Journal

  • Central Peru
    2008-07-31

    The road south of Trujillo proceeded in the same manner as the road north. That is, strong headwinds and endless dunes. A mixture of dunes and rocks, and larger rocks, and then verdant irrigated valleys. The dessicated trees found further north had all disappeared.

    And the unexpected but entirely welcome kindness of Peruvians continued south. My second day out of Trujillo, after several hours of battling a wind that slowed me to 5 mph on flat ground, I pulled off to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. There I met the owner, Clemente, and he fed me, gave me a bed for the night, and we had a wonderful conversation. Before meeting Clemente, I was prepared to nominate this day as one of the worst days of riding on the entire trip, but after meeting him, I was prepared to nominate it as one of the best. If anyone is foolish enough to take the costal route after everything I’ve written in discouragement, km 348 will be an oasis.

    And again a couple of days later, while in a restaurant, a family (the Cubras family) invited me to their table to talk with them. I gladly accepted, of course, since talking is one of my favorite activities. And when lunch was all over, they insisted on paying for my meal. And I’ve heard that Peruvians are unfriendly!!

    Sure they loudly observe that I am a gringo much more frequently than the Colombians (never) or Ecuadorians (maybe twice), but the hospitality I’ve experienced has rivaled that of the Colombians, and greatly surpassed that of the Ecuadorians. Maybe I’ve just been lucky… Who knows.

    At any rate, without wind I can manage around 80 to 90 miles a day. With this wind, I’ve been lucky to achieve 60. The race down the coast is nothing at all like I’d hoped it would be.

    Leaving Chancay I ran into a dutch cyclist whom I’d first encountered in Stewart, British Columbia, and then again in Bodega Bay, California. We road together for a while and caught up on everything that had happened in the intervening 8,500 miles. Before I met him, I’d suspected that my bike was slowly seizing up on me and that I couldn’t be going as fast as I had a year ago. But riding with him, I kept pace and that relieved me greatly.

    On the way in to Lima, I saw the opportunity to tuck in behind a truck and draft it for a long while. I took that opportunity and cruised into town for a while at an effortless 25 mph. Eventually it got stuck in traffic, and I darted out from behind it and into the hellish maw of hundreds of competing collectivos on the Panamericana Sur. I’d long since learned that the way to deal with latin traffic is never to yield ground, and to have absolute faith in your ability to survive. And by the continued grace of God, I found myself safe, but also having overshot the road I wanted to take by several miles. I cut through Chinatown (not too different from the ones we have in California), eventually found the road I wanted, and managed to piss off several hundred more collectivo drivers to my destination. So, add Lima to the list of latin capital cities I’ve ridden through (every one but Mexico City, which I bussed to).

    I spent an unexpected rest day in Lima when I woke up with a very sore Achille’s heel. The day was spent doing the usual: eating. The next day, the pain was still there, but I didn’t feel like spending any more time waiting around to see if it would go away. So I spent the day with one foot pointed downward the entire time, and the other foot doing performing most of the labor. That technique actually worked out very well, and I managed to cover 90 miles.

    While in the middle of a day dream about all the peanut butter I would be eating when I finally arrived in Cuzco to meet my parents (the reason I’ve been hurrying since Quito — to meet them on time), two Swiss cyclists pulled up next to me. After a moment of confusion as to which language we all spoke best, we settled on High German, introduced ourselves, and decided to ride together for a while.

    This was great news for me, since I’d been mostly alone the entire trip and was getting pretty lonely for company. And the fact that I’d have to remember a language which I hadn’t needed to speak in over six years was no problem at all in forging a bond of international friendship. We rode together all the way to Cuzco.

    So, leaving Lima we rode 90 miles, the next day we rode 100. I started to worry that if this was their pace, I would be in for some serious hurting later on down the road. But they had the same fears, and the following day we only rode the sixty featureless miles to a small village whose name I can’t remember. I do remember they didn’t have water or power until well after dark, and they did have an unusually large number of roaming dogs. But nothing else.

    We cut the pace back even further the next day, because 30 miles from that nameless hamlet was Nazca, and we all had a hankering to see the lines. In the area where the lines are, some enterprising Peruvians decided to build a viewing tower, and we had the option to climb it for 35 cents to have an oblique look at some of the lines. So we did, and I managed to get a reasonable picture of a giant bean with even larger hands. We quickly got down from the tower when a busload of German tourists decided that the capacity limits didn’t apply to them, and I felt that the structural integrity of the tower was at risk.

    At Nazca we decided that it was a very good idea to cram as many calories into our bodies as possible, for the next day began a 11,500ft climb. And here I need to give the Peruvian road engineers a lot of credit: whereas in some countries I’ve been through, the road would take the steepest path up the hill that pavement would stick to, the Peruvians never made the road steeper than 4 or 5 percent, except when it was obvious that there was no other option.

    Anyhow, we managed 35 miles of climbing the first day, and slept under a clear sky at 10,000ft. The air was cool, but not cold, and still breathably thick. I remember this night in particular, because it was when I decided that my habit of brewing tea needed to be upgraded from habit to institution. So every evening, morning, and lunch break (Mittagspause), I’d make either herbal or coca tea. It’s nice to feel civilized every once and a while, and even though my face and hands were black with dirt, and I stank so bad that female animals would flee and males would make their challenges, I still felt like I belonged to an ordered world. Civilized.

    Leaving camp the following morning, I saw a trail which I felt would save me considerable time and effort over taking the regular highway. Of course, it cost me both. The trail eventually met up with the main highway, and I quickly put that whole ordeal behind me. The road continued up and up to the pampas (rolling plain in English, perhaps). We had our lunch, and after a little while finally reached the pass. There followed 3,000ft of screaming descent, and then more climbing and descending to the village of Puquio.

    The locals in Puquio seemed to be in the middle of satisfying a village-wide curiosity about how bad they could make a road before it became unpassable. They succeeded in that task as I pedaled up a particularly steep, potholed, and sandy section. I started to fall backwards off the bike, and only quick acting saved me from severe testicle injury.

    Leaving Puquio, we noticed signs on the highway saying not to destroy it or take pieces from it, and collectively wished that those signs were posted on the streets of the town as well. But the folks this side of town obeyed the signs, and the highway was in great shape. We climbed and climbed and climbed. After a while, I noticed snow in the shadows and I started to see more and more alpacas munching away on the hills. The road finally leveled out at 15,000ft.

    We rode hoping to come to some sort of pass before nightfall, because we knew that the air 15,000ft would be bitter cold after the sun went down. But instead of the pass, we encountered hail. So we rode as fast as our lungs would allow us (not fast), and by 4:30 we managed to ride out of the storm and into a broad plain of dejecta from an extinct volcano. We made camp, quickly set up our tents and cooked dinner, and ate as fast as we could.

    The sun went down, the temperature got down to around 15 degrees, and I shivered in my once-upon-a-time 20 degree bag with all my clothes on. When the sun finally rose, I thanked God for my survival, beat the frost off my tent, and laid it out to melt. All my water had frozen solid inside the bottles, and so was useless for cooking breakfast. Luckily my Swiss friends were more experienced with the cold, and had enough liquid water to pour into a pot to cook oats.

    We spent nearly the entire day on the broad plain above 13,000ft and had to climb to over 15,000ft several times before, glory of glories, the ground opened up and we were met with a 3,500ft descent off the cold plateau and down into a wonderfully warm river valley. We spent the night in a small town and bought six pounds of mandarin oranges with some of the highest seed counts I’ve ever seen.

    Anticipating a 70 mile gentle downhill along the river to the city of Abancay, we brought nothing else with us in the way of food but those oranges. And for the majority of the distance, say 55 miles, it was exactly that: a gentle downhill along the river. But oh god, those last 15 miles of uphill without any real food in my stomach were absolutely brutal. My two Swiss companions cheated by clinging on to the back of a slow moving truck. But I was more principled and less talented at it than they were, and chose to ride the entire thing. When the wind was at my back, I sweat incredibly, and the biting insects swarmed my eyes and nose. When the wind was in my face, the insects blew away and I crawled upward.

    We finally got into town, regrouped, demolished a local Chinese restaurant, rested, and then demolished a pizza parlor. On the map Abancay is tantalizingly close to Cuzco, but in reality it is 6,000ft climb, 6,700ft descent, and another 5000ft climb before the city limits. This took two days, and my first two flat tires since leaving Quito. But after all of it, I rolled into town, found my way to my parent’s hotel (a day late), and was greeted with a hot shower, hugs, and 8lbs of peanut butter.

    The next evening, I met up with my Swiss friends again, and with them, we went to a pizza parlor known for its giant portions. We asked the waiter to show us the pans for the various sizes of pizza we could have, and against his advice, ordered a pizza “large enough for 15 people”. When it finally came out, the three cyclists in our group burned through it, leaving my parents (and us) still hungry for more. We ordered a “family sized” pizza, and did the same to it. We finally left, but in my heart and stomach, I knew I still had space for a medium pizza…

  • Northern Peru
    2008-07-17

    On other side of the border bridge were people selling cheap Ecuadorian gas, and hundreds of mototaxis. I made my way to Peruvian immigrations and fended off money changers (I had no intention of surrendering my American dollars, which are used for the currency of Ecuador). The immigration officer asked me how many days I wanted and I told him at least 60. He gave me 120. This increased my belief that the Colombian immigrations officer had no sense of humor, and punished my hilarious jokes with 15 days way back when…

    A few miles south of immigrations, the land turned ever more dry, and instead of rivers flowing with polluted water as I found in Ecuador, these rivers didn’t flow with anything at all. Eventually I made it to the town of Tumbes, withdrew of nuevos soles from the ATM, and used them to get some cheap lodging. And so ended my first day in Peru…

    Well, nearly. In the evening, while taking in some of the local sights, I was approached by a desperate Austrian man, whose trusting nature had allowed a taxi driver to drive away with his luggage still in the vehicle. He asked me for some money, and when I only gave him the dollar (3 soles) I had on me, he critized me for not giving him more. What the hell? That’s the last time I ever admit to speaking German at night in Peru…

    The next morning I made my way south, to the costal resorts, and then costal desert to be found south of Tumbes. On my way I stopped to lend the use of my bike pump to a motorcyclist who had a flat, and his graciousness made me feel partially better about my charitable nature. Continuing on, I became increasingly bored by the landscape, and nearly fell asleep off my bike more than once.

    So it was a great change of pace to meet a couple of Argentine cyclists on their two year global tour. After a bit of chatting, their continued north as I continued south.

    And around the next bend began the headwinds. Why didn’t they tell me about them? As I went further south the winds built and built, and I found myself infuriated and nearly defeated. I ended the day near an oil derrick, about 75 miles south of where I started the day, too tired to be angry and too exhausted to cry. I lay with my head out of my tent staring up at the unfamiliar southern constellations for a while until the full moon outshone them all, and then slid back in and fell alseep.

    The next day the winds returned, and I must have competely zoned out the entire time. Because after several hours of riding through featureless desert, with the occasional dog chase and ever-present headwind, I found myself in an irrigated valley near Sullana. I made my way to that city, got a room, got some food, and washed the dirt and cooking fuel off my hands. I’d ridden 85 miles, but now have barely any memory of it at all. Oh, while brushing my teeth on the side of the road, I accidentally spit toothpaste on my shoe. I laughed at that.

    As I was preparing myself for the desert the next day, I decided it was time for a break. I pushed on 25 miles to Piura, arriving at 10:00am and set in for the day. The desert could wait another day.

    In the morning before I set out to tackle the desert, I brewed myself my first batch of coca tea and loaded it up with sugar. I figured with the combination of cocainoids and sucrose I’d fly right down the desert and possibly —just possibly— cross the entire thing in one day.

    As it turned out, no such luck. The now-familiar headwind was in top form with nothing at all in the endless expanse to stop it, and it pushed me constantly. I still managed to roll out a cool 85 miles that day, and I can’t decide if I should credit the coca for that result; my careful two sandwiches and a banana every 25 miles regimen; or the fact that I devoted eight straight hours to riding that distance.

    In any event, I ended in the middle of nowhere, hidden from the highway behind a thorn tree-covered dune. I cooked up some oat/quinoa porridge, shoveled it into my mouth, and stared out across the dunes as the sky slowly lost its light. The wind howled throughout the night, but in my tent I was warm and secure.

    The next morning I cooked up more porridge, demolished a roll of ritz cracker imitations, produced some food for the local fly population and set off. The wind was already strong. But after around 10 miles the land started to green and I saw huts along the road in increasing density. Clearly I was near some sort of population center. Sure enough another 10 miles down the road I came to a town and to the end of the depopulated expanse of the Sechura desert.

    In Chiclayo, I went into a diner and saw couple with a half finished plate of thick-cut french fries. Not knowing it was half-finished, and thinking that it was just delivered to their table, I ordered one for myself. What came out can best be described as a moutain of french fries. I did my best to eat them all, but eventually the grease and salt started to give me a headache, and I went from delicious feasting to wincing with every bite. At that point I threw in the napkin and admited defeat.

    The next morning I rode through a stretch of desert even more featureless than that which I’d just spent two days in. Flat sand forever. Well, and the occaisional sign saying that this was a military testing zone and that there were live explosives, so don’t enter. I took them at their word.

    But eventually hills started to rise off on the eastern side of the road, and became larger and more sublime as I continued southwards. And so I spent half my time watching the road for potholes and the other half watching the hills grow larger and closer. I would choose a hill on the horizon and guess how far away it was, and then perhaps 45 minutes later, I would discover that my guess wasn’t even close. In this way, I was able to cope with the wind and desolation all the way to the beach town of Pacasmayo, where after some hard negotiation and playing one hotel off the other, I got a room for $4. The management wasn’t very friendly with me after that, but I wasn’t about to pay more for a cold shower (which I didn’t take) and a bed which I never slept on (I prefered the floor).

    The following morning I got up very early, and mentally prepared myself for riding through the thieves nest of Paiján. I first heard about this town in Colombia from a pair of Spanish cyclists travelling north, and its reputation grew in my mind to such a point that I was sure that I’d be robbed naked and blind shortly after passing through.

    After thirty miles in the desert, I came to the town limits. I set my body to maximum adrenaline rush, and pushed on the pedals so hard it felt like angry dwarves were kicking my shins with each rotation. I made it through town without issue. But everyone had, the real action took place in the sugarcane fields on the other side of town when the thieves would supposedly come in their mototaxis and attack. The dwarves put on steel-toed boots and I continued on to the next town five miles down the road. Safe. I still raced through that town and to the next one. Safe. And then into the desert again. Safe. Finally 15 miles down the road, I relaxed a bit and let my tunnel vision expand back to normal.

    The rest of the ride to Trujillo was spent thanking god and cursing the wind, and in Trujillo I called up Lucho. He met me, and took me into his home for a few days of chillaxin’ in the first cyclist friendly environment I’d been in for ages. What a perfect way to take some time off!

  • Ecuador
    2008-06-22

    I spent a while at the Colombia-Ecuador border chatting it up with the money changers before I left. They were a good source of information on the road ahead, and were curious about my trip on a person-to-person level, rather than the series of rapid-fire questions level. God knows I love to chit-chat, and it was a good 30 minutes of shooting the breeze between getting my exit stamp and crossing the small bridge to Ecuadorian immigrations.

    In light of my experience with Colombian immigrations, I decided that joking was not in order, so I listed my profession on the immigration form as the relatively tame “fighting-cock breeder”, rather than the usual “international jewel thief” or “organ trafficker”. Apparently, “fighting-cock breeder” is a high-demand profession here, as I was granted a 90 day visa. And so after enjoying a 35 cent cup of coffee, I started the climb up to Tulcán.

    And I immediately thought that the drivers here were all nuts! The northbound traffic had completely blocked the southbound lane, and so I had to ride against speeding traffic all the way to the outskirts of town. There I realized that there was an entirely different road for southbound traffic, and it was I who was riding in the wrong direction.

    In town I didn’t see anything to compel me to stop, and so found the road south and took it. While still in town, I got a flat rear tire (my second flat in South America). I commandeered a section of the sidewalk and changed it. And then rode on.

    Leaving town, there was a 1000ft or more climb to deal with, with views of nearby volcanoes and dark clouds speeding towards me. The clouds never caught up, thank god, because at my altitude that would have been some really cold rain. It turned out that the climb was just up to a pass, because I descended towards a valley-like area after a bit and ended my first day in Ecuador with another flat rear tire as I rolled into the town of San Gabriel.

    There I took a $3 room at the local residencias and went on a $10 shopping spree at the local supermarket. Considering a bag of milk only cost 60 cents, and a one lbs. bag of quinoa (!) cost a dollar, you can imagine just how much food I bought. I spent the rest of the evening stuffing most of it into my face and then feeling pretty sick after imbibing triple milk rations.

    What remained of the food after my gluttonous frenzy fueled me for the next day down, down, down to the Chota valley and to a town of purely African descendants (I’d never encountered any sizeable African population at this altitude before, so I was curious about how it came to be there, but not curious enough to stop and ask). The Chota valley was warm and dry, and since I still had a good amount of food left, I saw no reason to stop as I rode through it, except to occasionally convert food to fuel. The road down, however, is worth special mention because as I turned a corner leaving San Gabriel, I saw my first giant snow covered volcano. That stayed in sight as the road followed the edge of a canyon which as far as I could tell was bottomless (I believe that it is bottomless). While still high up in my descent, farms descended down the hills to the event horizon of the canyon, and I found them all to be beautiful. Down lower, it was too arid for that…

    After a while of flat or rolling riding through the Chota valley, I saw a road switch-back up the hill, and a little later, realized that it was my road. So I went into the lower gears for a while, and summited next to a fragrant landfill, and finally descended into the town of Ibarra (birthplace of the last great Inca resistance leader, I think). I rode through Ibarra up and along the hump of the local volcano, all the while enticed, but not seduced, by signs for delicious grilled guinea pig. The road took me through a sort of low point between three large volcanoes, past a lake which looked like Lago de Atitlan, Jr. and finally up, up, up and then down, down, down to the town of Cayambe. There I quit for the day, and wandered around town while Ecuadorian teenage girls giggled and cast furtive glances my way as I walked past. After a week of hard riding without a shower, I can’t imagine I looked or smelled particularly good, but who knows.

    I woke up the next morning to rain. Dang it. I took longer than usual getting ready hoping it would stop, but it didn’t. And so I headed down out of town freezing until I surrendered bit by bit, and put on my cold weather gear. I guess I was pretty high up after all…

    And after a shorter while than I expected, I saw a town which seemed somewhat out of place, and realized that I’d just crossed the equator. So I went over to the monument, took a couple of pictures, and got back on the bike. I’d just ridden for a year, down 70 degrees of latitude and east 70 degrees as well. Somehow what that meant failed to impress itself upon me at the monument. Maybe it was the rain…

    The rain did stop eventually, and I began the long slow climb (my legs were pretty dead after riding from Bogotá to Quito with just one rest day and several bucket loads of climbing, so when I say slow, I really mean “slooooow”). Eventually I made it, and did what I always do when coming into a city.

    After over two weeks of waiting for my tires to clear customs, and also having three different conflicting responses as to the status of my package from UPS depending on whether I called from Quito, my mom from the US, or the tire company called from wherever they are, I decided to just go down to UPS and see if some physical presence could produce the package.

    Sure enough it was there, and by some crazy coincidence UPS had only received it from customs earlier that very same day…

    My time in Quito was spent waiting around for the package, and I regret that. The next time I’ve got an unknown wait for something to come, I’m just going to take off exploring via the bus, and come back when I know the package is ready for me to liberate it. Right now I’m pretty pissed off at UPS for the way they’ve handled things, but at least they didn’t charge me any customs duties. Actually, I think they meant to, but in a moment of confusion, I took the package and ran off.

    So I finally got to get back on the road, and after an eternity riding south of Quito, finally left its orbit and made it out into the country. And into the rain. My legs began to complain, I got soaking wet, and said “Nuts to this, I’m calling it a day!”. So I stopped at the junction town of Aloág and took shelter. The rain continued to pour through the night, and the clouds were there thick as ever the next morning. Normally this wouldn’t bother me overly much, but they completely obscured my view of several giant snow covered volcanoes. Their threat of rain on this day never produced more than a drizzle, and so I stopped short again in the city of Latacunga, hoping for a view of the volcanoes the next day.

    No such luck. Thick clouds again hung low in the sky and obscured my view of Chimborazo (a 20,700 ft peak) completely. The only way I could tell I was near it were the signs pointing in its presumed direction, and the absolutely breathless altitude I had to climb to (12,000 ft) to get to the city of Riobamba.

    Again I hoped for a view of Chimborazo the next morning, and again clouds completely covered the sky. My climbing for that day topped out somewhere past the indigenous town of Cajabamba (“bamba” is qichwa for valley, so whenever I see a town on the map with “bamba” in its name, I know I’m in for more climbing). And although I was denied a view of every major peak in Ecuador except Cayambe, I did get to see something I wasn’t really expecting to see at all —quinoa being cultivated in the fields. I’m a pretty big nut for gardening when I have access to land, so seeing quinoa triggered an euphoric geek response that made the rest of the day fly by.

    Well, relatively. First I had to descend through some dense fog into the town of Alausí. But with that accomplished I took a contemplative stroll around the town, reflecting on quinoa and other indigenous crops in the new world. I also reflected on the fact that I haven’t seen a llama in the fields yet, and am getting pretty impatient to see one.

    From Alausí the road turned for the worse, and I was sliding over loose rocks uphill to the town of Cunchi where the good pavement finally returned. At a restaurant just outside town, I met a guy named Nacho who used to live in New Jersey. He was originally from Ecuador, but his parents live in New Jersey now. We talked about some of the differences between Ecuador and the US, and he was grateful for the opportunity to speak English with someone (my Spanish is such that it’s usually just easier to speak in Spanish).

    The road from Chanchi climbed through the fog. As it continued to climb, the fog began to lift and rain began to fall. It started to fall harder and harder until on every slight descent the drops of rain felt sharp in my eyes. In these conditions I continued to climb and descend to the junction town of Zhud. Beyond there the rain doubled its force, and the fog returned. The road became the worst I’ve seen in a long time (I find bad pavement to be worse than bad dirt, and this road was perhaps the best proof of that).

    Finally as darkness was coming on, I pulled into the town of Tambo, frozen cold and starving, and took a $4 room at the local residencias (“Residencia” is the magic word for dirt cheap accomodations in Ecuador). After stuffing my face with some bread and milk I found, I crawled into my sleeping back and passed out shivering. But for all that, my spirits were incredibly high that day. The day before I was overwhelmed by a sense of lonliness, the first which I’d experienced in several months. And so the swing in my mood by the next morning was unexpected and very welcome. I didn’t mind the dirt I had to ride on, I loved talking with Nacho, and the road to Zhud was downright pleasant to ride on. It was only after Zhud when altitude caused the trees to disappear from the land, oxygen from the air, and strength from my legs that I started to feel desperate and cold.

    On the next morning, I was greeted with a cold headwind and a climb back up to 12,000ft. Devoid of oxygen and full of agony, I slowly climbed over the pass. Finally at the top I was saved by a 3000ft descent which banished the cold wind and brought oxygen back to my legs and lungs. It did nothing to relieve the soreness in my legs, however. And so, I followed a rolling road the remaining 20 miles into Cuenca, and decided it was time to take a day off.

    After my day off in Cuenca, I orienteered my way out of town and onto the road leading south. The road led through more pastoral valleys with pine and eucalyptus climbing the hills. In one town, I saw a procession of faithful carrying a statue of the virgin Mary complete with marching music. Overall, the road was nearly flat and the weather was pleasant and the miles rolled under my tires.

    I eventually came to an intersection which led on the one hand over another 12,000ft pass from my current altitude of around 8500ft and up and down to Loja, and on the other hand to a 8500ft descent to the coast. On a whim, I decided to burn 8500ft of hard earned elevation and see what the Ecuadorian coast had to offer.

    Well, I never quite saw the coast, but here’s how the climate changed as I descended: lush grass and cool air, to warmer air, to scrub land, to wind-swept badland, to scrub land, to tropical, to really humid and more densely tropical. The road didn’t descend the whole time; no road in Latin America can be that kind. And the wind-swept part of the road was more wind-blasted-in-my-face-so-I-had-to-pedal-to-descend-a-five-degree-slope. Also the road sucked and I had to be ever vigilant for potholes.

    But I made it down to the dirty town of Pasaje after 95 miles of riding, found a cheap hotel and a cheap chinese restaurant and set to work relaxing for the night. While in my room, deciding what I was going to do for the day, I realized that I was really close to the Peruvian border. Before taking the route to the coast, I was still about four days off, but suddenly, I found myself with 45 miles of Peru. So I set out to find the exchange rate, read up on the border crossing and generally inform myself as to the situation I would soon encounter.

    Well, the news wasn’t good. My guidebook repeatedly said that this crossing was the most dangerous of all the crossings into Peru from Ecuador, and that I would surely be a victim of some foul crime. But what the guidebook didn’t account for was that I was stinky, uncaring, and most importantly: I had a bicycle.

    And so the next morning, I left Pasaje through banana plantations and drizzle. The drizzle stopped, the plantations stopped, and the tropical foliage became more scrub-like as I went south until at the border town it was more savanna than forest.

    I passed immigrations, and by the time I stopped to ask someone where the office was, I was informed it was two and a half miles back the way I came. Dang it! I turned around, trudged the two and a half miles, got my exit stamp, turned around again and trudged the two and a half miles by to where I had to turn around the first time. From there it was another half mile to the border bridge, through street stalls and a mass of human traffic and into Peru.

  • Colombia
    2008-05-15

    The Darien Gap presented me with a difficulty. Here was a stretch of land without any road, but populated with poisonous varieties of any animal you can imagine, infested with all manner of disease and also with people who would be just as likely to shoot me as not. And so starting in Honduras, the contemplation of this physical barrier caused it to burrow into my mind, seperating my trip into everything before the Darien Gap and everything after.

    And the problem of how to cross it was not easily solved. I could hire a tour and march through the Darien, I could take a boat from near Colón to Cartagena, or I could take a flight. Now as you may have guessed already, I am not the adventurous sort, so crossing the Darien by land was out. That left the boat and the plane. At first I was all gung-ho to take the boat, but as I looked into it, the problem of actually getting a boat with a captain who wouldn’t abandon us in the middle of nowhere nor be raging drunk the entire time was greater than I had imagined. And all the reputable boats would be leaving nearly two weeks after my original arrival in Panama City. Since that city shares the same insta-sweating quality as Puntarenas, I was somewhat eager to make onward progress.

    So I took a flight to Cartagena. This had the twin advantages of being faster and cheaper than a boat, and the bonus advantage of heart-stoppingly sexy stewardesses. Being a modern man I normally use the word “flight attendant” when talking about that profession, but these women were so classy in a 1960s sort of way that “stewardess” was clearly what they were. They were also, to my wonderous delight, typical of nearly every Colombian woman I would see. But I digress…

    With me on the flight were a Swiss, a German, and an Australian. We formed a confederacy and took a taxi from the airport to the old town, realizing when we arrived after only a distance while that we’d paid far too much for the ride, so it goes. I joined in on the taxi, because I wasn’t confident that my bicycle would survive the turbulent flight intact, and I had no desire to find that out in the airport (it did, thank god).

    And how to describe Cartagena? The old town is surrounded by a thick and fortified wall, built after the town was razed several times by English pirates (Sir Francis Drake among them), and within this wall is a collection of well-preserved 16th and 17th century Spanish buildings. Outside the wall on three sides is the sea and the forth is a hill with an impressive fort. So in summary, Cartagena is gorgeous. The city is also not insufferably hot, thanks to a continual breeze coming off the sea, and I am glad to have had it as my introduction to Colombia.

    It felt somewhat weird to be on the road again after leaving Cartagena. Everything seemed similar to every other latin country I’d been in, but of course, this is the country with armed revolutionaries in the hills and para-military drug-smuggling kidnapping-for-ransom bad-asses everywhere else. But still the road felt as safe as anywhere, and considerably safer than in some countries I’ve already passed through. I guess either my perception of reality and reality itself were at odds (I certainly won’t discount the possibility at this stage in the journey), or the strong military and police presence everywhere made it feel quite safe.

    In Curumani, I finally picked up a pair of sunglasses. I was tired of feeling like my eyes were being rubbed with sandpaper after a long day of riding, and of riding with one eye closed while I tried to fish out whatever insect decided to kamakazi into my eye most recently. So, I finally have sunglasses again after my last pair broke outside of Guanajuato. ¡Qué bueno! Now if I can only get some pants to replace the ones whose seat was stained black, I’ll won’t feel embarrassed to walk around in public…

    People have started to ask me if I’m from Argentina. I guess here, it’s more likely that a white person on a touring bicycle is from Argentina than from the US, so that’s the logical conclusion. During those times where I take the effort to explain that I’m from the US, they don’t believe me. They don’t speak Spanish in the US, I’m told. I usually respond to this with the equivalent of “well, there it is…”

    Shortly after passing through the town of San Alberto, I began a series of climbs that put my legs through the paces. I would climb and climb, perhaps for a thousand feet, and then descend down nearly all that distance. This repeated itself five times before Bucaramanga, and ending with a final long ascent up to the city itself.

    But before arriving in Bucaramanga, while stopped at the town of Rio Negro to do some exploring, I met two Bucaramangans (Mauricio and Sergio) who were in town to wash Mauricio’s scooter in the river. We struck up a conversation and Mauricio invited me to stay at his place while I was in town. I was incredibly grateful for the invitation, and of course accepted. He gave me his card with the directions, and after we parted ways, it was two hours of hill climbing till I was there. ¡Múy excellente!

    When I arrived in Colombia, I helped the non-Spanish speaking Australian through immigration, but appartently she didn’t like my joke that his purpose in visiting the country was to find a Colombian wife: she gave both of us only 15 days on our visa. So as I spent time in Cartagena and while riding through the country, the days ticked down until at my arrival in Bucaramanga I had only three days left. I needed an extension.

    In the spirit of all countries whose bureaucracies (Germany I’m looking especially at you) I’ve had to deal with, the day I would have taken care of this business was a national holiday and nothing was open. So Mauricio proposed to show me Bucaramanga and the neighboring towns on his scooter. I accepted. We went to a zoo where I saw the largest pigeons I’ve ever seen in my life (they were bigger than chickens), I tried tons of different types of local sweets, saw the colonial town of Giron, and kicked it with his friend Marta. This was the first time I’d ever ridden on a scooter larger than a minibike, and am very pleased with how few times I fell off the back of it (not once!).

    Finally leaving Bucaramanga, I had a breath-taking descent down into a canyon, and a 20 mile climb back out. While descending, I nearly ran front-on into a truck which decided to pass another slower-moving truck and take up my entire lane. But quick thinking and ditching off into the gutter saved me from injury. I only wish I had had a hand free to flip him off…

    The climb itself actually wasn’t horrible, but it just never ended. The energy I had in me before the climb lasted the first 3000ft of climbing, but eventually I found myself weakening, and knew that food was the answer. Unfortunately, I’d failed to pack any while in Bucaramanga, and none was in evidence for the next 5 miles of climbing. When I finally got to it, I downed a few bananas, ate most of a block of hardened sugar locally called “panela”, and continued on my way.

    The clouds closed in as I was riding through coffee fields, and for the first time since the highlands of Guatemala, I found myself needing a sweater. It was so wonderful to feel the nip of cold again, rather than the dissolution of the heat, and I welcomed it smiling (well, at least not grimacing). Still the climb continued above the clouds, until the pass was finally gained near a chicken plantation 6000ft above the town of Pescadero, where I crossed the river and began to climb up, up, up, and up.

    At this point rolling hills and descents led me down over 3000ft from the my maxium altitude and into the colonial town of San Gil. While descending, the rain finally started to hit me with some force, and I made a mental note that this was the 8th day of riding out of 8 in Colombia where I had been rained upon. As it stands, Colombia is set to outpace Alaska, Canada and the Pacific Northwest for percentage of rainy days (100% vs. 60%).

    When I arrived in San Gil, I asked some people where the gringos stay in town, was directed there, and set in. I quickly decided that the soreness in my legs would necessitate a rest day, and even though I’d just had two, I didn’t feel guilty about it at all.

    During that rest day, I wandered around the sharply inclined streets of San Gil, and through its markets and clothing stores all the while hunting for food and pants. I managed to score the perfect pair of pants, and made a potato-spaghetti dish with a tomato based sauce for lunch. The potatoes I found were small and good, and of a variety which I had never encountered before (the Andes being the home of the potato, I expect this to happen with some delightful frequency). Seeing that the goals of any rest day are to stuff oneself with food and allow the muscles to recover their strength, I’d say this one was quite satisfactory.

    From San Gil to Santana one day, and from there to Chiquinquira the next. Both days saw lots of climbing, and as I climbed higher and higher into the thinning air, I felt the lack of oxygen in my legs. But never one to assume that the problem lies within until all other causes have been ruled out, I continually checked my tire pressure, ever-suspicious that my rear tire was slowly and intentionally going flat. Just to spite me. It wasn’t, I was weak, and at 7 m.p.h. I trudged up the hills all day long.

    And as I climbed back into the cold, the stupidity that had possessed my mind in the hot lands began to fade away. To fill the void came the tricks and techniques of cycling I’d learned way back in Alaska, but had forgotten or unlearned through the heat. And even though I rode slowly, I rode at peace. I rode consistently, stopping to photograph the beauty around me, and to feel the cold enter my lungs and caress my face.

    The rain continued, of course. But this time I could wear my rain jacket without fear of over-heating. And my torso kept warm while my legs warmed themselves through their effort. This difference in the manner of warming was pleasing and contributed to my serenity. And after that second day of riding from San Gil, when I arrived in Chiquinquira I was fully happy and had remembered everything of the joy of touring.

    While riding down the streets of Chiquinquira I glimpsed a street party. So I squeezed the brakes, bought some Arepa (similar to American corn bread in texture and taste, but flatter), and headed on over. I asked a lively group of people if I could join them, they said sure, and through the miracle of joviality and beer we became fast friends. I was invited to stay with them (one of the women joked that she had half a bed I could sleep on. Her sister doubted whether I would be able to sleep). The sisters showed me around the town, and to my surprise to the second most magnificent basilica in Colombia (I’m not sure which the first is suposed to be, but I believe that this one deserves its high ranking). And after a night spent in my sleeping bag on a sofa couch (foul temptresses…), I was refreshed and ready to press on.

    Everyone warned me about this major climb between there and Bogotá called Piedra Negra (Black Rock), and so I spent most of the ride apprehensive of the climb. And as I rode I got varying estimates for its grade and length. So I knew it was somewhere between 3 and 7km long, and anywhere up to 15% grade. But while riding along, I came across a group of amateur cyclists out for a day ride, and I joined them for about 20km. They told me concretely that the climb was 6km, and around 8 to 10%. When I finally got to the climb, it turned out they were right. The climb happened, and on the other side was a long descent into the altiplano containing Bogotá.

    This descent put me down to 2600m, or about 8500ft. Since Colombia is so close to the equator, the temperature doesn’t change with the seasons, but only with altitude. At this altitude, the average temperature is in the mid 60s to low 70s, and when there is a good covering of clouds, it feels like mid-November in northern California. In other words, my perfect temperature.

    I ended that day short of Bogotá, in the city of Zipaquira. In Zipaquira is a giant cathedral carved out inside a salt mine, and it is a marvel to behold. I don’t know whether it is the largest cathedral in the world, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it was.

    The next day saw my entrance into Bogotá, and the entrance was the easiest I’ve ever made. Bogotá is an extremely bicycle friendly city, with dedicated bike lanes everywhere, and closed streets on Sundays and holidays for what is called the ciclovia. I had the great fortune to arrive on a holiday when it was in effect, and rode with a thousand other cyclists right into the city center.

    One evening, I fixed a woman’s sleeping bag and was rewarded for my efforts with beer. On the way back from the bar (which played the music videos of all my favorite hits from the 60s to today), five punks with knives mugged me. One of them managed to get his hand into my pocket and take my wallet after I put up a struggle, and then outrun me as I chased after them yelling “policia”. Where are the police at 12:15 in the morning anyway?

    And I was extremely dissatisfied with the mugging. I never felt threatened by the kids who performed it. I could see in the way they brandished the knives that they were more afraid to use them than I was of them using them. And since I paid good money, didn’t I deserve —at the very least— to be scared?

    But no. And like an idiot, I had my debit card in my wallet (the credit card was safely locked up elsewhere). And moreover, the wallet wasn’t just some piece of crap I bought at Macy’s. My dear friend Keyla made it for me, and I loved it a lot. So instead of being scared, I was just dissatisfied and pissed off.

    But I did at least get a story out of it for a little while. But then the bastards took that from me too, as they continued their spree of muggings. My story was hardly interesting when every third person had been mugged as well. It got to the point where another traveller and I started joking about holding a competition as to see who could get mugged the most in a single evening.

    Eventually the fun had to end, though, and I left Bogota to continue on my way (I had a new debit card coming to me in Quito, and I wanted to actually be there to receive it). And leaving Bogota was a 8000ft plummet to cross a stupid river and then another 9,000ft climb to cross over a pass called “La Linea”.

    Near the summit, while taking a cookie break, it started to rain. And it was cold rain. I was pretty upset that it had to rain on my picnic, but I couldn’t dwell on it too long, because rain at 11,000ft is cold. Luckily, at the summit there was a small restaurant which served hot panela with cheese, and that helped to warm me up.

    The descent was freezing, then cold, then comfortable, then warm, then humid and hot. Such is a 6,000ft drop in the tropics. That put me in the city of Armenia, which I had no intention of actually visiting, so I rolled out some miles in scattered showers until encroaching darkness forced me to stop in some small town.

    Playing the “I’ve just been robbed and have no money card”, I got accomodations on the cheap, and plowed those savings into a large position on delicous potato empanadas. That and my usual bag of milk set me for the night, and some shrewd bread purchases provided the early breakfast.

    It was flat, fast riding into Cali where I took a day off to see what was on offer in Colombia’s third city. After that I somehow managed to ride the 90 miles up to Popayan, including a 30 minute break to wait out a hail storm. Arriving in the gloaming, I saw the beauty of the city, and wished I’d taken my break day there instead of in Cali. That night, I saw Transformers on dvd. I don’t remember my childhood games with transformers to match what I saw in the movie. But that was 20 years ago, and maybe my memory fails me…

    Leaving Popayan promised to be a 5000 ft drop into some hot valley, but instead I managed to climb and descend several thousand feet throughout the day. What made it maddening, however, was when a hybrid motorcycle-ice cream cart chased me out of town and followed me for half an hour playing a demented music box medely of Fur Elise and The Entertainer. I started to entertain very violent thoughts. That guy finally got the idea that I wasn’t about to buy his ice cream, and just as the horror of that jingle had nearly faded completely, some other ice cream jockey decided to try his luck. He gave up when I pulled over, covered my ears and started shouting. I ended the day in El Bordo and watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in Spanish on television. It was an early night.

    The next day it was hot, god-awful hot. At one point, while stopped to take a break, it started to rain. But the rain evaporated before it could wet the road. I’d never seen that before. And the sight of it encouraged me to get back on the bike and climb (the temperature drops with altitude).

    And just when I thought that the day would just be stupid boring climbing the whole day, I cleared a saddle point, and holy moses, what a canyon opened up before my eyes. And fields climbed the hills in every direction, provinding a patchwork quilt over the land.

    Owing to the first front tire flat I’d had since the great storm in northern British Columbia, I had to stop short of my target for the day. I was happy I did. I found a military unit guarding a bridge and generally patroling the area for signs of FARC. I asked them if I could camp with them, and they said yes. The people whose land the soldiers were camped on offered me dinner, and inside their cabin they had a cuyeria. A cuyeria is where you raise cuy for eating. I’ll leave it to you to find out what cuy is.

    The next day I climbed and climbed to Pasto, and past Pasto to some truck stop town. It was a day of 40 miles of climbing, and my legs felt dead afterward. So I drank double milk rations. The next morning I finally made it to Ipiales with 16,000 pesos to my name (around $9US), traded it for $8US (thieving money changers), and crossed into Ecuador.

    I survived Colombia, and highly recommend that you give it a try as well.

  • Panama
    2008-05-10

    I walked across the single lane wood-paved bridge from Costa Rica and into Panama. There I had an unusually hard time trying to convert my colones into dollars. In fact, business in the black market was so slow that I had to ask around for the man called “El Chino” for over twenty minutes before I again laid eyes on George Washington’s sexy bust.

    My first introduction to Panamá was cooler, but still amazingly humid temperatures and broad flat banana plantations. I thought to myself that this country would be a cakewalk after all the hills I’d already climbed. After all, people managed to cut a canal through it, so how high and how steep could the mountains really be?

    Of course, I was quickly disabused of this fantasy after confronting a series of sharp climbs and descents between Changuinola and Almirante. My map depicted the terrain in the area as all being under 2000 ft, but I’d guess that I made it up to 1900 ft and back down again on more than one occasion. But eventually the road plummeted into Almirante, I found a boat service through the help of a very industrious 11 year old, and jetted on over to Bocas.

    My stay there was made cheap by an indoor campground, and pleasant through the surprise company of my (non) cycling buddy Jeff and a Dutch man on his second trip around the world. With access to a full kitchen I finally got to do some cooking again, and that brought me a lot of joy. I finally scored some snorkeling equipment as well, and floated around staring at fish for several hours. It was quite good.

    And after the road began to call me strongly again, I took a boat back to the mainland to continue on my way. Getting off the boat, another 11 year old offered to show me the way to anywhere I needed to go. I was already on my bicycle heading for the main road, and told him that I was headed for Colombia. He told me that he’d show me the way there. I had trouble believing him, and despite his assurances that he’d show me the way to Colombia, I rode off.

    The road went sharply up and down again all the way to Chiriqui Grande, where I stopped for the night, and then sharply up and up the next day for around 25 miles to the continential divide. And I had thought I’d finally left the 15% climbs behind me in Guatemala… As I climbed higher, the air cooled off and I was treated to waterfalls decorating the hills. The countryside was extremely lush and forested, and was rather pleasant despite the leg-destroying grades.

    After an infinitude of up, I made it to a pass so windy that I had to get off my bike and walk it, caught my first glimpse of the Pacific since Puntarenas, and once I’d walked out of the wind I began a very long invigorating descent back into the lowland heat. That achieved, I found myself in the middle of nowhere. With nothing to do other than ride I pointed my bike toward Panama City and spun down the road until dusk. I found a spot under a bridge, and smelling like a troll, I made it my home for the night.

    My original intent when I went beneath the bridge was to pump some water for drinking, but it was too polluted by agricultural runoff to drink even after going through the filter. So for the second time in my trip I went to bed thirsty (the first being the night before I arrived in Guanajuato, Mexico), and filthy (I only realized after dark that I could have still swam in the water).

    The next day I stared at my map, saw that next populated center of any importance lay 100 miles further up the road. I also realized that I would force myself to ride that distance. So I cursed myself for putting me through such an arduous day yet again, and set out. Tormented by the heat and endless rolling hills, I eventually dispaired ever making it there before dark. At one point, I took off my socks, rolled up my pants and lay down at the side of the road, my mind spread thin by the heat and effort, and uncaring because of my sheer exhaustion. But as I cooled off and my brain left its heat-induced delirium, I regained hope and determination, and pushed that much harder on the pedals. I arrived in Santiago at dusk.

    But not content to let one day of punishing riding stand alone, I did the same thing the second day. The rolling terrain was replaced by a maddening headwind which dogged me for 30 miles. But after those miles were up, the road suddenly turned with the wind, and for the first time that day my speed went faster than 15 mph, and I sat up in my saddle and began to relax.

    The wind, as it turned out, was driving a storm down the road as well. I caught up with the stormfront, got well drenched, rode out the front and lost my tailwind. Each time I got to a town I thought I might go a little further, and in that way I went 95 miles down the road before a flat tire stopped me front going any further. I took a hotel room which fronted the highway, and was backed by a cock-fighting establishment. It was a noisy evening.

    But I was also only 50 miles from Panama City. I took my time riding down the road, realizing I had all day to cover half the distance I made over each of the previous two days, and before I was mentally ready for it, I was within sight of the Bridge of the Americas.

    Now the Panamanian government is nobody’s fool, and they’ve recognized the severe threat that filthy, tired bicycle tourists pose to their national monument. And for that reason (so I was told), I had to hitch across the bridge. This was made easy since the police officer himself flagged down the pickup which carried me across. Seeing as I was already halfway up the bridge before I got pulled over I wasn’t overly happy for the ride.

    I later met some bicycle tourists coming down from Mexico City who were allowed to ride across a day earlier, so it seems that the officer recognized the unique threat I alone posed to the bridge. Those same tourists grabbed the last two spots on a boat leaving for Colombia the next day. I thought that karmickly this was somewhat unfair, but was too tired from the past several days of hard riding to get too upset about it.

    So I set in for a long period of no riding and lots of eating. The manager of the hostel asked me if I’d been punched in the face since the lines under my eyes were so dark and strong, and I took this to mean that my fast-living was catching up with me. There was only one cure that I knew of for this: a giant block of cheese and enough beer to cut through all the fat. I acquired both, took a moment to reflect that I’d just ridden the ridable length of North America, and set to work.

  • Cosa Rica
    2008-04-15

    After a very windy Day riding along Lago de Nicaragua, Nicaraguan customs took one last parting shot at me by levying a two dollar exit fee. I gladly paid, since it meant that I could finally enter Costa Rica, a land whose tap water is acclaimed far and wide to be drinkable, and whose many national parks mean that I can finally camp with ease once more.

    After crossing the border, I got my passport stamped (twice: the first time I got it stamped I couldn’t actually find the stamp in my passport, so I went back to get it stamped again) without having to pay an entrance fee. I finally got to get rid of all the papers crammed into my passport which I acquired from Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. I never understood why I had to carry those papers, and any thorough examination of them would reveal several inconsistancies: in Guatemala, my profession was organ trafficker, in Honduras it was sword swallower, and in Nicaragua it was trapezee artist. And english-reading police officer would have been concerned, but none of them ever were. Either Costa Rica didn’t ask for me to fill out my profession, or I have some unfinished paper work to attend to. I had planned to be a monkey tamer.

    At any rate, the first 10 miles into the country were lined with trees and tropical birds. The locals were friendly and had all of their teeth, and the roads were excellent despite their reputation as being the worst in Central America. After talking with an expat I met in La Cruz, I discovered that recent foreign investment had brought with it a lot of money for transportation infrastructure improvements. In fact, while I was sitting in his house eating breakfast, a maintenance truck was preparing the road in front of his house to be paved.

    My second full day in Costa Rica was a day of rest. When I woke up in the morning the wind was blowing quite strongly, and I’ve finally developed enough sense after nearly 10,000 miles of riding to just stay put when the wind was up.

    But when the wind was still up the next day, I figured that it was just a feature of the landscape, and I grit my teeth and set out. It came at me as a crosswind until Liberia when I finally turned toward west and was able to sail at 20 mph without pedaling. I found that to be very excellent.

    The next day I finally arrived at Playa Tamarindo and settled in with some cracked-out Costa Ricans at the local campground. I walked the beach, did some swimming to beat the heat, and enjoyed the view from the shade. But Playa Tamarindo was too developed for my tastes, and seeking solitude, I set out south along the costal road.

    Every few miles I would gain a view of the ocean as the road wound its way down the peninsula, and after a long and bumpy day I arrived at Playa Ostional and set up camp. The black sand beach I was nearly on is a protected sea turtle egg-laying zone, and the evidence of a recent hatching was scattered all over the beach in the form of empty egg shells and sea turtle prints. I hope the little fellas had as good a time swimming in that water as I did.

    The next day was more bone-jarring, colon-rupturing riding down to Playa Sámara. I forded several rivers spotted several birds and monkeys (the toucan remains elusive). Just outside of Playa Sámara I met three local cyclists at a local watermelon patch, and devoured what they offered me. It was delicious and rich and the perfect thing to combat the heat.

    In Playa Sámara I cooked, swam, napped in a hammock, and swam some more. It was an edenic time for me, but after a day of doing absolutely nothing I headed the call of the road and pressed on. While stopping to devour some carrot-orange juice (delicious), I made the critical error of sitting on some fiberglass. That ruined one of my three pair of underpants, and I still itch a bit as I write this.

    In the city of Nicoya, my quest to find a spare innertube continued to go unfulfilled, but I spent a relaxing hour in the shade of large tropical trees in the central park. And then I continued to punish my butt by jostling over more stones and washboard towards Playa Naranjo.

    To be fair, I only had two 6 mile stretches of dirt from Nicoya to Playa Naranjo, and aside from the choking dust which got kicked up by every passing vehicle, it was a pleasant ride. I saw more monkeys, some interesting trees, and finally the northern coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. Arriving at Playa Naranjo, I settled in to wait for the ferry. While I was waiting, three other cyclists on a Guatemala to Costa Rica tour pulled up and over the next couple of days we bonded over beer and thrill-seeking sports.

    Jim helped me out incredibly by donating his water bottle cage plus liter bottle to me, his mint condition tire, and a spare tube. That was a huge help to me, since the lack of all three of those things was beginning to worry me considerably.

    Jim, Joel, Kurt and myself spent the next two days recovering from the beating that the Nicoya Peninsula delivered us, as well heading up to Monteverde to zoom over the cloud forest canopy on a zip line tour. That was a lot of fun.

    But as they had a few days left on their tour down the coast, and I had to head up to San Jose to find parts for my bike, we parted ways. And up I went out of the infernal heat and humidity, through the clouds, and back down into the central valley of Costa Rica.

    And I spent a couple of days in Alajuela unintentionally. I went there in the first place because I wasn’t allowed to ride on the highway directly to San Jose, and so I detoured through Alajuela. But while there I met a man of mixed britannic desent with whom I tried to catch a bus to Volcán Poás. My luck with buses to volcanoes continued, of course, and after waiting for a full hour in the spot we were assured several times was the correct one, we gave up.

    While we were waiting, some daylight hookers took an interest in steve and myself. And even after trying to convince them for several minutes that we just were waiting for the bus, they wouldn’t leave us alone. So it finally came out that they were hungry, and Steve and I went to a bakery and got them some pasteries. After that they stopped trying to have sex with us for money, and were very friendly besides.

    Steve and I took the food we bought for ourselves to the local parque central, and with the sounds of parrots squawking above of and locals chattering around us, we had a good conversation about the types of things one talks about while sitting on a park bench.

    Later Steve left to catch his plane back to Honduras, and I stuck up a conversation with a 78 year old man of Czech desent (like myself) from Florida, who had met my great-aunt some forty years ago. I guess the Bohemian world is smaller than I had realized…

    The following morning, it was finally time to knock off the last 15 miles to San José, and find a bike shop which could do the service my bike needed and I was unequiped to perform, as well as score some new innertubes. I was successful in the former, and thought I was successful in the latter. But later, when checking the tubes our more closely, I realized that they had the wrong type of valve, and I would be stuck in San José at least one more day to return them and see if I could get the correct ones.

    To my great fortune and surprise, my delay in San Jose allowed my friend Jeff to meet up with me, and we spent the day trading stories from the road and eating. Jeff has been riding down from Los Angeles since late November, and I had always been too far up the road to make catching up possible for him. Alas, we wouldn’t be riding together from there, since he made it to San Jose via bus to meet his sister and travel with her by that magical conveyance for the following several weeks.

    My departure from San Jose led me up and then down, down, down through a cloud forest into the Carribean lowlands, and finally down into Panama. While stoping to enjoy some food on the side of the road, I saw leaf cutter ants hauling their load, tropical birds squawking, and giant blue butterflies fluttering by. What a wonderful place Costa Rica is, and even if my butt didn’t enjoy it thoroughly, the part of me that remembers did indeed.

  • Nicaragua
    2008-04-10

    I don’t think I gave Nicaragua a fair shake. Perhaps the shock of being hit in Honduras left me with the desire to cover as much ground as I could to distance myself physically and therefore mentally from the scene. But I can’t say.

    I spent a total of four nights in the country. I had my first 100 mile day in a very long time entering the country, and the next two rides which would take me to Costa Rica both covered at least 85 miles. But my experiences with the people there were wholly positive. While leaving Granada I met a boy on a racing bike who complemented me on mine. I met locals riding their bikes to work who would shout encouragement as I trudged up the few hills I encountered, and most of the faces I remember were smiling (without all of their teeth).

    So I guess I was unfair not to explore it more. Lago de Nicaragua was beautiful, although the sand flies caused me great consternation. Volcanoes rose in pairs in the distance, or fumed up close.

    In Leon, I met my first bicycle tourist in a long while and we swapped stories about the road behind and our ideas about how we might tackle the road ahead. At night I ate behind a gorgeous cathedral with a professional chef, and in the day I sweat all the water out of my body walking around. And in the cool of early morning after only a day, I left for Granada.

    And in Granada I found the same thing. I met a motorcyclist intending on riding south. We discussed strategies for crossing the Darien Gap, I harrassed a fat and lazy cat while he restrained me. And when my bank card decided to go on strike, we worked out how I could get more money. Granada’s colonial elegance impressed me greatly, and the breeze off the lake refreshed me in equal measure. But in the cool of early morning after only a day, I left for the border.

    I rode to the ferry for Ometepe, considered taking it for a while as sand flies covered my things and attempted to cover me. And I pressed on. The rode was flat and quick, and the constant breeze blowing across me from the lake kept the worst of the heat from me. Before I was mentally prepared for it, I was at the border, then crossing it, and then in Costa Rica.

    So I can’t say what Nicaragua was really like. I never had enough time there to get a proper feel for the culture. The talk I heard about the government, I had expected to hear, and for that I didn’t trust it at all. I have only ever been surprised by each country being totally different from my conception, and so I couldn’t believe that Nicaragua should match it.

  • Honduras
    2008-04-06

    It is very hard for me to characterize Honduras. I’ve met so many wonderful people here who’ve treated me very well, but I’ve experienced and seen the most terrifying things of my entire trip here as well. Maybe I am still too near to everything to see Honduras clearly, but I don’t think that time will be able to bring together my two very opposite impressions into one unified whole.

    On the good side: Whenever I tell people of my journey, they seem to go out of their way to aid me in whatever way they can. I’ve experienced this before, but never to the extent where it seems like a national trait. And when I’ve experienced problems, people have given me whatever they could to comfort and help me.

    And on the bad side: While riding south of San Pedro Sula, I came across a man lying dead in the road, having been struck by a vehicle while riding his bicycle along the shoulder of the road. The vehicle was nowhere in evidence. After seeing that I felt a chill sweep over my body, the sky seemed to dim and I lost strength in my legs. I still continued on, of course, because what else could I do? But now I had an unseeing and unmoving face to put to all the stories people have told me about the roads being dangerous. And I felt lucky.

    I eventually ended the day at a place called Honduyate Marina on Lago de Yojoa. I was able to camp for free (all are), and the proprietor and other guests showed me wonderful hospitality. The next day, recognizing both the need for rest and the beauty of the location, I decided to take the day off. I spent it relaxing in a hammock, swimming in the lake, and variously enjoying the simple pleasures to be had.

    Taking off early the next day to beat the tropical heat, the ride started as usual. And then, for no reason I could discern, a car swerved out of the lane and on to the shoulder to sideswipe me. Thank god I was ok, but if it had come just a half a foot further into the shoulder first I would surely be dead. As it was, my bags on the left side of my bicycle were torn off by the car, and I didn’t even fall over.

    But stopping to go back and retrieve my bags, I found my legs shaking and my mind unable to stay with any single thought. Eventually I continued on, taking my experience as a sort of cosmic lesson that the dead man was a display of the possibility of death, and my personal encounter was a very strong suggestion that I too might suffer his fate.

    I knew the risks before starting my trip, and these experiences have done nothing to cause me to doubt the rightness of my choice to undertake it, nor to doubt whether or not I should continue.

    Later on down the road, I met a group of US army men near their base in Comayagua. The base is a hold-over from the political unrest of the 1980s, and the particular soldiers I met were there to build schools and add infrastructure. And continuing the kindness I first experienced from soldiers when I was camped at the arctic circle, they gave me a couple MREs (meals, ready to eat) to carry on my way. I ate both of them for dinner that night and found them delicious. I later remarked to them that I should join the army because my chances of death were lower and the food was better. We all laughed and wondered if that were true.

    I am now in Choluteca preparing to cross the border into Nicaragua (finding out the lempira-cordoba exchange rate, stocking up on food and water, obsessively consulting my maps, etc.).

  • Guatemala
    2008-03-13

    Having successfully accomplished my river based infiltration of Guatemalan soil, I set about reconnoitering the local currency and women, talking to the locals and trying generally to get the feel of the country which I just entered: I watched a soccer game, drank very affordable soda, and changed pesos at very competitve rates. I also managed to acquire the travel documents to allow me to be in Guatemala legally, got a hotel room whose quality matched the bargain-basement price I paid for it, and set my clothes out to dry from the refreshing, but ladening rain of a couple days prior.

    And for the riding. 60km across flat or nearly flat dirt road with drifting patches of ridability until abruptly pavement started 7km outside of Las Cruces. Going from dirt to pavement was a bit of a shock, because suddenly everything felt too still and quiet. But I was glad to be able to make several km/h faster with no additional effort. I ended my first day of riding by taking a car-ferry powered by an outboard motor across a river and into the town of Sayaxché. The room I got there rivaled the previous room in terms of both quality and price.

    Following the suggestion of a webpage my companion came across, we decided to head that day to Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. I took it as a good omen that it shared so much of its name with San Cristobal de las Casas, and so didn’t expect the backwater pit that it was. It didn’t help that the city was suffering a power outage the day I arrived, nor that I had to ride over 25km of bone compressing rock road to get there.

    The next day was worse, however. Climbing over grades that were designed to test the souls of men, with a dirt surface that seemed to be taken from a river bottom and fixed into the earth at wholly inappropriate angles, it took me eight hours to travel 60km. When I finally saw pavement again at the junction to Languín, I shed a few tears of joy.

    All along that road, I traveled through native villages and farms. When I would pass a rural school, one or more children would shout out “Gringo! Gringo! Gringo!”, attracting their friends and siblings who would join in the cry. I found it either endearing or infuriating depending on the grade I was struggling up and the age of the child doing the shouting. Several times groups of children would run along my bike shouting what I like to believe were words of encouragement in their local language as I crawled up some stretch of the road. I did enjoy that…

    When I reached the junction where the pavement began, it was just before 4pm. I quickly ate as much as I could, and resolved that if I rode as hard as I was able, I would be able to ride the final 50km into Coban before it became too dark and dangerous to ride. Damn, but I did my best to make it. I made it about 4 miles from town before I decided to throw in the towel and stop at a hotel I came across.

    And lucky that I did. The proprietor of the hotel used to race bicycles in Guatemala in the late 70s, lived in Seattle, and had a sister in Fremont, California. Over this common bond we discussed bicycling, bicycling in Guatemala, the things I should see and do while I was here, and the places I should go. I finally had an idea of how I wanted to spend my time in Guatemala, and was greatly relieved. Before entering the country I basically only knew that they exported bananas and coffee, had a large Mayan population, had a currency called the Quetzal and spoke Spanish (generally). But now I had an idea of what was what, and it felt pretty good.

    The next day, I sampled some delicious coffee, finally got a haircut (the last was four months ago), did my laundry, and even rode the remaining four miles to Coban. And it was good.

    While in Coban, I came across the opportunity to take a trek through the jungle and learn some ethnobotany. While the trek failed to teach me very much ethnobotany, I learned some words in Quiche, got to play with some wonderful Mayan children (who didn’t yell gringo every time they saw me), and see the rare quetzal, which is the national bird of Guatemala. I also got to eat the first corn tortillas that I found absolutely delicious, and final understand how a people could base their diet on them.

    The road out of Cobán refined my concept of what the worst possible road could be like. I found that my legs were not nearly as fit as I had imagined, as I struggled up 15% and greater grades. Finding the current ones lacking in potency, I invented new swear-words to call the Guatemalan road engineers who laid out the road they way they did. But after two and a half days of grueling riding which included my chain and other minor components of my bicycle breaking due shaking caused by the roughness of the road, I arrived at Lago de Atitlan.

    And it is amazing. Three volcanoes rising 5000 to 6000 feet out of the lake and water that is clear, cool and refreshing made it the perfect place to rest and recuperate while Semana Santa finished up and all the crazy drivers returned to their hamlets and villages. While at Lago de Atitlan, I stayed at a campground populated by Sardinian circus performers, ex-pat hippies, and a dog who recently became the proud mother of six puppies. With an open-air kitchen and very good communal space, I collaborated with other residents to cook up fantastic meals that were nearly able to fill me up. And it was good.

    The road out of Lago de Atitlan was as windy and steep as ever, but refreshed mentally and physically by four days rest by the lake, the riding to Antigua never seemed as challenging as before.

    While descending into Antigua, the road surface finally became smooth enough, and the curves unwound just enough that I could finally take advantage of the steepness of the terrain to go for a new trip speed record. I topped out at 50 mph, and it felt wonderful.

    While in Antigua I tried to go on a tour up to an active volcano, but the bus never showed up to take me. Later, I tried to go on a tour of a coffee plantation (a subject which I’ve become increasingly interested in while riding through Guatemala), but again the bus never showed up. I realized that I had bad luck with buses at that point and threw in the towel on arranging any more tours.

    Perhaps it’s for the best. I feel scared for the passengers of the buses that careen around the corners up and down cliffsides, knowing that it is only luck that keeps them on this side of the great beyond.

    I made good time from Antigua to Guatemala City, and after working my way through for an hour and a half, finally found myself on the other side. What greeted me, to my utmost delight, was a 13 mile downhill into Tierra Caliente. I finally managed to end that day just after dark in the abysmal pit of El Rancho.

    The next day I woke up very early to beat the heat of the day, and rode to Rio Hondo. There I fulfilled my promise to call Gustavo (the man I met in Carcha who invited me to stay at his house along the Rio Dulce). Everything was still go for me to stay there, which was a great relief.

    The next day I did about the same thing as the day before, but ended at Quiriguá, which is a small town next to the Mayan ruins of the same name. The ruins themselves couldn’t compare to what I’d already been priviledged to see here and in Mexico, but what made the site very interested were the giant stellae (pillars with carved images and hieroglyphics). After a suitable period of staring at the likenesses of Mayan kings from thirteen centuries past, I made my way back to town and called it quits for any further activity (the heat makes me angry and sleepy).

    Finally the day after, I arrived in Rio Dulce found a man named El Negro as I was instructed to do. Told him I knew Gustavo and needed him to help me get to Gustavo’s house, and then set about acquiring the various provisions I would need to stay there (food, food, food, and… more food).

    The launcha I took town the river insisted on a 25 Quetzal surcharge to carry my bicycle, and then during the trip itself probably caused another 100 Quetzales worth of damage to my bicycle (I have no idea how to value my labor at this point). The way it did it was this: It tied my bike to the interior of the launcha (good), then piled several very heavy traveler’s backpacks on top of my bike (no good). Then it zoomed down the river jumping over every wave. At each bounce the backpacks would come pounding down on my bike causing more damage and more internal crying on my part.

    But eventually we arrived, I set to work doing what repairs I could in a house that his half over the water (absolutely wonderful by the by), and then set about turning all the food I bought into poo. And after a fabulous time of relaxation, where I was about to use their canoe to paddle around the river, and their hammock to swing back and forth for uncountable hours, I hailed a passing launcha and headed to Lívingston. Lívingston is a town on the Carribbean coast of Guatemala, and when I arrived there I had to keep repeating to myself that I’d actually managed to travel from the Arctic ocean to the Carribean. I just wasn’t prepared for the opportunites for relaxation and tropical decadence.

    After a day in Livingston, I decided that I needed to either leave then or never, and so took the ferry over to Puerto Barrios. It had wonderful views of the sea, and I was able to watch a cruise ship sail out as I ate dinner. But other than that, I was glad to leave it as fast as possible.

    And so I did. And after 25 short miles through banana and palm plantations, I found myself at the Honduran border, crossing the border, and finally in Honduras. And that ends this section.

  • Chiapas
    2008-03-06

    I exited Oaxaca through the hot southern end of the Valles Centrales towards Tehuantepec. As I slowly lost altitude over the course of a couple of days, the heat began slowly to blow over my arms and face until no cool breeze remained, but only the sweat-inducing calor.

    In Tehuantepec, I met an Irish cyclist who was riding from Mexico City southward as far as his schedule would allow. We braved the strong winds of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and arrived after a couple of days in Arriaga, Chiapas. With our arrival, I said goodbye to the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs and hello to the Mundo Maya. Already in Arriaga, I started to see native dress and catch whispers of Tzetzal, a local Mayan language.

    The next day we set out for Tuxtla, but winds stronger than those that tried to keep my from entering Los Angeles fought us over every inch we tried to gain. While taking a break from being knocked down again and again while walking my bike up the hill and having to dodge branches and airborne rocks, I sat down on the side of the road and laid my bicycle (recently re-christened “The Waddling Tortise”) down next to me. To my utter disbelief, the wind mounted an even stronger offensive than before, and my bicycle started to slide down the road on its side. Aside from a tear which duct tape was able to repair, no real damage was done. But in that moment I realized that having to retreat down the hill to fetch my bike when it blew from my hands would result in little forward progress. I knew I was beat. So I hitched for the third time on my trip (into Los Angeles, in the dune buggy and now into Tuxtla).

    My time in Tuxtla was uneventful, and the next day I did the solid 40km climb up to San Cristobal de las Casas. Upon arriving in the cool of the afternoon amongst pine forests and hillls that put me in mind of Austria or Switzerland, I quickly decided that San Cristobal was my favorite city in Mexico. I could easily have spent several weeks there, and was sorely tempted to do so. I saw indigenous people in their traditional dress speaking their ancient tounges, and wanted to fully know that place. But Palenque called, and I knew it was time to go.

    Struck sick with the flu the day after I left Palenque and unable to eat anthing, I still managed to make it to Ocosingo, and then to Agua Azul the day after. There I jumped into the pools immediately to refreshen and remove the sweat that covered my body. I was too weak to swim, despite a sign warning me that it was dangerous not to, but I floated in a shallow pool for a while until I felt better.

    At Agua Azul I met a French Canadian couple who surprised me with a delicious dinner. Unfortunately, what I ate of it didn’t stay down and none of those tasty calories could do me any benefit. The next morning they gave me some dry crackers and a broth to drink. Both were wonderful to my deprived and recovering body, and were gladly consumed. Somehow, I forced myself the final 40 miles into Palenque, hooked up the with irish cyclist again, and went to bed after drinking several pitchers of juice and juice-like beverages.

    The following day I met the French Canadians again, and we set out to explore the ruins of Palenque together. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I was truly well-impressed by the ruins, having been put in the mood the night before by howling monkeys and dreams of ancient Mayans. I decided that the ruins were worth the three days of delirium and torture to ride there.

    After that my irish companion and I set out for the Guatemalan border through the rain and into the Lancandon jungle. The entire day felt great to me, finally having my strength back after being sick, and my muscles back after all the punishment in the hills from Guanajuato to there. It rained the entire day which kept me cool, kept the sun off my fried skin, and made me content and at peace. The next day, we made the final 20 miles to the border, boarded a boat, and motored across the river and into Guatemala.

  • Oaxaca
    2008-02-22

    I have arrived in the land of chocolate, mole and mezcal and it is glorious.

    I had to ride in heat for the first time since climbing up to Guadalajara, and I’d forgotten the age old strategy of taking a siesta in the noon-time heat. So I rode like a mad dog or an Englishman in the full sun up and down the endless hills and then mountains of southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca. And I camped in places that I would never have chosen if the heat hadn’t robbed me of my senses.

    The first night out of Cuernavaca, in a riverbed ten yards from the highway and 130km from my start of the day, I slept fitfully as wild dogs and other nighttime monsters probed my camp. The second night the dogs were exchanged for goats in the hill country north of Huajuapan, and I marveled as the shirt which I’d worn the past two days had become so encrusted with dried sweat and salt as to become stiff.

    And on the third day I stopped for lunch in a small town just north of the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca and had my first significant human interaction since Cuernavaca. As we talked about life in general and life in the hills specifically, I learned that their fathers or grandfathers all spoke Mixteca, but they themselves never learned. I mentioned I had been bitten by a spider a night or two previously, and showing a concern greater than I felt the situation merited, they found a pregnant woman to rub her saliva on my bites. Until this point, I’d had no significant interaction with the knowledge and lore that preceded Colombus. And as dubious as I was about the saliva cure, I figured I’d give it a fair chance.

    And I’m not sure whether it worked or not, since my bites were already healing before the application, but the next day my skin was only rough and not inflammed.

    And so at the end of that day, after being chased by turkies for the first time in my life, I finally descended into the Valles Centrales, and set up base camp in Nochixtlan. While wandering the streets of that town I came across a Mezcal shop, and figured it was time to see about some traditional inebriation. For the bargain-basement price of 15 pesos, I manged to walk away with a jug of rested mezcal of delicious quality. It would be my kissing buddy that night and the several that followed.

    Finally the next morning I set my wheels towards the city of Oaxaca and spun out 70km. I had finally arrived! Ever since falling in love with the Oaxacan restaurant near my apartment in Los Angeles, I had dreamed of this moment and it was finally here. In short order I ate mole negro (¡fantastico!), got some chocolate with cinnamon (¡muy rico!) and summited Monte Alban and explored the ruins there (¡qué impresionante!).

    I’m now busy stuffing my stomach full of as much food as I can before the two week push through the jungle and into the land of the Maya and San Cristobal de las Casas.

  • Cuernavaca
    2008-02-17

    I started back on the road a week ago. I had just come off of a month of sloth and sickness while taking Spanish lessons and I was unsure whether what level of fitness to expect, or whether I would be able to ride at all.

    But when I got on the bike and started to ride, it was as if I had ridden yesterday. My legs burnt, my lungs felt as if they might burst, and my heart tried to escape my body through my chest, however, the mechanics and habit of it all came back.

    That first day I rode 40 miles to Salamanca and called it quits. Along the way I sampled freshly pressed pineapple juice and generally enjoyed the rhythm of being on the bicycle again. I went to bed resolved to take it easy for the next few days as my body got back in shape.

    Of course, the last time I resolved to take it easy, I wound up riding 125 miles from Glennallen to Valdez, and this time was no exception. It was only a fraction of the distance, but in the late afternoon I found myself in Morelia after being compelled further by increasingly beautiful country, including some spectacular lakes and marshes.

    I arrived in Morelia hungry, filthly and exhausted, and took care of all three in that order. After evaluating my physical condition the next morning, I decided that I had over-extended myself the day before, and for once I would listen to my body and take a rest. I walked around town and pursued the various eating opportunities that Michoacán is famous for, marveled at the architecture and ducked into an internet café when it started to suddenly pour rain.

    The next day was sunny and I felt great, so it was time to head up and out of town. The first 30 miles of the day were spent climbing up ever higher into the highlands, and along the way I had to put on a sweater to ward off the increasing cold. I finally ended the day near Ciudad de Hidalgo at Campestre Fogata (Bonfire Campground). It was the second campground I’d encountered on the mainland, and I was grateful for not having to spend the time and energy to find some hidden spot in a cow pasture or abandoned building.

    The next day I climbed considerable more, and I think that when I crested the mountain at the border of Michoacán and México State I’d crossed 10,000ft for the first time on my trip. Luckily, the other side was a luxurious descent through a cool pine forest and I was able to bring my heart rate down into non-cardiac arrest levels. I ended that day at one of the most amazing secret campsites I’ve found on the trip: I was in a pine forest off the road surrounded my masonry of indeterminate age (possibly aztec ruins). The ground was soft and easy to drive stakes into, and the ruins provided convenient locations to set up my stove and cook.

    I woke up very cold, having had to put on various articles of clothing throughout the night and wrap my head in a shirt as it became colder and colder. This made me thoughtful for what the Salar de Uyumi will be like when I get there some months from now.

    I ate some granola, packed my things and battled trucks and homocidal drivers for the next 40km into Toluca, and called it quits. While in Toluca, I discovered a fruiteria which made a plate of fruit so large that I nearly thought I would be unable to eat it all. A recent binge on ice cream and pasteries called my ability even more into question… But in the end I triumphed and shuffled my way back to my flop hotel room, trying my best to limit the up and down motion in my step.

    The next morning I set out early on what I thought would be a very easy and short day. According to the internet, my route would cover 51 miles and descend from 9000 ft at Toluca to 4500 ft at Cuernavaca.

    Well, the internet is a lying bastard. Before I could descend down to 4500ft, I had to climb and descend repeatedly, with the final climb reaching 11,500 ft. All of this took 50 miles to accomplish. The final 10 miles into town were a rubber-burning, knucle-whitening, rim-heating plummet which I never hope to repeat. To add to it, the road was imperfectly paved, and in-between dodging traffic, I had to deal with loose gravel and potholes.

    But I made it, damn it. And while I waited for my nerves to relax and my rims to cool down I contemplated my final approach into town. I made it, eventually found a place to stay and repeated my experience at Morelia.

    Tomorrow I expect to finally reach the road to Oaxaca, and finally realize my months-long dream of arriving in that land fabulous food.

  • Mexico City
    2008-02-09

    My month and a half in Guanajuato has come and gone. My Spanish has improved tremendously, and my legs have weakened by an equal amount. I can’t imagine that I could have picked a better location to learn Spanish, and the people I met have been wonderful and kind.

    For my last week of classes, my mom came to join me, and the two of us had a blast learning together. She stayed with a family who cooked meals so huge that I could never finish everything put in front of me, and who cared for me when I was sick for the first real time on the trip.

    After the week we took a bus to Mexico City and met my dad, and the three of us toured around the city, spent two days at the Museum of Anthropology (and could have spent more, it is more incredible than the Deutsches Museum in Munich). We went to Teotihuacan, and climbed the third largest pyramid in the world. While dodging souvenir hawkers, we got a demonstration of how they got the yellow and red dyes used to paint the pyramids, and were forced into a demonstration of carving “artifacts” from obsidian and other semi-precious stones.

    After the week there, it was time to return to Guanajuato, pick up my bike (left there with friends), and continue on my way. Next stop, Oaxaca!

  • Guanajuato, Gto.
    2007-12-28

    I was all set to spend Christmas Eve alone, cooking the rest of my lentils with the remainder of an onion I’d used a couple days before. So when Melanie, the receptionist at the hostel where I was staying, invited me to join her family for Christmas Eve it was the best possible gift I could have gotten.

    A Melanie: Muchas gracías para todo. Esta noche fue muy especial para mi y me encanta tu familia.

    I eventually returned to the hostel having acquired a new family, and hopefully a life-long friend. But the next morning, being Christmas Day, I decided it was time to get back on the road.

    And so I continued on my way with creaking legs and an aching heart. It seems that everywhere I go I meet so many wonderful people, and each place I stay for a few days, I could stay all my life. The hardest part of traveling isn’t the riding nor the uncertainty of where I shall sleep or what I shall eat. It is the certainty that leaving will break my heart and will be an abandonment of home.

    My ride continued over steeply rolling hills and along depoplated streets. And when night began to fall and desperation for a place to sleep set in, I found my way to Valle de Guadalupe and into a hidden place to sleep. And I woke up the next morning cold, for the first time since the Elk Meadow in the redwoods, and I reveled in the feeling of stiff fingers and biting toes. It was so different from being covered in sweat and the feeling of having marinated in the product of 70 miles of effort.

    And so I made a similar effort the next day, and wound up camping behind an auto graveyard in the middle of farm country near Lagos de Morenos. But during that day, I somehow forgot to mind my water levels and I forgot to stock up on ready-to-eat food. And all I had was spaghetti and lentils but no water to cook them in. And so I went to bed hungry, and woke up hungry, and rode twelve more miles over the same steeply rolling terrain hungry and thristy.

    When I finally found a place to eat I consumed so much food that I had to sit for a while before I could continue riding. And while I was sitting, two people from Chihuahua came by and started to chat. One of the guys was a big fan of reptiles, and had just bought a rattle snake for 50 pesos. When he went to feed the snake a rat, the rat attacked and killed the snake. When he discovered what the rat had done, it had long since fled the scene. But then, that’s the way it always goes…

    The other guy was a guitar player, and had composed his own songs. He played a few of them for me, and they sounded really good. In fact, it was for his music that the two of them were traveling to Mexico City. Eventually they left, and my legs regained supremacy over my stomach, and I left as well.

    The road continued on into Leon. And through Leon was the most smog-filled, rubble strewn road I’d ridden in my memory. It was so bad that my thoughts turned to prayers that my tires would not blow out due to the rubble and send me into the truck traffic.

    But I cleared it eventually, and I continued on into Silao, and on to the road into the city of Guanajuato. It was at the juncture to this road that I experienced my second puncture in two days (I’d had one the previous day), and I sat and killed 20 minutes waiting for the patch to seal. And it did, and the road wound up and over one last hill, and I finally descended into Guanajuato with a few hours before dark.

    And what I city! Guanajuato is a UNSECO world heritage site, and it deserves the title every bit. I can’t think of any city in Europe that would compare to it in terms of the intracacy of the streets or the charming affect of the houses lining the canyons. The best I could think was that it was a combination of the labyrintine streets of Venice and the hill of Mont San Michael.

    And so I’ll stay here, as planned, for a month of Spanish lessons. I can’t think of a better place to hang out and acquire a major world language. Sometimes all the heartbreak, all the sweat and tears, all the hunger and filth manage to deliver me to a place like this.

    And it’s worth it.

  • Guadalajara, Jal.
    2007-12-18

    While waiting for the ferry to Mazatlán, I met two other cyclists on the road from Portland, Oregon. We decided to form a temporary gringo cyclist confederation, and would ride together from Mazatlán to outside of Tepic, where I headed into the mountains, and they headed back to the coast.

    In Mazatlán, we found a hotel for the bargain-basement price of 70 pesos a night, and decided that at that value, we’d stay an extra night. While Casey and Scott (my just-introduced friends) took care of their business around the town, I set about discovering the many and varied delights to be found. I had a variation of Horchata which —against all expectation— I found to be better than the original. And I found a market that had many different kinds of tropical fruit for sale, at prices that meant I could buy one of everything. I found the street food to be exquisite, and the architecture that lined those streets to match.

    While leaving Mazatlán, I used my shrewd negotiational skills to get a loaf of bread for two pesos more than the original asking price. I quickly resolved to learn my numbers better.

    Heading south, we noticed that the landscape became more and more tropical, and with the hills it envoked thoughts of southeast Asia. We also took several opportunities to explore local towns, and despite being baffled by the choice of using river rock for pavement, I was enchanted by the plaza principales that I would see, and amazed by the architectural detail on the cathedrals in the smallest of town.

    We took to taking a siesta in the middle of the day to beat the heat, and our status as curious-looking foreigners with fully loaded touring bikes gave us plenty of opportunity to practice our Spanish.

    We eventually discovered that we weren’t going to be yelled at for taking the toll road, and also that we wouldn’t have to pay to ride on it. The advantage of the toll road was that it was much better engineered, smoothly paved, and had a very wide shoulder. The free road, in contrast, had precipitous drops, reckless drivers, no shoulder, and a complete disregard to grading.

    We camped to first night out of Mazatlán in a mango orchard, that unfortunately had no mangoes, but plenty of mosquitoes. And the second night just off the road, failing to find a break in the barbed wire fence that bordered the toll road.

    After we parted ways, the toll road that I continued on merged with the free road, and inherited all of the free road’s characteristics. I had to climb and descend several times before finally reaching Tepic at dusk, and I took the first hotel I came across. The next morning, I played asteroids with the collectivos (privately run busses that seemed more intent on running me off the road than anything else) while riding out of town, but eventually the traffic died down, and I found myself in tropical highlands. As I rode through fields of sugarcane climbing up the sides of extinct volcanoes, I wondered how I could have never seen such a beautiful landscape before, and felt very lucky to be riding through it.

    I was riding on the free road through all of this, thinking that the “no bicycles” sign I saw prohibited me from riding the toll road. When I was pulled over to adjust my bike a bit, I federale stopped by to chat, and I learned that I could ride on the toll road, and it was in his opinion much safer. I also learned the word for road shoulder (acotamiento) during the course of that conversation. My Spanish improves a bit each day in that way.

    After endless climbing, pine trees started to replace the tropical vine covered foliage, and corn replaced sugarcane as the dominant crop. I eventually summited over a volcano, and had an endless downhill that had me curse at how much more work I’d now have to do to climb up to Guadalajara, but at the same time I exhilirated in how fast I was going. By the time I reached the bottom of that descent in the town of Jala, I noticed that the temperature had climbed several degrees from the summit. I was amazed that I had already climbed high enough and then descended far enough for the difference in altitude to affect the temperature.

    After one more climb, and similar descent, I found myself in Ixtlán del Río, and decided to call it quits on the day. I discovered a new type of licuado in the local Michoacana, and found it to be delicious. For dinner I bought a quart of yogurt with granola, and took the whole thing down. Then I made myself some sandwiches with my pineapple marmalade.

    The next morning I found myself cold for the first time in a very long while, and enjoyed the sensation incredibly. I prefer shivering so much to sweating, and I finally had a chance to exchange them.

    More climbing, a flat tire, four sandwiches, and becoming absolutely filthy in the exection of the day, and I arrived mysteriously at a baptist camp outside of Guadalajara. After explaining my trip to Nacho —the groundskeeper— I was permitted to stay and make full use of the showers and bathrooms (and I did…). I made lentils for dinner, and Nacho and I talked for a while in a mixture of English and Spanish about various things over a cup of coffee. Absolutely beat by the day, I fell asleep around 8pm.

    The following morning, having run out of breakfast food in the sandwich binge the day before, Nacho invited me to share breakfast with him. We talked some more over a cup of atole (?), which is a drink made of corn flour, sugar, cinnamon, and hot water. It is absolutely delicious. After a while it was time to get going again, and I set out to cover the final 12 miles into Guadalajara.

    While crawling up a hill on my giant tortose of a bicycle, I was passed by a dozen lycra clad bicyclistas. It made it very obvious that my racing days did not at all coincide with my touring days, and my masculine desire to catch them went utterly unfulfilled. After a while I found myself in the greater Guadalajara metropolitan area (population 2.2 million!), and through dead reckoning I found myself riding past the Corona and Modelo brewery.

    After inhaling the sweet smell of mash for a while, I set for the old town, and reckoned my way to a youth hostel. Thanking god for my continued ability to find what I need without any clear idea about where to find it, I set my body to relax, and went at it full-tilt.


    I took a few days off in Guadalajara to soak in the sights of this very impressive city. The architecture reminds me more of baroque Italy than Mexico, and both the number and quality of cathedrals are very high.

    On one day I took a bus with someone I met at the hostel to the town of Tequila (it’s a real place!). It was a very educational and rewarding venture, and I’ve come to respect the drink tequila very much, and so far have had no reason to curse it.

  • Los Cabos
    2007-12-07

    After finishing my week of intensive language course, I was armed with the knowledge of the past tense, and a desire to finally finish riding the peninsula to Cabo San Lucas. So I headed out to Todos Santos.

    The 50 mile ride was made rather easy by generally flat terrain and the beginnings of a tailwind as I approached to Pacific Ocean. And so I arrived in Todos Santos in time for lunch, and with plenty of time to explore the city. But I quickly concluded that there wasn’t much for me there by way of accomodations, and decided to try my luck in one of the towns to the south. Also finding nothing in those towns, I resolved that this would be another night of sleeping in the cactus, and towards dark (and 30 miles down the road), I found a spot with the perfect combination of enough bare ground to pitch a tent, seclusion from the road, and stunning views of the Pacific. Also, in riding south from Todos Santos, I crossed the Tropic of Cancer, and was officially in the tropics.

    I set up camp, and as I was gazing out on the pacific, I saw a whale breach. And then another, and then I saw a tail slam down on the water. There must have been seven or eight whales, swimming right off shore from where I camped. I figured that wasn’t such a bad trade off for going to bed absolutely filthy, and having to squat near razor sharp cactus to take care of business.

    The next morning, I covered the short distance to Cabo San Lucas, including one never-ending hill just before town, to arrive in time for lunch. I decided to first go as close to Los Arcos as I could with my bike, and wound up walking (covered in dirt and sweat) through the lobby of a very expensive hotel to get there. I guess I have to thank the Mexican law that all beaches must be publickly accessible for that one, or perhaps it is the fact that being a gringo allows me to get away with nearly anything…

    Six years ago I had come to Cabo San Lucas, and my memories from then did not help me navigate the city this time at all. Everything had changed from how I remembered it, and wanting to preserve those memories, I decided to press on to San Jose del Cabo.

    That too had become very developed, and so I rode on into the cactus once again. I finally found a spot in a wash north of Santa Anita next to a very old wreck of a car and called it a day. After reading my Spanish books for a while, and using my binoculars to gaze at the abundant stars, I tucked myself into my sleeping bag and passed out.

    Very early the next morning, I was gently awakened by the sound of trucks engine breaking down the hills on either side of the wash, and after a breakfast of potato chips and Emperador cookies, I headed on up to Los Barriles, crossing the Tropic of Cancer once again.

    In Los Barriles, I pulled into the first campground I saw, set up camp, took a shower, and headed to the beach to drink some beer and eat some fruit. Both were done with great enthusiasm, and while I was restoring humanity and insobriety to my body and mind, I was treated to the sight of windsurfers and kite surfers playing across the water. It was an amazing thing to behold.

    Seeing how amiable Los Barriles was, I decided to spend an extra day. That day was spent in the glorious tradition of all break days: eating and napping and eyeing my bike with the intention of performing maintenance, but not the motivation.

    I eventually and reluctantly left Los Barriles to cover the remaining 65 miles back to La Paz. Unlike the gentle hills of the Pacific road, the Sea of Cortes road seemed to adopt the Alaskan strategy of laying road straight uphill, the grade be damned. So it was a lot of climbing and exhilirating descent that brought me through the picturesque San Bartolo and El Triunfo. In El Triunfo, I stopped for lunch, and had my first conversation entirely in Spanish. It wasn’t easy or fluent by any means, but by god I was speaking and understanding (mostly)!

    After an interminable period of grinding the gears, I found myself on the now-familiar streets of La Paz, and finished off my tour of Baja California. On Monday I take the ferry to Mazatlán, and from there it’s anyone’s guess…

  • La Paz, B.C.S.
    2007-11-22

    I left LA with my good buddies Mike and Sameer headed for Sameers’ parents’ house in Orange County. We had a delicious breakfast at a place in Santa Monica, and full of carbohydrates and fat, we headed down south.

    The route took us variously through the streets of LA and along the beach, and each time we crossed into a new city (it’s hard to tell exactly when that happens in LA), we’d think of a new team name. I can’t say that we were particularly inventive with them: ‘Team Generally Southward Trending’ and ‘Team Trio’ were typical. But we had fun.

    Sadly, in the friendly city of Lomita, Mike experienced a mechanical failure while trying to stop suddenly after we’d been cut off by a car, and pitched over his handle bars and landed on his elbow. We quickly cleared off the street, and waited to see if the pain in Mike’s arm would subside enough for him to ride. But when it became clear that it wouldn’t, we walked a few blocks to an emergency room. Sameer and I would later find out that the fall had broken his elbow.

    But since Sameer and I had no other choice, once we were sure that Mike was well situated, we took off for points south. We arrived in time to get cleaned up and enjoy a delicious dinner courtesy of Sameer’s mom, and then we headed over to his friend Matthew’s place to celebrate Matthew’s birthday.

    The next day, Matthew accompanied us for a few blocks as Sameer and I continued our way south. Along the way we visited Mission San Juan Capistrano, the “Jewel” of the missions, and took the tour. While adjusting my brakes outside the mission, one of them broke, and I had to fix that. But it was taken care of eventually, and we continued south. At the end of the day we stopped at Sameer’s cousin’s place in Vista to spend the night.

    The next day, we made the final push to downtown San Diego to meet my friend Sean at his apartment. There Sameer and I said our goodbyes, and he headed back to LA by train. Sean and I did some errands, and generally caught up on old times (he is a friend from College). The next day I wasn’t quite ready to leave, so I finished my business and tried to eat as much ice cream as I could. I figured that I didn’t know when I might eat ice cream next (it would be in Santa Rosalia), and I needed to store some in my stomach for the long treacherous road ahead.

    So there it was. Sean and I made for the border on our bicycles, and as I got closer and closer, I began to realize just how little Spanish I knew, how I didn’t have good maps of Tijuana or Ensenada, and that I knew nothing about the conditions of the road ahead, where I would sleep, where I would eat, how I would get water in the desert. I didn’t really know if the people would be friendly or mean, whether my things would be safe or stolen.

    And I smiled. Finally an adventure! After the grizzlies made a poor showing in Alaska, I had no reason to really worry about my safety at all. The decadent shoulders on the Canadian and American roads gave me no sense of danger or excitement, and with the exception of one branch falling in front of my bicycle in Oregon, no real hazard.

    So I crossed the border. After squaring away my visa situation, I started to ride on the toll road out of Tijuana. When I was told I couldn’t do that, I overlanded it for a while along the toll road, until it looked like I would be able to again, and in that way I eventually found myself in Rosarito. Along the way the sights and smells of Tijuana began to envelop my world. The extremely lax leash laws in Mexico meant that any dog which cared to was able to chase after my bike. There is something deeply engrained in the canine mind which recognizes as evil anyone on a bicycle. So it was with holy fury that every dog I saw would bark and chase after me. But if I got off my bike and walked next to it, they wouldn’t give me a second glance.

    I slept on a beach south of Rosarito that first night, and woke up to see dolphins swimming in the ocean. “So this is what Baja will be like”, I thought to myself. Not bad at all. I eventually rode into Ensenada to find that the Baja 1000 was going to take place the next week, and consequently, the roads were full of support vechiles and people driving south to watch the race. For those who don’t know, the Baja 1000 is an off-road race from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas involving buggies, motorcycles, monster trucks, and others. In short, an action packed high octane spectacle that I wouldn’t want to miss.

    Anyhow, I went to a restaurant in Ensenada, and when I explained my ride to the owner there, he asked me if I wanted to take his (17-20 year old) daughter along. He said he’d give me a tomato box to put her in, and cautioned me that she ate a lot. I told him that I also ate a large amount, so I didn’t think that would be a problem.

    But that idea seemed to fall through, so I found myself riding solo again south from Ensenada, intent on reaching San Vicente by night. Along the way, I saw an advertisement for a youth hostel on the beach, 12 miles off the highway, and I figured that sounded like a pretty good idea, so I went there instead. It was there that I got my first experience with some truly horrible dirt roads (the ones in Alaska were a dream in comparison), and I found my tires to be barely adequate to the task of riding on them.

    From the hostel, I continued on the dirt roads along the beach, figuring it would be quicker to head along them, then go back the twelve miles to the main highway and continue south from there (ha!). Six hours of rough riding later, including a stretch of road that was literally unrideable (it also happened to be a part of the baja 1000 course), I found myself back on the highway. I was bloody and covered in dust. I had gotten lost several times, and I had run out of water an hour previously. But something about reaching pavement gave me a renewed strength, and the thought that I might meet my death that day rapidly faded into the background.

    When I finally came to a market, I bought water and milk and chugged the milk. Then I bought soda and chugged that, then the water. Then I bought more water and continued to ride, looking for either a hotel where I could shower and forget about the day, or any place at all where I could just pass out. It turned out that spent the night in a cow pasture short of San Quintin, filthy and uncaring.

    I woke up before dawn and watched the sun rise over the mountains, and felt renewed by the day. I rode the distance to El Rosario, and took a hotel to shower and wash my clothes. While riding that day, I had a mixed Spanish and English conversation with a store clerk named Raul. He told me about his coin collecting hobbies, and I learned the word for ‘far’: ‘lejas’.

    The next day I rode to Cataviña. The flora there shifted from coastal sage to full desert, and I saw my first large cactus. Eventually the terrain changed too, and the dominant feature of the area was massive boulders everywhere.

    While staying in Cataviña, it began to rain very hard. I became concerned that I might actually lose my life if I tried to ride that day after considering that it hadn’t rained there for over a year, and the roads would surely be slick; the road was barely wide enough for two trucks to pass each other, and it would be difficult for them to stop (or for me to bail off the road) in an emergency, and finally there was increased traffic due to all the support vehicules on the road for the Baja 1000. As I was debating whether to ride or to stay put, I was offered the chance to ride along in a Baja buggy until we got to a place where the rain hadn’t reached. Thinking to myself: “A BAJA BUGGY! That would be So AWESOME!!!”, I told them that I would accept their ride. And it was every bit as cool as I thought it would be. Thanks guys!!

    I started riding again for Bahía de los Angeles, and as punishment for taking a ride, the entire distance was ridden into strong headwinds. When I got there, I went to the taco stand that was recommended to me: “third one as you come into town, the white one”. There I met Chris and Jerry, who invited me back to the place they were staying. It turned out to be owned by their friend Dan, and was right on the beach. How did I get so lucky? In addition to Dan, Chris and Jerry, another guy named Russ was also there. I had a wonderful time watching the baja 1000 come through town with them, and enjoyed their hospitality very much.

    That next day the race was still going on strong, and in my weakened moral state, I rationalized that it would be better if I accepted the ride that Chris and Jerry offered me to the junction of highway 1 and the road to Bahía de los Angeles. But feeling guilty, I rode the entire distance to Guerrero Negro that day, and found a spot in an RV park just before dark.

    So the next day I rode through fog so thick that my bike computer stopped measuring the distance. That finally cleared, and I made the long haul to San Ignacio, an oasis in the middle of the desert. The old plaza in San Ignacio was beautiful and the buildings were well maintained. It was wonderful to smell water on the ground after such a long ride in the desert.

    In the town of Vizcaíno, I met a trio of kids who were curious about my bike, and the youngest of whom wore a shirt which read “I dig your boyfriend”. I didn’t have the heart or vocabulary to explain to him what his shirt said, but it made me smile.

    The next day I rode past the volcano ‘Tres Virgenes’, and down into the port town of Santa Rosalia. Santa Rosalia was built by the French in the late 1800s, the architecture had a character completely different from anything I’d yet seen. It was there that I met my first other cyclists, and had my first ice cream of Baja as well.

    The next day I intended to ride to Mulegé with them, but we got seperated somehow, and I wound up camping on playa Santispac, south of there. Santispac was so beautiful and my neighbors were so congenial, that I decided to take a rest day there. That day involved passing out in my tent due to the heat, drinking ice cold beer under an umbrella, and very little else. In short, it was about as good as I could have hoped for.

    I finally made the push into Loreto the day after my break. It was on that day that I had my first real water scare, and I was forced to beg for water twice. I surprised myself with my Spanish then, and how well it was coming along that I could actually beg for water. But I made it into Loreto, and found a spot at an RV park with the most luxurious shower I’d taken in months. I took in the cultural wonders of the town, and armed with the word ‘ballena’, I got a liter of Pacifico from a liquor mart. I know that ‘ballena’ means ‘whale’, but it’s also what they call a liter of Pacifico. A liter of Tecate is a ‘caguama’.

    The ride out of Loreto meant a climb over the Sierra de la Giganta, and due to a landscape anomaly, there was no corresponding downhilll on the other side. I spent that night and the following night in a cactus patch off the road, both times ending very boring days.

    But finally I arrived in La Paz! I found myself riding down the streets of La Paz without any clue as to where to go, so when I saw an internet cafe, I decided I’d do some research on hostels in the area. At the ciber cafe, I met a girl named Luz, who gave me a very thorough tour of the city, and showed me the hostel where I am staying now. I ca