearly trying his best to speak correct Portuguese and not Spanish (he’s studying Spanish at the moment) and it was super cool to see an American putting so much effort into learning foreign languages. Not something you see everyday.

Christopher then said that he would gladly give me a ride to town! He just needed to finish unloading the truck and soon after we were on our way to South Lake Tahoe. Since it was still before 5pm, I decided to go to the car rental company and see if I could get a car today already (I have a reservation for tomorrow). If that worked out, instead of sleeping one night in South Lake Tahoe I would drive ~5 hours to San Jose and sleep at my friend’s place. (I’m having a quad-zero, more on that in a future post!)

Long story short, I couldn’t rent a car because my driver’s license is dutch and I don’t have an “international driver’s license” 🪪. The guy said he would even cancel my reservation since I wouldn’t be able to rent the car tomorrow as well.

That would completely ruin my plan. I googled other car rental companies and nothing. But then there was an ad for this app, Turo, in which you can rent other people’s cars. I downloaded it, found one single car available in the whole region, called the owner to make sure everything was set and it turned out that I could have the car within one hour! I just needed to find a way to get to the car, 4 miles away. No way I would walk four more miles today!

I saw some Lime/Byrd scooters 🛴 on the sidewalk. I stopped by one, opened the Byrd app, read the QR-code and the scooter unlocked! HIkertrash with a PCT backpack riding a scooter in South Lake Tahoe!

Everything went well with the car and by 6:30pm I was already driving to San Jose. All of a sudden I was in a completely parallel universe: this morning I was hiking in the Sierra. Now I’m in a highway 🛣️ driving a car towards civilization, watching mesmerized the city lights in the distance.

After five hours driving I arrived safely. I’ll stay here until Sunday and then drive back to South Lake Tahoe and restart the trail on Monday with a very special +1!