Cancun to Corazol

I left Cancun early.  I was anxious to hit the road again.  It was a short, hot, sweaty ride south to Playa del Carmen.  By 8:30 in the morning it was possible to wring the sweat out of my shirt.  When I got into town I tried to call Horacio.  Unfortunately I was not able to get a hold of him.  I fired an email his way and crossed my fingers while I checked into a hostal.  I instantly like Playa better than Cancu  The beach was not as nice, but much more accessible.  There is also crazy nightlife in Playa if that is what you want.  Playa is also known for its scuba diving which is supposed to be second to none.  I am not a diver but the snorkling is highly recommended as well.

I spent the afternoon lying on the beach doing nothing until I got hungry.  I walked around and looked for something to eat and even though Playa is not developed to the extremes that Cancun is, I still saw several American chains and some of the same restaurants that were in Cancun.  I decided then that I was not going to stick around another day to snorkle.  I was still feeling the itch to keep moving and sticking around an overly Americanized city did not appeal to me too much.  I was dying to feel like I was traveling again, not like I was at home.  After a few drinks at the roof top bar in the hostal I went to bed.

The next day to Tulum was another easy ride.  It was almost a carbon copy of the day before.  Short, hot, and sweaty without much scenery.  The beach to my left was lined with huge resorts the whole way from Cancun to Tulum.  About every 3 to 5 kilometers there would be an enormous entrance with a big fancy gate and guards there to keep out scrungy cyclists.  You could never even see the resorts behind the entrances which where hundreds of feet long and at least thirty feet tall.  I got into Tulum really early and checked into a hostal there that was recommended to me the night before.

If Cancun is Vegas, then Tulum is Breckenridge.  It is definitely still touristy, but it feels so much more laid back.  I can deal with that a lot better.  I realize that I am a tourist as well and I can deal with touristy stuff pretty well, but it was nice to finally be somewhere that was much more chilled out.  There were bars and nightlife here as well but not the insanity of Cancun.  There were also resorts on the beach, but they were much simpler and less obnoxious.  It seemed like the place had everything you could want without the crowds.  I took the shuttle the hostal runs to the beach, and I loved it.  Tulum is definitely a place I could see myself going back to.  The beach is incredible, there are plenty of nearby activities and there is lodging in every price range,  and oh yeah the girls there were incredible.  Both the locals and the tourists where the hottest girls I had seen anywhere on the Carribbean.  If you have even seen a drawing of a little fish getting eaten by a bigger fish which is eaten by a still bigger fish, that is kinda like the women in Tulum.  One passes by and you think, wow look at that, then another passes and you say to yourself, oh my goodness are you serious, then another one passes and you don´t think at all.  I wished I was stranded there for a week.  Or maybe I have just been on the road too long.

There is also a large Mayan archeological site in Tulum.  I went and visited that as well while I was there.  The ruins were unspectacular to be honest, but the scenery (I mean the ocean view this time) was nice.  Despite all the positive things about Tulum, I was in a little bit of a funk.  The hostal I was staying in was a party hostal, but instead of staying up having drinks with the pretty señioritas until four in the morning I went to bed early.  The next morning, I still wanted to spend another day in Tulum, but I checked out of the hostal and moved my bike to the campsite on the beach.  I threw my tent down there and talked with a few hippies that were staying there.  I went swimming some more and then rode out to swim in one of the many nearby cenotes.  It felt awesome to jump into the cold fresh water.  The ocean is great and all, but the sea is almost too warm to be refreshing and nothing beats fresh water swimming.  Cenotes are kinda a crazy thing.  This one was huge and I saw some scuba divers come out of the water that had been exploring the place for two hours.  I overheard the guide tell someone else there are 60 kms or underwater tunnels in that cenote.  Cenotes just seem like such a strange phenomenon to me and the strange landscape inside them mixed with the large amount of area unexplored in them are enough to make the imagination run wild.

I went back to the campsite and watched a storm come in off the sea.  No one else seemed too concerned so I figured it wasn´t serious.  It was really cool and humbling to look out over the ocean and see huge clouds lit by lightning coming in.  I was once again blown away by the vastness of the ocean and what a powerful force it is.  Once the rains hit I hit the sack.  I had a day to simply grind out distance the next day.  On the road south I saw another cyclist resting at a shaded bus stop by the road.  His bike was fully loaded just like mine so I stopped to talk to him.  His name is Martin and he is a Polish guy traveling more or less the same route as me for six months.  We go about the same speed and distance per day so we decided to ride together for a little while.  Martin is kinda a strange dude.  He speaks no Spanish at all and his English is worse than my Spanish so communication is a big challenge.  He had been on the road for three weeks and honestly I don´t know how he has done it.  My Spanish is not good by any means, but I can understand the idea of what someone is telling me and I can make myself understood and cleary ask all the basic questions.  The nice thing though is when my Spanish really breaks down I can get away with English.  Also, English is the default language in any hostal.  To be honest, Martin was the first white person I had met that did not speak English.  Every other European speaks English with a varying degree of skill.  But Martin is a little older and from a former Soviet bloc country so I doubt he learned any in school.  He also seemed to have no desire to improve his language skills.  He lived in the UK for two years working as a welder and hardly spoke English, and for Spanish phrases he had notecards already written down that he would hand to people.  I read them and they said simple phrases like “I need a place to rest for the night, can I put my tent in the garden.”  The fact that he hadn´t memorized these after three weeks quickly squashed my hopes that this could be a person to learn Spanish with.  He was also traveling very cheap, which is perfectly understandable.  I like to cut corners wherever I can as well.  There is no purpose is frivolously spending money and I actually prefer the tent on some nights, but Martin took some extremes.  The best example is his water.  He buys water in 20 litre jugs, because that is the cheapest way to buy it, and puts it into 4 smaller containers in each of his bags.  That is 44 pounds of water.  Nothing but water.  I couldn´t lift is bike it was so heavy.  I think in the long run a knee replacement is more expensive.  I asked about his spokes with the weight and he said he had broken a rear spoke on a 40 spoke wheel.  He hasn´t made any mountain crossings yet and I wonder if he will continue with his strategy once he hits the Andes.

All that said, I was beginning to get a little lonely on the road and was glad to have the company.  It is also so much easier to ride when you have someone to share the load with.  In a way, not being able to talk much almost made getting along easier.  There are no expectations from the other person to be your friend or keep you entertained, just as long as you take turns cutting the wind its all good.  At the end of the day we arrived at a little village and I asked aruond about camping somewhere.  I figured that would be easier than handing someone a notecard.  However, we were quickly reminded of the drawbacks of having more than one person.  People are simply more wary and less generous.  Martin refused to camp in any fields, including one that we were told about that was in the middle of nowhere with a few good hiding spots.  He insisted on staying in someones garden where there would be people to keep an eye on us.  We could not find anything in the first pueblo so we tried a few ranches without luck until we reached the next pueblo.

 

It was beginning to get dark and I started to try and get more and more creative for a secure place to stay.  Eventually I got hooked up with the mayor of the pueblo and after talking with him for a little while, he agreed to let us stay in his yard.  The major downside was the small zoo of dogs that kept me up all night.  I was glad to get an early start the next day.  We rode to Laguna Bacalar, and it is an incredible lake.  The water has the same beautiful shades of blue that the ocean along the coast had.  Also, the bottom is sand and there were these bizarre coral formations that I was told by a local were some of the first organisms on the planet to perform photosynthesis and  pollute the air with oxygen and cause the first mass extinction.  I have no idea if that is true but it is kinda neat if it is.

 

There was a small campsite along the lake that we stayed it.  It was an absolutely ideal location.  As I was setting up my camp I recognized two Spanish girls I had seen briefly in Tulum.  I went over and asked them if they were in Tulum and they said, yeah you are John the bike guy.  Apparently they were also camped on the beach and someone there had told them about the crazy bike dude.  They told me another friend of theirs was going to arrive in a little while.  Not long later Juri, a Belgiun guy I had met in Cancun, showed up.  It is funny how these things work sometimes but I guess we were on the same trail and all trying to travel cheap so it makes sense.  The four of us hung out at the lake for a while.  Later we heard about a fair in town.  We figured why not go check it out.  The fair was exactly like any American fair except they had fried bananas instead of funnel cake.  Eventually it got late and Juri and I were exhausted.

 

There was no rush to do anything the next morning because Corozal was pretty close.  I woke up early, which I always do when I am camping, and decided to go for another swim.  The lake was just too perfect to not jump in one more time.  There was also a cenote very close to where we camped.  Martin and I went there and I jumped in the water again.  The cenote was free, but not underground so it was not quite as neat as some of the other.  Eventually it was time to stop swimming and start biking.  The road to Belize was horribly windy but we did not have to go far.  At the border it was time to spend some pesos.  Martin cooks every single meal to save cash.  Overall it is a good strategy, but it is really hard to find decent meat at any of the stores.  I almost always resort to buying something from a street vendor and crossing my fingers that it is well prepared.  This time I was able to talk Martin into buying some tacos at a street stand.  When I told them they serve tacos he asked me what they were, which told me he really does make every single meal himself.  Tacos are as common here as trees in a forest.  They are literally impossible to avoid if you buy food.

 

After some delicious fish tacos and spending the rest of my pesos on groceries it was time to cross the border.  It was a pretty painless process and the next thing you know I was in Belize.  I was so ecstatic to finish Mexico.  I had a huge sense of achievement and I could not take the smile off of my face.  After the border it was maybe ten miles to Corozal.  Belize is an entirely different place than Mexico.  The most obvious change was language.  Since Belize was a British colony, everyone speaks English.  Spanish is also very common and so is some other Carribbean language that sounds like nothing I have ever heard before.  The population is incredibly diverse.  There are white, black, hispanic, and chinese people all mixed together with no clear majority.  There is also a large Rastafarian population that has dreadlocks and will gladly sell you marijuana.  Overall though I would say the people are very friendly and laid back.  Everywhere I went, on the bike or off, I was gretted with a “whats up dude.”

 

After hitting up the internet cafe in Corozal I headed to the beach which was actually quite awful.  It was incredibly rocky without many good places to swim.  That did not keep it from being swarmed with children though.  They all looked at my bike and found it to be the most incredible thing they had ever seen.  Even the smallest features amazed them.  My camelback and rear flasher were probably the two most popular items.  At least a half dozen children insisted on squeezing the mouthpiece and watching water drip out.  After a while it was beginning to get late and I had already given away all my sweet bread.  I headed back to a campground that Martin and I had picked out earlier.  After setting camp I celebrated being alive two years after being diagnosed with cancer, which I have since beaten, by eating a massive plate of Chinese food and going to bed.

Merida to Cancun

After eating breakfast I had an easy ride to Cuzama.  Cuzama is a little village that is known for having beautiful cenotes, waterfilled sinkholes.  They are supposed to be among the finest in all of Yucatan which is saying quite a bit because cenotes are everywhere here.  I pedaled down one of the narrowest two way roads I have ever seen in my life for about 25 kms before I got to the town.  Fortunately, there was essentially no traffic to deal with.  I passed through several small villages on my way and I noticed something that made me smile.  All these villages had bicycle taxis.  A bike taxi looks like a backwards tricycle where people sit on benches in the front and a guy pedals in back.  I suppose because the land is so flat here and the ground they have to cover is so small it makes a lot of sense to shuttle people around by bike.  I had seen these a few other places in Mexico but here they were everywhere.  Being the weekend, one village I passed through had a market going on and there was an absolute swarm of bicycle taxis outside.  Just like car taxis they all have a little bit of personal touch as well.  Some where just the basic bench, others had a canopy for shade for the passengers, many had stereo systems to provide music for the “driver” and the really nice ones where actually powered by moped.  It is sometimes good to know I dont have the heaviest load on the road.

 

It took me a little while to find the cenotes because they were not very well marked.  This kinda suprised me because they have to be a big source of income for the village.  When I finally did find them I learned that I would not be able to ride my bicycle to them.  The only way in and out was on an ancient rail track with a horse drawn cart.  I was able to hop on with a smaller group and off we went.  The cenotes were really incredible.  The water was crystal clear and incredibly blue.  They were nice and cold also, perfect on a hot sunny day.  One of them was just a few holes in the ground that were just big enough to stick a ladder in and climb down.  Once inside it opened up into a huge cavern with roots dangling down from the ceiling and little shafts of light shooting through the other holes.  Being a weekend and all they were a little crowded, but I did not care too much.  I was too busy jumping off the platforms into the water.

 

Afterward storm clouds moved in and rain started to fall.  This did not bother me too much though because I was not planning on going farther that day anyway.  After taking a bit of shelter and waiting for the rain to pass I asked the police station where I could camp.  They recommended a futball field a few kms away because there was going to be a party in the center that night.  I asked about music and dancing and they said there would be many señoritas.  When I got to the field it was raining again and I had to chill out for a while until it stopped to pitch my tent.  I crawled inside and began to update my journal which was falling behind.  I reached over to hit my GPS locator to let mom and dad know I was still alive and I could not find it.  I looked through my bags and realized I must have left it in Merida.  This was a pretty big blow.  I was planning on going to the fiesta that night but resigned myself to sleep so I could wake up early and return to Merida.  My short bike ride to Chichen Itza now turned into a long bike ride.

 

I woke up and began riding before dawn.  It was pretty scary without any moon.  My headlamp was painfully inadaquate and drivers do not seem to realize that highbeams blind cyclist just as easily as they blind drivers, if not more so.  Cycling over terrain I had already covered was enough to make me sick.  It was incredibly demoralizing to pass through the villages again knowing I was going the wrong direction.  Fortunately, when I got into Merida, my Spot GPS was exactly where I left it.

 

It was breakfast time by now and I remembered seeing a place in town that did breakfast buffets on the weekends.  I decided to hit that up and see how much damage I could do.  The food was only slightly above average but what makes this buffet worth mentioning was its likeness to the Topeka Country Club Sunday buffet.  Almost every weekend I am home in Topeka, I go to the Sunday buffet with my grandparents.  It is one of their favorite things to do and has become a small family ritual.  The buffet was set up exactly the same as TCC does it at home, and there was even a live Spanish guitar trio, which I figure is the Mexican version of the TCC piano player.  After the guitar trio was done Frank Sinatra, my grandparent´s favorite singer, came over the speakers.  The whole experience gave me a huge sting of homesickness for the first time on my trip.

 

After breakfast I went to fill up on water.  In the process a guy walked past me wearing a Kansas State shirt.  This is only the second time I have seen K State gear in Mexico, the other was on the Mexico City subway and I did not have a chance to flag down the guy wearing the shirt.  This time I chased the guy down, who looked to be about the age of a college freshman.  I asked about his shirt first in English and he gave me a bewildered look.  I asked again in Spanish and the situation was not improving.  I told him that I went to that school and asked him where he got his shirt.  Maybe I scared him off by being way too enthusiastic but he basically told me that it was just a shirt he had with a logo on it and it had no significance to him.  Bummer, it would have been cool to run into a fellow Wildcat.

 

I began the long ride back toward Chichen Itza, although this time on a different road.  I stopped in a small village long enough to watch the U.S. get embarrassed by Mexico in the Gold Cup final.  I left before it ended and saw the final score that night was 5-0.  Ouch!  There was a hotel with campsites near Chichen Itza that I pulled into.  After paying the man at the desk I began to wheel my bike through the lobby.  I felt the brakes rubbing badly so I stopped to inspect my wheels.  My rear rim was cracked very badly.  I actually could not believe I did not notice it earlier.  This was a killer blow on an already awful day.  This almost pushed me to tears.  I went into the campsite and just sat down for a while.  I did not know what to do.  A suitable rim could not be found in the entire country, and even with a new one I was beginning to have serious questions about the craftsmenship on some bicycles in the area.  It is a little unbelievable what people ride on here.

 

I could not deal with the problem that night.  It was just too much for me at the moment.  I went to sleep and woke up for Chichen Itza the next day.  I was sadly disappointed by Chichen Itza.  This “Marvel of the World” does not allow climbing on any structure.  I had read that someone had an accident on the main Castillo several years earlier and it had yet to reopen to people who want to scale the steps.  I really wish I could simply sign something when I go to these ruins that states “If I fall and die it is not your fault.”  Although the Castillo is a truely beautiful building, without being able to touch and experience the building I can not feel same level of intimacy to it.  I loved Palenque where I was allowed to run around on everything in site.  The same for Teotihuacan.  Although the ruins I have seen since surpass these in quality in many ways, the experience is simply not the same when you just look at it and snap a few photos.

 

I went back to the campground and hung out by the pool in the swealtering heat.  Chichen Itza also has a light show that I figured I would attend.  I went back that night and watched the light and sound spectacular which was a little less than spectacular, but it was included in admission and it was not like I could cycle anywhere.  That night I tried to write in my journal, but I realized I had left it at an internet cafe.  I felt like my whole trip was starting to fall apart.

 

I woke up and hung outside the internet cafe waiting for it to open.  As soon as it did I retrieved my journal.  There was a town of a decent size about 40 kms down the road.  It also had a hostel that sounded like a good place for a potentially extended stay.  I decided to chance it and ride there.  Fortunately I did not have a massive wheel failure and did not have a deadly crash, although they were a nervy 40 kms.  In Valladolid, the town I arrived in I found an insane area of massive activity.  I actually really liked the town.  It had much more character than any I had been to for quite a while.  I found out the hostal had recently been closed so I started looking around for bike shops.  There were bikes all over the street and a handful of outfits that rented bikes.  Unfortunately all the people that rented bikes were unable to help with parts or repairs in any way, and I had no better luck at the shop.  One part store at least looked at my bike.  At the shops I would say I have a cracked rim and they would give me a crazy look.  Then I would point at my rim, just in case I pronounced something wrong and say its broken.  They would continue with the blank stare and say, you are going to have to replace it.  Then I would ask if they could help me with that and I would get another blank stare.  I would ask again and they would just say no.  They never even asked my what size my rims where.  This process repeated itself at every shop I walked into.  I was baffled.  I wonder if the “shops” are just glorified puncture patchers because I could not even begin a dialogue about a real repair.

 

I found a cheap hotel but the desk was closed for siesta for the afternoon.  I figured I would wait in the center for it to open back up.  There I ran into Oscar, one of the guys who worked at the Merida hostel.  I talked with him for a while and showed him the cracked rim.  We eventually decided to catch a bus together that evening for Cancun.  Maybe I could find suitable parts there.  So yes I cheated.  I took a bus.  There is no way around this one, I cheated out and out.  It was only about 100 miles, but in ways it did feel like a failure.  I looked out the window as we passed through small villages and found myself wondering what that place was like and what kind of experience I would have there.  After a little while though I got over it and took a nap.

 

The next day Oscar and I went around town to look for a rim.  He is completely bilengual which helps a lot with technical conversations.  I should really learn how to say every part on my bike in Spanish and every action for the bike in Spanish, but I am just not there yet.  We went all over town and one guy tried to sell me a racing wheel after I told him that I had a bicycle with a 40 kg load.  He insisted that the racing wheel was strong enough.  My theory about glorified puncture patchers was being confirmed.  After a while, we found a nice shop.  The owner understood that a unique bike and a unique trip requires a unique rim.  The mechanics knew all about bike also.  This was a huge breath of fresh air, but they did not have a suitable rim.  I began the process of ordering a rim from the U.S. but at least  I had a shop to take my bike to now.

 

So I was basically stranded in Cancun, what a tough life I lead.  I have to say though, after spending two months in Mexico I was not a big fan of Epcot, I mean Cancun.  The place is really busy, but not in a good way, and the beaches are not very accessible.  Mexican law says that anyone can go on any beach that is not under military control, but all the resorts have big walls and fences that force you to go through their lobbies to get to the beach.  They do not allow access to anyone who is not staying at the resort.  I not only found this to be a terrible shame, but bad business.  I would think they could make a lot of money selling drinks, sunglasses, sunscreen, towels and other beach items to people walking through.  Not to mention higher end items like clothing, jewelry, and the “Wow, I want to stay here next time” effect.  They really need to take notes from the Vegas people.  Fortunately, I can be rather sneaky when I need to be and made it to the beach after a few attempts.  There are also public access points, but sometimes they are a 2 km walk away.  Who wants to do that?

 

I will admit the beaches in Cancun were fantastic.  The sand is perfect and the water is beautiful.  It is truely a paradise.  I just could not help but wish to myself that they had made it a national park instead of trashing the coastline with resorts.  But everybody has to make a living, and I figure I am not one to judge how another man, or nation, feeds his family.

 

I spent my week in Cancun lounging on the beach, meeting other travelers at the hostal, hanging out at the bike shop and trying to learn a thing or two and going to the clubs.  I only did the big club thing once and that was enough for me.  First of all I can live for a week on what I spend there in one night, and second of all I have noticed clubs just are not my thing.  Most night I like to simply chill out when I go out for drinks.

 

My wheels finally came in and I was really itching to move on.  I relaced them at the shop myself which was a really educational experience and was ready to hit the road.  Finally I get to head south again.

Campeche to Merida

I left Campeche early in the morning.  I have really gotten into a rythm of waking up a little before sunrise and biking.  Then a little after sunset I go to sleep.  The heat and humidity are simply too much to cycle during the middle of the day.  The only way I can cover ground is to get going early and stop early.

 

There are two ways to go from Campeche to Merida.  The short way and the long way.  The long way had many more sights and activities to do along the way so I figured it was worth spending a little extra time to take that road.  A little off the road are the ruins of Edzna.  I figured it was worth the extra 40 kms or so to check them out.  The ruins were not as extensive as the ruins in Palenque but they were also not as crowded.  I did not have the entire site to myself by any means but it is nice to not be bothered by people trying to sell things.  The unfortunate thing about this ruins site is the main attraction, the building of the five stories, was closed from climbing.  My guidebook mentioned spectacular views from the top, so I assume that someone must have hurt themselves on it fairly recently.  Still, the site was impressive.  The main acropolis was especially impressive and I was allowed to crawl around on all the the other buildings.

 

I took a siesta in the village that was right outside of town.  When I finally got going there were storm clouds coming.  Fortunately the downpour missed me and I arrived into Hopelchen nice and dry.  Well kinda dry.  I was covered in sweat, but that happens to me when I read a book in the shade here.  In Hopelchen I asked the police where I could camp and they told me to camp in the centro.  The main plaza was really lit up and full of people well after dark.  Finally the lighting and thunder that was moving in convinced me to get a room.

 

The next morning I went to a group of caves that are about 40 kms north of Hopelchen.  I got there early and waited for a little while outside for them to open the doors.  The first part of the cave has well lit paths for you to walk through.  They open up into huge areas where they found Mayan artifacts.  After a little while though Iwanted to keep exploring.  I got the few flashlights that still worked after the bag flooding and went back in.  I crawled around and climbed as much as I felt comfortable.  This was my first caving experience of any kind and I really had no clue what I was doing.  I just tried to be really mindful of the way I came because the one thing I did know about caves is they are easy to get lost in.

 

To be honest I am not sure what my feelings about caves are.  I know some people swear by them, but I am not convinced.  It may have been much different if I had the right equipment or a guide or at least a partner that knew what was going on, but it is really hard to see everything.  When you crawl through a small shaft and come to an opening it is neat, but without a proper lantern I really could not see the big beatiful stalactites well.  Also, the amount of guano everywhere made the whole place absolutely reak.  Still, I was glad I did it and know I have a new experience under my belt.  There was nowhere to shower when I got out.  I did find a hose bib by the bathrooms and I did my best to get cleaned up there and wash my clothes, but there was no way to deny it, I smelled awful.  I can only describe my oder as offensive.  I really tried hard to not get too close to anyone.  I was embarrassed to talk to people at places I stopped.

 

After the caves I hit the road to Uxmal.  By this time of day it had gotten pretty hot and the road was actually really hilly.  Nothing ever went very high, but I was constantly going over rollers the whole day.  And here I was thinking the Yucatan was flat.  I got to Uxmal that evening.  There was a light and sound show that I went to that was kinda neat, but it also humbled my Spanish skills quite a bit.  Still, I think I got the general idea of what was going on.

 

I went to the ruins the next morning and was blown away.  The buildings are huge, but it was not the scale that impressed me so much.  The detailed ornamentation of the buildings was incredible.  The site was huge and I was constantly snapping pictures.  I ended up spending quite a bit of time wandering around.  I managed to find some nice trails around the area as well which I am not sure I was supposed to be on.  I did not leave until almost noon.  I had put myself in a situation again where I had to bike in the heat of the day.  Merida was too far off to wait for it to cool down.  Yucatan is not like Baja.  Biking in the middle of the day is not dangerous, but it is really unpleasant.

 

Four hours later I arrived in Merida.  I must say that overall I was disappointed in the town.  It is a major tourist stop, but I am not sure exactly why.  I think it is very centrally located to a lot of other sites.  Uxmal and Chicen Itza and many other Mayan sites are close by, as are several cenotes (underground water chambers), and coastal areas with nice beaches and flamingo sanctuaries.  The down side is I will pass most of these things on my bicycle so there is not much need to go to Merida at all.  However, the hostal I stayed at was really pleasant.  There were many friendly travelers and the breakfast was excellent.  I ended up hanging around and doing a lot of nothing while I was there.  I cleaned all my equipment and swapped the chain to avoid serious wear issues later and read a lot.

 

One person I met at the hostal was Horacio.  He is a tour guide in Playa del Carmen and we hung out a lot.  He thought my trip was an awesome idea and was even more impressed that I was an American doing it.  I have discovered that we Americans are a sadly unadventurous people.  I very rarely meet Americans anywhere I go despite our proximity to Mexico.  On the other hand Europeans are everywhere.  However, I tell myself that it is only because Americans work all the time.  We only get two weeks vacation a year and taking time off between high school and college is very frowned upon.  We simply do not have time to travel.  It is not because we are too scared to leave our comfort zones and travel to other countries that are not filled with white people that speak English, I hope.  Horacio was an absolutely rediculous person to hang out with.  He whistled at every girl we passed on the street.  I am not exaggerating.  Young girls with their parents and older women with their husbands were all targets.  No one was safe from Horacio.  Needless to say I loved the entertainment and was constantly cracking up as we walked down the street and hung out.  I also learned some good Spanish pick up lines, although I have to say they really are not too complicated.  He offered me a free place to stay in Playa and I definitely plan on hitting him up when I pass through.

 

So after spending a few more rest days in Merida that I planned I was off to Cancun.  I felt well rested and ready to make that final push through the end of Mexico.

Palenque to Campeche

I left Palenque early.  I had some big ground to cover and not much to see.  These were going to just be days for pumping out distance.  After I left Palenque I was suddenly in the most desolate territory I have seen since Baja.  Usually there are several small towns and villages that are not even on my map.  On this stretch there were small towns and villages on my map that ended up nowhere to be found.  I was a little worried because I had very few pesos and I was not seeing any banks or ATMs anywhere.  I figured it would not be a problem as long as I managed my money well.

 

I finally rolled into a town of a decent size and looked for some tortillas.  Unfortunately it was still a small enough town to sell out of tortillas.  I asked a man in the town if there was a bank or ATM anywhere nearby.  He told me the next ATM was in a town that was two days away and not on my route.  No I suddenly had a problem.  I only had about four dollars in pesos on me.  That would hardly be enough to buy water for two days.  The rest of the day was not too fun.  I was hot and hungry.  I was eating most of the reserve food I keep in bags.  At the end of the day I rolled into a tiny ejido and they said I could camp in the field there.  I was relieved because I could not afford to stay somewhere that I would have to pay.

 

In the morning I rode a little way and bought a loaf of bread for my food for the day.  I was heading to a town named Sabuncuy on the coast that I figured would surely have some way of getting cash.  It was not too far away and I still should not have a problem.  While I am telling this story let me explain how baffeled I was by the lack of banks or ATMs.  In Baja California I went through some long stretches where there was no access to cash, but this was kinda expected because there were no people in these areas.  There might be some small truck stops, and tire repair shops, but very few places that could be called cities.  In this stretch of road I was passing through towns with gas stations, police, fire departments, internet cafes, medical facilities and every other type of public building you would expect to find.  There were populations in the thousands of the towns I was going through.  I am amazed that business can function effectively without banks around.  It blew my mind at one point that internet access is more widespread than access to money.

 

I rode towards the coast and was planning the feast I was going to treat myself to upon arrival.  I had gone two days surviving on noodles and bread.  Also my guidebook had mentioned a place on the beach that allows tents, and has shade, hammocks, and cold beer.  It sounded like a little slice of heaven.  When I got to Sabuncuy I discovered that this town did not have a bank or ATM either.  The nearest ATM was 70 kms away and it was noon and the sun was out in full strength.  I had already ridden about 100 kms that morning and really wanted to stop for the rest of the day on the beach.  I carry a reserve of dollars on me for emergencies and I started going around the town asking if anywhere could change my dollars into pesos.  All the hotels told me no, as well as the large grocery stores, pharmacies and everywhere else I went.  I went to the coast in search of the site mentioned in the guidebook.  I was completely out of cash by this point and all the water around me was salt water.  I found a soldier and begged for some water which he fortunately gave me.  He told me there was a tourist restaurant down the road that might be able to change money.

 

At this point I began to resign myself to the fact that I was simply going to have to ride the 70 kms in the heat to the next town.  I rode along the coast, which would have been quite enjoyable if it was not for the heavy head winds and awful heat, and the fact that I had no food, water, or money.  I ended up riding all the way to Champoton, the next town.  What was supposed to be a relaxing day on the beach, turned out to be a hellish bit of riding.  The only good thing about it all was I never saw the place mentioned in the guidebook.  Passing by a cool palapa, with a beautiful seniorita serving ice cold beer on the beach would have made it even worse.  In Champoton, I found the mythical ATM and finally got cash.  Unfortunately, there was no real beach here even though this town was on the coast.  I ate a delicious seafood cocktail at one of the countless seafood joints.  I crashed after that in a hotel room.  I did not even bother looking for a place to camp, because at this point in the day the wind had reached a point where I would have had real problems getting the tent up.  Over the coarse of two days, I ended up riding 200 miles.  That is a new personal record on this trip.

 

The next day into Campeche is as easy as a day on the bike gets.  Outside of Campeche I ran into something I had not seen in a long time.  Hills.  It was actually fun on an easy day like that one was to ride agressively and weave through turns as hard as I could.  I wore myself out just in time to hit the city.  I was hoping Campeche would have a beach so I could reclaim the afternoon on the beach stolen from me at Sabuncuy.  Unfortunately, it is just land going until it hits a wall and then water.  Nothing even resembling a beach.  I needed the rest though so I just pigged out at the hostel for the rest of the day.  The next day I went and explored around Campeche.  The city actually has a really interesting history.  It was a major Spanish port and it constantly had problems with everyone´s favorite menace, pirates.  The pesky pirates pillaged the city over and over.  At one point they completely sacked the city and burned much of it down.  Finally the Spanish forced their slaves to build walls around the city.  Some of them are still standing and the basultrades now hold small museums.  I enjoyed myself by wondering around and visiting these.  That evening I walked around the plaza and sampled food from the temporary stalls set up everywhere for Sunday night.  After that I hung out on the roof of my hostel and watched the activity in the plaza as lightning flashed off over the ocean.  I woke up early the next day, I was off to Merida, but not without a few stops in between.

Villahermosa to Palenque

When I arrived in Villahermosa, I found a town very unlike many other Mexican towns I have visited.  I had read that it had boomed up rather recently due to the regions oil prosperity and you could see the effect.  Every town in Mexico, from small poblados to Mexico City, has the same street plan.  In the center is the church or cathedral, usually the biggest building in the town.  Across from that is a plaza.  There are always signs pointing you towards the center when you ride into town.  It is really nice, and makes navigation, at least on the way in, really easy.  The center also has all the activities that you want so it is always the first place I go.  Villahermosa is different.  The whole town felt suprisingly American.  There were big American chains everywhere, large parking lots, big cars in the streets, buildings that have green space around them, a small public transportation system (although this is by Mexican standards, it would still outclass almost anything in America), and the center was a downtown business district.  Also, instead of the classic grid that most Mexican towns have, the streets here went every direction and were really confusing.

 

I have to admit though, that what Villahermosa lacked in character it made up for in convenience.  I had a rest day scheduled because the UPS store was closed on Sunday.  It was really easy to resupply all the little odds and ends I needed at the giant walmart style store that was a block away from my hostel.  Normally these are really hard to find and require a lot of time and effort.  Not really what you want to do when all you need is a new bar of soap or some zip ties.  I was assisted in all my efforts by the good natured Lucio.  I was oddly really craving some solitude when I rolled into Villahermosa.  I am traveling alone, and it would seem I would have as much alone time as I could stand but this really has not been the case.  Staying with families, and talking to people about my trip almost anytime I stop anywhere, has provided me with a lot of human contact.  It is nice of course and I like the generousity of the people I have met, but there are times when all I want to do is chill out and read a book.  However, Lucio was a young boy that was spending his summer working at the hostel, indeed at times it seemed he was running it, and I could not tell him no.  He was fascinated by me for whatever reason and accompanied my on many of my errands.  At times it was nice because he could talk to people in Spanish for me.  He did not speak English at all but I have found I communicate much better with children.  They seem to be more patient and they dont use as many words or phrases I dont understand.  It is sometimes depressing to think that I speak below a gradeschool level.

 

In Villahermosa I did go to the one tourist attraction there.  About 100 kms away there is an archeological site and many of the important pieces have been moved to a zoo area in the city to make them more accessable.  It is an Olmec site which is really old.  Olmecs predate the Maya and just about every other major civilization in the region.  The coolest pieces were definitely the giant heads that were carved out of stone.  Also the jungle like setting they were in was cool.  I was able to watch animals running around without some of the annoyances of mosquitoes and flies and other jungle critters.  Also in Villahermosa I met a cyclist that was going the opposite way.  A Mexican man that was heading to Guadalajara.  Ironically, we were the only two people staying there.  I am pretty used to being a novelty everywhere I go, but here being a cyclo-tourist was the norm.

 

After my recharge in Villahermosa I left to retrieve my tires.  I went to the UPS store and excitedly opened my package.  There they were, my giant new monster truck tires.  I put them on my wheels and pumped them up, then I had a heartbreaking moment.  The rear tire fit onto my frame only barely.  There is maybe two milimeters to spare.  My front tire was not fitting at all.  It was close, but there was no way it was going to work.  I was pretty disappointed, but I remembered where there is a will there is a way.  I began searching around town for a welder.  Once I found one I showed him the problem and asked if he could grind away a piece of metal on my fork, or simply cut it off.  The piece I am talking about is the part that I would attatch a fender to if I had a fender.  With this gone the tire would fit.  I was not quite sure if I was using the correct word for grind and I was having trouble communicating with the man.  He told me he could cut it and I trusted him.  I thought to myself that this is a country where things are repaired instead of thrown away and someone like a welder would have plenty of experience.  I was super nervous as he put the flame to my bicycle.  I felt like I was watching a family member go under the knife.

 

My fear started to grow as it looked like he was having trouble controlling the flame.  He was definitely starting to hit parts of the bike I did not want him to.  After a little while a man, who was obviously in charge of the shop, returned and started helping him and scolding him.  Now I was really nervous.  I looked at the work they did afterward and told myself my trip was over.  My fork looked ruined.  It was absolutely horrible.  I almost wanted to cry.  I told myself to remember the big, friendly, yellow letters on the book that contains all the knowledge of the galaxy.  DONT PANIC.  It is just a fork, worst case is I have to replace it.  Maybe these guys can actually fix it.  The shop master spent the next three hours working on my fork.  The whole time I was under agonizing stress.  This was not helped that almost the entire time I was being bothered by another guy, obviously a friend of the shop, that was drunk before noon on a Monday and would not leave me alone.  I could not understand anything he said either except that god is powerful.  I could not have understood a word the shop master was saying if he was speaking English his speech was so awful.

 

Eventually they presented me with a fork that seemed to work.  It was very difficult to reattatch the wheel, but it did work.  I decided to ride on it.  I figure only time will tell what happens with it.  Either it will last the whole trip, and I will be ecstatic, it will have a slow failure and I will see it bend and be forced to replace it, or it will fracture and I will be hurled over my bicycle and possibly severly injure myself or damage other parts beyond repair.  These are really the same possibilities as before and I just told myself not to think about it.  After several kms and some hard bumps I could finally do that.  The plus is I immediately loved the tires.  I was amazed at how much smoother my ride felt.  All the little bumps and cracks were much less jarring on my body.

 

There was no way I was making it to Palenque after all my delays so I just started to ride and was planning on seeing where I ended up.  I made it Agua Blanca.  It was a beautiful set of waterfalls that just cascaded from one pool to the next for a really long ways.  Unfortunately I got there really late and after doing my own exploring and swimming it was too dark to take photos, but I highly recommend you google it.  The rocks were really slippery though and I realized that I was all alone in this paradise and falling and breaking something would be really bad.  I kept my exploring pretty tame, but it is always awesome to have a chance to swim in fresh water.  I camped on the restaurant patio and talked with a man and his boy who worked the restaurant in the morning.  They said it was no problem if I left early.

 

No problem there, I wanted to hit Palenque early.  I left at dawn and rode back to the highway.  Palenque ended up being too far away to hit before noon.  It was almost 80 kms which it near a full day ride for me.  Also on the way my computer stopped working.  While the welder was going all over the place with his flame he grazed the piece that attatches to the fork and sends a sign to the computer on my handle bars.  It worked for a while to my suprise, but no doubt the airtight seal was broken and condensation trashed it.  I now dont know my speed or distance, and in effect have a very expensive clock/altimeter.

 

I rested after I got to my Palenque campsite and decided to explore the site the next day.  I did not want to rush things.  I did not do much of anything.  I lounged in a hammock and read a book.  Although the campgrounds had a bunch of cool people in it and a bar that had good live music, I was happy to finally get my alone time.  The Palenque ruins are awesome.  I will try to get pictures up soon because I am not a skilled enough writer to do them justice.  It was very different than the Mexico City pyramids.  These were less massive, but more enjoyable in their own way.  There were tons of structures to satisfy your urge to climb everything in sight until your legs are as tired as they are after a day of cycling.  The site was huge, and the society there was sophisticated and advanced.  There were different sections of the city for different purposes and irrigation channels to avoid flooding during the rainy seasons.  After what turned out to be a tough morning I went back to my site and paid for another night.  Once again, I did a lot of nothing except enjoying my solitude.  I went to bed early,  there would be big ground to cover the next morning.

Mexico City to Villahermosa

I left Mexico City early on the Fourth of July.  It was a funny thing because I almost forgot the holiday.  There obviously is no celebration here.  I thought leaving early on a Saturday morning would help me beat the Mexico City traffic.  Maybe it did, but I think it is a city where the traffic is simply bad twenty four seven.  As I was heading out of town I managed to take a wrong turn somewhere.  I started noticing I was going through some not so nice looking Mexico City neighborhoods.  I stopped and asked for directions.  I told people I was trying to get to Pueblo.  This was another mistake.  Puebla is a major city about 120 kms to the east of Mexico City.  It is famous for its 5 de Mayo victory over the French.  Pueblo is a suburb on the east side of Mexico City.

 

This made me even more lost as I found myself going around in circles.  It was not until I asked directions from a man who spoke broken English that I realized my mistake.  Eventually I got on the road to Puebla.  I once again stubbornly decided to avoid toll roads.  I realized this would put me through more city, but to me one of the biggest benefits of traveling by bicycle is how you truely feel everything you pass through.  I think it helps develop a deeper understanding of what places are.  You feel mountains when you climb over then, you feel deserts as you cross them, you feel jungles as you sweat through them.  Often in a car these things are just a different color on a map.  You never feel what they are and can not appreciate how they effect the people and the development of an area.  I figured I also had to feel the city and decided the slow route was best.

 

I proceeded to battle horrible traffic for miles and miles.  I somewhat regretted my decision but it was definitely too late to change now.  It was amazing to me how the city just seemed to go on and on.  It was mainly flat to the east and I think that meant more sprawling city.  A small sidenote here.  In case anyone is reading this for advice on bicycle trips there is the great debate of panniers or a trailer.  They say whichever one you use you will end up swearing by.  I suppose I am no different.  I have been using panniers and I absolutely cannot imagine having a trailer.  While it may help with handling and all that, maneuvering my bicycle through several lanes of traffic and crowded markets is difficult enough as it it.  The extra length of a trailer would make it near impossible.  If I was only touring in the U.S. maybe it would be different, but I often push my bike through extremely crowded pedestrian areas and this would be extremely difficult with the extra length.  After several hours of stressful riding in the city I stopped to call home and wish a happy fourth to everyone.  After I left the internet cafe it started to rain a little.  Nothing too bad though and I could easily ride through it.  I took a short detour to avoid a flooded highway and then noticed it appeared that the city finally ended.  This also coincided with the beginning of the climbs for the day.  I knew Mexico City sat in a valley.

 

I climbed through the rain up the mountains.  It was fairly late due to my being lost for several hours and making slow progress for several more.  As I started to get pretty high up the weather got a little cold.  My socks were wet and there was thunder threatening more rain.  All things pointed to finding a stop for the day.  Plus I had to be close to the summit as I was approaching 3000 meters.  I passed through a little village.  I stopped to try and find it on the map but it was too small.  Something about this little village high in the mountains with crisp, clean air, something I had not had for ten days, really drew me in.  I found the police station and asked about camping.  They said I could sleep in the station and even fed me tacos.  One of the officers brought an enourmous trey of meat from something they obviously recently slaughtered and a bunch of tortillas.  The policemen at this station seemed to have a really good time at their job.  Obviously there was not much for them to do on a Saturday night so they spent the evening laughing and joking around.

 

I left early in the morning and had one of my best days cycling.  I left at dawn and the weather was cold.  My thermometer had the temperature at around 40 degrees.  It took about an hour to get to the summit and then I spent the rest of the day delightfully coasting into Puebla.  The weather warmed up to the most perfect temperature possible and the view included two majestic, snow capped volcanoes to my right.  One of which had smoke coming out of it.  I cannot recall ever seeing that before.

 

Puebla was a nice little town.  Well I should not say little.  It felt small because I was able to see most of it fairly quickly.  Like Morelia it is a small colonial center surrounded by lots of city, but unlike Morelia the city surrounding it was not unpleasent.  I wandered around a bit and went to a highly recommended anthropology museum.  I ended up staying in the zocalo area for quite a while.  I know it was Sunday and I am sure that had something to do with it, but the area was absolutely swarmed with families and children.  It is nice to see children and families doing something together besides watching television.  I really enjoyed just sitting there and watching the people.  I think it is because not very many people in Mexico have air conditioning, but it seems to me that seeing lots of families and children playing outside together is not an uncommon site.  I think it is a much healthier way of growing up than the standard American lifestyle.  It makes me wonder about the idea of progress and what it really means.

 

In the morning I had the not so small problem of figuring out what in the world I was going to do about these tires.  I received an email from the company I bought the tires from that UPS was going to claim them if I did not contact them.  I wanted to scream.  I have been in contact with them for weeks and nothing has happened.  I called a UPS representative in Mexico.  He told me that I had to have someone in La Paz get some sort of stamp for them because of customs and then they could forward them.  My other option was they could be returned to the shipper and I work something out with them.  I was furious.  If I had a friend in La Paz I would not be in this situation.  And the shipper had already told me it would cost 90 dollars to have the package returned so they authorized UPS to claim it.  I said everything I could without mentioning the word “steal” to the UPS representative to describe what they were doing to me.  I resigned myself to losing the tires and biked out of Puebla a little upset.

 

My anger quickly melted away as I poured my energy into flat roads in beautiful weather.  I knew today had some tricky navigation and was trying hard to pay attention to the signs.  Many highways here do not have numbers on the map or in reality.  Often there is just an arrow pointing to a town that is not named on my map and I have to use my judgement to tell if it is the right road or not.  I was trying to avoid the dreaded toll roads, but this time there was no simple free road running parallel.  I was trying to take small side roads.

 

I did a decent job with directions the better part of the morning.  Every time I asked I was told I was on the correct road.  I knew I had another turn coming up and I saw a sign pointing towards a road and I was not sure if this was the one I wanted.  Fortunately there was a gas station right by the turnoff.  Unfortunately, all the attendents were women.  I hate asking women for directions.  I honestly believe in this somewhat machismo society that the male always drives the car and as a result has a better idea of where things are.  I tend to always get better directions from men.  Although I must say, I very rarely get good directions at all, and people here are absolutely awful with maps.  I tell myself that I am simply being sexist and this woman surely knows more about where we are than I do.  I ask several times to make sure nothing gets lost in translation, is that turn the yellow road or the red road on my map and point to make sure she knows which roads I am talking about.  She assured me this was the yellow road.

 

After five kilometers I realized something had gone wrong.  I was on the red road.  I had also spent that 5 kilometers going uphill and really did not want to waste that precious energy by simply going back down the way I came and climbing again.  My options were to go about 20 kms out of the way to get to a road that could take me where I wanted to go but would take me a further 40 kms out of the way, go backwards (never an option in my opinion) and possibly get lost again, or hop on the toll road.  Ugh.  I decided to tough it up and take the toll road.  I would have to take it for about a day, but I was not interested in spending three days lost in the mountains going around in cicles.

 

It did not take long to remember why I had avoided the toll roads.  Also on this straight, flat road with no obstacles I had to head into a headwind.  To anyone reading that does not cycle, headwinds are the product of the devil.  Mountains are fun in a way.  If you keep working you know you will always outlast a mountain.  Eventually, even if it takes days, you will reach the summit of a mountain and then reap the rewards by taking it easy downhill.  Winds can last forever.  There is no give and take like mountains, only take.  Personally they absolutely suck the desire to pedal out of my legs, and on a trip where today is a long day, and tomorrow is a long day, and yesterday was a long day, it is also terribly ineffecient to bike into a headwind.

 

I called it quits pretty quickly.  I pulled into the town of Cuacmopalan.  I got the look from the locals that told me gringos on bicycles are a rarity around here.  I asked if I could camp in town and was allowed to sleep in the police station.  The police talked with me most of the night and joked with me.  I really have trouble understanding jokes.  If they are anything like our jokes they are riddled with colloquialisms which I am not even close to getting yet.  At one point I hung outside the police station and was writing in my journal as lots of children played basketball.  Soon I had a crowd talking to me, obviously fascinated by the foriegner.  After a while I finally had to excuse myself and go to bed.  I had plans for the next day.

 

The map had me licking my lips for the next day.  It was not much further and I would be out of the mountains on perfectly flat planes.  I really wanted to cover some distance.  I started off on some small mountains, into the wind, and was wondering if my planes of a record day would be foiled.  Then the earth opened up into a huge valley and I began a 1,000 meter decent.  I was passing the large trucks that could not take the corners very fast and hardly pedaled for an hour.  After the huge decent I continued to lose altitude slowly and kept a great pace despite still fighting the wind.  I got low and started sweating a lot in the jungle like conditions again.  I was trying to keep my water breaks brief because I wanted to hit 240 kms before sundown.  The turn south helped me get out of the wind, but after 225 kms I simply had nothing left in the tank.  I pulled into Ciudad Aleman which despite the name had no Germans.  I started the day at 2300 meters and ended at 50.  I asked some locals where I could stay but they were drunk and rambling.  I was told by someone else there were no hotels in town.  The police gave me permission to camp outside in the park and assured me it was safe.  I locked up my bike and went into the town for groceries.  I asked at the bike shop if they had any tubes in my size.  Again some of the workers were drunk.  I was now a little worried about camping in the park.  Drunks are the one thing that make me a little uneasy, because they are unpredictable.  Speaking of unpredictable, I checked my email and UPS was rerouting my package to Villahermosa.  I will believe it when I see it.

 

I got groceries and then decided to eat something at the restaurant bordering the park.  I was waved over by a table and they pointed to a young girl and told me she speaks English.  This is not uncommon in the smaller towns I have noticed.  Often someone will come up to me and inform me with great importance about the person in town who speaks English.  Sometimes this is really nice, like nights when I am dead tired from biking so far.  The girls English was flawless and I asked her where she was from.  Kansas City she told me.  I could not believe it.  Here in a small town in the middle of Mexico I meet a 19 year old girl that went to Shawnee Mission South.  I was a little suprised we did not have common friends on facebook.

 

The park started to get active at night, presumably because that is the only time it is cool enough to play outside.  And the mother of a friend of the Kansas City girl (keep up with that?) invited me to camp in their backyard.  I happily accepted and spent the evening chatting with them, this time with an interpreter to iron out the misunderstandings.  I slept awfully.  It was so hot and sticky inside my tent.  I got a late start the next day and did not feel good all around.  Even early the heat was bad.  Packing my tent had me soaked in sweat.  I tried laying siege to the day.  Or trench warfare on the distance.  Go for about 10 miles and then take a good break.  Then 10 miles more and a good break.  It just was not working.  I was still feeling the day before too much and it was too hot.

 

I pulled into a town and spotted a water purification plant on the outskirts.  I tried going up to fill my water bladder but it was closed.  A family who lived next door took pity on me and filled my bladder from thier water reserves.  I was really grateful just for this.  They asked if I was hungry, which I always am when I bike, and they fed me.  Then they insisted I rest in thier hammock.  When I woke up they fed me again and insisted they wash my clothes.  My efforts to help with anything were rejected.  I was told I was a guest and this was how I was supposed to be treated.  This family absolutely showered me with generousity and they very clearly had nothing.  Their house was a cinder block structure that had only two bedrooms for five people and a small common room.  The toilets were in a shed outside and did not have running water and the kitchen was a thatched structure made from woden posts.  The stove was operated by slow burning wood and the whole thing reminded me of exhibits of Mayan life I had seen in the archeology museum.  However, as usual, the people who have the least are always the most generous.  They were incredible to me and even invited some of the extended family to come over and talk to me.  I spent most of my time talking with the oldest son.  He was a few years older than me and worked in the pineapple fields.  I had seen many of the trucks full of pineapple pass me on the highway.  I had also seen men working in the field and it is clearly brutal work.  However, this family seemed very happy and close knit.  Even though they had very little, they seemed to have everything they needed.  The son I spoke with told me they were very content with their life.  It was hard to leave the next day, but I had a package to pick up now.

 

I left predawn  I wanted to avoid the merciless heat.  Locals were continuously asking me if I rode at night.  When I said no they always looked at me funny.  I tried explaining it was not safe because I am not easy to spot in the dark but the concept of working through the day is obviously not endorsed here.  I rode hard that morning.  I wanted to hit the coast before dark.  I made good progress and decided to take a rest in the middle of the day.  When I started again I was hit by rain.  I pulled over for a while and got going to the next town named Cosoleacaque.  This town was a small dot on the map but it was obviously some sort of busy bus terminal.  There was traffic everywhere and large buses and people running too and fro.  I had never seen such activity in such a small place.  It was insane.  I stopped at an internet cafe to wish my sister a happy birthday and when I came outside the heavens were pouring down.  I opted for a cheap hotel.

It was still raining in the morning and I got going a little late.  I got lost in the next town of Minatitlan and gave up hitting Villahermosa that day.  I took the detour to Coatzcoalcos.  They had a decent beach there and I took a few hours to enjoy my accomplishment of hitting Atlantic waters.  I officially became a transcontinental traveler.  After enjoying the beach for the middle of the day I got going again.  Once again the road was flat, hot, sticky and everytime I stopped mosquitoes came out in force.  I was also going into the, now clearly predominant, east to west winds.  I rode until I simply was tired of riding and did not want to keep going.  I heard thunder rumbling and I asked some kids at a snack stand if there was anywhere to rest for the night.  They took me to their house and brought out a hammock.  I jumped in and passed out.  I woke up a little later to an incredible thunderstorm.  I was not worried though.  My bike had been dumped on several times by now.  I went inside and crashed again.  I spent the night camped out on their porch.  In the morning I was putting the bags back on the bike when one felt rediculously heavy.  I must have sealed in improperly because it was nearly half full of water.  The worst part is many of my lights got wet, including my camp lantern which I had fallen in love with on this trip.  It was such a great, compact piece of equipment that I will not be able to replace here.  However, it could have been much worse.  That day I rode into Villahermosa, but I will write about that in the next post because this is already much too long.  If you read this far, I applaud you.

Mexico City

I was not expecting to be very fond of Mexico City.  What I was expecting was a huge, sprawling, poor, dirty, crowded, dangerous city.  I was very happily suprised.  The city is beautiful, the streets felt safe, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.  I had many things to do there.  First of all I had to find Graham and discuss the future of our trip.  I also had to pick up some new supplies including figuring out something with my tire situation.  I also had a pain in my leg that was making it difficult to walk.  Strangely this hardly effected me on the bike at all, but it was definitely a sign to rest up a little.  Mexico City is also full of lovely senioritas.  All signs pointed to me spending a little bit of time in the city.

 

I spent my first day there mainly resting up and cleaning my equipment and clothing.  I met with Graham that night and we talked about our time apart.  On my way into the city I was convinced I was doing the rest of the trip alone, but I really did enjoy seeing Graham again and having another person to exchange bicycle stories with.  After catching up we talked about the rest of the trip.  It is a monstrously long trip and we will both have a lot of time to ride alone, but I think we both really enjoyed our time apart and the extra generosity we recieve from locals when we are alone.  It was a tough decision and we both decided to sleep on it.  I ultimately decided to go the rest of the way alone.  I really did enjoy riding with Graham and I hope to see him again someday after the trip is over and really exchange stories, however, this is a very special trip.  I will not get another chance to do something like this for, most likely, the rest of my life.  I only have one shot at this and I want to do this the way I dreamed of doing it.  Unfortunately for both Graham and me, I think we found ourselves making compromises for the other person.  So now it is down to just me.  A rather intimidating prospect, but I told myself before I ever contacted Graham that I would do this trip by myself if I had to and now that is starting to seem like the only way I could ever do it.

 

I now had as much time in the city as I wanted.  I really did like the city and made some good friends at the hostel.  I also was became a little more nervous about lonliness down the line.  I decided to enroll in a weeklong intensive Spanish course.  I figured this would help me talk to locals in the small towns and in the big cities, the places where it is strangely the easiest to feel alone, there would often be hostels where I could make friends.  Also, I had to wait for a while for my package to be delivered and the city was going to take at least a week to see.

 

Mexico City is huge with tons of sites and sounds to take in.  I will try to go over some of my favorites briefly.  The cathedral that was located across the street from my hostel was magnificent.  I looked around and took a tour of the bell towers.  Mexico City is sinking and it is really apparent in the cathedral.  The floor is noticably unlevel.  Some of the lights hanging are at a visible angle, and there are workers restoring the building everywhere.  It is kinda sad because they will never be able to stop restoring it.  Also in the Zocalo, the main plaza in the center of town, is the parliamentary building.  The murals painted inside are representative of the history of Mexico and they are absolutely outstanding.  A bus ride outside of town is the ancient Aztec city of Teotihuacan.  This is where the famous Aztec pyramids are.  I made the required climb to the top which was a little difficult with my bum leg and looked around the site before the rain came it.  They are really incredible when you take the time to stop and think that these structures were made with nothing but human manpower.  It also shows how important religion must have been in the society, because they spent so many resources building something so impractical.  One thing worth noting, I had not seen much poverty in Mexico City before I took the bus to the pyramids.  On the way there we passed through miles and miles of slums and I was able to observe the poverty I had heard about.

 

The museum of fine arts was also really impressive.  There were many more large murals and they were once again incredible.  On the same day as the fine arts museum I really enjoyed the first half of the U.S. vs. Brazil football game where we took a 2-0 lead.  I was equally disappointed by the late Brazil second half goal that gave them a 3-2 lead to win the tournament.  The anthropology museum in Mexico City is also extremely impressive.  The museum is massive and I had to pick and choose which exhibits to see because I could not fit it all into one visit.  Another must for anyone who goes to Mexico City is the Lucha Libre.  This is the Mexican wrestling spectacle.  It was a blast.  The wrestlers are incredible athletes.  They do all sorts of flips and spins and jumps that would put WWE wrestlers to shame.  Also, part of the cutlture of the Lucha Libre is foul language.  The evening greatly expanded my vocabulary of Spanish swear words and phrases.  There was plenty of other activities in D.F. as the locals call it, but for brevities sake those were my favorites.

 

The Spanish class was good, but I really do not know if it was any more beneficial than talking with locals on the streets would have been.  It is tough to say.  My tires, which I was assured would arrive in 1 to 2 business days never shipped from La Paz and I spent a very frustrating evening going into no less than two dozen bicycle shops looking for 700×28 tubes.  I am convinced they do not exist in Mexico.  I made many friends at the hostel.  Some of them I hope to run into later on in my travels.  I also went out a little in Mexico City, but nightclubs there are expensive just like nightclubs here and since me and a bunch of backpackers are trying to live on 20 to 30 dollars a day we did not go to many.  I decided after 10 days that I had to keep going.  I would sort out the tires later.

 

Saturday morning I headed out.  I was actually really nervous.  I had not riden the bike in so long it seemed wierd.  Another thing in the back of my mind was the last time I rode my bike anywhere I crashed.  Also, I was now alone.  Graham left several days before me and I was entirely dependent on my own wits and abilities.  The road would be much less forgiving from here on.  On I headed to Puebla, most likely solo for the rest of the way.

Morelia to Mexico City

I spent a little time in Morelia in the morning before heading out.  It made for a kinda late start.  I was finally going with food and water around 11 am.  I had used the free but painfully slow internet at the hostel the night before and knew the road out of Morelia would climb.  After going a little way the road did not disappoint.  I started climbing up a winding road.  The climb was slow and tough but I once again did not mind.  I loved the feeling of being connected to the mountain.  At one point, a Mexican man came out of the woods as if by magic and he was carrying a big bag of strawberries.  He must have seen my eyes come out of my skull because he offered some to me which I gladly accepted.

 

I stopped several times to take pictures and was making very slow progress.  Meanwhile, there were clouds moving in.  I do not know why but for some reason I just felt like I would get lucky.  Of course I should have reasoned with logic instead of reasoning without reasoning.  Before too long it started to rain.  I put my rain jacket on and skipped the rain pants.  I told myself with all the work my legs were doing they would have no problem staying warm.  After a little while the rain started to really pour on me.  I could hardly see and started to realize that cars would hardly be able to see me either.  Fortunately there was a little roadside snack stand with some shelter.  I pulled in and got out of the rain.

 

I started to really regret my decision to skip the rain pants.  I was soaked and began to get really cold.  I waited for a long time and even bought some juice and bread.  In one of the strangest bits of behavior I have seen in Mexico the girl working the booth acted absolutely terrified of me.  She stood as far away from me as possible while still being in the structure and when she had to come to the counter to hand me my items she quickly returned to the back of the store before I even had the chance to pay.  Anyway, I shivered for a while until the rain let up.  Once I saw the chickens come out of their coop I figured it would be safe to start again.

 

The summit was not much further.  I cracked 2800 meters on the climb.  This crushed my previous total and made me feel rather good about myself.  This feeling was quickly replaced with frustration.  My brakes where sticking and I was unable to fix the problem.  Then when I was working on this I realized my rack had lost a bolt.  I looked through my repair kit and was unable to find the proper bolt to replace the lost one.  I cursed myself for my stupidity and tried to think of how to fix the problem.  I remembered the large amount of zip ties I brought on my trip for random repairs.  I looked through my bags.  No zip ties!  Where did they go?  I know I brought them at the beginning.  I swore in the rain and considered gambling it down the mountain with a loose rack.  It seemed sturdy enough.  I started to have pictures of what a massive rack failure would do to me at speeds much faster than 20 mph down a mountain and quickly reconsidered.  I had to find a solution.  That was when I utilized the second most important item in any repair kit.  Any faithful viewer of the Red Green show will know that duct tape is the most important item in any repair, but I believe a close second is bungee cord.  I was able to wrap the bungee cord around the frame several times and put one of the hooks through the hole where the nut and bolt were supposed to go.  Tension did the rest and the rack was steady and sure.

 

The decent was still a little disappointing.  With wet road conditions my tires and brakes are much less than optimal and the rack was still in the back of my mind.  I took it really slow and told myself there would be more decents in the trip.  Although this one would have been a blast with many curves and a good view.  I came into Ciudad Hidalgo and found a bike shop to get more bolts and fix the brake problem.  It was raining hard again so I stayed in a cheap hotel room fit for Frankenstein.  I had to repair the toilet for it to work.

 

I wanted to leave early the next day, but I awoke to rain and really lacked the motivation.  I moved slow and spent a little bit of time at the market buying fruit.  The day started with a decent, which actually made me grumble because I knew I would have to get it back somewhere.  I earned it back in tough fashion.  The previous day had a total of 1700 meters climbing.  This day had a total of 2200 meters climbing.  The road simply went up and down and up and down.  Mercifully it did stop raining rather early.  The road got kinda boring when it just started to go straight up.  No twists or turns or anything.  It was just uphill grade for over 400 meters of elevation.  I was tempted by the toll road but I stuck to my resolve and took the free road to the pass.

 

On the free road I passed through a town I have named El Pueblo do los Perros, or Village of the Dogs.  Dogs for whatever reason hate bicycles.  A car can drive by and they have no reaction.  A pedestrian can walk in front of their yard and they simply get a curious look.  Put that pedestrian on a bicyle and suddenly Lassie turns into a ruthless killing maching.  Normally this is not a huge problem.  I wait for the dog to run at my bike and once it gets close enough to me I kick my leg out at its face.  I never connect, but the dog usually gets the picture and starts to back off.  This defence works well against a single dog.  In Pueblo de los Perros every house has not one, but multiple large dogs.  This was also at a very steep part of the road where out running them is not an option.  At one point I had six dogs, all large enough to hurt me surrounding me and going balistic that I was on their road.  I actually got a little nervous because it is hard to defend from multiple directions and keep moving so I get far enough down the road they are satisfied I have left their territory.  There was one very large, very stealthy dog that almost got me.  If it had not been for its owner yelling I would not have seen it at all.  I figure when they don´t bark and try to sneak up on you is when they mean business.  A little while later on a flat strecth of the climbs I though I could outrun a pack of three big ones.  I found out that dogs are more than capable of running 25 mph which is about as fast as I can push my big bike without going downhill.  When I finally left this cursed village I realized I was going up the climbs at triple my normal pace.  Sometimes addrenillin is sweet.

 

I got into Toluca really late.  My legs were toast from the day.  I stayed in a cheap hotel that was actually quite nice and at one of the best burgers of my life.  In the morning I left early.  I wanted to hit Mexico City in time for the U.S. vs Spain game.  In the rush hour traffic I saw a big bump ahead on the road.  I could not swerve to miss it so I braced myself.  I hit the bump and my front right pannier fell off my bike.  A very strange occurance.  I took my eyes off the road as I watched it hit the pavement and my front wheel went straight down into a drainage grate.  Why they put drainage grates in the road with three inch gaps parallel to traffic puzzles me, but that did not change my situation.  I flew over the handlebars and hit the pavement.  My bike did a front flip or two and suprisingly all my other bags stayed on after this bump.  I got up and assessed myself.  I seemed ok.  A lttle sore in places but nothing seriously wrong.  I looked at my bike.  It seemed ok.  The front tire was predictably flat, but that was to be expected after that crash.  I set out to change the tube when I see that my rim is badly dented.  At this point I had no choice but to find a taxi and spend most my morning getting my rim fixed at a bike shop.  I was further delayed because on the way out of town I watched the U.S. upset Spain.  That at least boosted my spirits.

 

They say Mexico City sits in a valley and I learned exactly what that meant that evening.  I cracked 3000 meters and for the first time began to feel the altitude effecting me.  Maybe I was just tired, who knows.  After that was an 800 meter dive into the city.  The traffic got a little insane at a few points and I was happy to find my hostel and be all in one piece at the end of the day.  My directions to the hostel said it was behind the cathedral.  Which one I wondered.  There are cathedrals everywhere.  Then I saw The Cathedral and there was no doubt.  I really liked the city after a couple of days so I decided to stick around for a while, but that is for another post.

Guadalajara to Morelia

We left Guadalajara fairly early in the morning, but we were still unable to beat the traffic.  We took the cuota, or toll road, out of town.  It was hectic as usual.  Fortunately I was no longer feeling the effects of the Tequila tour.  The day´s ride on the cuota was predictably uninteresting.  Also, a catch 22 on the cuota are the shoulders.  It is nice to have a big wide shoulder that is really safe to cycle on.  The drawback is when there is a huge shoulder there usually happens to be an insane amount of junk on the road.  There are rocks, and glass, and pieces of car tires everywhere.  However, I couldn´t complain about our progress.  It was looking like Mexico City may only be a four day ride away instead of five.

 

With all the debris everywhere I was not suprised when I got a puncture.  I stopped and pulled four pieces of wire out of my tire.  It was amazing there was only one hole in the tube.  Graham rode on ahead to the stop we had planned for the evening.  After fixing the puncture I rode hard to try and catch up with Graham.  He said he would not ride very hard and probably take a break somewhere for a drink so I thought I could catch up.  I think I burnt myself out because I never caught up with him and by the end of the day I was really struggling.  As luck would have it the day gave me one last climb to do before going down into the valley where the city of Ecuandureo.  It really shouldn´t have been that bad of a hill, but my legs were tired and my heart was not in it at all.  I was beginning to tire of the road and wasn´t really enjoying the cycling that much.  Some days it seems like a silly way to get from place to place.

 

When I got into town I looked for the police station to ask if I could camp and it was obvious Graham had already laid the groundwork for me.  They saw me coming and waved me in and told me to put my bike inside before I even said anything.  I did that and then went to the local La Michoacana.  La Michoacana has kinda become the first place we look for each other due to their amazing ice creams, popsickles, and drinks.  Plus they are everywhere.  Every Mexican city large and small is set up the same way.  The largest building in the town is a church or cathedral.  In front of the cathedral is an open square.  In a bigger city they call this the centro.  Around the centro there are usually places to eat, sometimes a market in the morning, and a La Michoacana.

 

I find out Graham has become a local celebrity.  People were getting their picture with him and a group of young kids bought him a bracelet.  I have to admit I was a little jealous.  I spent the night looking for fruit and vegetables without luck and repairing tubes.

 

The next morning I felt awful.  I was sick and felt very weak and dehydrated.  We took our time in the morning at the market because it was cheap and fantastic and I realized why none of the regular stores sold fruit and vegetables at night.  Once we hit the road it took about 3 minutes for Graham to totally leave me in the dust.  I was totally struggling to hold five miles per hour over roads that weren´t really that bad.  After an hour I had another puncture and had to change tubes in the rain.  We were also on the cuota which I have already mentioned being rather boring.  All these factors combined took thier toll on me and I cracked.  I found myself hating what I was doing.  I was no longer enjoying cycling.  I felt like a fool for attempting this trip and was cursing myself for wasting all the resources I had to do this.  I started thinking of all the other things I could do with the time and money.  If somebody would have driven up to me and handed me a backpack to continue the trip with in exchange for the bike I would have taken it in a heartbeat.  I didn´t want to go home, but I didn´t want to keep going.  At one point I just stopped on the road and sat there.

 

I pulled off the road as soon as there was a proper exit and called it a day.  I went into the town of Panindicuaro and tried to find an internet cafe to call home and vent.  None of them had microphones and I spent over an hour looking for one that did.  I was completely frustrated at this point.  Completely discouraged I sent a long email home describing how miserable I was that day.  I looked outside and watched the heavens open up and pour on my bike.  Fortunately my bags passed their first real waterproof test with flying colors.  After spending some time at the cafe I went to the police station and asked if there was anywhere to stay in town for cheap.  They recommended some hotels but I was able to beg for a spot behind the station to pitch my tent.  Then a guy who must have taken pity on me offered to buy me tacos.  I gladly accepted his offer and ate tacos in what must be the only taco stand in all of Mexico that serves Pepsi products.  I talked with a kid who worked there who was studying English.  We basically practiced on each other for a few hours.  The owner and I joked around as best we could also because they were really slow.  The rain really kills the business of outdoor taco stands.  He insisted I practice making tacos with them so I went back and playfully cut up onions and meat.  Unfortuately when there were finally customers he did not let me pretend to work there and serve them.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact I was covered in bicycle filth.

 

The evening lifted my spirits a bit and reminded me some of the benefits of traveling by bicycle.  When you backpack around you never get to see the little towns and you are not as novel.  I don´t think I would be the recipient of the hospitality I have gotten if I had been traveling by backpack the entire time.  Still when I went to sleep I was not looking forward to the ride the next morning.  I had decided not to make any rash decisions and ride the rest of the way into Mexico City and make choices there.  I had also decided to avoid cuotas whenever possible and seperate from Graham.  I think the pace we were going at was wearing me down both mentally and physically.  I was finding myself compromising my trip to accomodate the schedule of someone else.  Unfortunately, I only get one shot at this and I figured I have to do it my own way.

 

I woke up early and packed up.  I wanted to arrive in Morelia early.  I had heard really cool things about the city.  If you read Lonely Planet guidebooks, the bible for backpackers, it props it up as one of the best cities in the world.  I started pedalling out of town and got some things at the Sunday morning market to eat for the day.  I could not remember at all how to leave town so I simply looked for one of the big buses that goes between town and followed it until I found the highway.  I took a small road south instead of heading East to Morelia.  It was an absolutely fantastic road.  It made me wonder why I had ever riden the toll roads.  It curled and winded up a mountain in the early morning mist.  It was such a shift.  I looked out at the mist covered peaks and suddenly the sense of adventure and mystery of the trip started to come back to me.  I also saw tons of sport bikes all over the road.  I wonder where some of these people get their parts because they are riding on really nice wheels.

 

I got to Zacapu way too early to stop for lunch and left my beautiful little road for the free highway into Morelia.  I had been warned that the road was very tough and windy.  It sounded awful the day before but now I was looking forward to it a little.  I started climbing, and climbing.  Oddly enough though I looked at my computer and found I was going at a faster than normal climb pace and I wasn´t getting tired.  I kept climbing and shattered my previous altitude high for the trip.  Eventually I wondered when the climb would end and then I realized I didn´t care.  The climb could have gone on all day and it would have been fine with me.  Anything could have happened at I would have been fine.  It was a semi religious moment when I felt absolutely connected with the road and part of my bicycle.  I quickly made the decision to keep going all the way to Buenos Aires and the concept of doing any other way besides biking just seemed rediculous.  Eventually I did get to the top and began a fantastic decent down an equally windy road into a valley where a large lake was.  It looked like a popular weekend spot for Mexicans.  I stopped for lunch and had a fantastic chicken and a liter of coke to complete my perfect morning.

 

After restarting I had a bit of a stomach ache, probably due to the massive amount of sugar I just ingested.  But quickly I found myself greatly enjoying the climbs again.  It almost felt like a game the mountains and I played.  I would see a switchback and take it as a personal challege that it threw at me.  Then I would get to a plateu or small downhill and I would laugh at the mountain because it cracked before I did.  I got into Morelia much later than I thought I would.  Dispite my good pace it was still more hilly than I expected and I will probably have to budget time different on the libre.  Morelia was really disappointing.  First of all it took forever to find my hostel.  I asked several people where it was and showed them the address.  No one had any clue.  Finally I had to go to an internet cafe and look it up on a map.  I called my father and wished him a happy father´s day while I was at it.  I found the hostel on the map and it was about three blocks from the tourist kiosk where I asked directions.  How could they not know where that was?  It had cost me hours and now it was pouring.  The hostel said I couldn´t stay there but they didn´t seem full either.  I couldn´t figure out what the problem was but I certainly had to go somewhere else.  I went to hostel around the corner and was literally the only person there.

 

I hit the town by myself because I didn´t have much choice.  I wandered around and was generally unimpressed.  There was a few really nice blocks surrounded by a bunch of city.  Some of the earchitecure was nice but other than that I can´t saw much for it.  I didn´t go inside the cathedral, the most famous structure, because there Catholics having mass.  It started to rain again so I went back and called it a night.  I woke up early to have another look around before I left.  The cathedral was having mass again so I didn´t go inside.  Can any Catholics tell me how many times there is mass a week?  It seems like a 24 7 thing at these cathedrals.  The aquaduct was neat.  The engineer in me enjoyed that but before too long I was anxious to leave so I started the bike out of town and towards Mexico City.

Tepic to Guadalajara

So I have been a little lazy about updating this lately.  If there is anyone who is actually trying to closely track me sorry about that.  Hopefully I will catch up in the next few days.

 

Graham and I biked out of Tepic.  Urban biking can be very stressful.  There are cars and exhaust fumes and horns and all sorts of hazards to look out for.  Usually it is not very enjoyable, but for whatever reason this morning was different for me.  I think I enjoyed seeing all the activity.  It was such a switch from the desert of Baja.  It took a while to get out of Tepic and out onto the open road.

 

Once out of town the road was fairly easy.  After the rough climbs from the day before I was happy to not have to work super hard.  I was also trying to take it easy and conserve a little bit of energy.  I had learned that you never know when the next huge climb will come.  We took a short break after about 20 miles and decided we should try to get to Guadalajara in two days.

 

After the break we did finally start hitting some real climbs.  Graham got ahead of me and I did not try to keep up.  I figured I would see him at one of the stops up the road.  We had already made lunch plans at a town up the road that looked like it would be of decent size.  There we would see how we felt and make decisions on the day.  After a few hours we were getting close to the place we had agreed to stop.  I could actually see Graham on the road a km or two ahead of me.  There was one more minor climb I needed to do and then I got to go down a massive downhill.  It lasted over 10 kms and I broke 70 kmh at one point.  A new max speed for the trip.

 

I exited into the little town of Jala.  I was not able to spot Graham again on the decent and I wondered if he took the same exit.  There was a police man near the entrance of the town and I asked him if he had seen another man on a bike with a lot of weight.  He said he had so I went into the town to try and find Graham.  I scanned for his bike as I rode down the main street and could not spot it.  Eventually I had to make a turn.  Left was the city center over cobble stone streets and right was paved.  A tough decision.  The center would most likely have better food, but cobble stones are murder on a bicycle.  Eventually my stomach won out and I figured Graham probably made the same decision.  I went down the streets and rode on the sidewalks when I could for a smoother ride.  When I got to the center I stopped and looked around for a few moments when a car pulled up to me and asked me where I was going.  I told them I was going to Guadalajara and that I had started in San Diego.  They asked if I was staying in Jala for the night.  I told them no, and I was looking for my friend.  They said they had not seen him but they had food, cold water, and a place to rest at their home if I wanted it.  The triforce of cyclists.  I simply could not turn an offer like that down and followed them to their place.  Maybe I would find Graham later I thought to myself.

 

It turned out that Pancho, the man driving the car, owned a bicycle repair shop in town.  He used to be a competitive cyclist and showed me pictures and told me about the days when he used to race.  He told me I was doing a beautiful thing which made me feel really good.  After eating a bunch of tacos they made me I said I wanted to look around the town a bit and see if I could find my friend.  I was not able to spot Graham anywhere so I just wandered around a little bit.  They offered to let me use their mountain bike but I insisted on walking.  It is nice to walk sometimes and not pedal everywhere I go.

 

The town seemed pretty poor and run down.  Most of the buildings desperately needed painting and even the churches looked to be in fairly bad shape.  Also everything was open when I came in for lunch but after the lunch period the whole town closed up.  It is kinda quaint to see somewhere take a true siesta, but it is also depressing to see that the economic activity is not high enough to keep anything open during the day.  In the middle of the town was a steep hill with a cross on the top.  I went to the top of it and got a nice few of the whole town.  It sits right up against some beautiful mountains, and a volcano sits impressively on the western edge of town.

 

I returned back to my home for the night.  Pancho and Mari, his wife, have an impressive fruit garden in the back of their home.  They gave me all sorts of fruits that I have never had before.  Some were strange, some were delicious, and some were both.  I could not tell you the names of nearly any of them any more.  I stayed with them and ate dinner.  They spoke no English and at times I was frustrated by my inability to communicate complex thoughts.  I think at one point I may have even accidently insulted her cooking.

 

Mari runs a sweet shop that is connected to the bicycle repair shop.  Pancho gave me all sorts of tips on cycling and told me about the importance of daily stretching and massaging my muscles and keeping a high cadence.  I went to bed early knowing I had a huge day the next day.  I was not planning on stopping as early as I did and I had a lot of ground to make up.

 

I left Jala early and was loaded up with cookies and water by my generous hosts.  Pancho rode with me out of town and wished me luck.  The road was tough, but not as tough as I had feared.  The mountains were very pretty and I enjoyed the ride.  The sencond half of my ride flattened out and I started to make decent time into Guadalajara.  On the way I passed by Tequila, the town the drink is named after.  I told myself I would see it later and I had to stay focused on making it into Guadalajara at a decent time.

 

The city was large and took a long time to get through.  Eventually I found the hostel that Graham and I had decided to stay at and he was not there.  I was suprised because I knew he had to be ahead of me.  I walked around the town and saw something I had not seen in Mexico yet, rain.  The city got a good shower and I walked around in it and enjoyed the sensation.  It turns out Graham stopped in Tequila and took a tour around the town.  I met a few German folks that night and played cards with them.  They said they were heading for Tequila the next day and I figured I would tour around the city with them.

 

From our hostel we took a van to Tequila with a guide.  We went around to the different Tequila factories and learned about the entire process of making Tequila.  At every factory we went to we got to sample the different Tequilas they made.  We went around the town and saw all the important sites.  All of the tours were in Spanish and I kept up decently well.  When I got confused the Germans translated for me.  They had been in Mexico for a year studying abroad.

 

By the time we went back to Guadalajara, I had drank quite a bit of Tequila in my effort to out drink the Germans.  Once back at the hostel we went out to the bars.  It was my first night of heavy partying on the trip and I was really feeling it the next day.  My plan was to look around town and then head to Lake Chapalla and camp for the night.  I ended up biking nowhere and walked around the town rather slowly in the afternoon.  I was a little upset at myself at my excess the night before and losing the better part of a day on my vacation.

 

The silver lining to the cloud is I had the time to appreciate Guadalajara.  It is an old colonial city and is full of large plazas and fountains and churches.  It was really a beautiful city and fun to just wander around.  I went to the market there which was absolutely nuts.  It was very crowded and had everything your heart could desire in it.  The food looked fresh and cheap and even though I did not have much appetite I still got something to eat there.  The market also made me realize I need to improve my Spanish.  If you look at something for too long a vendor will come up and start trying to sell you their wares.  I had trouble thinking and telling them that I was just looking around, although my headache might have been the true cause of that.