Map of our route in Southern Mexico with some of the spots we visited: a) Oaxaca; b) San Jose del Pacifico; c) Zipolite; d) Salina Cruz e) Zanatepec; f)Arriaga (just after crossing in Chiapas); g) Pijijiapan; h) Mapastepec; I)Tapachula and j) Ciudad Hidalgo (border with Guatemala)
Oaxaca state is a seductress. From the amazing UNESCO world heritage colonial city of Oaxaca where there is always something happening in its leafy central plaza to the indigenous villages in its mountains and on the hot, humid coastline, to its beautiful beaches and delicious cuisine, it is hard to pull yourself away because you are just enjoying life so much. We pulled ourselves away from Oaxaca city after over two weeks there and soon find ourselves in Playa Zipolite on the Oaxacan coast for another two weeks.
Leaving Oaxaca city, we rode in the flat Valley of Oaxaca for the first 60km and then the road steeply rises after Miahuatlan where it became unrelentingly uphill.
Mountains in Oaxaca
Bryan had found a little shade at one point and was waiting for me to catch up. He asked if I wanted a water break and I said, “We’re almost at the top. I’ll stop for some water there.” Well a few switchbacks later, we indeed reached that place I thought was the top. There were signs that said “Cerro Metate” Mt. Metate. You would think that once you get to the top of a mountain, there would be a little downhill on the other side. Well these mountains defy that logic. There was another about 4 km after that before I saw the first level looking, maybe even a little downhill dip at San Andres. Roads don’t seem to consider the grade here. I think it’s because there were well used walking and donkey trails before roads. Though the landscape is dramatic with tall mountains covered with pine trees and deep canyons, houses dot the steep mountainsides like tin stars in a field of lush green. The ride is challenging but it was amazingly beautiful. With every switchback climbing up the mountain, I would look back out onto the valley that we rode in from Oaxaca city on and marvel at how small and toylike the farms and towns have become. As we crossed into the mountain range, it was mountains after mountains, like wave peaks on an endless sea. The colour of the mountains would fade from deep green to green with bluish tinge then blue and then lighter and lighter shades of blue until it seemed to meld with the blue sky. Donkeys brayed, seemingly working themselves up into a bit of an hilarously sounding braying frenzy, echoing through the narrow valleys and rising up to the ridgelines. Turkeys gobbled and dogs barked as we pedaled past their home ranches.
San Jose del Pacifico
We made it to San Jose del Pacifico, is a little indigenous village / hippy hangout at 2500 m elevation full of cheap “cabanas.” It is really tranquil here as the village sits on a ridgeline right below a peak with sweeping valley canyons on both sides. A mist rolls in in the late afternoon, reminding me of the Himalayas. It is amazingly cold here and I wear both my hoodies and my toque. It is hard to believe that we’re only 125km from the hot, tropical beaches on the coast! It is very peaceful here in this couple restaurants and couple stores village that we can walk across in under 5 minutes. We have a cleansing ceremony with Shaman Navarro (see previous blog post – https://maggiemwoo.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/temazcal-with-shaman-navarro-in-san-jose-del-pacifico/) afterwhich we felt completely rejuvinated.
Temazcal with shaman Navarro
After Suchixtepec, a little indigenous town perched on top of a mountain with steep cliffs on all sides with houses, shops and farm fields that seemed to defy gravity, the road dived off the mountainside in a series of steep switchbacks.
Our ride from San Jose has been one of my favorite in the whole trip maybe because of our temazcal cleansing ceremony but also because we saw the landscape change before our eyes from 2500m elevation to almost sea level. We rode down canyons for kilometres after kilometres, hardly pedaling but giving our breaks a work-out on the windy roads. We went from little indigenous villages perched high on mountain ridges and the steepest corn fields i’d ever seen, through pine forests fluttering with butterflies and the sounds of birds, down into little homesteads surrounded by banana trees and small coffee planations nestled in the dense jungle.
Into the tropics! Goodbye pine forests. Hello luscious bananas!
It was walls of vegetation with vines hanging from trees that crowded every possible space, especially near the streams. Huge green leaves draped from tall trees and bamboo groves sprung thickly on the side of the road. Every once in a while, there would be streamers of colours hanging over the road in the brilliant greens, broadcasting a little village with a little church and friendly people who would wave and say hi to us.
We got to the beaches of Oaxaca and immediately fall in love with the funky Playa Zipolite with its 2.5km stretch of sandy beach and free-spirit attitude where nudists strolled the beach beside hippies with a head full of dreadlocks, yogis stretching in the sunshine and surfers dancing in the pounding waves. Zipolite is known as one of the only nude beaches in Mexico.
Playa Zipolite
We spent two weeks at Zipolite and tried boogie boarding and bodysurfing the crashing waves. Nude bodysurfing is an interesting experience as the powerful waves bring us to the sandy shore. Boogie boarding is a lot harder than it looks! The name Zipolite is from a local indigenous language meaning “beach of the dead”, a reference to the strong ocean currents and the wicked waves. In our first time, we shot out into the crashing waves and we were all shown Mother Nature’s power. Boogie boarding, like surfing, is an art. You have to be at the right place at the right time to hit a wave in the right wave. A little too early or at the wrong angle and the wave crashes on you and tosses you around. The wave took me and smacked my face into the sand. I came up a little shook up with a scratch on my cheek under my eye but fine. Looking more like a pirate seems like a trend on this beach. Talking to people after, it seems like learning the respect for the waves and its tremendous power is a common first lesson. Hubert, a friend from our hotel said “It happens to everyone!” He pointed to his ear “The board hit me here.” I tried boogie boarding again a little later and it was wicked fun. The waves tried to pull my board under the water again but now I knew and kept it up for a wicked ride in the froth to the shore.
Stephan with Bryan and I
We also spent our time in Zipolite relaxing in hammocks, dancing under the stars at a bonfire on the beach for Valentines and celebrating my 27th birthday with Stephan, a friend who lives in Prague that makes very persuasive suggestions for us to continue our cycling journey in Europe.
After Zipolite, we fly like the wind and ride all the way from the beautiful beach to Tapachula by the Mexican/Guatemalan border. We ride 650km of our total 912km of this portion, over two thirds of the distance in one third of the total time spent in Southern Mexico!
Our warmshower host’s kids took me on a boat ride in Laguna La Cotorra
After being in the mountains for so long where you work really hard to make a 65km day, grinding uphill at 5-7km an hour, it is really amazing to do 20km/hr on flats again. We rolled out of Salina Cruz at around 7:30am and was already in Tehuantepec, 18km away, by 8:30am and then eating our second breakfast at the Oxxo by Juchitan at 10am with 42km riden from Salina Cruz already! The roads were good, with shoulders and they were so FLAT!! We have not had such flat stretches since the Baja. By around noon, we have made it to La Ventosa about 60km from Salina Cruz. We are riding through rows and rows of wind turbines that was lazily spinning.
I am reminded of Don Quiote with my metal steed, charging through the field of these white metal spinning giants. However, I am not here to battle the wind turbines themselves as Don Quiote fought the windmill thinking it was a ferocious giant. No, we race across the flat lands in defiance of the invisible force that propells the turbines and mills – the wind itself! La Ventosa is renowned for being a windy places. It is located in the mi ddle of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where the land narrows and it is the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Located between the high mountains of Oaxaca and the high mountains of Chiapas, the isthmus is also flat and becomes a crazy wind channel. The winds can get ferocious here – so much so that when the winds really blow, the road is closed first to trucks and trailers and then to the heavier vehicles like SUVs and vans as the wind will blow them off the road. On a bike, it would be absolute hell. Bryan and I, however, was really lucky. The winds were just a breeze when we rode through. Knowing the horror stories that this place could hold and also rejoicing in the amazing ability to just fly over the flat land, we decided to keep riding and made it to Zanatepec that night. We did 130km in one day, which is our longest yet!
Bryan with Rodrigo’s son picking mangos
We stayed with an amazing Warmshower’s host in Zanatepec. Rodrigo and Lupita have been so nice to invite us into their homes and into their family as if we were old friends. We get to their house a day earlier than we arranged and it is no problem. We start getting settled into our room and Rodrigo asks what all cyclists dream of hearing, “Have you eaten yet? Are you hungry? Lupita will cook you up something.” Lupita cooks us up a delicious meal of steak tacos, serving up huge cyclist portions to Bryan and I each. Rodrigo then helps us by calling Noe, the next warmshowers host down the road who mainly speaks Spanish and arranges for our stay there in a few nights!
Camping as trolls under a bridge just before Pijijiapan, Chiapas
Mapa in the evening
We cross out of Oaxaca state and into Chiapas and soon we get to Mapastepec, which is a bigger town than we knew. We were riding and riding through town and I was starting to wonder how we’re going to find Noe’s house. The instructions we got from Rodrigo is that Noe lives in the centro so riding there and then ask for Noe’s house. As the town started to look quite big, I was starting to doubt that a random person on the street would know Noe and where he lived! However, as we’re riding along the main road, we hear “Hola!” It is Steve, a Canadian cyclist from Montreal who we had Christmas with in Guadalajara! Steve is also staying with Noe. Noe was not actually even in town but his family took us in like we were family. Such amazing people.
Crossed 6000km ridden by Pijijiapan on our way to Noe’s house. We are here with Noe’s wonderful wife, Anita, and daughters
Riding in Chiapas
The rest of our ride in Chiapas state was relatively flat beside the towering Sierra de la Madre. It is really lush here with lots of greenery. We rode through fields after fields of mango trees. The tall green leafy trees line the roads, filling the air with the sweet fragrance of their flowers. Unfortunately, we’re still a little early for the mangos. It is still orange season here and the mango trees are still either in flower or have small, unripe green fruit on them though apparently there are some types of mangos that are ready now. After being tantalized by hundreds of kilometres of green mangos literally hanging over the highway, we find some stands with big, ripe mangos and feast! We ride over 100km from Mapastepec to Tapachula in one day for our last night in Mexico. It has been a fun 4 months and we enjoyed our last night doing what we like best – eating delicious tacos el pastor and ice cream!
Tapachula centro
Tacos el pastor
Ice cream!!
SOUTHERN MEXICO STATS
Oaxaca de Juarez to Tapachula
Feb 3, 2014 to Feb 28, 2014
Departed Oaxaca on Feb 3 Arrive in Zipolite on Feb 8; 12 days in Zipolite
Depart Zipolite on Feb 20; 9 days from Zipolite to Tapachula on the Mexican/Guatemalan border
This section consisted of 26 days
Day 155 to 180 (of overall trip) – roughly month 6 in the trip
Total km travelled – 911.5km
Daily average – 82.9 km per riding day (11 out of 26 were riding days)
Number of rest days – 15 days (including the 12 days in Zipolite!)
Route – Hwy 175 from Oaxaca to Puerto Angel then just up the road a little to Zipolite. From Zipolite/Potchutla, we rode on Hwy 200, the “coastal highway” to Salina Cruz where it changes names to Hwy 185 until switching to Hwy 190 around La Ventosa and then back to Hwy 200 around Zanatepec. The rest of the route is on Hwy 200 to the border.
Weather – 26 days sunny
Accommodation – 18 nights hotel (including 12 nights at hotel in Zipolite), 4 nights wild camp, 4 nights warmshowers
We spent the day with a shaman named Navarro having our first spiritually and bodily cleansing temazcal ceremony today. Navarro is tall and lanky, with his brown hair tied up in a pony tail. As we are walking out to his ranch in the morning, a couple dogs follow our entourage. There is one young puppy with a collar that is very skitish, darting around us and a couple other dogs that calmly walk with us, placing themselves in opportune spots for petting. I am amazed that these calm dogs are street dogs because they are so friendly. Navarro says that if you tie a dog up, they bark, become aggressive and don’t really know how to deal with others but if you let the dog be free, then they are free to be chill, friendly and nice. He was talking about dogs but I think he meant the statement more generally to everyone in this world.
We walked down a lush forested path where Navarro pointed out this little nest in the bush with baby birds in it that had only hatched yesterday and then out onto his “terrace” a rock outcrop that overlooked a canyon that starts right behind his house and cuts all the way out to the ocean. This canyon is why the village is named San Jose del Pacifico. On a clear day, you can see all the way out to the water and I wished that there was a zipline down the canyon that we could take. Under the rock are caves that deer come to give birth in and there is a tree infront of the rock that when the season is right and the flowers are blooming, you can see up to 30 species of birds buzzing around the tree. The flowers are like outreached hands and water pools in them. Navarro says, “Listen. The forest sounds different here away from all of the houses.” Away from the town sounds of dogs barking, roosters crowing, , turkeys gobbling, babies crying and banda music blaring from radios, the forest is a symphony of birds. It is unbelievably loud! Navarro picks bunches of yerba negro which we will use in the temazcal ceremony. It is used for helping with cancer, Navarro says, but it’s benefits are actually more general in activating your body’s immune system. Navarro says that 90% of diseases are healed by your body. Modern medicine and doctors tend to treat the symptoms but underlying it all, you cannot forget that it is your body that is doing the healing. The remaining 10% of diseases, well, Navarro says, your body does have an expiration date. However, he says that your body expires when it cannot keep up with your mind. It reminds me of yoga a bit where the uncontrollable busyiness of the mind is the source of illness, where the stress of the mind is manifested in stresses in the body and the body is not able to do its natural healing functions.
We wander up the path again and Navarro finalizes the preparation for the temazcal. It is a small domed tent, reinforced with cement, clay and sticks. We crawl into the damp enclosed space with mud floors that is not high enough to stand in. There is a stone and mud circular bench around a center raised area where Navarro shovels in some fire heated rocks. He passes us a bucket of “tea”, which has arnica, eucalyptus and other herbs. A second bucket of tea is given to us after awhile with camomile and some other herbs that smell a bit smoky. This “tea” is not for us to drink in the conventional way but rather the brush of yerba negro is dipped into the bucket and then draped onto the hot rocks, sizzling and filling the small space with hot steam. The yerba negro and the tea lets off a herbal steam that quickly turns the cold mountain air and chilly damp rocks into a hot sauna. The four of us, Bryan, me and a young Mexican couple, sit in our bathing suits in the hot, moist darkness. The space is completely dark and every 10 minutes or so, Navarro opens up the entrance to shovel in more hot rocks. We are inside of that room for about 40-50 minutes. The sounds outside are muted and the sizzle of the leaves on the rocks and our breathing is the main noise, interspersed with occasional conversation as the four of us get to know each other. It is like we are in the womb of Mother Earth and the four of us are sharing that intimate experience of sisterhood and brotherhood. We drink the tea through our pores as we are drenched in its steam and hot “rain” drips down on us from the branches in the low ceiling. Our tired mountain climbing muscles relax in the heat and herbs and I could feel my whole body being cleansed as we sweated out toxins and was bathed in healing herbs.
Soon the door opens for one of the last times and we each leave the room one by one. When we leave the temazcal, we are led in a bit of a daze to a cold shower. The cold shower is a bit like the shock that wakes you back up to the world, I guess like the shock of birth or rebirth in our case. Navarro says to rub your arms, body, face and shake your hair under the cold water. It is to close the pores in order to keep out infection but also to exfoliate and awaken your immune system. After the shock of the cold shower, which didn’t last more than 20 seconds but felt like an eternity to me, he gives us the rest of the warm “tea” to pour over our bodies.
After our time sequestered in the hot, moist darkness and the shock of hot then cold, our senses seem more alive while our minds and bodies are in this almost trance like state of deep relaxation. The colours seem brighter and the whole ranch on the mountainside seems bathed in this vibrant green I didn’t notice before. I see the little white flowers on the stone stair path back up to there road and the dash of pink in these other small flowers. Bryan and I don’t talk as much on our way back to the village but we don’t seem to have the need to. We are just enjoying the environment around us and each other, not separating between the two.
When we started riding next day, we noticed something amazing. All of our aches in our muscles from climbing the mountains was magically gone! The temazcal had worked wonders in ways that completely blew my expectations out of the water. It was healing when I didn’t know I needed any healing. If I was functioning fine at 90% before, it brought me up to glorious optimal 100% where functioning is effortless. We would see a steep climb ahead of us and then as it flowed by with seemingly minimal effort. The pedals just seemed easier to push. It was not just our bodies rejuvenated but also our mind and spirit as well. The ride today was just so amazingly beautiful with lush green valleys, tall mountains that we rode up ridgelines on and deep sweeping canyons and narrow valleys. Sunlight filtered through the greenery above us and butterflies fluttered about while birds sang in the trees. I just felt a renewed appreciation for everything around me and the beauty that exists in everything.
This morning on Feb 2, the fireworks have been excitedly firing into the skies above Oaxaca city all day and the church bells enthusiastically ringing, calling their faithful to mass in 16-17th century cathedrals. Inside the churches, people holding up lit candles in one hand while cradling elaborately dressed dolls in the other.
Walking down the streets of centro Oaxaca today, many people are carrying baby dolls. Some are real baby sized and others are miniature babies, small as the size of a palm. Some sit on wooden chairs while others are bundled up in blankets and cradled as people carry them through the street. They are all elaborately dressed in robes with satiny fabrics, often heavily embroidered with gold or silver trim. Sometimes I did a double take and realize that the baby I thought this mother was carrying was actually a doll.
In the land where machismo is prized, there has to be a story when you see a strong, stoic looking teenager carrying around a baby sized doll in a fancy pink robe walking down the street.
I found out that today is Dia de la Candelaria, or Candlemas in English. These dolls are Ninos Jesus, Baby Jesus, that families have in their home altar. On February 2nd, people dress up their Baby Jesus figures, buying new outfits that are sometimes more costly than the clothes they buy for their children, and then bring them to the church to have him blessed. The traditions recalls how it was customary during the times of Mary, Joseph and Jesus for women to be sequestered in their homes with their newborn child for 40 days after birth. February 2nd, 40 days after December 24, would have been the day that Mary took Jesus to the temple to be presented and blessed. Here in Mexico, this event is vividly reenacted every year as Baby Jesus is placed into nativity scenes on December 24 and then taken to the cathedral on February 2nd. While this tradition is slowly dying out in many cities in Mexico, it still seems to be very much alive in Oaxaca. Our hotel filled up with a group of 40 people yesterday who have arrive in the city for this occasion and there windowed showcases in stores full of baby dolls, dresses and accessories.
In the first year of having the Baby Jesus figurine, he is dressed all in white. In the second year, he can start wearing coloured clothing and then in the third year, he can be dressed like royalty with crowns, thrones and other accessories. People treat these holy dolls like live babies, cradleing them around gently in their arms, wrapping them in blankets so they don’t catch a cold and cooing to comfort them. Apparently, Baby Jesus figures sometimes have godparents who rock the baby to sleep on Christmas, bring him presents on the Day of the Three Kings and go with the family to the church on Candaleria to bless the child.
Los Ninos, the holy dolls, are household incarnations of Baby Jesus but they are also more than that.
This is a friendly family I met walking home from church. She is his eldest and the Nino Jesus represents her.
Families get a Baby Jesus doll with the birth of their first child after marriage. For the first year of a child’s life, the doll is dressed in the white baptism clothes. After the first year, families can change the clothes to those of different saints or the pope so the child can absorb some of their saintly characteristics. You can also dress your doll up as a doctor, if you want your child to become a doctor. The dolls are always dressed up as a male even if the first born child is a girl because Jesus is male. This tradition emphasizes the sacredness of all children and also reveals how Catholicism has combined with local beliefs and customs including magical aspects where families hope to influence saintly development in their children by acting on these sacred dolls — a Catholic voodoo doll in some ways.
After Baby Jesus has been dressed, presented and blessed, people celebrate with fiestas that punch the skies with loud fireworks. When we were riding through the hills before Oaxaca, we camped at a churchyard at a remote ranch. A party gathered around us at the church where people cut the Roscas de Reyes, the Three Kings cake, which has a tiny plastic Baby Jesus figurine about the size of a pinky finger. Whoever got the Baby Jesus hosts a tamale party on Candaleria on Feb 2nd.
I find it so interesting how Catholic traditions are combined with indigenous traditions and customs and have developed into something uniquely local. Dia de la Candelaria celebrates the presentation of Baby Jesus to the temple but also celebrates maize and has themes of lighting up the darkness as people light candles. Though it is a Catholic event, it speaks also to local traditions and predicting weather to come. February 2nd marks the halfway point between winter solstice and spring equinox. Interestingly, it is also the date of Groundhogs day back home in Canada, another event of marking the changing seasons. Maize was sacred to ancient peoples and the mural of Oaxacan history in the Palacio museum highlights a stalk of maize in the centre of the painting and the Aztecs believed that maize was used to first create humans. Tamales were used as offerings to ancient gods.Tamale parties thrown on the Dia de la Candelaria are in honor of both Baby Jesus and pre-Hispanic traditions.
For those without a preplanned tamale party and because Oaxaca is just that amazing, the city is throwing a party tonight. Our day today has been split between wandering around the streets and churches of the historical centro, then having ice cream and watching the state orchestral band perform in the zocalo, watching the NFL Superbowl game and then heading out to the city fiesta. The city set up a stage by Santo Domingo church and the Orchestra Primavera Oaxaca played traditional Oaxacan songs while an amazing tenor sang. Different from watching the orchestra at home, people would start clapping right in the middle of a piece after parts that the audience felt were played well and people would sing along to the songs. Candles were passed out and lit while we listened. After, they served tasty tamales and atole to the eager crowds of celebrators. Bryan and I had dulce tamales, sweet tamales with raisins, pineapples and a red sweet sauce soaked into the moist cornbread.
Riding through Central Mexico has been an unexpected pleasure. I thought of the ride as purely a ride at first, such and such many days riding x number of kilometers to get to Oaxaca, but then I quickly realize that the area has a big heart. Away from the beaches and tourist resorts and away from US-Mexico border areas constantly in the news, Central Mexico doesn’t seem to appear in the news very often. There are some tourists here but they’re mostly located in specific areas like in Mexico City, Puebla and Oaxaca and not to the concentration like on the coast. Outside of a few cities, the villages, countryside and small cowboy towns seem rarely visited by tourists and rarely featured in global news and tourism.
However, in Mexican history and culture, Central Mexico is the beating heart. I felt like we were riding through history both ancient and about the founding of the nation. We rode in the shadow of the smoking giant volcano of Popocatepetl and the sleeping woman mountain, an Aztec Romeo and Juliet story forever written on the landscape and crossed through numerous territories of different ancient peoples from Aztec to Mixtec to Zapotec. Ancient ruins stood high on top of mountains, a testament to the strength of the people who built them and their devotion to their gods, while age old grand churches stand tall in the middle of villages and towns still in use to this day. On the slopes of Popocateptl, there are the first cathedrals built by the Spanish missions, which became the model for churches in America.
16th century cathedrals built like fortress castles rise unexpectedly out of the rural Oaxacan landscape. In the building of the nation, Zapata’s bones are buried is on a street in Cuautla and children play on the concrete of his masoleum in the evening. Zapata is from a little village nearby Cuautla and the city is one of the first under his influence in the Mexican Revolution. A century earlier, Mexican rebels fighting for independence from Spain, including Morelos, rode on the railway into Cuautla and the Spanish royalist forces layed seige to the town. Katya, our couchsurfing host in Cuautla, lives in a house right by the rail station and she tells us that there are tales of buried treasure from people who died in the seige and the dead talking to people today in their dreams about the location. Katya tells about her aunt who dreamed of the buried treasure in their house once but was too scared to act on it. After a little while, the family got together and dug a deep trench but apparently because they had included people who were not family in the excavation party, the treasure was “moved” and not found.
The beating heart of the nation is not only found in the historical momuments we pass on this stretch of our ride but also in the generosity, hospitality and friendliness of the people. It has been amazing to ride through the little cowboy towns and villages nestled in the remote hills where people are excited to try to speak Spanish to you, invite you into their homes and into their local parties. Local traditions flourish often blending Catholic events with local ways of celebrating.
Men wear crisp buttoned up shirts with a pair of blue jeans and large cowboy hats are still in style. People herded goats along the steep mountain sides and we saw donkeys and horses teethered on the side of the road to feed on the grasses and nervously look at every passing car. Well, the horses did. The donkeys looked generally bored. There were little farm patches everywhere. As we camped in ranches and in little church yards, the acordian and brass beats of banda music drifted throughout the village merging with the never ending symphony of dogs barking.
The beating heart of the nation is also reflected in our own beating hearts as we cycle up and down seemingly endless hills. The landscape was dramatic with cutting cliffs, sweeping grasslands, mountain slopes covered with golden grasses and cactus trees, overlooking a field of mountains each fading in shades of blue in the distance. It felt remote with dramatic vistas of towering monolithic rock spires and ranges after ranges of mountains. There are cactuses again – tall straight cactuses standing at attention on mountain slopes and cactuses that were a conglomeration of pads as shorter shrubs. It felt a little like the Baja in some of its remoteness though with more mountains, more rivers with water in it and more periodic villages with cold Cokes. We faced a lot of mountains and the inland route to Oaxaca is not the easiest path. As Santiago’s dad, Alejandro told us, there is a mountain range the runs along the western side of mainland Mexico that is the continuation of the Rocky Mountains and there is another mountain range that runs along the eastern side of mainland Mexico. These two mountain ranges seem to converge around Oaxaca. Also, there is a transversal mountain range that cuts across Mexico just below Mexico City. This means that we got to cycle them all on. Sounds fun. Actually, I do enjoy hills. Climbing hills makes things more exciting as going up is accompanied by the eventual going down. Plus, climbing hills for me is a bit like yoga – you’re completely in the moment with your breath and in that moment, you are the master of your own destiny. Only you can get yourself up that hill. Going uphill is a challenge rewarded by stunning views and reaching those hard to reach places. There is a sense of accomplishment reaching the top but for this to happen, I think there is also a sense of respect for Mother Earth who raises tall mountains and creates deep valleys and crevices. You respect the landscape for the challenges it presents and the willpower it helps forge within you.
After long ascents, we were rewarded by wild, thrilling downhills. Perhaps less discussed is the challenge of going downhill. For me, it is kind of terrifying as you go faster and faster down the slope. Your pedals are freewheeling being you are now travelling faster than you cycle. There is a sense of losing control as the landscape whips past you and periodically cars pass. I tend to break a lot because I want to feel more in control but actually, you’re in least control when you’re trying to stop the momentum. On this stretch, I leaned forward and crouched down a bit and just rode out the curves winding down the mountain, feeling actually more in control than before. Also, after hours of ascent, I was very ready and excited for the downhill!
I rode down those hills, hugging curves, testing my own willpower in a very different way and felt one with my bike flying down the hills. The adrenaline courses through my veins and I feel my heart beat for this amazing place.
I can’t believe that it is already February and it has a been a month since we celebrated New Years in Valle de Bravo. For this stretch, we explored Central Mexico, spending about two weeks riding from Valle de Bravo near Mexico City to Oaxaca and then spending another two weeks in the city itself learning Spanish and exploring. From Valle de Bravo, we rode to Toluca. The first day back on the road was 20km of up, up, up that burned my legs and tested my willpower. We stopped at a little village that night and it was amazing how we were invited right into people’s homes. I feel like the warm hospitality of these Central Mexican villages and towns really characterized this portion of our journey. That and the hills. We were mostly on a slant our whole ride. When we were not going up, we tended to be going down. There were little other tourists on this stretch until we got to Oaxaca and it was great to explore these little cowboy towns nestled in highland hills. We got to Toluca on Jan 6, on the Night of the Three Kings and the whole city had exploded in celebrations. There was a huge carnival in the park, street vendors lined the roads, clowns and people lighting lanterns filled one plaza while in the next plaza, the city had set up a snow wonderland with an ice skating rink, snowball fight areas and two icy ramps for snowtubing. Bryan and I went on the towering “adults” ramp and we flew down the icy ramp. That was one of the last things I expected to be doing on this trip in Mexico, snowtubing! After having our fill of churros and other carnival delights, we continued riding through the beautiful Lagunas de Zampoala, which made me think I was back in the wilderness of Northern California not just an hour’s drive from Mexico City.
After, the Lagunas de Zampuala, there was a wild 30km descent into Cuernavaca and then to ths historic city of Cuautla where we intended to stay only one night but ended up staying three because both the city and our Couchsurfing host, Katya, were so amazing. Cuautla is very important in Mexican history both for the siege of the insurgents fighting for Mexican independence from Spain and also where revolutionary hero Zapata is buried. Zapata is from a nearby village to the city. We explored Cuautla including seeing mummies in one of the earliest churches in the Americas at Tlayacapan, hiking to an ancient temple on top of a mountain in Tepoztlan,
swimming in the volcanic springs at Agua Hediona and touring the fantastic ice cream shops of the area! After Cuautla, we rode in the shadow of the the huge volcano Popocatepetl. Popocatepetl was letting off a little steam in the distance with his legendary love as the Sleeping Woman mountain beside him. The Sleeping Woman mountain looked remarkably like a sleeping woman, down to the curve of her heel on her foot. Popocateptl and the woman is a Romeo and Juliet story from ancient Mexico. We cycled on Hwy 190 to Oaxaca.
I think most people take the toll freeway from Puebla to Cuautla so Hyw 190 felt very remote sometimes as we winded through the highland hills, encountering men herding their goats with their donkeys and mountainsides covered in cactuses and swaying grasses.
It is cowboy country here where horses and mules are considered modes of transport and cowboy hats are still in style. We rode first to Matamoros then to Acatlan where we stopped early that day and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beers in a terrace restaurant overlooking the small central plaza. From Acatlan, we rode to Huajuapan and then to Oaxaca.
We did a lot of climbing in this portion though the roads were graded very nicely and it was very manageable. For example, in one day from Huajuapan to Tierra Blanca, we probably did 1000m of climbing. Huajuapan at 1600m elevation and at Tierra Blanca where we camped the next night, we were at an elevation of 2200m including a huge descent into Tamzulapam which we then climbed out of after. In Oregon when we were first starting our journey, we would nervously talk about a 700ft ascent, which is under 250m. We apparently did four times that in one day.
We get into Oaxaca and we fall in love with the UNESCO World Heritage city. The colonial buildings and cobblestone streets are well preserved and it feels like we are walking around in a living, breathing museum. The city is so alive and on any day of the week, people are strolling around the streets at night, music is playing and street vendors are selling food and things. If you have nothing to do, you can just head to the tree covered zocalo where there seems to always be something happening. We have ballroom danced in the plaza under the leafy trees with dozens of other couples and a live band playing and we rocked out to a free outdoor concert.
The day after we arrived was a festival to El Senor de Esquipulas. We joined the procession of the statue around the streets of the historic centro and then enjoyed the incredible display of fireworks.
We took a weeklong Spanish course with Oaxaca Spanish Magic, a great school. We still need to practice to speak faster but now I feel like I have a firm foundation. We visited the ancient Zapotec city of Monte Alban where astronomer priests and warriors ruled on top of the mountain and inhabited continuously for over 13 centuries, this site is known as one of the first places where the development of state in the Americas is seen.
Then, we visited the ancient giant cypress tree at El Tule. Monte Alban is now a scenic ruin but this tree is still alive and growing. This tree, which is 14 metres in diameter (42metres circumference!) and the stoutest tree in the world, was already growing when the city Monte Alban was at its height. We visited the huge, bustling market in Tlacolula and went to a little slice of paradise at Hierve el Agua with its spring fed pools overlooking mountains and petrified waterfalls.
Oaxaca is also a food lover’s haven as the land of chocolate and the seven moles. We sampled the different moles and also learned how to make mole rojo and negro, the hardest of all seven!
Our hotel is also just around the corner from chocolate street, a street lined with chocolate shops, factories and cafes. One of the chocolate factories on the corner nearest to us was like our second home and we were there daily drinking frothy hot chocolate and cold chocolate milk shakes.
The blog is copied below. However, for regular updates and the tracking map where our SPOT satellite updates our daily location to so you can see where we’ve been for a week, check out our blog for this epic adventure at http://theworldcan.org/biketrip.html.
Jan 6, 2014 – On the Road Again from Valle de Bravo to Toluca
The road climbed out of Valle de Bravo and kept on climbing. We only made it about 20km the first day but that was 20km of ascent, ranking as one of the longest if not the longest uphill stretches we have ridden on our trip so far…and this was after 3 weeks off from riding! It was a bit hard realizing that we will take 2 days to ride to Toluca when it is only one hour in a car. However, sitting on the side of the highway at a little village that did not exist on our map while Bryan searched for water, I put things in perspective. As I was sitting there on the guardrail, I could hear all of the sounds of the community around me. Behind me and on the other side of the highway up in the forest were women washing clothes and talking with each other. One man whistled for his partner, who came walking leading a cow by some rope. People were working in the field and periodically, a herder would bring their flock of sheep home walking them down the road surrounded by their family’s pack of dogs, making sure no sheep wandered away. The community was perched on a slope surrounded by mountains. Cycling, I felt so much more in touch with the landscape and immersed in this little community. The time was already 3:30pm and we decided to ask around for camping. I ask the first person I see and he says yes. Enrique is a taxi driver and we are camped out beside his house. His aunt, who is across the street, runs a little shop out of her house. As we set up, Enrique’s cousin, Vincente, and his cute 3 year old daughter, Alexa, comes up to talk to us. Vincente and I talk with each other for almost an hour in bits of Spanish and English and he invites us over for dinner. We have handmade maize tortillas, warmed up by his wife Lydia over a cooking fire. On the side are fried chorizo and nopales, veggie rice and some pickled chilis to go into the tortillas. The nopales, stripes of the prickly pear cactus pads, have always been too slimy for my liking but Lydia cooks them up so they are really tasty, like a chewier green pepper. We sit around the fire in the middle of their dirt floored living room/kitchen after. We laugh with his two beautiful daughters, who are eating fruit loops cereal with milk for dinner, and I help his wife and mother bundle these edible greens for sale in Valle’s market tomorrow. In the morning, these two adorable kids from his aunt’s house across the street comes over with warm toasted bread slathered with butter and sprinkled with sugar. Bryan goes over to the store to buy a Coke and comes back with the bottle and two coffees that she had prepared for us! Everyone has been so amazingly nice. The traffic gets heavier closer to Toluca. As we get closer to the Centro, a seperated bike path that would make the Mayor of Vancouver envious appears. We have our own set of traffic lights for the bike path and when there isn’t, there are these lovely green signs that say yield to cyclists! We get into the centro and find a nice, clean cheap hotel right on the central square. Outside, the town is a huge party. It is the celebration of the Epiphany, the celebration of the three kings, of the three wise men, which marks the last celebration of the holiday season. There is a huge carnival in the park with mini roller coasters, rows of food vendors and people selling balloons. There are three very popular photo taking opportunities where there are scenes of the three kings and you can sit on their camel with them for a photo. Roads were blocked off as people filled the streets. We sat in a square beside the cathedral eating pizza and people were lighting lanterns. It seemed a bit of a fire risk to me to light up these paper lantern hot air balloons and let them float over the city but they were very beautiful to see drifting up into the twilight sky up by the majestic domes of the large cathedral. Infront of the cathedral was a city funded fun park. There was again, more food (I’m so stuffed by now that I’m too full for ice cream! Tragedy!) and more little shops and more balloon vendors holding their a giant bouquet of colourful orbs. Here however, there was an ice rink with people skating around and a snowball fight area. Bryan and I went snowtubing on a huge ice ramp. Just before I was launched down the icy ramp, the attendent asked me “Fuerte” strong….or some other Spanish word, which I think meant easy. I didn’t answer quick enough and he said, “ok, fuerte” and whipped me down the ramp. It was pretty fun…and random. I certainly did not think when I woke up in the morning in the little farming community that I would be snowtubing tonight! We decided to stay another day in Toluca to work out maps of where we are going. Though I have not heard of Toluca as a tourist destination and really only experienced it as a transit stop at its huge bus terminal, Toluca is unexpectedly pleasant – it is easy to walk around in and food is avaliable everywhere. Toluca seems to be a huge fan of tortas, Mexican sub sandwiches packed with your choice of ham, sausages, hot dogs, multiple types of cheese, and/or egg and salsa. It is bascially your arteries worst nightmare but they sure are tasty. Torta restaurants seem to be almost every third shop, interspaced by ice cream, churros (deep fried doughnut stick) and pizza restaurants. I have even seen restaurants that serve all three, tortas, pizza and ice cream. Unfortunately, though I love ice cream and ice cream places tempt me on every corner, it is actually too cold here since we are at a high elevation. It was kind of funny becuase we were talking to a friend from home and I was complaining that it was quite cold here. “I have to wear my jacket!” I lamented. She replied that it was -1 degrees Celcius in Vancouver right now…and raining.
Jan 8, 2013 – Skirting by Mexico City: Toluca to Cuernavaca via Lagunas de Zampoala
We were on the main highway from Toluca to Mexico City. There are 8 lanes total, four in the middle “freeway” type lanes that bypassed the towns and two lanes on each side going one direction to serve as a more “local” highway. The outside lanes are like an extended merging /bus lane, a mediator between the gas stations, food stops, streets and bus stops that towns have and the busy highway. Actually, if you count the “two-laned” seperated bike route, the highway was a total of 10 lanes of traffic. At first, we were so excited to see the bike route, which was smoothly paved and seperated from the busy car traffic. However, while I think the heart was in the right place, something went wrong with the planning of the bike lane. Because the bike lanes were in the middle of the highway, when they abruptly ended, they also left us in the middle of the highway! We would have to cross over to the right until the bike lane started again when we would have to cross the highway again then jump a curb. It’s great that there are bike lanes and fine looking ones at that but unfortunately, we felt that it might have been more dangerous to use them! We turn off Hwy 15 at Ocoyoacac and enter a populated countryside. The road is busy and narrow but traffic is very courteous. We just have to ask people if we’re on the right road. We have learned the magic number of 3. When we were clarifying directions out of Santiago Tianguisteco, we had one person tell us with clear details, “go two blocks this way then turn left and then go straight…”. We asked someone else just to be sure and they gave us the exact opposite directions. We asked a third person to be sure and he agreed with the second man and we were off. For us being so close to Mexico City, one of the biggest cities in the world, we are riding through quaint towns and a patchwork quilt of farmland that drape up the mountain slopes. Even the smallest town perched on a slope of the mountainside seems to have a minature grand cathedral with two bell towers. We crossed a chain of mountains at Lagunas de Zampola, which I highly recommend to cycle. We slowly ascended through grassy meadows with a slow stream flowing through it and everygreen forests with lush green carpets of moss and ferns. As we cycled through a tunnel of evergreen trees, from pine to a flat needle everygreen at the very top of the pass, with only a few cars passing us here and there and the air cold in the shade like in the Redwood groves, I was reminded of Northern California. The elevation of the National Park, which was already after a bit of a descent, is at an elevation of about 2,900 m (9,500 ft) above sea level. Cuernavaca, the city where we ended up today, is at an elevation of 1,510 m (4,950ft). We dropped almost a kilometer and a half in elevation! You can feel the change of elevation in the air. The air becomes warmer and more moist. We are immediately transported from Northern California to the tropics. We enter Cuernavaca and it is bustling. Buses clog up the road as it one buses infront of us, buses behind us and beside us. We make our way to around the Centro where Bryan and I walk around the narrow, busy streets filled with shoe and bra stores, places to sell your gold, ice cream shops and roasted chicken places. The Zocalo, the central square, is a leafy place surrounding an ornate gazebo with stately colonial buildings on all four sides. Walking under the trees made me feel like I was in a rainforest with birds sqwacking above me. There were lots of people chilling in its park benches and little stalls selling food. Tortas are everywhere. Also, the central square seemed to be populated by an incredible number of balloons with vendors crowding all of the plaza’s entrances. We went for all you can eat pizza at the marketplace overlooking the square. Don’t underestimate hungry cyclists! Bryan and I both ate just shy of a whole pizza…each.
Jan 11, 2013 – Mummies, catherdrals and ice cream OH MY! : Our adventures in Cuautla
We had actually only planned on staying one day in Cuautla but ended up staying three nights because Katya, our couchsurfing host, was so amazing and showed us all around the area, which is packed full of ancient and modern history. In the shadow of the huge, active Popocatepetl volcano smoking on the horizon, this area has been important to cultures from the prehistoric to the present. We visited Tlayacapan, a “Pueblo Magico” with streets paved with cobblestones and redtiled roofs on old colonial mansions where the former monastery of San Juan Bautista towers over the town like an old fort. It is from the 1530s and the old monastry courtyard area has been converted into a museum with art and other relics and mummies! About 39 mummies, including children, were found under the main nave of the church floor. There was a belief that you could reach heaven sooner if you were buried in the church as close to the altar as possible. Katya tells us that these bodies were naturally mummified due to compsition of the soil. We went to Oaxtepec, a nearby town with another old monastry church. These churches are a part of the “Monasteries on the slopes of Popocatepetl” World Heritage Site, a group of fourteen 16th century monastries that served as a model for monastries and evangelism in the Americas. These first monasteries by the Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian missions are large and grand with thick, plain walls, resembling an old castle fortress towering over the small towns. Afterwards, we went for delicious ice cream across the street. Only in Mexico can you go for a church and ice cream tour! It is amazing how seeped in history this whole area is. Zapata’s masoleum where his bones are buried is just down the street in centro Cuautla. He is from a little village near here. The Mexican rebels, including their leader Morelos, fighting for independence from Spain came to Cuatla because of the railway and the Spanish royalist forces besiged the town from Feb 9 to May 2, 1812. It’s interesting because the street names mark historial events. For example, the next street from Katya’s house is “Captain Bollas sin cabeza”, translating directly to “Bollas without head” and marks to location of where the captain lost his head in the seige. Because Katya’s house is right by the rail station, her house is in the middle of the historic centro. She tells us that there’s a lot of ghost stories in the area including her house. There are tales of buried treasure from people who died in the seige and didn’t want their family heirlooms being passed into the wrong hands and the dead talking to people today in their dreams about the location. Katya tells about her aunt who dreamed of the buried treasure in their house once but was too scared to act on it. After a little while, the family got together and dug a deep trench but apparently because they had included people who were not family in the excavation party, the treasure was “moved” and not found. We also visited the nearby town of Tepoztlan, another Pueblo Magico quaint red tiled roof and cobblestone roads town that looks like it’s out of a page from a history book. It is on the other side of the mountains from Tlayacapan. These mountains rise up in sheer cliffs as rock spires lumped together. Up at the top of these mountains is a small pyramid, El Tepozteco, which is reached by a beautiful hike through the jungle and climbs through canyons up 400m. Fig trees grow out of the old walls and rocks of the trail and butterflies flitter about in the dense green. Once at the top, the view is absolutely amazing as you can see the town below you, the rock spires of the mountains around you and the landscape dropping down to the flat plain where Cuautla is far below. The pyramid temple is simple but it is really amazing that people carried all these rocks up here to make the pyramid and trail. Bryan amuses himself with the pack of ferret raccoons who get right close to the people. He had them drinking out of…my waterbottle! It is a really special place. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this as others agree that Tepoztlan is a special place. According to myth, Tepoztlan is the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god widely-worshiped in ancient Mexico. Today, there are stories of UFOs here and of mystic magnetic lines of the world passing under the town, energy lines that are said to line up with many of the ancient wonders. The well-perseved old colonial buildings lining the cobblestone streets are filled with tarot readings, massage places, and alternative therapies from the traditional temazcal sauna to a magnetic foot bath that draws out illness in your body making the clear water rust coloured. To finish off our amazing adventures in and around Cuautla, we went to Agua Hediona, a series of huge outdoor pools that cascade from the volcanic spring in the corner. The water comes out at about 26 degrees celcius and orginates from the huge, active Popocatepetl volcano smoking on the horizon. Apparently, when the volcano was erupting, the water came out hotter and more yellowish! Agua Hediona ranks as one of the top natural mineral water springs in the world for a high mineral content. When we got out of the pool, our skin and hair was silky soft and we were so relaxed.
Jan 13, 2013 – 5000km crossed from Cuautla to Acatlan on the road to Oaxaca
It is amazing to think that 5000km is 25% of our PanAmerican journey! Katya, our couchsurfing host in Cuautla, joked that the weather was going to turn and we would be in Cuautla all week. We joked that we should get her to teach us Spanish. It was actually kind of half joking as thunderclouds rolled in the horizon. In the morning of Jan 12th however, it was a clear blue sky and it was a beautiful ride through farmland framed in mountains. The huge volcano Popocatepetl was letting off a little steam in the distance with his legendary love as the Sleeping Woman mountain beside him. The Sleeping Woman mountain looked remarkably like a sleeping woman, down to the curve of her heel on her foot. Popocateptl and the woman is a Romeo and Juliet story from ancient Mexico. At 66 km from Cuautla to Matamoros, we rode the farthest on Jan 12th since our holidays and then realized that Oaxaca is actually not that far away! Only about 300km down the windy road. We are in mountain country and every moment seems to be spent on a slant. If we’re not going up, we’re going down the other side of the mountain. We climb 5km, we decend 5km. It is actually kind of rewarding and keeps life interesting. The grade is always quite manageable and the traffic is patient, passing with lots of room and often waiting behind us until it is safe. When they drive by, the whistle, honk their horn and holler encouragements in Spanish. We are not the only bicycles on the road. We met up with a group of 12 Mexican cyclists biking from Mexico City to Oaxaca in 4 days as a part of a religious prigrimage. On the back of their bikes are blue and white cloth banners of Jesus flapping in the wind. Many of them were cycling fixed gear bikes! They also had two support vehicles with family members and all of their stuff. It is really awesome to see local people touring. You go to a small town that seems so remote, Tehuitzingo in this case, where life seems more simple, horses and mules are considered modes of transport and cowboy hats are still in style, and you meet people with a passion for mountain biking, cycle touring and travelling. Our mechanic, Israel, today pulled out a shiny new smartphone, logged onto facebook and showed me pictures of his four mountain bikes including two little ones for his kids. Then he showed me pictures of his motorbike. He toured on his motorbike from Mexico to Columbia and we laughed at how it took him 20 days to drive what will take us probably 6 months to cycle. It’s crazy to think that the buses passing us will reach Oaxaca in a few hours though we won’t be there until the end of the week. I guess from Oaxaca, a flight to Vancouver is only a few hours too! There is something about travelling slow and with your personal power that moves you, as I’m sure the Mexican cycle-pilgrims agree. I got some work done on my bike, remarkably only the second of this whole trip, after realizing that a part of my front rack was snapped on one side and cracking on the other. We think it’s probably from the combination of my big front panniers and the stress on the rack as I bailed off the road to avoid a crash in La Paz. Anyways, after a little tour of what the little town had for shops, we were led to Israel by recommendation from all other other places. Israel did an awesome job sautering my alumnium racks and only charged us $ 50 pesos to repair both of my front racks and wouldn’t accept the tip I wanted to give him. He only asked for our Facebook and other contact info so we could keep in touch. After the visit to the mechanic shop, it was already 3:30 pm. We rode for another few kilometres then decided to call it a day. We camped out in front of a sky blue painted church covered in strings of red, white and green flags drapped over the front stairs, colourful paper flower garlands strung above the front entrance patio and Christmas lights over the door. As we were preparing dinner a bit later, children start to flock into the church. The woman with them, Cecilia, blares music from the church tower megaphones and children are running around, kicking around a ball and watching us cook. A table with bottles of Pepsi and two large wreath shaped breads decorated with sugar and candy fruit is placed infront of the church door. Cecilia tells me that they are having a “rosco” (spelling unclear…) party where the bread is cut for each person and if your piece has a little plastic baby in it, then you throw a tamales party on Feb 2. We didn’t find any babies in our pieces but Cecilia jokes that there was one in mine and I just have to come back in Feb. Soon the bread is eaten, children start filtering home and the church is quiet once again ….other than the symphony of crickets and dogs barking in the town and lively Mexican tunes with brass instruments blasting away and an almost polka beat rising from a home in the distance. The next day, we made a long, gradual ascent through a long narrow valley through hills until Nuevo Horizontes then it was a marvelous gradual descent for the rest of the day basically. We had lunch at a Pemex station at the beginning of Acatlan. Someone came up to us and we started talking about our trip. When he found out how long we were riding, he asked us if this was some sort of pilgrimage, a pennance to the church for atonement. When we said that we’re just doing this for fun, he said we’re crazy. We thought to ourselves, what’s crazy is a sin that would require cycling the length of the Americas to atone! When we were done lunch around 1pm, we went back out into the sunshine and quickly realized how bloody hot it was. We decided to have a beer, which turned into another and us chilling out in the little 2nd floor patio restaurant that overlooked the zocalo for the rest of the afternoon. Acatlan has stunning churches from the 18th century with a beautiful tiled domes. Around the church in the zocalo is a leafy central square with delicate ornate metal chairs and gazebo in the center. Near to the church was a bustling market with clothes, fruit, vegetables and meat. It has been great to explore these little cowboy towns that dot the beautifully dramatic, hilly countryside.
Jan 14, 2014 – Hills and Headwind into Oaxaca State
We rode out of Acatlan and there was a 29km/hr ENE wind, which translated to mostly a speed crushing headwind for us. However, we were doing so many switchbacks up and around hills that even a headwind was partially a crosswind sometimes and more rarely, sometimes a tailwind. It felt like we were ascending all day, struggling to cycle 7km/hr as we grinded up hills. The hills all about the same level so you would grind up to the top of one hill, expecting a bit of downhill after. There is a short downhill bursts sometimes that quickly led to more hills or sometimes you find that you go along a ridge for a bit then up another hill. We find that roads try to follow valleys and canyons to minimize the ups and downs but today, it just seemed like a wrinkled blanket, hills after hills after hills with no easy path through so the road zigzagged all around them unpredictably. It was a kind of game for us to guess where the road would lead though I stopped expecting downhills after a long ascent. I guess that’s one lesson of the landscape today – have no expectations! Don’t expect things of the world because it is doing its own thing but instead be pleasantly surprised when we do get a bit of downhill and can go -woot woot!- maybe 15km/hr in the headwind. Though the day was hard, it was also a great day. Bryan and I got to spend a lot of time riding with each other and it was great. Bryan would sing to me as we grinded up the slope or we would breathlessly talk with each other. Othertimes, we would be quiet in contemplation of the amazing landscape. The landscape was beautiful and the traffic was very courteous. People cheered at us out of their windows as they finally passed us, giving us peace/victory signs, thumbs up, waving, whistling, honking and yelling something repetive and cheering like in Spanish though I can never actually catch what they’re saying. Turkey vultures soared above our heads and just when we thought the journey was so hard, a man with a wide brimmed ivory cowboy hat and his goats would walk by in the bush. As slow as we are cycling, it is still much faster than walking! Green cactuses shot up from the earth straight and tall, a counterpoint to the gnarled leafless trees with twisted and curled brown branches that also shared the mountain slopes. Golden grasses rippled in the wind and sometimes we would pass little patches of tilled earth and old harvested maize fields with only a little part of the stalk closest to the ground left after the corn has been harvested for people and the rest of the plant for animals . A plastic bag would blow across the road – the tumbleweed of the modern era I guess. At the end of the day, we descended about 350m down into the city of Huajuapan de Leon, a bustling place with a beautiful old catheral in the centro. We had some delicious chicken mole, a cocoa based sauce, and some hot chocolate made before our eyes with a wooden spindle to churn the decadent concoction. Oaxaca state is known for its chocolate and we look forward to much more! As we look up to the mountains beyond the city, we also look forward to more climbing!
January 18, 2014 – Dramatic mountain landscapes from Huajuapan to Nochitxtlan
It’s amazing to think about how much we’re climbing. Huajuapan at 1600m elevation and at Tierra Blanca where we camped the next night, we were at an elevation of 2200m including a huge descent into Tamzulapam which we then climbed out of after. We probably climbed about 1000 metres that day in total. In Oregon when we were first starting our journey, we would nervously talk about a 700ft ascent, which is under 250m. We apparently did four times that in one day. The landscape was dramatic with cutting cliffs, sweeping grasslands, mountain slopes covered with golden grasses and cactus trees, overlooking a field of mountains each fading in shades of blue in the distance. Men herded goats along the steep mountain sides and we saw donkeys and horses teethered on the side of the road to feed on the grasses and nervously look at every passing car. Well, the horses did. The donkeys looked generally bored. There were little farm patches everywhere and we followed river for a little bit as it cascaded over rocks into little turqouise pools beside our ride. After Tamzulapam, we rode through a long valley. It was still rising but very gradually. At the end of the valley, it started to ascend through the hills once more, but less steeply than this morning. We are camped out in the church yard in Tierra Blanca. Our highest point of the ride to Oaxaca is just over the 2400m line on our map and we climbed to that the next morning. As we climbed up the slope, a Mexican cyclist from Tamzulapam came up beside us in his slick racing bike decked out entirely in spandex. We talked for a bit before he raced off ahead of us. He loves to ride and tells us he does these hills everyday before work. There was one peak, a short dip, and then another higher peak with a smaller third peak in elevation to go and then it was a wild descent into Yanhuitlan. Yanhuitlan is in a large valley and the landscape is dominated by a huge old cathedral that looks more like a fortress than a place of worship. It is tall with thick rock walls and arch supports. Construction started in 1541 though there was a smaller church here before that. If you think about that timeframe, Columbus only reach the Americas in 1492! This church is one of the earliest on the continent and looking at it, it definately represents a mission statement – strength and domination from the outside, loftly ceilings and richly decorated panels of biblical scenes on the side. We jumped onto the toll highway after Nochitxtlan and camped on the side of the highway about 20km past the town.
Jan 20, 2014 – Welcomed to Oaxaca City with a Bang
Oaxaca is a beautiful city with old colonial architecture, elaborate churches seemingly on every street corner and bustling markets everywhere. The historical centro is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO has inventoried a total of 1,200 historical monuments in the city centro and states that the iconic architecture and buildings represent a cultural tradition of more than four centuries of art and history. The city is incredible with markets everywhere and every building seems out of a history book. The Zocalo is a huge plaza covered with tall, shady trees surrounded by restaurants and cafes with lots of things happening and people gathering. When we walked by, we stopped to listen to a 20 piece brass band playing with old couples dancing and mescal shots given to people in the crowd in shot glasses made from roma tomatoes. Balloons and food truck stalls where everywhere and children running around wild. Food has been an interesting experience in this city. We are staying right by the 20 de Noviembre market with one building as entirely for little eateries. It is a bit of an intense experience going into the market as once you step in the door, people are flagging you to go to their little eatery. When you stop to take a look at their menu often written on the wall of the kitchen facing the benches where you sit to eat, they spout off the whole menu to you in rapid Spanish. Quite incredible actually. We had a delcious breakfast there, which I had a hot chocolate with! I love that I can have chocolate with every meal practically! We are staying right by chocolate street where the stores grind cocoa, make moles, whip up hot chocolate drinks and there is always a delicious aroma in the air. Last night, we went to the prestigous Church of Carmen Alta celebrating the Feast of Our Lord of Esquipulas, a grand finale of a week of celebrations in honor of the Black Christ crucified statue on the altar. This is the event that the Mexican cycle-pilgrims were heading to though we didn’t see them in the crowds of people. El Senor de Esquipulas is orginally from Esquipulas, Guatemala, a site of pilgrimage from pre-Christan times which has continued to this day to the statue of the Black Christ. The statue was carved in dark wood to represent local peoples. However, there seems to be other stories of the Black Christ such as from Valle de Bravo where two local indigenous groups were fighting. One of these groups were feasting at their church and the other group raided and burned down the church. The smoke made the statue turn black, which also represented the hate between the two groups. Seeing their violence and hate visualized in the statue of Christ crucified led them to peace. It is not completely clear what the story of El Senor de Esquipulas is but what is clear is that the statue loves a bang. It started the previous night around 4am. I woke up to a start at a loud BANG! Then, BANG BANG BANG BANG!! Fireworks were going off in the city and throughout the morning, there were periodic fireworks being let off. Around 7pm, mass started with incense, beautiful choral singing and of course, more fireworks shot off the roof of the elegant neoclassical style 17th century cathedral into the evening twilight. After mass, El Senor de Esquipas is brought out of the church and placed onto a white mobile altar decorated with candles with a light under gauzy white trim to be carried by four people down the street (and another one carrying the generator). The altar is proceeded and followed by men and women carrying tall decorated banners with pictures of saints. A brass band is immediately before the alter and a drum and pipe dual leads the whole procession. There is almost a hundred of the tall banners topped with a bronze cross slowly walking in single file down the road and all around are the worshippers and us walking alongside the procession through the city. The pipe music is haunting, repeating a melody which seems to have indigenous orgins over and over. The brass band is triumphant and loud, playing something resembling a 16th century European waltz. Both are interspersed by the loud bang of fireworks. When the procession kept stopping, I first thought it was to wait for everyone to catch up. Then, I realized that the procession was stopping periodically because less than 100m infront, someone would set off fireworks in the middle of the street. We get back to the chuch and El Senor is put away in the church again with the brass band blarring. The brass band continues to play and people in large paper mache dolls start to dance, twirling around estatically and swinging their cloth arms around. The music is lively and the band builds with to a tempo with a fury and the dancers whirl, shimmy and fly their feet. After the big dolls, the fireworks begin with el toro, the bull. A paper mache bull rigged with a lot of fireworks is placed on top of someone’s head. The fuse is lit and the person dances while the fireworks explode above them in sprays of light and fire. A crowd circles around the dancer and is sprayed by the fireworks as the dancer swings the bull around. There are five bull dances then comes the grand finale. It starts with the theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean then the explosions start. There is a three story frame in the courtyard of the church rigged up with fireworks. Different songs play and different parts of the frame is lit up with exploding fireworks that both display an image and other fireworks that propell the structure in a circle. There was a spinning fiery El Senor de Esquipulas, not black but fire bright, with the words ¿Hasta cuando? -“Until when?” lit up below it. It was a dazzling display of light which ended with two angels at the top being lit up with fireworks that started spining the angels off the structure and into the night sky. Today, we relaxed and explored the city a bit more though our chill out days are going to be a lot more limited in the future! We signed up with a week long Spanish course with Spanish Magic (www.oaxacaspanishmagic.com). They came highly recommended to us and when we dropped by this morning to their open couryard classrooms, it was full of students and teachers clustered around the white little tables and white boards speaking Spanish in the garden. We talked to them and they were very flexible, starting our week long class on tomorrow, a Tuesday rather than the normal start date of Monday. The director herself came and gave us some delicious hot chocolate. We are really looking forward to learning more Spanish with them!
Jan 25, 2014 – I love Oaxaca!
We are settling into a bit of a routine here in Oaxaca. We leave our hotel at around 8:30am, walk up the street to the Oxxo corner store for a coffee and then down Hidalgo St towards the Zocalo where we buy the best tamales on the corner of Hidalgo and 20 de Noviembre streets. We have classes from 9 to 1 then lunch and then we return back to the school for a language exchange with a local brilliant medical student named Pamela. It is so amazing how much we have learned in just four days. Bryan says that he has learned more Spanish in four days than he learned in four years of French at school. I feel like I have learned more Spanish in under a week here than three years in high school, and I somehow won the Spanish award in my grade 12 year! I think it is a combination of excellent teachers at Oaxaca Spanish Magic Language School (www.oaxacaspanishmagic.com) and the great environment of Oaxaca where you can practice Spanish everyday, every moment of the day if you want to. It has been great to walk around and understand random words in other people’s conversations as you pass by. It makes you feel so much more HERE. In the afternoons and the weekend, we have been exploring the city. We went to the Bascilica of La Soladad, a beautiful 17th century cathedral built in Baroque style laid out in the shape of a Latin cross. The front facade is gorgeous, carved in with pillars and statues including the patron saint of the Virgin Mary kneeling and weeping at the foot of the cross right above the main entrance doors. The sanctuary is dedicated to Our Lady of Solitude, the patron saint of Oaxaca. Interesting fact is that it was intentionally built with low spires and towers so to better resist earthquakes! After we walked up to the ampitheater on the mountainside, Cerro del Fortin, up a beautiful tree lined stair walkway, where we looked over the entire city and valley. It was really interesting to see the valley that we cycled into Oaxaca from, all of the buildings in the centro and we were identifying churches, the markets, and the zocalo, then looking at the valley we’re going to be leaving by. One evening, Flo, Oaxaca Spanish Magic’s director, decided to take us out on a little tour of the city after treating us to some delicious mezcal. We walked over to the Palacio museum where we got to see two amazing murals by an Oaxacan artist. One over the main staircase depicted the history of Mexico highlighting Zapata, Benito Juarez (who was born here and the city is named Oaxaca de Juarez in honor of him), Benito Juarez’s wife (afterall, behind every great man is a great woman, Flo said) and Morelos. In another staircase in the corner of the Palacio, there was a wrap around mural depicting the history of Oaxaca. This mural showed a lot of the indigenous traditions in the area, Monte Alban, Mitla, Hierve de Agua and highlighted maize as so important to Oaxacan culture. Talking about Oaxacan culture, in addition to the murals, there was also a huge tlayuda. It took 300kg of maize to make this huge tortilla that was imprinted and painted with items of Oaxacan culture and history. After, we walked to the Majordomo chocolate factory where we saw them turn 1kg of cacao beans, cinnamon sticks, almonds and sugar into a bag full of hot chocolate powder. They put it through two grinders to make it the perfect consistency. The air was full of delicious chocolate aroma in the air. After our amazing little tour, we jumped into taxis to a local restaurant that Flo found on the outskirts of the city whose speciality is tlayudas. It was delicious and great company too. We have been dancing in the zocalo. It is amazing that on a Wednesday night, the streets are filled with people out and about. There are as much people on the streets on a weekday night here in Oaxaca as there was on the streets of Vancouver during the Olympics. The old colonial buildings are lit up with lights as people stroll on the cobblestone walkways. At the zocalo there is a band playing and people are dancing danzon, a stately ballroom style dance. The dance floor was filled with old couples dancing though there were a bunch of younger dancers as well and a crowd surrounding them watching both the dancers and the musicians. It is a weekly tradition in the zocalo. Bryan and I watch for a bit and then head to one of the entrances of the dance floor. The guard looks at us with surpise and says, “You’re going to dance? Really? Yeah go for it!!” He seems excited that we’re willing to join the dancing. There are no other gringos on the dance floor. We stumble around the dance floor, laughing, trying to catch the beat and the stately movements of the other couples. The others are dressed their best, in heels, dresses and suits. We are perhaps the only ones in sandals and hoodies, with my purse slung over my shoulder. I look back over to the guard and he gives me a huge smile and a thumbs up. The music gets faster and faster. The other dancers twirl around the dance floor. We keep to our simple square ballroom dance waltz routine but are having tons of fun getting caught up in the energy of the dance. I think our problem with ballroom dancing is two-fold: I am terrible at following and Bryan has a hard time hearing the beat. However, I think our full enthusaism makes up for it! Last night on Friday, we got to try our dance moves in the park again. There was a free outdoor concert with bands after bands taking the stage. We ended up watching three different bands, the first was a rock band, the second was a brass band with amazing dancing beats and the third was a chill ska band. We danced for hours in the zocalo, interspersed with an ice cream break when the bands were changing. Today, we visited Monte Alban today where the ruling Zapotec elite once lived high over the peasants in the Valley of Oaxaca and on the terraced mountainsides. It was the the first planned urban centre in the Americas, the biggest pre-Hispanic city in Oaxaca and was continuously inhabited for 13 centuries from 500BC to 850 AD. Temples for ceremonies and astrological observation were set around a 300 m long and 200 m wide Gran Plaza. There was an imposing South platform with a 40 metre wide staircase leading up to two pyramid structures. Bryan and I went there right away and ate a great little picnic lunch of tortas, water and a cookie overlooking the main plaza and the view of the mountains and valley all around us. The whole top of the mountain has been leveled to create this ceremonial center and the logistics of that boggles my mind, as with somehow getting all the stone up here. On the side of the arrowhead shaped observatory, there are carvings of scenes in the stone depicting conquests of Monte Alban over other towns between 100 BC and 200 AD with the conquered peoples shown as upsidedown heads under the glyph of Monte Alban. Observation of the skies was really important to the city, in which a priestly elite ruled. In one of the buildings (Edificio P), there was a small hole in the staircase only the size of a missing stone brick. Underneath that was a small tunnel and a narrow chimney that looked up to the hole. The sun would shine through that hole into the tunnel at the sun’s zenith on the equinoxes. If you clapped infront of this structure, in front of the window, the sound would also echo, become louder and a bit more warbled as well. Stelae 18 is a tall pillar of stones from 100 BC to 300 AD was an astrological instrument to verify midday and winter and summer solstices. The shadow of the stelae is at its maximum to the north on the winter solstice and then decreases to the south during the summer solstice. The importance of astrological issues is also found in the ball court. The ball court game was apparently really important to help people resolve conflicts from land disputes to trade controls. The rubber ball represented the heavenly bodies: the sun, moon and sacred Venus. The winner of the game is said to have the support of these gods. The staircased sides of the ball court was not for sitting but was covered with lime and a part of the ball court. Players would bump the ball with their hips, elbows and knees and there is a disc located at the center of the wall which perhaps was key to winning points in the game. Opposite of the South platform is North platform set on a rock outcrop that is almost as big as the Gran Plaza itself. There is a sunken patio and numerous tombs and ceremonial centres. From up here, there is 360 degree views of the mountains and valley below including modern Oaxaca city and surrounding villages. Breathtaking.
Jan 26, 2013 – Market day in Tlacolula by Oaxaca city
We took a collective taxi (aka a taxi that thinks it’s a bus and takes on passengers going to the same location or on the route) 29km out of Oaxaca to Tlacolula village where it was their fantastic Sunday market today. After riding our bikes and going about 20km an hour… in the best of times… and usually just pushing pedals on the side of the road, it is always a little intense to actually be in a vehicle. We go so fast though I look on the spedometer and it’s saying a very reasonable 100km/hr on the highway. I feel like we’re in a video game, swerving around cars to pass them while avoiding oncoming traffic. The music blaring from the radio sounds like Mexican nintendo music. Before we know it, we are in Tlacolua. On Sundays, the market day of this village, it looks like the normal market explodes out of its usual buildings and takes over all of the surrounding streets. The streets all around the centro are tarped over to provide shade and look like colourful leaves laping over each other over the bustling market. The market seems almost endless. I think Bryan and I walked around for 3 hours and I’m not sure if we saw it all. There was everything for sale from fresh fruits and vegetables, to clothes, to blankets, to local artisan crafts to saws, knives and other tools. You want some spicy seasoned grasshopers to snack on? They were heaped in large baskets. Want a live turkey? Vendors had turkeys by their feet , waving them to bypassing potential customers. Vendors rolled carts with homemade ice cream through the hot, busy crowds offering delicious cool treats. Other vendors wheeled a dolly full of large clay pots decorated with an emerald green glaze. People walked around selling bunches of green onions with huge white bulbs and long green stems and bunches of fresh garlic that looked like they had just been pulled out of the ground that morning. The smells and colours were intoxicating. We would get a whift of succulent tasajo, thinnly sliced beef steaks, being barbequed on a characoal grill. A massacre of chickens were being roasted on portable rotissarie ovens. We ate at one little eatery where the little tables were packed with people eating and Bryan counted 75 chickens being roasted in the oven. Bright pink watermelon, brillant orange papaya and golden yellow pineapple were being expertly sliced up into fruit cups sold with a little chili powder to add more zing to the flavour. Some vendors were selling handwoven, heavy woolen blankets and sweaters though in the hot sun, I veered away from their stalls. A brass band was playing in the gazebo in centro, providing a lively beat in the streets around it but quickly faded out as you left the area and back into in the maze of market, under the tarp shade covers and drowned out by the sounds of people buying, selling and chatting. Not as easily drowned out was the periodic BANG! BANG! BANG! of someone shooting off firecrackers leaving a puff of smoke high in the sky over the market. It was hot and we took ourselves on a bit of a pulque tour sampling from a few different vendors. I also tried tampeche, fermented pinapple juice, which was sweet and earthy but I prefered the lighter pulque. Bryan and I would sit off to the side on little plastic stools or milk crates, sipping cold pulque from our cups made from half a gourd, trying to practice our fledging Spanish with the vendors around us and watching the colourful whirlwind of the market roll by. In the evening, we go for dinner at a local restaurant by the mercado. We eat mole estofado with chicken in a set meal. Mole estofado is a mole, a chili based sauce, made from a variety of ingredients including olives and almonds. The sauce in moles is the focus of the meal rather than the meat and the chicken was swimming in a rich, delicious pool of thick, savory cinnamon and nutty sauce. Afterwards, we had a little time before meeting up with our cycle-homies, Uschi and Dave, so we went down to the zocalo for a walk. If you have nothing to do in Oaxaca city, just walk down to the zocalo because something seems to be always happening there. Tonight, there was a state police brass band playing stately dazon music and people ballroom dancing under the trees. It’s like the opposite of regular job by day and fighting crime by night! These officers were crime fighters moonlighting as musicians! They were pretty talented and it was fun to watch them and the dancers. Soon, we left to met up with our friends for some delicious hot chocolate and maltedas at the chocolate factory just down the street from our hotel. Yes, we’re staying down the street from the chocolate factory…and we go there at least once, often twice a day! It’s actually a street of chocolate shops, cafes and factories, that is place where they turn cacao beans, cinnamon sticks, almonds and sugar into the decadent chocolate that Oaxaca is known for. Malteda is a drink of iced milk blended up with chocolate powder. Delicious!
Jan 30, 2014 – Big trees, petrified waterfalls and delicious food in and around Oaxaca
Tule is a quiet little town with a gardened centro with palm trees, manicured lawns, a fountain and a gazebo. However, the town is overshadowed by the towering El Tule tree, a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) that some argue is the oldest tree in the world. It is at least 2,000 years old, with some saying as old as 6,000 years old. If not the oldest, it is certaintly the “stoutest” (aka having the widest girth) tree in the world. The circumference of the trunk is 42.00 metres with a diameter is 14.05 metres. Thirty people are needed with arms extended and hands joined to encircle this ancient giant. The tree, at 40 metres high, dwarfs the church of Santa Maria de La Asuncion beside it. I think this is an accurate picture if you consider that the tree is at least 2000 years old, it is four times older than Christianity on this continent and was around when Jesus was said to have been born! The tree was already alive and growing when the Roman empire fell and when the Zapotec city of Monte Alban was at its height. The tree was already 1500 years old when Columbus first set foot in the Americas. Growing in the courtyard of the church, the tree continues to be sacred today as it was for the ancient Zapotecs and subsequent Mixtecs. According to Mixtec myth, people orginated from cypress trees. The tree is nicknamed the “Tree of Life” from the shapes of animals you can see in the tree’s gnarled truck. We saw an antelope/deer and a few faces in the branches though there are apparently also elephants, jaguars and many other animals sighted. A plaque in the front encourages people to gaze at the rough bark and gnarled limbs to see if they can see animals and other shapes, a moment of tranquility under the green leafy branches that hold you under it’s gigantic umbrella as you contemplate life. The next day, we had a cooking class with Chef Augustin (http://www.cookingclassesoaxaca.com.mx/chef.html). We started at 11am and first walked through Benito Juarez market to buy the supplies for our cooking class today. We are cooking everything from scratch and we must have went to half a dozen little stands to get everything we needed from chilies to cheese to garlic to fruits and vegetables and more. We went to a chili vendor where the dried chiles were piled high in wicker baskets and the woman processing them had a face mask and heavy duty rubber gloves on. We needed four types chilies to make the mole negro (chile pasilla mexicano, chili chilhuacle negro, chile mulato and chipolte meco) and two types chilies to make the mole rojo (chile ancho and chile guajillo). Though moles have a lot of different ingredients, at its core, moles are chile based sauces and different types of chiles make the different moles. We walk through the 20 de Noviembre mercado to the chocolate factory, aka our second home, and saw their tasty creations. Both of our moles today use chocolate as an ingredient. We catch a bus from the chocolate factory all the way to his house, just outside of the centro area. Chef Agustin has a restaurant downstairs and upstairs is his living room and kitchen which he uses as his classroom to teach the classes. He has a big sunny terrace that overlooks the centro. We get started cooking…and drinking. His classes are open bar beer and mezcal. We do four different courses – quesadillas with guacamole and two types of table salsa then mole rojo and mole negro then chicken enchiladas, then two types of chile rellenos with a desert of fried plantains dribbled with crema. It was like four cooking classes combined into one as we would cook a meal together, eat it on his sunny terrace, then start the next round and so on. We started with 45 ingredients to make the bases. There are 30 ingredients to make mole negro and 25 ingredients to make mole rojo! Chef Agustin says that there are 5 core sauces that are the base of Oaxacan cuisine: black mole sauce, red mole sauce, red tomato sauce, green tomato sauce and ground bean sauce. With these five bases, you can cook most of Oaxacan food and we learned how to make four out of the five today. We left Chef Agustin’s house after sunset at around 7pm. We were so full and happy. Today, we jumped into a shared taxi to Mitla about 45km away. There we switched to a shared collectivo pickup truck up another 14 km up the mountain to Hierve el Agua. Bryan and I sat in the covered back of the pickup so we had amazing views of the whole valley unfolding below us. At Hierve el Agua, there are two “waterfalls frozen in time”. Mineral springs bubble up on top of the mountain and trickle down the cliff. Over thousands of years, the minerals have built up making fantastic stagatite rock “waterfalls” that are still growing as water continues to drip down. At the top are naturally forming rock pools, including this one giant one big enough to swim in. We hiked around the waterfalls going to both the tops and bottom of these incredible formations and went swimming. There are old rock pools where the springs have now dried or changed their path from prehispanic times so people have been coming to this area for thousands of years. It is so beautiful here with turqouise pools the overlook the mountains. A little slice of paradise. Afterwards, I was so relaxed. We got back to Oaxaca after dark and did some last provisioning. As we were walking home, our state of relaxation turned to just plain tiredness. We decided to stay another day in Oaxaca tomorrow to actually rest before we start our journey. Oh Oaxaca, you are so amazing! We just can’t leave!
The amazing joy from sharing experiences and celebrating the holidays with family and friends is really the theme of this portion from Puerto Vallarta to Valle de Bravo. For a cycling journey from Vancouver to Patagonia, this portion from Puerto Vallarta to Valle de Bravo had remarkable little biking. Cycling was not a lifestyle of this portion of our trip but rather a mode of transit. Though I felt a little lost busing, feeling like I was beamed through space like in an episode of Star Trek and completely disconnected from the landscape around me as we focused on Spanish films blared on the bus or slept in its comfortable chairs, it was great to be able to spend the time with friends. I think there has to be a balance – we want to do the most of the trip cycling but at the same point, we should not be so rigid in our plans that wonderful opportunities pass us by. It was hard for me to skip these portions by busing but the experiences with Alexa, her family and our family of cyclists for Christmas and our hilarious New Year celebrations with Erin, Santiago and their families were priceless and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.
Christmas dinner in Guadalajara
I am reminded of oak and willow trees. Oak trees are strong but rigid without the ability to move, they can crack and break in a storm. Willow tree branches sway in the wind, being flexible to situations and after the storm, they are still there. In travelling, we all have our goals and plans but we can’t be too rigid to them or else we’ll break as the world seems to be constantly against us and our plans. The truth is, I think, the world doesn’t care. It moves to its own beat and the world is a synergy of many different parts, each doing their own thing but somehow weaving in together in a beautiful chaotic but yet somehow patterned dance. When we try too hard to hold on to our own ideas of how things should be and how things should act, we try to stop this dance and we can’t. If we jump right in and dance with the world in all of her glory, learn the challenges and work with them and embrace opportunities, it becomes an amazing whirlwind experience.
I feel like this expresses our incredible experiences over this past holiday, from jumping off a mountain and soaring like a bird while paragliding over Valle de Bravo, to hilariously wearing red or yellow underwear on New Years, to listening to Dave’s incredible sitar music on Christmas in a 300 year old colonial mansion in Guadalajara, feasting all night for Christmas with Alexa’s family and hungry cyclists, to more mundane fun like playing games with Erin and Santiago’s families and trying to talk to turkeys on Santiago’s family ranch, to so much more.
Our family in Guadalajara – 16 cyclists and Alexa’s amazing and welcoming family!
Allow flexiblity to embrace opportunities and I feel that magical things happen. It turned out that we bused through one of the more dangerous areas of Mexico, Michoacan state. I had really wanted to go Moralia in the state of Michocan to see the monarch butterflies. As fate would have it, Valle de Bravo is the site of Mexico’s newest butterfly sanctuary! I often ask the people I meet what their definition of paradise is. One of my good friends, Jory, replied “To always be in the flow.” Jory, Ben, Bryan and I had been sailing in Baja California a couple years ago. As we were chatting on the sailboat in the middle of calm waters with manta rays doing flips in the sunset, I told them that sailing was pretty close to my idea of paradise. Jory pointed out that sailing was great but skiing in the winter was also paradise. It was more about being in the moment and enjoying what each moment has to offer. Going with the flow and getting that chance to spend the holidays with Alexa and her family and meeting up with all of our cyclist friends then coming to Valle de Bravo to spend New Years with two of my best friends, Erin and Santiago, and finally able to spend time with their wonderful families, has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much to everyone for welcoming us and including us in your celebrations and more than that, in your families. It makes Bryan and I feel as if we are the luckiest people in the world.
Alejandro, Santiago, Erin and I sailing in Valle de Bravo
This portion of our journey is focused more on the stops we made rather than the travel through places. We landed at La Cruz on Banderas Bay and then cycled to Puerto Vallarta. It was such a crazy change from peaceful horizon to horizon shimmering seas where we would be on watch for hours at night without seeing another boat to crazy eight lanes of busy traffic to get to Puerto Vallarta. It was a bit of a shock for me to say the least. We had two wonderful days in Puerto Vallarta, exploring the cobblestone streets of Old Town and eating tasty food at the numerous restaurants and cafes. We spent most of our days walking, exploring the beach, the happening malecon oceanside promanade and checking out the sights, including the beautiful tiara crowned old cathedral and walking through the little crafts market nestled in the lush jungle on the island in the middle of the river.
As a tourist center, we sampled tequila at the numerous vendors, indulged in dollar margaritas on the beach and even went to a time share presentation. Bryan and I actually love time share presentations because they wine and dine us and then give us some sort of incentive for attending. Our salesperson told us honestly, “We’re here to make a profit but we want to do that by making you happy with these luxurious places.” In my mind, I thought, “These places are definitely nice but we’re really here for the free stuff you give us.” We ate like kings that night, treated to a dinner that was the same price as both nights of our stay in a hotel in Puerto Vallarta.
We left Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara on Dec 23, catching a luxurious deluxe class bus. I find that we actually have to ride the top of the line buses because they have the room to fit our bikes inside. Though we could probably cram them onto a 2nd class bus, which I really don’t mind riding, our bikes would have to lay down flat to fit and then there is the danger of bent wheel spokes if (and when!) stuff is put onto of them. On the 1st class buses, the storage compartment under the bus is big enough for us to put our bikes on upright. The 1st class buses are amazingly luxurious with foot rests, wifi internet sometimes, two bathrooms in the back and even individual touch screen TVs on the back of seats though I still gaze longingly out to the green landscape flying by outside, wishing I was biking.
In Guadalajara, we first stayed with Alexa’s grandparents house in the Centro, near the Sanituario de Guadelupe. Their house is a 300 year old mansion, with delicately decorated walls in an old technique using plaster and horse hair to make gorgeous French Noveau designs and loftly high ceilings, with many open spaces with rooms layed out around gorgeous courtyards. We met up with our bike gang there, a reunion as we had all gone different ways after the beach in Bahia Conception, and tents popped up like mushrooms after a rain on the courtyard roof. We spent three wonderful days exploring historic centro, checking out amazing and provacative murals by Orozco, the numerous markets with delicious tacos and fruit smoothies, visiting old cathedrals and walking down busy pedestrian promenades.
It was great to celebrate Christmas with our cyclist friends and with Alexa’s family. Christmas dinner started long after dark and long after many rounds of tequila. Alexa’s family had set up a large white tent in the main courtyard and there was three rows of tables and chairs to seat all their guests, including Alexa’s numerous cousins, aunts and uncles and of course, 16 of us cyclists! Dinner was served at around 11:30pm and we feasted until 4am!
After Christmas, we didn’t have enough of Guadalajara yet and stayed with WarmShower’s host, Nic, for three more days. Justin, Bryan I went for a wet and wild tour of Guadalajara and its suburbs hopping on and off local buses in the rain in search for a little laptop as our Christmas present to ourselves. We also went on an epic taco tour in our new little neighbourhood just north of centro in Guadalajara. We ate tacos, tamales, churros, deep-fried hot dogs but I think the most exotic was tacos of cow brains! Kinda mushy and flavourless in my opinion.
After Guadalajara, we bused to Toluca on Dec 29 where we were picked up by Erin, Santiago and his dad after finding out the buses to Valle had stopped for the night. Thank you so much! We had to make it into Valle that night because the next day, we were going paragliding! The very next morning, Bryan and I are standing on a mountain above the quaint town of Valle de Bravo overlooking its beautiful lake with Erin, Santiago, Santiago’s sisters Carolina and Valeria, Valeria’s boyfriend Ben, Santiago’s mother Malena, Erin’s sister Hannah and Erin’s dad Tom. The 10 of us are wearing giant diaper-like harnesses that will become great recliner chairs once we’re up in the air. I had some butterflies in my stomach but I was so excited!
For both Bryan and I, this is our first times paragliding! For launching, my instructor, Juan, told me, “The most important thing is that you have to run.” Well I guess the no jumping part is correct! Juan also added another important point, “Are you happy?” Upon me replying yes, he said, “I will keep on asking you that through our trip today because that’s the most important part of the trip.” Prepared by my two instructions, run and have fun, Juan and I got ready to walk off the side of the mountain. We were soon the next ones to launch. Assistants help raise the parachute behind us up and it immediately catches air. Juan tells me to run and I take one step before I am lifted off the ground. We soared over the valley – graceful like a sea bird hanging in the air, floating like a leaf peacefully adrift in a light breeze. That afternoon, we experience another form of wind transport and go sailing on the lake with Santiago’s dad, Alejandro.
Our next day in Valle de Bravo was New Years Eve. We celebrated with some old Mexican traditions, including eating 12 grapes in 12 seconds before New Years, making wishes for the upcoming year, and had some fun original twists to old customs.
There is a practice of gifting coloured underwear for luck in the new year, red coloured ones to find love and yellow to find money.
Shopping for lucky New Years underwear!
We ended up having a “Secret-Panty-Santa” where we each put our name into a basket and drew out a name then headed to town to buy a pair of underwear of the giver’s choice. Red or yellow? Love or money? Simple or hilariously scandalous? Since we were all there together, we would try to sneak off on smaller groups or sneakily make quick purchases when others weren’t looking to hide our purchases from the people whose name we drew. We wrapped our scandalous articles of clothing in white napkins, a cheap and available source of gift wrapping but the resulting little white packages looked hilariously like drugs, then stuffed them into the colourful starburst shaped piñata along with candy. We took turns wacking at the piñata, which has a clay pot inside, until Santiago’s little sister, Valeria stuck it with such ferocity that candy and panties came spraying down. For the luck of the colourful underwear to work, you have to be wearing them on the moment of New Years so we each put on the underwear overtop of our own clothes, superman style. It is hilariously ridiculous as people get all different types from more normal styles to the more lacy or exotic in toucan or butterfly patterns. We had a delicious family dinner with all of us wearing our new underwear over our pants, ate grapes on the countdown then cheered and drank champagne for the new year. Afterwards, we went out clubbing and danced until 6am!
The next day, Erin, Santiago and their families left to go back to Mexico City to meet extended family and go wedding dress shopping for Erin. We will continue cycling south from Valle de Bravo but decided to stay an extra day to check out the nearby monarch butterfly sanctuary. Each year, the monarch butterflies migrate from Canada and the United States to these specific locations in Central Mexico and California. We hiked up the steep trail up the mountain to the butterfly grove where monarchs coated the branches in large clumps, turning the green trees orange on appearance. There were millions of butterflies there. The air was alive with fluttering wings and there were so many flying around that there was a buzzing drone of their flight. It was such a magical experience.
Visiting the butterflies turned out to be an all day affair and most of the day walking. We decided to spend another day in Valle resting and finishing up with errands we ment to do yesterday, including restocking our food panniers, some internetting and going to the post office. Also, Santiago’s family ranch in Valle de Bravo is so amazingly gorgeous with peacocks, hilarious turkeys and a friendly pack of dogs that we couldn’t pull ourselves away just yet. One more day… A heartfelt thanks to Alexa and her family for hosting us in Guadalajara and giving us the opportunity to celebrate a Mexican Christmas with all night feasting. Thank you also to Nic, who hosted us in his apartment in Guadalajara and baked us a delicious cheesecake. To Santiago and his family, it has been so amazing to celebrate New Years at your beautiful family ranch in Valle de Bravo meeting both your and Erin’s families. Having fun with New Year customs was hilarious from stuffing grapes in our mouth as we discover that it takes more than one second to chew a grape than the second we’re allotted making wishes on the countdown to our incredible panty piñata. It has been so nice to spend the holidays with family and friends and I cannot express enough the gratitude Bryan and I feel for being welcomed in your celebrations.
My first thought about sailing in the Sea of Cortez is that it has been an incredible journey and we are so lucky to have been able to meet Jerry and Yeri and sail with them. They said we helped out a lot with the crossing but really, I can’t express how much gratitude and inspriation we have gotten from the journey.
Hanging out with Jerry and listening to his trips in the past and also being a part of the sailing trip this time has really made me think more about the art of slow travel. Jerry has a comfortable boat. As I said in the summary, it is bigger than our old one bedroom apartment in Vancouver. M/S SOMF has two spacious sleeping berths, a full kitchen (ahem, galley), two bathrooms with showers, a large living room sitting area inside and a table sitting area on the back deck. The ceilings are high and you can easily walk around inside. The boat is very liveable but the downside is that it needs the perfect conditions to sail – the right wind in the right direction. Subsequently, the sailboat is motored quite often. However, Jerry comments that ‘95% of the time, you’re anchored.’ They are going to be anchored at that very spot in La Cruz in Banderas Bay for the next two months before making a four day sailing back up north the Sea of Cortez to San Carlos where the boat is stored.
Sometimes, when you’re cycling, it becomes about the distance covered and ticking away the kilometres accomplished that week. In the past, Jerry spent about 4 years sailing from San Francisco to Costa Rica. Cycling, we aim to do that same trip in under 6 months. It was kind of mindblowing. Sailing has really reminded me that travel…really life itself… is not actually about a checklist of distances but rather about enjoying the experiences themselves. Savoring the experiences like a good meal where each flavor is a note in a magnificent symphony. It was amazing to sit out on the bow of the ship for hours gazing at the sea and the periodic turtles drift by.
I’ve also realized that afternoon naps are beautiful. We often took staggered afternoon naps as we were each up at strange times of the night on watch. Afternoon naps are a chance to slow down in the afternoon, spend some time with yourself and sometimes with your closest partners and take this time for yourself to reflect, think and recharge. They also break you out of the normalized mold of a day of working non-stop during the day and then regimented to at least 8 hours of sleep at night or else you’re not considered healthy. In our busy, hectic world where we are trying to accomplish more and more without really realizing why we’re doing it except an elusive promise of happiness after winning the rat race, maybe taking more afternoon naps will be good for us…and perhaps even good for the world and the environment too. Happiness is not just an elusive promise always just beyond grasp but already infused into every fibre and moment of everyday if only you slow down and take that moment to realize it.
Many cyclists opt to cycle down Baja California instead of making the same distance on the mainland. Maybe it is the remote desert stretches, gorgeous beaches and the promise of plentiful, tasty fish tacos that draw us or maybe it is the simplicty of the one main road that leads you through the pennisula or maybe we’re a little like lemmings and tend to plan our own journeys from reading blogs of previous trips. Anyways, we get to southern Baja California and we are left with a challenge – the broad espanse of water between us and the mainland. There are a variety of different options across avaliable, from taking a remarkably cheap flight and flying across (one of our friends found a flight that was cheaper than taking the ferry), taking either the passenger or freight ferries, or going to the marina to see if you can crew on a boat crossing. Timing is what marks the difference in these different options. First, the flight is much shorter than the ferries and the ferries also take considerably less time than catching a boat across. Secondly, timing is important because around the holidays when we were trying to cross, the passenger ferry was completely booked. Bryan and I decided to try out the marina and had amazing luck. The strong, cold El Norte winds was letting up for a break of three to four days and many boats were making a break for it. We called out on the VHF radio to the daily MarineNet broadcast and got a reply immediately. We met up with our captain in the next hour after and we were sleeping on the boat that night in preparation for departing the next morning.
We made the 72 hour crossing from La Paz to Puerto Vallarta in an amazing 4 day non-stop journey on the beautiful 46 foot sailboat, M/S SOMF with Captain Jerry, Sailor Yeri and her little seadog, Bubu, named after a candy here and just as sweet. The boat is the most luxurious sailboat I’ve ever been on and bigger than our old apartment in Vancouver! It had a huge aft cabin and a spacious v-berth by the bow of the ship. It has two full queen size beds, a full galley with a full sized fridge, a deep freeze, a large flat-screen TV that we watched movies at night sometimes, a water filter that desalinates ocean water to fresh water, an industrial sized ice maker and a washing machine. We had hot showers…hot showers!
Cold beer, hot showers and great company; we are living the dream!
We left La Paz harbour around noon on Tuesday Dec 17. Just before Lorenzo channel, I saw a manta ray jump and do a flip right off the starboard bow. We had seen some mantas jump in the distance when we had sailed here with Ben and Jory last year but I had thought they were baby mantas. Seeing them so close on this trip made me realize how diifcult it is to tell size over water without any visual references. Seeing this manta in comparison to the boat made me realize how big it was. It probably had a 6 feet wide wingspan!
The seas were a bit rough the first day, especially as we cut through Lorenzo channel between Isla Espiritu Santo and the mainland. The wind and waves were going one direction and we wanted to go another direction. Our disagreement left us rocking in the waters. However, by midnight, things had settled down and the ocean was as flat as glass for the rest of our crossing.
On a 72 hour crossing, someone needs to be awake and up on deck on watch all the time to keep an eye out for other boats and to keep us on route. Though Bryan and I feel like we are truly blessed to have such a remarkable opportunity and reaping the lions share of the benefits of crossing with Captain Jerry on the beautiful M/S SOMF, picking up some extra crew before a crossing helps share watch duties, as well as helps out with cooking, cleaning and etc. It works out much better to have three hour shifts through the night rather than just trying to stay up the whole night, which adds up on a multi-day crossing. Bryan and I are on watch from 11-2am, Jerry is on from 2-5am and Yeri is on from 5-8am when people start waking up again. On our first watch, I remember thinking, “Wow. Yesterday, I was in La Paz looking for a boat and here I am tonight keep watch and basically driving a 46 foot sailboat through the Sea of Cortez!” We worked south along the coast of the Baja that night bathed in the bright light of the almost full moon above.
When I woke up the next day, Cabo San Lucas and the southern tip of the Baja was fading off into the distance as we headed out into the open waters in the vast Sea of Cortez. As land faded away, it was just horizon to horizon shimmering blue seas. The wind had died and the ocean was a bit wavy sill but had really settled down from the day before. We dropped fishing lines off the back and eagerly watched for fish. One beautiful dorado, also called mahi-mahi or dolphin fish, finned around and nipped the lure twice. They are beautiful fish, changing to a brillant blue when they are on the hunt. However, they are also a really smart fish and quickly realized our lure was not edible and left us dreaming of sushi. The next morning, Bryan and I woke up to lines whirling on the fishing reel. It took us a couple moments to realize what it was and when we quickly realized, Bryan jumped out of bed and ran onto the deck. It was a slow morning in the middle of the ocean with no boats around so Yeri decided to start fishing. We had two of them finning around the back of the boat but it was just a tease. Still no fish for us.
Bryan and I spent much of our third day sitting together on the bow platform with our feet dangling off, watching the oceanscape flow past and looking for fish and other forms of life. There are so many turtles just floating in the water. The first one we saw, we thought it was a floating piece of garbage. We were going to sail right by it so Bryan went to get a hook to scoop the “garbage” out of the water. As we were right by it, we realized it was a turtle! I must have seen almost 40 turtles that day. They become temporary islands for resting sea birds and many of the turtles’ backs were spattered white. We also saw basking sea lions, flipping their fins in the air as they floated past us and a huge marlin jump three times, splashing in the distance. Flying fish, jumping out of the water and soaring for incredible distances on their wings leap to escape predators such as marlin and dorados. Sometimes, I think that flying fish might fly for the curiosity of it, a passion for exploring something completely foreign to their natural habitat, much like sailors who also leave their familar land behind for this vast watery domain.
The water was completely flat on our third day and the sea resembled a giant lake. We stopped the boat and jumped off to go swimming about 150 miles off shore! The water was such an incredible shade of blue and 30 degrees celcius, temperature taken 2 feet below the surface.
All of a sudden a little later, a pair of marlins hit our fishing hooks. They are fierce fish who dominate these seas. Bryan, on one fishing line, said that unlike the fight of other fish who try to run and then rest and then try to run and break the line, the marlin just seemed to stand up on his tail and shake his head to break the line. With each shake of the marlin’s head, Bryan was being tossed around a bit on the boat. It was an estimated 150lb fish, a fish that is bigger than me and almost weighed as much as Bryan. Both marlins worked themselves loose after a brief fight.
Then, we were blessed with a huge pod of dolphins who accompanied our boat into the sunset. One dozen was all around us and another dozen was bow surfing. They swim by the bow of the boat, perhaps the wake pushes them along for a ride or maybe it’s just for fun. They are doing jumps and flips and Yeri’s little dog, Bubu is barking at them from the deck.The water is so warm here, the ocean glows with bioluminence whenever the water is disturbed at night. Before the bright moon rose, the boat cut a shimmery, glowing path in the black waters. After the moon rose, it was so bright you could only see a few sparkles here and there. On our watch that night, we realized that some of the sparkles in infront of the boat was a pair of dolphins! As our eyes adjusted, we watched the glowing dolphins swim with the boat in the Sea of Cortez night.
On Dec 20, I woke up and could see land again. It would still take us all morning to go into the huge Bandaras Bay, which straddles two states and numerous communities. Bandaras Bay is also a hot spot for whales and our ride in was basically a whale watching tour, seeing the majestic grey whales swim with their sinuous dark bodies and breach with giant splashes. The flat bay was like a volcanic field with the geysers of the whales breath shooting into the air like numerous volcanic vents. We anchor at La Cuz, about 20km from Puerto Vallarto on the road and spend one last night on the boat. That night, the winds pick up and even the anchorage is rocking. We got here at the perfect time!
It has been such an amazing time sailing and I can’t wait until the next time we set foot on a boat. A huge thanks to Captain Jerry and Yeri for giving us such a wonderful opportunity and their lovely company!
This is about the experience of the landscape of Baja California and aspects of life cycling through it.
1) Everything is prickly
There are spines of all different types and forms from big to small, from hard and brittle to soft and flexible . Some plants look armoured like a medieval knight while others have small, hairlike spines that are nearly invisible and hard to get out. Even grasses have detachable parts that manage to work their way into our clothing to prickle you!
2) Prickly means less things are poisionous
I love exploring what edible wild plants I can find and bought the thick textbook like “Baja Plant Field Guide” with me. Reading through the book, I found that very few plants were poisonous. This did not mean that everything was edible or tasty but rather that it would not kill you to try it. Perhaps it is because most things are prickly so the plants did not need to protect itself with poison. We tried prickly pear cactus fruit through we were never able to avoid all of its small hair-like spines. We fell in love with amazing pitayas of the galloping cactus, which had large, visible spikes and tasted like a kiwiberry. We tried the peppery flowers of on an agave stalk.
3) The ocean breaks all of these rules
Pufferfish, for example, break al of these rules. They are pickly AND poisonous. However, breaking rules means we can also break rules too and pufferfish can be prepared in a way that is edible. Apparently, I am an “experienced cook” since I prepared and cooked one variety of smooth skinned pufferfish we unknowningly speared fished in Bahia Concepcion without harming us! Either that or beginner’s luck…
4) Goodbye racoons! Hello bugs!
Racoons plagued us on the Pacific Coast route through Washington, Oregon and California. However, in the dry and harsh deserts of the Baja without state parks that concentrated campers for an all-you-can-eat buffet for scavengers like racoons, medium to larger animals were farther in between. It was just harder to find food and water to survive. It was only in one spot on our entire Baja journey that we heard racoons existed and was a problem. Racoons apparently live in the mangroves behind a popular RV campground in Playa Santispac in Bahia Concepcion. When we were wild camping in the desert, we sometimes heard coyotes but never saw one. Apparently, they are quite shy and rarely approach people. Without bears and racoons, our food practices changed. At first, we had wondered how to hang out food in the desert without trees but we ended up just hanging our food panniers on our bikes at night and they were fine. Our threats were mainly mice and ants. Instead of worrying about racoons, we instead worried about scorpions, spiders and ants so we became really careful about picking up our panniers after a night or two sitting on the ground. Bryan actually found a small scorpion under one of his panniers after a night in the desert! We stored our riding shoes inside our panniers at night to avoid creepy crawlies and made sure our tent was always zipped up. Not worrying about racoons and bears also meant that we could eat in our tent. We resisted for a long time, eventhough we met a lot of the other cyclists who ate in their tent, until we were rained in one morning. Then, it was amazing to eat our trailmix breakfast in bed. What a wild experience!
5) Who let the dogs out? Woof woof!
Though we didn’t worry have to worry about racoons sneaking out at night to steal our food, we did have another animal on our mind. Dogs loved to chase us on our bikes. Sometimes, they would even hear us from behind their house and come out running and barking away. Everyone seemed to have a dog or two at their house or ranch to guard their property. Even the smallest dog, a little fluffy lapdog or a yappy chichuhua, would take their job very serious. Actually, it was especially these little dogs that would come out in a fury of fur and teeth, barking away as they chased us. However, with these little dogs, they barely came up to the height of our pedals and we quickly outrode them. Us cyclists had many different theories about the dogs. Someone suggested that our chains make an especially annoying noise that only dogs can hear. Another suggested that they’re herding dogs and we’re a strange creature getting away. Sometimes, I feel that they just like to run after and chase things for fun. Of course, there are often guard dogs as well, though they don’t seem to chase the cars that drive by (but they do chase motorbikes!). Cyclists have different strategies to deal with dogs including carrying a stick and the opposite of the spectrum, carrying dog treats, some pedal faster while others slow down, some tell them “No! Go home” and the stern voice carries meaning beyond the language itself and someone even spoke German to dogs. I often pedalled faster if I saw a dog chasing me because I knew my bike easily outpaced the dogs and they don’t usually run farther than their house. However, if I was about to pass a dog, I would pedal slowly and often, they wouldn’t even move to look up from where they are lounging in the sun. The dogs sound ferocious but if you stop to pet them, most of them are actually bundles of love. They jump and lick and just want a bit of your attention and love.
6) The wild camping bonanza south of Ensenada
Different cyclists had different strategies for finding a place to stay the night while travelling through Baja California. Hotels, couchsurfing and warmshowers hosts, staying with firefighters, asking to camp on people’s properties and wild camping are all options. Except for staying with firefighters, which we only heard from other cyclists later in the trip, we used all of the above options. The most common option for us and really my favorite is wild camping in the desert and on an isolated beach. After Ensenada, the population drops and a lot of the landscape is open desert – perfect for finding a random camp among the cactuses to spend the night!
7) Same same but different names
Names repeat. We stopped at Rosarito the first day in Mexico. El Rosario marked our entrance to the Central Desert. We then passed a turnoff to Santa Rosalilita on our way to another town named Rosarito after the Central Desert. This Rosarito is just under 300km to Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez. Figures in Mexican history are repeated as city names and street names in almost every city, such as Vicente Guerro and Lazaro Cardenas.
8) The one road to rule them all
There is basically one main road in Baja California that is paved, the MEX 1. It zigzags back and forth from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Cortez, successfully connecting many of the larger towns and cities of the pennisula on one road. This means that especially in the large center portion of the Baja crossing vast deserts, all of the traffic is on a narrow, two laned highway. At night, large trucks lit up in lights earning our nickname for them, “Christmas tree trucks”, race down the roads. However, the one main route also funnels cyclists and we ended up forming a bike gang with regularly 8 to 15 cyclists! It was a great little community of touring cyclists that developed.
9) Long haul cyclists carry the craziest stuff
Cycling the popular Pacific Coast route through Washington, Oregon and Californa, you see some people touring with very little gear. With a grocery store reliably every day and water avaliable almost everywhere, people don’t have to pack as much. Also, you get some credit card cyclists who stay at hotels and eat out at restaurants. We met people who didn’t travel with a stove, or even a tent. One person we met cycling in Oregon didn’t have any panniers. He only had a handlebar bag and one small bag on his back rack. He didn’t have a tent but rather slept under a lightweight tarp. They tended to look at us in amazement. Why are we carrying so much stuff? In the Baja California, the cyclists here carry more because we have stretches in the desert between towns. We tend to have a pattern of resupplying in town to last 3 or 4 days in the desert and water becomes a larger concern. For one overnight in desert including two days of riding, we survive on one 10L dromadary of water. For two to three overnights in the desert, we need at least 20L of water. Also, cyclists in Baja California tend to carry more tools to be prepared incase anything breaks in the many remote stretches. For long haul cyclists, cycling also becomes a lifestyle to be lived for many months to years and that also impacts packing styles. Bryan and I have a speargun and carry memory foam pillows. One cyclist named Paul started carrying a street cone as a joke. Another cyclist found a big curving goat (or sheep…) horn and thought he might use it as a drinking horn. Rigel and Erin started carrying a large tartantula spider they found in the desert in an old peanut butter jar as a pet. Other cyclists Dave and Uschi have four panniers plus pulling a trailer to carry a palace of a six person tent that I could do jumping jacks in, a sitar and a mandolin. They figured that if they’re living in the tent for two years, they might as well be comfortable and plus it needed to fit the sitar. We had some wonderful nights all our little bike gang chilling out in their giant tent playing a boardgame they brought and some amazing times stargazing in the middle of the desert listening to Dave play the sitar!
10) Pannier after opening
Because we do stretches in the desert between towns, cyclists often have to carry at least a couple days of food with them. We are testing the boundaries of keeping food. We find that cheese keeps remarkably long – even the softer white cheeses that are popular here in Mexico. Even sliced ham, chorizo sausages and other meat will be ok if it is used in the first day or two. You can often extend food life even further by cooking it, then reheating it before eating. “Refridgerate after opening” becomes translated into the cyclist idiom, “Pannier after opening.” In my panniers, I have a collection of old peanut butter jars that I store cut up veggies that make assembling burritos for lunch easy or leftover meals. In towns, we basically survived on delicious fish tacos. Fish tacos with a huge piece of deep fried fish in a flour tortilla is characteristic of Baja California.
11) The perpetual fear of the south
Many people warned us about cycling in Mexico, often of Baja California and Tijuana especially. We would tell people when we were cycling through the USA that we’re cycling from Vancouver to Patagonia and people would say, “Oh through Mexico…?” There seems to be this perpetual fear of the south. In Canada, people warned us about the States. “Everyone has guns you know?” In the States, Mexico was talked about in hush tones. Drug and weapon trafficking was said to dominate everything and the landscape was described almost like a war zone where you could trust no body. What a surprise it was for us then when we crossed in Tijuana and someone on the Playas de Tijuana said, “Here, it is safe…but you have to watch out in Chiapas!” Chiapas is a state in southern Mexico. I wonder if when we get to Chiapas, we will get people warning us of Guatemala and so on?
12) Travel Mexico!
I feel the challenges of cycling in Baja California were mostly environmental – the baking sun and limited access to water at times, strong cross winds that adds another element to balance, spines everywhere threatening our tires, and the risky combination of narrow, shoulderless roads and big trucks. However, people often expressed to us dangers of a more social nature focusing on people, violent thefts, kidnapping and the overarching spectre of the drug trade. While bad situations can occur, as they can anywhere in the world, I found them to be extremely overexaggerated for Mexico. The people I have met while cycling through Baja California have been some of the nicest, most friendly, welcoming and generous people I have ever met. People welcomed us into their homes and invited us, complete strangers, to camp out on their properties. We would wild camp in the desert and drivers would just wave if they saw us when they passed by. Cars and trucks would try to give us as much room as possible on the road. People waved and honked excitedly to cheer us on. Someone even slowed down to hand us each a cold pop as they passed. We felt like rockstars sometimes as people were genuinely so excited to meet us. If I had one recommendation to people after cycling Baja California, it would be travel to Mexico and especially the Baja. It is such an amazing place with friendly people, amazing food, dramatic landscapes and stunning scenery.
The black ribbon of HWY 1 stitching together the pennisula, weaving back and forth from the brilliant blue Pacific to the sapphire jewel Sea of Cortez, has taught me three things:
1) First, the most fun is often found on a path that is not necessarily straight but rather zigzags back and forth. Life is in the journey and we do not listen to a magnificent orchestral symphony for the last note but rather for the music of getting there. The roads of travel are rarely straight but curves in fantastical and unpredictable ways. This is where the adventure lies; in the random opportunities and challenges of life which becomes more vividly clear and concentrated when we’re out of our comfort zone in travel. Going off the main road to random side dirt paths, an interesting adventure as sand loved to slip under my tires carrying a fully loaded touring bike, found us the most stunning and isolated desert camps where we were surrounded by cactuses and millions of stars in the clear desert nights.
2) Secondly, the Baja roads have retaught me to have some element of trust in the world. The roads are narrow and a large semitruck often touched both the yellow middle line and the white outer line as they drove. Watching two semitrucks pass each other is a breathtaking display of skill and guts. Being involved in the dance as a cyclist on the side of the shoulderless road with a vehicle behind you and another one approching in the oncoming lane is a practice of skill…and faith for the cyclist. While ready and alert if the vehicle doesn’t give room, on some level, you have to trust that the car behind you sees you and will give you room. Sounds incredible but except for one bad experience when a vehicle merged into me and I basically dove off the road to avoid being hit, the drivers were amazingly nice and courteous. This was especially true for the big semi-truck drivers who would often go fully into the opposite lane or slow right down to chug up the hill behind you until it had a safe opportunity to pass. Also, there is an element of trust in the roads to get you there in one of the best ways possible. Though winding, I found that Baja roads were wonderfully graded with very manageable slopes and tried to find canyon passes to follow as much as possible.
3) The last but not least lesson Baja roads taught me is connection. Baja California, while inhabited by people for millenas revealed by rock art and historic old missions, the pennisula is largely remote desert. There are incredible distances between towns with services, that is a town that is more than just a name on a map, and the landscape seems largely populated by the silent sentials of cactuses standing in the baking sun. Whereas in the USA, it seemed like a town was defined by having a post office, also another embodiement of connection and nation building, the towns in Baja California seemed to be defined by having a Pemex gas station. Hwy 1 is the lifeblood of the pennisula, connecting various communities in Baja California. The one main artery of transport also served to connect cyclists as well by funneling our routes together. Organic groups of seperate touring cyclists joined together without commitment, seperating and moving on when plans differed and rejoining when fate crossed our paths again. We had a group of up to 15 people and a core group of 9 cyclists. It was great to share stories and jokes with others that understood what you were going through and sometimes even expertise in bike repair and maintenance with each other.
Our five week journey through Baja California has been magical dance through desert and beach. It has been challenging with extreme conditions including desert crossings with no water source for at least two days of riding and grinding ascents to new highs in elevation reached on the bike trip thus far. However, the scenery has been stunning and the people we have met have been so amazing. We crossed from the United States at the infamous Tijuana. We actually saw only a little bit of the remarkbly clean and orderly downtown area before heading out to Rosarito on the toll highway. From the warnings we have receievd about Tijuana, half of me was expecting something closer to a war zone but this wasn’t the case in our short time there. After Rosarito, we had an amazing lobster platter at Puerto Nuevo then made our way to the friendly, party town of Ensenada. We ended up spending a week in and around Ensenada, couchsurfing at Matt’s mansion on the hill in a complex ironically called Puerto Escondito, the hidden port. There we were adopted by Matt’s neighbour, Grandma D and also got check out hotsprings on a nearby beach where you dig into the sand at low tide to make steaming pools. From Ensenada, we make some long, dusty days to El Rosario, the gateway to the Central Desert and where the paved road used to end until remarkably recently. The 122km from El Rosario to Catavina is without services including a source of water and this stretch also involves considerable asecent. About 35km after El Rosario, we meet up with Dave and Uschi, two cyclists from Calgary (and Germany originally for Uschi), who we will continued to cycle with on and off for the full length of the Baja! Our first wild camp in the desert became the beginning of the bike gang as we scooped cyclists to join us in the camp. That first night together with the nine of us camped out in the surreal desert and making a campfire with cactus wood will be forever memorable. The vast Valley de los Cirios of the Central Desert is named after its most characteristic Dr. Sueuss like boojum tree, called los cirios by early missionaries because it looked like a wax tapered candle. The landscape of the Central Desert is stunning, from the surreal boojum trees and gigantic cordon cactuses, the series of flat table top mesas, the boulder desert around Catavina lit up in soft glowing pinks and purples of sunset, and the windswept, barren, moon-like stretch after Catavina above 1000m elevation. We didn’t have any substantial rain for over a month in our cycling journey through California and northern Baja California until we reach the arid Central Desert. There it rains on us for two days. However, the whole desert became green and all of the boojum trees flowered in yellow sprays. We make it to Guerro Negro, the next major town, for Bryan’s birthday and recharge with some laundry, groceries, showers and eating out at restaurants and taco stands before heading back out into the super flat Vizcaino Desert. Our trip through the Baja tended to follow a pattern of wild stretches through the desert intersperced by refueling (food and water being fuel for cyclists) at towns every few days. In the Vizcaino desert, we try pitaya fruit off of the galloping cactus for the very first time and tasting like a cross between a blackberry and a kiwi, it is a delicious treat! We get to San Ignacio and desend into a lush date palm oasis. We almost have to rub our eyes to make sure it is not some mirage formulated by our sun-baked brains. The moist air sweetened by thousands of date palms growing around the river formed by the springs seemed like paradise and almost unreal. One of the cyclists that became a core group of us riding together, Justin, also from Vancouver, climbed up one of the tall date palms and cut down a couple of branches heavy with the delicious fruit. We spent the afternoon gorging on dates. There was a strong headwind from San Ignacio to Santa Rosalia. The stretch also included the steepest portion of Mex Hwy 1 on Baja California as it dropped over 300m in one descent. While other hills had held the warning of “curva peligrosa”, dangerous hill, this hill was labeled “curva inferno”, the inferno hell hill. At Santa Rosalia, an old French mining town where the copper mine has recently been reopened by a Canadian company, a friendly lady led us to a windy beach where we could camp. The beach was so windy and filled with trash that we wondered about the wisdom of following her. She said that bikers liked coming here because of the stunning sunrise. We had our doubts but in the morning, the sunrise was indeed amazing and worth it. From Santa Rosalia, we went to Mulege, the second oasis on our trip. Mulege and surrounding area is popular with expats and we quickly realized why. The nearby Bahia Concepcion had some amazingly beautiful beaches with calm, lake-like waters. Playa Santispac on Bahia Concepcion was paradise found for Bryan and I. We spent almost a week there camping free on a beautiful beach, spearfishing for dinner in the morning and then relaxing at the hotsprings nestled in the mangroves in the afternoon. After a while, we did leave and cycled to Loreto to resupply. After Loreto, we crossed the Sierra de Giganta, which involved crazy switchbacking of the road that carved into a hill like whirls on a spinning top. We crossed to the agricultural centres of Ciudad Insurgentes and Ciudad Constituion near the Pacific Ocean side of the Baja before making the challenging headwind filled crossing back to the Sea of Cortez side and our end point of La Paz. Just before reaching La Paz, I was run off the road by a SUV but with only some stratches and bruises on my elbow and knees, I was fine. 36 days after crossing from California to Mexico at Tijuana, we make it to La Paz on December 15, 2013.
BAJA CALIFORNIA STATS
Distance from San Diego to La Paz – 1628.4km
Crossed into Mexico – Nov 10, 2013
Arrived in La Paz – Dec 15, 2013 (departed La Paz – Dec 17, 2013)
Length of Baja California journey – 36 days (to arrival in La Paz)
Number of riding days – 24 days
Number of rest days – 12 days
Average distance – 67.8km (per riding day) Accommodation – couch surfing 7 nights, warm showers 1 night, hotel 7 nights, paid campground 3 nights and 18 nights of wild camping including 3 nights sleeping in a ranch’s yard, 7 nights on the beach and 8 nights wild camping in the desert
The blog is copied below. However, for regular updates and the tracking map where our SPOT satellite updates our daily location to so you can see where we’ve been for a week, check out our blog for this epic adventure at http://theworldcan.org/biketrip.html.
December 16, 2013 – Our Suprisingly Short Time in La Paz
We go over one last mountain range, which was over before I knew it. Climbing seems to fly by when interestingly, the hill in front of you blocks some of the headwind! Uphills also don’t seem much slower when the downhills are still a struggle and a workout. We look down to the hazy view of La Paz bay. The drivers in Baja California have been amazing, very courteous and giving us lots of room. Unfortunately, that changed around La Paz. Maybe, it was the strong winds and the haze that went with it as it blew sand in the air. Maybe, it was because La Paz is a bigger city and just had more traffic. Maybe, it was that after a long drive in the desert to get to La Paz, drivers are just as tired and excited to see the city. Anyways, as I was rounding a corner on the highway just past the first Pemex station in the expat area of La Paz, this black SUV merges on the highway from a dirt road on the opposite side. Cycling on the Baja through the narrow roads, I have learned a little about trusting the world. You have to trust a bit that those semi-trucks and cars passing you will see you and give you room. I ad a moment of disbelief that the SUV was coming so close and then a moment of shock in realizing, “%$^! They’re going to hit me!” as my eyes locked with the eyes of the woman in the passenger seat through her window. I was so close to the vehicle and just in the nick of time, I dove off the side of the shoulder less road where the jagged edge of the asphalt turned into loose hot sand. I am a little shaken but with only little scrapes on my left elbow and knee, I am fine and very lucky. My bike was flipped over and red panniers were everywhere. People stopped to help me, including a local cyclist, but I was fine and started riding on. As I stopped to talk to Bryan a little further up the road, this big white truck pulled up and a glamorous lady with dangling earrings, dark wavy hair and tall heels jumped out and said, “Maggie?” It turned out that it was Glenda, our Warm Showers (a hosting forum for touring cyclists) host in La Paz. Glenda is so amazingly nice and was actually hosting two other cyclists, the honeymooners Sarah and Pedro from Portugal, and had recently hosted the rest of our old bike gang who were a few days ahead of us! It’s amazing the generosity of opening up their homes, that they share with their families as with Glenda, to basically strangers and sharing in friendship and excitement in our stories from the road. Dec 15th was Pedro and Sarah’s one year anniversary of their wedding and Pedro, a brilliant chef, cooked up a delicious Portuguese feast. There was a stew of pork, potatoes, clams and tomatoes served with French bread and salad then mouthwatering desert of rice pudding custard and a cookie cake layered with sweet butter and cream. The next day, Dave, Uschi, Bryan and I went to the La Paz Marina. La Paz is a major hub for cruisers and we were looking for a ride across to the mainland. At 8am, there is a weather and community broadcast on the VHF radio and then it opens up to ask if anyone has anything to add. Bryan called out from the VHF radio in the harbor, “We are four cyclists, two groups of two, looking for a ride across to the mainland.” Almost immediately, we get a reply. Jerry from M/S SOMF calls back saying he would like to meet us for a crossing to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow. He will be in plaid shorts at coffee time at the Marina clubhouse. We meet up with him and that night we are sleeping on the beautiful 46 foot sailboat in preparation to leave the next day. It has been the most amazing luck because people have been waiting to cross but haven’t been able to because of the strong El Norte winds. There is a break in the winds for the next 4 days and a whole fleet of boats is making the crossing.
December 15, 2013 – Gone With (and then against) the Wind on our way to La Paz
From Playa Santispac, we stopped for another day about 20km further south along the bay at Playa Requesion. Playa Requesion is on a beautiful sandpit that reaches out to a mangrove covered island. However, when we were there, the cold El Norte winds started blowing. Inside our tent, it sounded like a crazy howling storm outside pounding our tent walls with rain. However, there was no rain; it was just the sand. The next day, these strong winds blew us up and over the ridge south of Bahia Conception and onto the vast desert valleys north of Loreto. The valleys were flat…actually better than flat, they were a gradual decent and with the amazing tailwind, we were making an average of around 30km an hour. Though it was over 95km from Playa Requesion to Loreto, the next town, and we were not sure if we were going to reach Loreto in one day when we were planning the night before, with our quick pace, we said, “Hey, we can probably make it there for lunch!” We did 100km before 1pm that day, getting to Loreto super hungry and then feasting on pizza at the town. After lunch, we wandered around searching for a cheap hotel and finally settle on San Martin just a block from the town square. We start talking and then Dave and Uschi appear from the next room saying “I thought I recognized your voice!” The next day, the four of us start our journey to La Paz together, zigzagging over to the Pacific coast before heading back to the Sea of Cortez. The rugged jagged peaks of the Sierra de Gigantas look like the menacing fangs, fading in shades of blue and violet in the distance. About 40km after Loreto, we head into the maw of the beast, riding inland to climb over the Sierra de Gigantas. When it is named the giant mountains, you tend to go into it expecting a bit of a climb. It did have a fun ascent, climbing over 325m elevation in about 5km. Like most of our experience in Baja California, the grade was gradual and very manageable. However, there was some crazy switchbacking. After the first couple km of climbing, I look up and see the road on the next mountain high up above me. The switchbacks circled up this one mountain like the whirls on a spinning top. The Sierra de Gigantas are very scenic, with ragged peaks of weathered down sandstone that looked like it had hundreds of faces carved into it. It was a very rugged landscape with deep canyons and soaring ridges covered with desert. After going through a long valley in the mountains then up another long gradual ascent over a ridge, it was then mostly downhill to Ciudad Insurgentes. The two cities of Ciudad Insurgentes and Ciudad Constitution are bustling places surrounded by huge farms and ranches. The tailwind was with us the whole way until the turn in the highway at Santa Maria, then that amazing tailwind turned into crazy headwinds and crosswinds as we crossed the peninsula to La Paz. The winds were so strong that one afternoon, we made only 30km in 3 hours after lunch. It was also so hot, 41 degrees celcius, but it didn’t feel that hot with the whipping wind. Our sweat seemed to dry instantly as we fought against the hot wind though my lips were getting quite chapped. We were getting quite salty and I had salt crystals encrusted on my eyelashes. As we finally got some speed going down a hill, the crosswind would try to blow us off the road, sometimes succeeding. The scariest part was this one semi-truck that passed us, blocking the strong crosswind for a moment while creating a draft of its own. The wind became like a vortex that tried to suck us under the truck towards its back tires. However, we were fine and soon we were almost in La Paz and looking forward to a shower!
December 8, 2013 – A Culinary Adventure on Bahia Conception
Playa Santispac was the first place that we were truly able to use our speargun and it was amazing fun. We would take turns laying on the beach while the other snorkeled and hunted. We only have masks and snorkel and the speargun, no wetsuit or flippers. We would get so into the hunt and not feel the cold until we come out shivering with the fish we caught. That person would then lay in the sun while the other went out to fish. We would really only catch one or two a day for our own dinner and we had some amazing meals. We had a bit of a seafood feast at the beach, starting with clams and scallops on the first day, stingray on the second day (the wings are amazing with crab like meat), these two reef fish on the third day, a good sized mackerel on the fourth day, then octopus, triggerfish and Mexican hogfish on the fifth day. Funny thing is that these reef fish had a big head and buck teeth like a rabbit. The coloring was a bit like a grouper fish and it had smooth skin. I wasn’t completely sure what it was but I thought, maybe a type of grouper or variety of parrotfish, which also has big chomping teeth to chew coral? I was in the process of filleting it and Marco’s friend, Marco came over to see what was up. He basically showed me to do a simple gutting of the fish. Since it was a soft meat and would be really hard to fully fillet, it was easier to just take the head off and gut the fish. I then skinned the fish. We communicated in broken English and Spanish but I asked him if the fish was good. He replied yes, it was delicious. He got back into his truck and drove away. The fish was indeed delicious, a smooth white fish that we poached and served over rice. We actually had a little left over and made into a wicked pasta sauce the next day. It wasn’t until much later when we were sailing and looking at one of Captain Jerry’s fish identification books that we find out it is a type of pufferfish! Now we saw little colorful box fish and huge porcupine pufferfish which seemed to be the biggest fish in these shallow waters and moved sedately knowing that nothing with come after them. We avoided these fish. Though poisonous, the fish identification book noted that this variety of pufferfish, the bullseye pufferfish, is sold in local fish markets but the book still said that it is only palatable after preparation by an “experienced cook” and listed the fish as “non-edible” due to its toxicity. Maybe I can find a job in Japan as a sushi chef now! It was also quite satisfying to get a triggerfish. Bryan and I learned to scuba dive in Thailand at Koh Tao. There, they have a troubled relationship with the huge titan triggerfish. The titan triggerfish were very territorial, aggressive and had huge fangs. There are cases where a titan triggerfish would bite a diver’s mask and some people had scars from this. It doesn’t help that now the divermasters there carry a little slingshot stick that doesn’t hurt the fish but does show it whose boss to protect the divers though probably further antagonizes the fish. Consequently, we have always had a bit of wariness diving with triggers. Here, we found out that they are also amazingly tasty! Bryan was very excited about the octopus he caught and prepared into a tasty soup. He went into the water that day hoping to get an octopus and just as he dove, there was a squirt of black ink in the water from under a rock. Bryan would have never found the octopus if it did not have squirted the telling ink. The suction cups of the octopus’s tentacles are so strange feeling and continue to have sucking power even after death. It’s great to be able to finally use the speargun after carrying it across the desert!
December 8, 2013 – Paradise found at Playa Santispac on Bahia Conception
We were a bike gang of 11 cyclists strung out along the road leaving Mulege. It was a wonderful little group ride following the canyon out of the town then up across a coastal flat before a little climbing to Bahia Conception. Bahia Conception is a huge bay framed by rocky hills and often, it was flat like glass looking more like a big lake as we gazed across the narrow opening to the other shore. We camped out at Playa Santispac, basically the first beach on the bay, on a little beach just around the corner from the main beach. Marco, a man from Veracruz, was setting up a campground there and when we went, it was just a few palapas on the beach. Since the campground was still in process, he actually didn’t charge us to stay there. Our time there has been some of my favorite in the whole trip. The 11 of us chilled and hung out on the beach, playing frisbee in the water and having campfires. Paul, an architect, made a fantastic campfire area using wooden planks for seats and decorating the fire ring with hundreds of shells. I loved out lazy mornings here, watching the sun rise out of my open vestibule and the shadows of the fluttering palm leaves of the roof of the palapa on the tent. You feel so remote here, sleeping under a thatched palm leaf roof with no bathroom, walls, running water, electricity and other items of civilization around, with the amazing experience of friends and gorgeous sunrises/sunsets to keep you company. Then, a pastry vendor drives up. Perodically but unpredictably, we are visited by vendors who drive up in their vehicles and open up their trucks to reveal mobile markets. Someone would pull up to sell fresh bread (still warm!) and tasty cinnamon buns then tell us, “Tomorrow, I’ll be back with brownies!” The next day, everyone is excited like children at a candy shop. A car drives onto the beach and everyone jumps up and runs over to see if it is brownies. Cars with vegetables, eggs, and all sorts of things come to visit us too. There was this one very enthusiastic blanket vendor that drove up in a van and then opened the sliding door and started draping his colorful wares over the doors to display them. He was a pretty hardworking saleman but unfortunately, we were the wrong crowd. We just disappointedly asked, “No comida?” No food? While it is probably true for everyone that a way to a person’s heart is through their stomach, it seems especially true for cyclists. While the others left after 3 nights, Bryan and I ended up staying 5. It was just paradise and we weren’t in any rush to leave. I would do yoga on the beach in front of our palapa in the morning just after sunrise, then we would have breakfast and read a little bit then as it got hotter, Bryan and I would walk down the beach to go spearfishing, then lunch and more chilling and then around 3pm when it was less hot, we would wander down to the hot springs nestled in the mangroves.
December 4, 2013 – Friendly Mulege
We ended up staying a couple days in Mulege at the fantastic Hotel Hacienda with comfortable rooms set around a beautiful gardened courtyard with a swimming pool. Since we were so many – 8 of us cyclists on the first day and met up with Justin on the next day – we got a pretty wicked deal for taking up 5 rooms! They had a grapefruit tree heavy with the delicious yellow fruit so we would sit around the pool in the wooden rocking chairs feasting. We walked to the old mission in Mulege, which was founded in 1705. Everything was made of stone and it had an old bell in its tower. It had beautiful views of the surrounding lush oasis, with palm trees and the slow river flowing through it. It’s kind of funny because BCS, Baja California Sur, could also mean British Columbia South! There are a lot of expats who live in and around this sleepy oasis town and a considerable number of vehicles that pass us have British Columbian license plates. When we were looking for a hotel, we started talking to a Canadian couple who were shopping in town before heading back to their version of paradise on Coco Beach. It turned out that they were from Chilliwack too and lived just a few blocks away from where I grew up! He knew about my grandpa and bought potatoes from Woo Farms! Small world. Talking about the sleepy town, Mulege (pronounced Moo-la-he; the ‘g’ is an ‘h’ sound) is very serious about its afternoon siesta. Around 1-2pm, shops and restaurants start closing. What’s hilarious is that probably half don’t open back up again! These include many of the cheap taco shops selling amazing cerviche (seafood cooked by lime juice) and tacos de pescado, fish tacos, which have been a main staple in towns. Within Mexican food culture, lunch is the big meal and dinner is a small, “snackish” meal. The group of us walked all around Mulege at night looking for a good cheap place. We finally settled on a place and guess what we had? Fish tacos!! Yum! But this time, we got a platter with rice and beans! Fancy.
December 3, 2013 – Vultures, Dogs and Canyons on our Ride to Mulege
We crossed 4000km riden today on our beautiful ride from Santa Rosalia to Mulege. After the amazing sunrise, we rose up over a ridge then out onto a vast coastal plain. There was tornados of turkey vultures circling, rising on the early sunshine heat thermals. At one point, I was riding down the road and there was a row of cordon cactuses, each with a vulture on it with its wings outspread towards the sun. Less magical was the number of dogs that chased us today. Most of the time, it is the little ones that give us the most chase. You know, the little dogs that are bascially only 10 inches off the ground that run up to us with their short little legs and high pitched barks. They’ve got passion but really, it is quite easy for us to get away from them on our bikes. We had some of them today but we also had some bigger dogs too! Just before San Lucas, as we were rolling by a house, this brown dog that seemed to be a rotwieller/ pitt bull cross, started furiously barking and running straight towards the fence around the house. Bryan says to me, “Um, pedal faster…PEDAL FASTER!” I thought it had it had stayed within the fence but apparently it knew exactly how to get out and didn’t even slow down as it squeezed under a part of the fence. We got away just in time. Talking to other cyclists, there are a lot of theories about the dogs. Dave suggests that their excitment comes from not actually understanding what we are. Their barks are really “What are you? What are you?” Also, as many dogs herd, he suggests that the dogs are actually trying to herd us. Bryan suggests that it’s because we’re moving. If you run beside a dog, the dog starts running too thinking its a game. It’s true that most of the time, I actually slow down and the dog stops. Alexa and Paul just say “NO!” sternly at the dogs and that usually stops them. Uschi speaks German to the dogs, which also seems to stop them. Many stop after we have passed the house they’re protecting or won’t go onto the road. It’s interesting because some of the places that we have stayed at on this trip had some ferocious sounding dogs when we first approached but as they got to know us, they just wanted love and they were so cuddly and attention seeking. Just before Mulege, we wind along a scenic canyon pass throuh some hills. We drop down into Mulege, another little oasis with a river running through it out to the ocean. We’re staying in town for two nights, feasting on delicious fish tacos, seafood cocktails and cerviche, before moving onto the beach.
December 2, 2013 – The Windy Ride to the Santa Rosalia and the Sea of Cortez
We rose out of the oasis paradise of San Ignacio and back into the desert. The first ride we crosed was so windy, I wasn’t sure if we would make it the 73km to Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez. The incredibly strong headwind made me work pedalling with effort even on the downhill, when I otherwise would have flown down effortlessly at 45km/hr. Uphill was a fight for every stroke. After that first climb, it opened to a large plateau with the Vulcan Tres Virgins dominating the horizon. The descent crossing the ridge by the old volcano was stunning – a vast desert plateau covered with tall cactuses that looked like small vertical toothpicks from the height at the beginning of the descent and the whole desert plain was surrounded by rocky mountans chizzled from the earth. However, that wasn’t the largest descent of the day. The final descent by the coast is the steepest on Hwy 1 in Baja California. It was a 15% grade that dropped around 300 metres in a very short distance. A sign before the descent says “Cesta del infierno”, a hill of inferno! The downhill itself is fun as traffic is usally very understanding of cyclists and thankfully give us a lot of room as we move more into the middle of the road. However, what I find really tricky is if there is a crosswind, which there was today and is like someone giving you a shove while we are riding fast dwn the hills. We have all be excitedly anticiping the Sea of Cortez, the blue jewel that we saw from the high mountain plateau. The road descends and drops us off in an apocolyptic wasteland. The area of beach before Santa Rosalia is very industrial and we are welcomed to the coast by huge black plumes of burning plastic and garbage at the dump. There is a huge Canadian mining operation and roadsides are littered with garages and broken cars. Garbage is everywhere. Santa Rosalia itself was an interesting place. The city has French roots – a church there was designed by Eiffle and there is an old wood and steel station, an old wooden clocktower and wooden rectanguar homes with wide verandas. It was kind of like a Mexican New Orleans. We were looking for a hotel, but as we were a group of eight, many of the hotels were full or had only one room left and were very expensive. As we were riding arond the historic town, a woman in a white SUV marked with the mining corporation’s logo pulled up to talk to us. She first invited us to camp out at her home at the mine as she said there was tons of room. However, with our reluctance to back track, she first thought of bring us to a local church then suggested a beach owned by her friend and a lawyer for the mining company. We were like little ducklings following our white SUV mother as she slowly led our bike gang to the beach just south of town. She had her 4 way hazard lights flashing and it is amazing how patient people are on the road as we basically took over the lane and collected cars behind us. The chain of cars behind us including a cop car and a couple huge semi-trailers, who struggled up the hill keeping behind us. The beach at Santa Rosalia was a windswept place strewn with garbage and local people coming out to do drunken donuts in their vehicles. Our friend said that she had talked to cyclists and said that they usually like staying here because of the amazing sunrise. As we staked down our tents in the raging wind and cooked with a makeshift windbreak of my panniers and also behind the tent in an attempt to keep most of the beach from becoming dinner, Bryan and I had our doubts to be honest. Is saving a couple bucks at a hotel in town really worth this windy hell? We were tired from fighting the wind all day and went to chill in our tent early that night and our little Hubba Hubba MSR tent was amazing. Inside, it was a cozy cave and we were quickly lulled to sleep by the waves and wind outside. It was so warm that night, over 20 degrees celcius all night, and I think we all slept without our sleeping bags. The next morning, we watched the stunning sunrise and it was all worth it. The dark sky broke with a sliver of fiery orange on the horizon, which grew to light up the whole sky in magentas, pinks and purples. Pelicans flew as black silloettes against the lightening sky as a group of us sat on the beach in the early morning, saying hello to the day ahead.
November 30, 2013 – A Magical Oasis in the Desert – San Ignacio
From Guerro Negro, we headed off in the flat Viscaino desert. It is miles after miles of flat, straight road with rows of electrical poles running endlessly into the horizon. Windswept inland dunes were covered with green spiky yuccas. Everything was covered with spikes. It was a very stark and unforgiving landscape but also very beautiful with hidden gems. Out of the hot sand of the desert, a small yellow flower which reminded me a lot of a little crocus, was growing green and bright. We found pitayas, a violent looking fruit with spikes all over looking like a deadly mine, growing from the equally spiky galloping cactus plant. They were delicious and so juicy, with pulpy bright magenta flesh and little black seeds and tasted like a combination of kiwi and blackberry. Bryan and I made pitaya margaritas with the fruit, sugar, water, lime and mescalito. Yum! Closer to San Ignacio, we entered some rolling hills including some thrilling/exciting/kind of terrifying steep drops on curving roads without guardrails overlooking cliffs. The roads reminded me a little of being on a waterslide or a rollercoaster…but with traffic. Dropping down the ridgeline to the palm tee oasis of San Ignacio was magical. After a couple weeks in the desert, it was stunning to all of a sudden be surrounded by lush date palms swaying in the breeze over the calm, wide river fed by the spring. We had been calling the puddles we’ve seen in the desert from the rain we had “lakes” and now here was a real body of water. The very air is moist and fragrant with the sweet aroma of dates. We went into the town square, a calm elegant place with a tree filled courtyard facing an old mission from the 18th century. I think cactuses are really amazing plants but it was nice to chill out under the tall trees eating ice cream after the hot day of riding through the desert without shade. We camped out by the river with our little biking community, which seems to be growing. We stayed an extra day because once you find paradise, why leave it so quickly? The next day, we had 13 cyclists camping there. Justin, a rockclimbed and a professional scaffolder, climbed up one of the tall date palms and cut off probably 10 lbs of delicious dates. Four of us stood below holding a tarp outstretched to catch the falling dates and thankfully no falling Justins. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out, chatting about life and cycling and gorging on dates. We had a great musical jam in the evening with Dave on the mandolin, Mathieu on the guitar, Torey and Peter playing an empty water drum with amazing results, Uschi on the melodica, an keyboard recorder, and me banging on Torey’s dirty dinner pots. Magical!
November 27, 2013 – A Dance through the Desert – Crossing the Central Desert of Baja California
After leaving Punta Banda, we have had a whirlwind week with some big days, long treks of solitude in the mysterius high deserts of the Baja and meeting an amazing community of cyclists. After El Rosario, we left the Pacific coastline and turned inland to cross the Central Desert heavily laden with water. I started carrying a full 10 litres on my bike. The 20 litres between Bryan and I lasts only two to three days for us riding in the desert. From El Rosario, it is 124km until Catavina, where the next services can be found…including water. We left the Mediterrean climate region of Baja California, which has a climate drier but similar to that of San Diego and southern California and is characterized by sage scrubland. The Central Desert, is a surreal place with long grinding climbs to plateaus before dipping down in a canyon then rising again on the other side. Tall flat, table-top like mesas command the horizon with colours like a rainbow transitining from redish orange scrub by the road to various shades of blue and violet of the mountains in the distance. In some ways, I feel like I have stepped into a Dr. Seuss book with huge cordon cactuses like a many limbed green giant reaching for the sky. They are over 20 metres tall and many of the large ones are over 200 years old! Also keeping the cordons company is the boojum tree, which is a tall, pole like tree with a pale, waxy bark. The trees look straight out of the Dr. Seuss story with the branches curling and twisting into loops and twirls with a spray of yellow flowers at the tip. Th landscape is so alien, so unique in ther whole world that no wonder there are so many stories of aliens and UFOs here. The landscape is out of this world. The boojum trees are unlike any other tree I have seen before, as if it was a giant grass plant and I was tiny and looking out at the world from an ant’s perspective. As we enter the desert, guess what happens? IT RAINS! It was the first substantial rain since we left Oregon and it happens when we reach the famously arid Baja Desert. The cloud cover however was a blessing as it provided valuable shade in an otherwise hot and shadeless desert and the rain meant that the desert was amazingly green with all of the boojum trees flowering. We made the crossing to Catavina in two days and around Catavina is a stunning boulder desert, lit up in glorious hues of pink and purple in the sunset. After Catavina, we climbed up to over 1000metres in elevation, where the cold wind whipped as us and the landscape was barren even of the hardy cactuses. We felt that we were riding a ridge on top of the world. The vegetation slowly returned as we descended. The landscape seemed as isolated and remote as before. Sometimes, it feels so remote out in the Central Desert, with small cowboy villages that seem almost like ghost towns and surreal plants to keep us company in our long rides. However, this route is old as evident in the historic missions from the 18th century and even older in terms of the rock art that decorate some of the rocks. Also, coincidently, the remoteness and the single road has brought cyclists together. There is about 13 of us cyclists, some solo travellers and other couples, that are in the same area at the same time. We have formed a loose group – some ride ahead, but then we meet up as they take a rest day. Bryan and I did the whole desert crossing with Justin, a solo cyclist who also started in Vancouver, and Uschi and Dave, who started their long road south in Alaska and are carrying a palace of a giant tent and his sitar. There is something truly magical to stargazing in the desert, where there are so many stars that individual constellations are indisguishable, listening to beautiful and haunting sitar. We made it to Guerro Negro yesterday, just in time for Bryan’s birthday, and we’re spending an extra day here before heading back out to cross the Vizcano Desert. It is amazing to consider that we have just finished crossing a desert about the same mileage as our time in Washington! At 3751km from home, we are now half way down Baja California!
November 17, 2013 – The Enchanted Life in Punta Banda
We are living an enchanted life. We made it to Ensenada, well actually a little south of Ensenada at Punta Banda about 130km south of the the border. We met an awesome couchsurfing host, Matt, a professional online poker player… or professional odds player as he calls himself. Watching him play about 14 games at once is amazing and rises the game up to an art. Bryan calls him a professional multitasker. Matt also helps makes social documentaries in Brazil in his spare time. He lives in a beautiful house on top of a ridge overlooking the brilliant blue ocean on both north and south sides of the pennisula and the twinkling lights of the city across the bay. It was hard to get to – a steep mile long dirt road to the gated expat community of Puerto Escondito – “Hidden Port” ironically named because it is onto top of a huge hill from the ocean! We stayed here for five nights as the busy Baja 1000, an offroading race that spans the whole of Baja California whips its roads into a frenzy. It is a bit of a yoga retreat for me as I can do yoga on the big wooden patios overlooking both the sunrise and sunset on the ocean horizon. Matt’s even got a keyboard piano and music books with all the classics and I’m working through all my old favorites again. So anyways, we’re took long afternoon naps, cooked in an actual kitchen, explored beaches and was mesmerized by beautiful sunsets this week. Also, we’ve been adopted by Grandma D, Matt’s wonderful hippy neighbour. We meandered down from the ridge to La Bufadora, an hour walk away but we made it over two because we were exploring the desert plants. La Bufadora is the world’s second largest marine gyser (though we were never able to find out which was the first) and as a wave smashes into a pocket of air in the sea cave, a rocket of water shoots up; it goes “BUF!” thus the name. The ground thundered under us with each wave. We also enjoyed the market surrounding La Bufadora where every second booth seemed to be a pina colada stand where the tasty drinks were served in a hollowed out pineapple. The next day, D showed us the local Sunday buffet at Baja Mamas, which was like finding heaven for hungry bikers! Then afterwards, we went down to the beach at La Joya where hot spring vents up though the sand. In low tide, we dug a hole in the sand, making a delightful hot tub. We had to carefully choose our hole and dug a few betore settling on one. Some were just too hot. The impermenance of human activity on these springs was really interesting. After the next tide, all the holes are wiped clean for the next set of excited visitors.
November 15, 2013 – Rosarito to Ensenada
Riding on the roads in northern Baja California, I almost feel like a rockstar. People wave, they honk their horns excitedly, they cheer and they whoop. On our ride from La Mission to Ensenada, a police waved at us and when we waved back, he flared his sirens for a brief moment in cheer, which terrified the oncoming car to a sudden stop. When we are standing on the street or eating at a little sidewalk cafe, people come up to us and noting the Canadian flag on Bryan’s bike, ask us if we really came all the way from Canada and then heartfully congratuate us with cheer. We have met some of the most friendliness people in the world in our first week in Mexico, both locals and expats. It has been amazing. Also amazing has been the food! On our day riding from Rosarito, we didn’t get far as we were lured in by Puerto Nuevo, a little oasisof about 30 restaurants specializing in lobster. Bryan and I split a meal of four (four!) lobsters about the length of a dinner plate each, a pot of melted butter and endless tortillas, beans, rice and pico de gallo with a pina colada each for $15 total. We also found a little pulqueria on the side of the road. It was a little wooden stand with improvised benches made from a plank of wood and a very friendly owner who served us samples after samples of chilled pulque as we communicated again in a mixture of beginner Spnaish (from our side) and a bit of English (from his side) and a lot of laughing (on both sides). Pulque is the fermented nectar of the maguay cactus, a cousin of the famous agave. The cactus is cored and the juice from it starts fermenting with ferocity soon after. You have to “burp” the container or else it explodes. We had tried to ferment our own pulque in an earlier trip to Baja Mexico (basically waiting and perodically burping the container) to disgusiting results. We tried the professionally made pulque this time and it was amazing, especially chilled ice cold and mixed with fruit juices. As another note, we ran into two brothers down in Baja California for a wedding who were heading back up north and they sold us their speargun! Bryan and I had our first time spearfishing yesterday in a little bay south of Ensenada. No fish yet but it was wicked fun. It brings a whole new level to snorkeling! Ensenada is a super friendly town and with four universities in the city, it is a bit of party central in downtown with four blocks in the downtown devoted to the local favorite Papas and Beer franchise. We ended up meeting their operations manager, Rocky, while asking for directions in Rosarito, and had an awesome afernoon chatting with him in Ensenada. This weekend is also the Baja 1000, a 1000 mile offroad rally that starts in Ensenada and draws people from all over the world. We found an awesome couchsurfer, Matt who works on inspiring documentaries in his spare time, and we’re staying at his house on a beautiful pennisula south of Ensenada through the weekend until the roads hopefully become a little less hectic.
November 11, 2013 – Crossing into Mexico
The San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana is the busiest border in North America. Going north, there was a virtual parkinglot with over 20 lanes of cars waiting to cross into the United States. Luckily, walking our bikes through the crossing, we counted as pedestrians so we crossed with ease. In fact, we actually had to ask for a visa as visitors are allowed three free days in Tijuana and the border guard was just waving people through without looking at our passports. InTijuana, we were definitely in a different country.There were open markets, tacos stands, a different language, a remarkable number of pharmacies and people everywhere. we went onto the toll highway to bypass most of Tijuana and it was an exciting and somewhat terrifying shoulderless ride in a concrete confined space at first. Cars and trucks, full of all sort of things like a bunch of poles sticking out horizontal out ofthe passager side window, would come so close to us…but they never hit. One of our first pasts was this craz hill. As I struggled up the climb, I thought to myself, “Man, am I really so out of shape from one week off from riding?” I guzzled water at the top and sat down because I was feeling a bit faint after giving everything I had to get to the top without stopping under the baking hot sun. As subsequent, more graduale hills felt almost effortless, I thought, “Nope, that was just a really steep hill.” We made it to Playas de Tijuana before the police kicked us off the toll freeway. However, it was kind of hilarious because he emphatically said “I CAN’T allow you on the freeway,” then told us directions on how to get past the police and toll checkpoints. He told us to bcktrack a 100 metres, go down to the town along a path by the bus stop until we reached the bouvelard, head south for about a mile on that road then rejoin the freeway agan. Rejoining was an adventure. The road we were directed to didn’t actually rejoin the freeway but rather was an unfinished ramp up to an unfinished tunnel that local teenagers were bombing down on longboards. Our path back on was rather a dirt path littered with glittering broken glass and garbage that eventually jumped the curb and found a break in the railing to get back on the freeway. There were amazing views of the ocean with sweeping beaches and local children playing in the waves. We made it to Rosarito that night, about 30km south of the border. We stayed with a couchsurfing host, Lanny and her mother, who were so amazing and cheerful. Mama Rita didn’t speak much English…and we hardly speak much Spnaish yet (but we’re learning!) but we communicated in laughter. Lanny made us awesome margaritas from tequila, ice, lime juice and a bit of sugar blended all together. So many little limes went into making our drinks. It has been an awesome first day in Mexico.
Maggie's travels 