Day 105 (3 September) - Day 108 (6 September)

4 zero days in Bend - Dario's recovery from Giardia

Dario had another rough night despite the antibiotics but the next morning, Labour Day, he claims to finally feel a little better. We have breakfast in the hotel with the free vouchers we were given as first time guests. Dario manages to eat a little bit of porridge and camomile tea while I splurge on their amazing buffet. This is by far the best hotel food on the entire trip! Even though this involuntary break in Bend wasn’t planned I realize that this way I get to organize quite a lot of things and even get some much needed rest myself.

While Dario's digestion is still not back to normal and he goes back to bed, I borrow a bike from the hotel and bike over to REI to buy our rain gear and rain mitts for our wool gloves, as well as a new Sawyer Squeeze water filter (we want to make sure it works 100% in the future so as not to catch another parasite) and then take an Uber to the post office to pick up two boxes that we had shipped here. I then get a ride back to the hotel to get started on our resupply strategy. Resupply in Washington isn’t easy because the towns we will visit are small and usually only have tiny general stores with limited supplies and horrific prices. Most hikers prepare resupply boxes ahead of time and ship them to all the resupply points in the last state. We will ship 6 resupply boxes which means about a month worth of trail food for the both of us. I will not be able to do this by myself and have to wait until Dario is feeling better. We chill in our hotel room for the rest of the day, ordering soup up to the room, writing on our blog and going to bed early.

The next day I decide to wash our sleeping bags and down jackets. The down material requires a special laundry detergent which I also got in REI the day before. I bike over to the laundromat where they have larger machines, which is highly recommended. It takes forever until the sleeping bags are washed and dried, but they feel amazing afterwards! Finally they are puffy again and don’t smell anymore. :)

We are still waiting to hear if Dario has Giardia or if it is actually something else. The clinic should have called by now, so we call them instead to find out. They can’t get hold of his doctor and will get back to us. Luckily Dario’s state has much improved by now, he is feeling much better and can finally hold his food down. So it looks like it is indeed Giardia as the antibiotics seem to be working.

The next day we decide to go do the resupply in Safeway where we end up spending 450 USD on groceries. It is worth one month of food but still, it hurts! I picked up some empty boxes from the post office the other day, so once we get back I start distributing the items in the 6 boxes. Dario needs a lie-down, he’s still weak and our shopping trip - exhausting for both of us - really wore him out again. I soon realize that we will need two boxes for every destination (we are two people with big hiker hunger after all!) and it feels like a never ending task! Once Dario has rested enough he helps me with the boxes and together we complete this exhausting task. I never want to have to do this again!

Then Dario finally receives the phone call from the clinic. It’s Giardia! We guess that’s good news because he’s been successfully treated by now and has definitely started his recovery. We even jump in the hotel’s hot tub that night which feels great, especially for our legs and feet.

We take one more day off the next day and have a nice breakfast out in the town. Bend is a lovely place with a river running through the entire city. There are many parks, it’s generally very green and easy to get around. It has this laid-back vibe, it still feels like summer, people are als friendly as ever and the fact that Dario is finally feeling well again puts us in a great mood. We couldn’t be more excited to get back on trail.

We take our resupply boxes to the post office on a hotel trolley, which is kinda fun, even though (or especially because?) everyone is staring at us, wondering what we’re doing. Back at the hotel we decide to wash our tent for the first time, we might as well start all fresh! We end the day by going out for dinner in a great pizzeria, seated outside, enjoying the warm summer eve.

I think I can say for the both of us that this stay in Bend really helped us both. Dario recovered well and got rid of his parasite while I was able to organize everything we needed for the last leg of our hike. Now that we have boxes shipped all over Washington I guess we have to finish this hike. And with the new energy and motivation we just gained I guess we CAN actually finish this hike. Let’s go to Canada!