Journal Entries
3/2/09 San Pedro de la Laguna, Guatemala
Ben:
I'm having issues with my bike, gear heads out there please respond with advice. Others planning tours - be sure to get very robust wheels, very strong spokes (don't forget extras) and rims. I've broken 13 spokes on my rear wheel since Austin, TX. One of my rear panniers swung into the wheel and bent about three spokes on one side. They started breaking soon after that. I have replaced more spokes than could have been damaged but they keep breaking (on both sides of the wheel now). The wheel is never more than a tiny bit out off true before one breaks and I have tried loosening them all some and tightening them all some. A bike mechanic even trued my wheel perfectly in Veracruz, MX, but they still break. The spokes are now a mixture of different types, all steel but from different manufacturers. I'm hoping that replacing them all with a new set will solve the problem. Another issue that may be effecting the situation is that the rear axial is bent. I've gotten two new ones and they have bent as well, even the bock steel axial which is supposedly stronger. On my current set up the bearing race on the drive side is far from the dropouts on the frame. The new cassette I'm getting has the drive side bearing race closer to the drop out so the leverage against the axial will be reduced. Any tips? Ask your bike dealer for strong spokes, they are called "DT" (I think). And get 26" wheels for touring Central America!
But at least there is a silver lining. We are stuck in San Pedro, a town on the shores of Lake Atitlan. A large lake formed when a huge volcano exploded here 85,000 years ago. There are a lot of other travelers so lots of cafes and restaurants, meals for less than $5, and camping in town for $1 per night. I was lucky enough to get to help a friend that we met here retrieve a motorcycle from the other side of the lake, we rode out on his and I drove the other one back. Today I'm going to help another friend install equipment and shelves in a local restaurant.
From San Cristobal to Guatemala we hit our first real mountains. Mind sets have shifted - 20 miles a day is acceptable. I had to start wearing sunscreen and eating more again. The first day in Guatemala we rode literally though or around mountains. The roads (CA-1) were a relatively flat path but there were huge steep peaks all around. We broke our no paying for accomodations streak in Huehuetenango. It had been going since Louisiana! But it was late and we needed to go into the city for an ATM. Highlight in Huehuetenango was the pizza and a spanish dictionary at the book fair (not english->spanish dictionary, just spanish). Also got a learn spanish grammar book in german here in San Pedro. Hope to brush up on German too.
---------------------------------Christine:
We made it to Guatemala. We crossed into Guatemala at the border towns of Cuauhtemoc/La Mesilla. La Mesilla was exactly what you would expect of a border town, dirty with chaotic streets full of bars and people selling cheap crap. I had accidentally gotten a 30 day "transmigrant" visa for Mexico and so had been there illegally for the last week, and was nervous about running into trouble leaving the country. Luckily no one looked at the dates and we got our exit stamps for Mexico, tourist visas for Guatemala, and got out of town as fast as possible. We had been warned that the roads in Guatemala aren't as good as Mexico, steeper and with crazier drivers, but so far they seem fine. The road we entered on (one of two major east/west roads in Guatemala, the inter-american highway or CA-1) runs through a narrow valley surrounded by steep mountains on both sides. For the first couple days we kept expecting to have to do serious climbing but the road continues in the valley with only rolling hills (the best possible combination for bike touring, beauty of the mountains without the steep climbing!). The first evening in Guatemala we stopped at a church on the side of the road but a boy said the man we had to ask permission from was out of town and recommended that we ask at a TV station down the road. A little farther we saw a house with a large satellite dish and figured that might be the TV station. While we were deciding whether to ask there (it seemed weird to ask at a TV station for camping) a woman came out of the house and asked us how she could help. When we told her a boy recommended we ask there for camping she seemed surprised but said we were welcome to camp on top of their roof, where they were building a second addition. After talking with the family we found out that one of the men in the family, a house or town down, had hosted students who were learning spanish and we figured that the boy recommended we ask them because he had seem them take gringos before!
After a couple days the road started getting steeper and we did some serious climbing the last few days. At one point we hit what the map said was the highest point on the inter-american highway, somewhere around 3,000m elevation. We are now a on the shores of Lake Atitlan in a fairly touristy town called San Pedro de la Laguna. While we were riding down very steep winding roads to the lake (see pictures of the road) Ben's rear wheel gave up (see his post above). He ended up getting a ride from some guys in a pickup and we agreed to meet at the lake town. Unfortunately Guatemalan towns don't always have a main plaza like in Mexico, so I didn't know where to find him. As I was wandering around town a girl from Quebec approached me and said that she had once bike toured across Canada and asked if I would like to come to her hotel and take a hot shower! Got to love other bike tourers, they know exactly what we need! After showering I sat down in a central coffee shop to see if Ben passed by and talked with a guy at a nearby table. He called the owner of the house where he rented a room who said I could camp there, it was a beautiful landscaped yard. Using email Ben and I managed to meet up the next morning at a coffee shop. We are hanging out in town for a couple days while Ben figures out what to do about fixing his bike.
2/19/09 San Cristobal de las Casas, MX
Ben, written 3/2/09:
The ride through southern Mexico was great. The scenery became beautiful as we neared Guatemala, and the traffic died down. We were put up for two nights in Miriam's home. Christine met her at a roadside fruit stand a week earlier as I was replacing yet another spoke. She cooked for us (excellent food), gave us a bed, cleaned our clothes, let us ride her horse and gave us a tour of the nearby city, San Andres Tuxtla. Her and her husband and kids were very welcoming and extremely generous.
Another break in San Cristobal de las Casas staying with a friend of a friend from Bikes Across Borders. Heavy tourism but I got a great book for learning spanish grammar and we met another bike band, the Ginger Ninjas who are on their central american tour. You must check out their u-tube video. They carry themselves and their gear (instruments, amps, ect) by bike and power their concerts using battery capacitors attached to their bikes and pedal with the kickstand down to generate electricity during the shows. I was inspired and bought a miniature guitar, currently looking for replacement strings, between that and my rear bike wheel issues I think the universe is telling me I have a problem with tension.
---------------------------------Christine, written 3/3/09:
After Palenque we started heading up into the mountains towards San Cristobal de las Casas. A few of the guys on the Bikes Across Borders trip recommended that we go there and it was the first place in Mexico that we changed our route to see. It is an interesting town up in the mountains in southern Mexico with a large indigenous (Mayan descendant, Tzotzil) population and a large number of European and American backpackers. We had to climb the first real mountains of the trip to get there, it is up at about 2,300 meters. There is a large Zapatista (armed revolutionary indigenous rights group) presence in this area with many towns having signs that say they are under Zapatista and not Mexican government control. I had been reading a book about the Zapatistas while riding through Mexico and was curious to learn more about the movement. One day in San Cristobal I took a taxi higher into the mountains to Oventik, a Zapatista government center. The taxi dropped me off outside of a large gate with a woman in indigenous dress on the other side. She asked me what my purpose was in visiting and asked for identification and then left me standing outside the gate while she went to talk to others. I was then invited in the gate and led to the first office where there were three men in Zapatista gear (black mask covering their face) that wrote down all my information and quizzed me some more about what my interest was in visiting. I was then led to a second office where there were three women in Zapatista gear (dresses and a red scarf covering most of their face) who quizzed me some more and finally gave me a "permission slip" to walk around the town for two hours. The town consists mainly of the offices where they do their government business and a school where they house and teach foreigner students, mostly college age, who are interested in learning spanish and learning about the Zapatista movement. Of course there is also the obligatory tourist store where you can buy Che Guevara posters, tshirts with pictures of Subcomandante Marcos (Zapatista leader) or little Zapatista dolls. All the buildings are covered in murals, I posted lots of pictures of these. I was allowed to take pictures in the town as long as no people were in them.
After leaving San Cristobal we got to ride down out of the mountains towards the border with Guatemala. Way more fun than riding up! The ride on the way down was beautiful, very low traffic with pine tree forests and corn being grown on steep plots. After descending we reached a valley that is the border between Mexico and Guatemala and could see the mountains ahead leading into Guatemala that we would have to climb in the next few days. The valley was really beautiful with bright flowers growing that felt like a sudden change from the green and brown of the mountains.
2/12/09 Palenque, MX
Christine, written 3/2/09:
After Veracruz we started heading inland. I was actually sad the last night that we camped on the beach knowing that it was the last time we would see the gulf for a while. Riding out of Veracruz was pretty rough, as Ben described in the previous journal entry I had got sick in Veracruz and was still eating only crackers and drinking electrolyte replacement. The good thing was that we had an invite to a house a few (bicycle) days outside of Veracruz. While Ben was working on his bike at a roadside fruit stand before Veracruz a family pulled up in an SUV to buy some fruit. When the woman heard me talking with the fruit stand owner she approached me and said how nice it was to hear a gringo speaking spanish, and then said that she wanted us to come to her house so we could take a shower and eat some good food. I pulled out the map and she circled the general area where she lived, wrote her name down and said when we got near her town to just ask people and they would point us to her house. I didn't even have a chance to tell her how slowly we travel so when we reached her neighborhood over a week later I was worried she wouldn't be expecting us anymore. As we were riding down the road a couple of guys saw us and ran out from a store to flag us down. They asked us if we were looking for Miriam's house and gave us directions. I guess she had told the people in town to be on the lookout for gringos on bikes! As Ben described above she and her husband were really generous and we took an extra day to stay with them and tour the area. They drove us to see a big waterfall in the area, El Salto de Eyipantla, and let us go riding on their horse. Miriam's husband was a truck driver and he had a driver leaving the next morning for the Guatemalan border. Before we knew what was happening they made a few calls and told us to pack our stuff and that they were driving us to the trucker's house to get a ride with him the next morning. They ended up dropping us off late at night in a gas station where lots of trucks were parked and we were told to wait there until about 4 or 5 AM when the driver would show up. We set up camp under his semi (in order to not be run over by other semis pulling in or out) and put our bikes and bags in the back of the semi with the cargo. We ended up getting a ride through a bunch of towns along the gulf and he dropped us off at a gas station near Palenque. Being a truck driver in Mexico seems pretty exhausting as the highways go through all the towns and have tons of speed bumps that they have to come to almost a complete stop for, as well as trying to avoid hitting the dogs who walk the streets and children who stand in the middle of the street to sell oranges to the drivers.
After we were dropped off we started making our way towards Palenque. We could tell we had gotten farther south quickly as it was significantly hotter there and there were monkeys howling in the trees on the side of the road. When we reached Palenque we were surprised to see other tourists, it was the first place we had been on the trip that we had seen other foreigners. There were lots of european backpackers there to see the ruins at Palenque as well as for the mushrooms that grow in the mountains in that area. I don't normally like tourist attractions but the ruins at Palenque were really exceptional. They are spread out over a huge area and you could wander for hours on paths that ran through rain forest and waterfalls and stumble upon more and more ruins. I wandered off down a path leading deeper into the rain forest and after walking for about 10 minutes heard rustling in the trees. I sat down and waited and pretty soon I could see about monkeys playing in the trees above. I sat and watched them as long as I could stand being bitten by the mosquitoes. We camped near the ruins and met a 60 something year old woman from Germany who was bicycle touring Mexico and Central America by herself!
2/6/09 Veracruz, MX
Ben, written 2/25/09:
Next memory - Veracruz. I guess we head heard good things about this city because we were both looking forward to it. And it was nice looking upon entry. I cooked dinner in the central plaza (zocalo) while Christine looking for sleeping accommodations at churches. Cooking on the camp stove with all our stuff spread out among the wandering tourists and business men gets some stares. But its good stares that result in conversations with locals or children playing with your stuff. The churches rejected camping, typical in big cities where they also function as tourist sites. So we gave up and were going to pay for a room, would have been the first time in Mexico and a in a long while at that. We pride ourselves on not paying for sleeping. But we saw Daniel on the street as we were walking to the hotel. Christine had met him at the church. We told him we were going to a hotel and he stopped and tried to help us think of another option. I asked him in my broken spanish if we could stay at his place. "No problemo." It was a great apartment with plenty of room for bikes and sleeping in the living room. And a kitchen to cook in, what a luxury, I love countertops, my legs go numb from sitting indian style. I didn't go out with Daniel and his friends to the disco like I wanted to. After a big dinner and being acclimated to the camping schedule I was dead tired by 8:00. Christine got food poisoning that night so we stayed another night. I spent the day at the Veracruz bike shop, "Bici Centro," getting a new (and supposedly stronger) rear axial (already bent) as well as the rear wheel trued (supposedly to stop the spokes from breaking, have broken four since then), and at the internet cafe, food market and wandering around. I bought meat to cook for the first time in Mexico there, enchilada meat that was excellent. The next day Christine was on a saltine diet and we headed out, San Cristobal de las Casas in our sights.
Christine, written 3/2/09:
Some of my favorite days in Mexico were these first couple days when it was just the two of us again. It was really nice getting back into our old routine, and easier to coordinate only two people. We immediately started being approached by more locals, two people is less intimidating than a group of cyclists. The first day on our own we left from the El Tajin ruins and passed through the mountain town of Papantla. On the map Papantla was show as the same size town as Poza Rica, but it couldn't be more different. We had to climb some of the steepest hills (at that point) of the trip to reach it, and the town is spread out in the hills and feels small and low key. Check out the pictures of the cool basketball court they have. After passing through Papantla we reached Gutierrez Zamora, a small coastal town. We were given permission to camp at the church but while walking through town we met two guys (Pepe y Pepe) who offered to let us sleep at their houses. Everyone in town seemed to know them and we felt safe taking them up on it, so we went with Pepe to his house. He and Ben sat talking for about an hour (in spanish), and later realized that they had been having two completely different conversations! Ben thought he was explaining that he had lived in Germany for a year, and Pepe thought they had been talking about soccer the whole time, it was pretty hilarious when with the help of some translation they realized they hadn't been understanding each other at all. When we were getting ready to sleep, Pepe told us he hoped we didn't mind but that he falls asleep to music. He then started blasting a music station on tv while singing along and doing something that sounded a lot like snorting coke. We finally drifted off to sleep when a woman and a crying baby burst in and they started arguing with her crying for an hour or so. When we woke up that morning the woman was still there, and a few small children were looking curiously at us. A very interesting night!
The next day we reached the Esmeralda Coast, a nice low key beach strip where local families vacationed. There were stands selling delicious fried coconut treats that we ate too many of. We stopped at a small plaza to camp and started talking to a local man. He got really excited and told us that there is a gringo that lives in town and that we have to meet him and dragged us to this guys house. The gringo turned out to be Murl, a truck driver from the US who married a Mexican woman from this town. He drives his truck in the US for 9 months a year (non stop, no weekends off) and then takes all his vacation time to spend the 3 winter months with his wife and daughter in Mexico. He and his wife took us in, bought us dinner at their relatives restaurant next door and let us watch the super bowl (in spanish, quite an experience) at their house. The most interesting thing about them was that he had limited spanish, just the basic vocab, and she had limited english! When Ben told a funny story to Murl and I, Murl asked me to translate it for his wife! They had been married for about 15 years and had developed a limited spanglish communication style together, and both seemed very happy with it.
The next day while looking for camping we came upon a small, poorer town called Barra de Palma off the side of the road, and set up camp under an overhang in the plaza. The family whose house was right next to the plaza invited us to get water from their house and offered us bananas and a coconut. The hospitality of families in Mexico is amazing, this family was clearly pretty poor, the house was more of a large shack with dirt floors and still they offered us everything they could. I had a conversation with the woman about how her two sons both lived in the US (Chicago) and how they couldn't come home to visit due to not having papers, and how she just wished they would come home for good. The plaza we stayed in was actually littered with anti-US graffiti and signs, but yet was one of the most friendly places we stayed. After talking with the family we settled down to make dinner and all the neighborhood kids came to hang out with us, some bringing little gifts of oranges or salsa from their parents to give to us.
1/30/09 El Tajin Ruins, Papantla, MX
Ben, written 2/25/09:
So now we were down to 6. Joe and Ollie had been hoping to make it as far as they could by bike and then take a bus the rest of the way, and they left from Ciudad Madero on bus. The night before all 8 of us stayed at Julio's house. Christine and I contacted him via couchsurfing.com a week or three earlier. Now we were a group of six instead of two, but Julio was very nice and fit all of us into his parents house. He slept in his parents room, 2 of us in his room, two on the lower roof, one on the top roof and one on the couch. Quite accommodating. (Check out the pics of us putting the bikes on his roof for safe keeping). Unfortunately we arrived late in the afternoon and left early the next day, consensus was to keep heading south. So I didn't get to spend much time with Julio. Joe and Ollie took a bus from the city center and the rest biked out.
The days blur together here but it was at this point that I saw the cenotes and family on bikes mentioned in the previous journal entry. Eventually we got to the El Tajin ruins. Ignacio, Christine and I explored then for two hours while Josh played the guitar (he often played guitar or trumpet in the plazas or places like this and earned money) and watched the bikes, he had already seen many ruins. By the way in many places I have stopped in Mexico I felt comfortable leaving my bike and gear unattended and unlocked. Only on busy city streets have I wanted someone to watch the bikes. At the ruins I hiked through some woods and found an orange orchard and a house with some people cooking, cleaning and children milling about. At first I thought I found a live exhibit because there was a man dressed in brightly colored traditional clothes, but it was just another day for the people who lived there. It was fascinating for me to see them so close to these old ruins as if I were looking into the past. But then I felt out of place and intrusive, a tourist with oranges in hand. They didn't look bothered but I quickly returned to the ruins. We camped outside the gates behind one of the restaurants. Had a fire and dried clothes over it (it had rained for the first time in Mexico the previous day), but will never do that again, my clothes pannier still smells a little like smoke. The next morning Ignacio decided to head west toward Mexico City and Josh decided to do the same. So for the first time in Mexico, half way through, Christine and I were on our own. I got an email from Josh later saying he was hiking west with a group of six other travellers to a destination where they would do a three week fast and learn from a Shaman (I think). I was a little jealous of the hike but was glad to hear about his new adventures, coming from a guy who for the past couple days was considering returning to Austin.
---------------------------------Christine, written 3/2/09:
So after we left Josh and Steve at the beach it was the six of us. Ollie and Joe had to be in San Cristobal de las Casas (a town in Chiapas, southern Mexico) for language school by the beginning of February, Ignacio was planning to go to Mexico City to meet up with some people, and Josh was just traveling. We got some advice to take a back road that wasn't shown as completed on our map, but that a few people said was finished and paved and a better way to get into Tampico. It was really pretty and went through nice small towns along the water until about 15k outside of Altamira/Ciudad Madero/Tampico (all three are big cities right next to each other). Then it suddenly turned into a long stretch of industrial water treatment complex, with two lanes in each direction all filled by trucks who didn't want to share the road with bikes. It went on this way for about 10k and was the worst riding we have had to do this trip.
Tampico/Ciudad Madero were the first big cities we had seen since Matamoros. They were pretty typical cities with fast food and traffic. We had arranged couchsurfing with Julio in Ciudad Madero back when we thought it would only be two of us, and it was awesome how he took all six of us in. Ben mentioned the Family on Bikes (family from Idaho with 11 year old boys who are biking from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina) that we met in San Fernando, they had been interviewed on television and everyone in the towns we were passing through had heard of them, people kept telling us they had passed through just a day or two ahead of us. We finally caught up with them outside of Tampico and got to ride with them for a day. One of the boys is on his own bike and the other is on a tandem with his dad. The kids seemed to enjoy the touring, they take a lot of breaks and the boys climb trees or other typical 11 year old boy stuff, but they don't seem to mind all the riding. They said they go about 30 - 40 miles a day which is similar to what we do. Can you imagine traveling on bikes with your family for 2.5 years though?!?
After leaving Tampico and riding through a few more nice small towns we got off the main highway and took a smaller road that went closer to the coast. We spent the night in a really cool beach/river town called Tamiahua. The town is one long street that runs along a river/inlet for about 5k. Bicycles are a really popular way to get up and down the street and there were lots of good stores. On the other side of the town is the ocean, and we camped in a great spot near the beach. It was so nice we ended up staying for two days, it was one of my favorite small towns in Mexico. Riding from that town into Tuxpan was really beautiful too with orange tress and colorful flowering trees all along the side, it didn't hurt that it was pretty flat and we had a nice tailwind. Tuxpan was my favorite big city that we passed through, it was along the water but didn't have the dirty industrial feeling of Tampico. It was obviously really old with narrow winding streets, the parts we saw felt more like an old European city. That whole stretch of Tamiahua to Tuxpan was one of my favorite parts of the trip and somewhere I would like to revisit some day.
After passing through Tuxpan we were headed to Poza Rica. The map showed it as a small city, little did we know it was the box store shopping capital of that area. Riding in was awful, it was miles of stores (walmart, sams club, home depot...) and cars. It was the first city we saw in Mexico that didn't have a church right on the plaza, the shopping gods apparently reign over Poza Rica. We found the church and got permission to sleep outside in front of it and were warned that Guatemalan illegal immigrants often sleep there as well. Sure enough one or two guys joined our camp sight late in the evening but left in the morning before we could get a chance to talk to them. After Poza Rica we rode to see the Toltec ruins at El Tajin. One of the best things about Mexico is the relaxed attitude about camping, we were encouraged to camp for free in the nice grassy areas near the tourist junk stands right at the entrance to the ruins, with a security guard who was watching the ruins all night.
1/25/09 Tepeguaje, MX
Ben, written 2/23/09:
Mexico! Like I said we are already out of it but let me see what I can remember. I caught up with Bikes Across Borders in the Zocalo in Matamoros. A couple people went ahead to scope out the situation in Derechos Humanos where we wanted to hold a bicycle workshop and build community ties. I missed the crowd that gathered when the 18 cyclists first formed in the plaza. Apparently there were police, journalists and lots of people gathered around the group. A couple days later we were in the newspaper, "Cyclists from America build bikes from parts they find on the rode and donate them while riding all the way to the South Pole!" Some Mexican news = 1 part misinformation + 1 part hype.
We all landed in a plot of about four families with four houses and slept on the floor in different rooms wherever we could fit. The first night was nice - campfire and dinner for all. The workshop the next day also went well but we were at a loss for spare parts - cables, housings, brake pads ect. The experience ended on a sour note the night before leaving when a bicycle trailer and personal belongings of two people were stolen. One of our new friends had a drug problem (as we later found out) and drinking with him put him back into the habit of stealing for drug money. Luckily it didn't dampen the spirit of the people whose things were taken too much to stop their journey south. Eight of us all had plans to stay in Mexico and we decided to travel together. That day we said goodbye to the rest of the group at the border, fixed some visa issues and headed south out of Matamoros for out first camp spot in Mexico. Next to a field of sheep behind the state owned gasoline distributor PEMEX!
Each day we rode a little farther with the smaller group or so it seemed. Many afternoons we spent hanging out at gas stations (they have the nicest bathrooms) or rest stops in the grass eating fruit or peanut butter. We also got in the habit of sleeping at churches, either camped in their yard or in an extra classroom. A church is always next to the zocalo where we would meet up at the end of the day. We rarely road as a complete group. I would typically ride with Josh (the guy I am giving dreadlocks to in the pictures) up front and would get to the zocalo early and relax or check internet or whatever.
Some highlights are the "cenotes" or springs that Josh and I went to see early one morning before getting back on the road with the rest of the group. It was as if meteors hit the earth and punched 100' shear vertical rock walls straight down to the water which is said to be so deep that nobody knows the depth, not even NASA who apparently visited. We hiked out to two and swam in one - undisturbed deep blue water, isolated paradise. I was a little afraid of hidden seamonsters. A guy from the town said extreme sports guys come out there to jump off the edge - sounds like fun. In San Fernando we met Family on Bikes, a husband, wife and two twin 11 year old boys. They are biking from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego (southernmost tip of S. America) in 2 years. Pretty neat. We rode with them a few days later but they were a little too slow and we were still trying to stick with the others. Backing up in time - the beach - so important and almost forgotten. We got Steve to the beach - he really wanted it. And it was a good beach only fishermen were there. They sold us fish straight from the ocean and they were great - grilled with some garlic and lemon, yum. The bike ride to the beach lasted well into the night, about 10 PM I believe ~60k east off the main highway on a very hilly winding road. It seemed to take forever but we all just really wanted to get there so bad. There was hardly any cars and it was so dark and the sky so clear that every star could be seen like in the planetarium. We rode in groups huddled around the few that had head lamps. Sometimes flying blind downhill dodging potholes or gravel if seen in time. Very exhilarating and with the group energy pushing us this was one of my favorite moments. We left the beach and Josh (Rhizome Josh not dreadlocked Josh) and Steve behind, it was time for them to return. And then there were 6!
---------------------------------Christine, written 3/2/09:
I thought I would add some of my memories to Ben's description of the first two weeks in Mexico. The first couple days in Mexico were an easy adjustment, as we were still with the group of 19 and someone in the group had set up sleeping arrangements for us in the community where we were doing the workshop. After the workshop most of the group headed back to Texas, leaving 8 of us to continue on in Mexico. The day we were planning to leave we woke up to find the possessions of a few group members stolen, as Ben described above. Dealing with this took most of the day, and by the time we were ready to go it was late in the afternoon. We didn't want to spend another night at that house in Matamoros but we didn't know how far we would have to ride out of town to find somewhere to camp. We decided to just leave town even though it would require riding in the dark, we were really ready to get out of Matamoros at that point. Riding for a couple hours in the dark that night, feeling like it was the first night REALLY in Mexico, was pretty scary. And of course I got my second flat tire of the trip that night too, so we had to deal with that on the side of the road in the dark. When we arrived at the first PEMEX station we asked the young guy working there if he could think of anywhere safe to camp and he said that as long as we left before his boss got there in the morning we could camp behind the station in a nice spot that was out of sight, under a tree and next to a (loud) field of sheep (it seems that most gas stations in Mexico also have a field of sheep for some reason). That night riding was the only time I have been nervous while in Mexico, and I have never felt uncomfortable about the places we have found to camp, all of them have felt nice and secure.
I was pleasantly surprised by the roads in Mexico, after getting out of Matamoros they were all pretty low traffic (for being the major east cost highway) and very well maintained. Most of the land in the north east seems to be used for large scale agriculture with huge plots of land being farmed along the sides of the road. It is very flat there and there were plenty of little roadside stores to buy snacks. The second night we stopped in a very small town (Ejido La Loma) and they gave us permission to camp next to the church. That started our church streak, for the rest of the time that we were in Mexico with the group we pretty much either camped at a church or on a beach. All of the larger towns that we passed through in the first week of north east mexico were beautiful with really nice plazas and huge catholic churches right on the plaza. Two of the guys in the group had to head back to Texas soon and wanted to end their trip at a beach, and we ended up at a small fishing beach called Tepeguaje. The fishermen let me come out in the ocean with them to drop their nets, it was really fun to be out of the water and the view of the mountains looming in the background from the ocean was my favorite view of this entire trip.
1/12/09 Derechos Humanos, MX
Ben, written 2/23/09:
Its been a long time since Christine wrote the last journal entry, I'll see what I can remember since Austin, TX. We stayed with an old, old friend of mine, Billy, and his girlfriend Emily's parents (while he was still in Philadelphia for the holidays). Emily and her family were very friendly and welcoming. We had a great time exploring Austin and recharging before entering Mexico. Christine read about the Bikes Across Borders ride organized by the Rhizome bicycle collective online, and I went to the shop Sunday night to talk with the people. They planned on leaving the following week for Matamoros to build ties with the community and donate their recenty built bicycles (the ones they would ride down - sweet construction, check out the pics). Luckily I was able to get the new rear wheel I wanted from South Side Bicycles in Austin before the group left on Saturday night. Billy, Emily, Christine and I celebrated New Years Eve in Boerne, TX at Billy and Emily's friends. Great food, drinks, a pool, trampoline and we got to camp in the backyard which butted up against a golf course (discovered this while answering nature's early call near those with early tee times). It was great to catch up with Billy (who I hadn't seen in 12 years) and talk about the old times and see what he is up to now.
We left from the Rhizome collective on Saturday night and camped in a field just outside the city, Christine, me and 17 other cyclists who also turned out to be musicians. Roy fabricated a music trailer from bicycle forks (good job and his first time using a welder) and was carrying the instruments - clarinet, glockenspiel, tamborines, knock blocks, washtub base, and a washboard. There were also guitars, banjo, harmonica, ukilele and more. It was wonderful having campfire concerts every night and riding with such a large group during the day. (We have since heard in emails that since returning the "bike band" is doing gigs in Austin - more on bike bands to come).
It took about 2 weeks to reach Matamoros. Surprisingly it was just as easy if not easier to camp for free with the large group. I was riding "sweeper" almost everyday (the last rider to help with breakdowns) so by the time I got to the destination town those in the front already organized sleeping arrangements. One night in Melanie's backyard (a young woman who worked at the coffee shop we breaked at), she also practiced a healing art form called unification and gave out free sessions. I was "aligned" and felt my weaker side re-energized. My favorite night we stayed behind a firehouse but were then invited across the street to a neighbor's backyard. There he built a giant campire and I slept next to it outside my tent, later I had to make room because everybody else followed my lead, we were all packed around it like spokes radiating from the fire (think thats geeky - you should have heard all the bike talk on this trip). We stopped at a lake one afternoon for a half day - good to bath and wash clothes once in a while. And the night before crossing we stayed in an art gallery through Lauren's (the girl who I am dreadlocking hair with in the pictures) connections.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to cross with the group because I had to ride back into Brownsville to collect mail (Central and South American maps!). But it did leave me the opportunity to cross alone. Surprisingly there was no grenade shrapnel. I had been hyped up by all the danger stories we heard throughout our trip. Using my spanish dictionary and the help of a Mexican I formulated the question "has visto Americanos en bicicletas?" (have you seen the Americans on bicycles?). After riding around Matamoros and asking in the bus sections I was finally directed to the center plaza or Zocalo, a trend set for all future meeting points in Mexico. There I found the group and so starts adventures in Mexico.
12/26/08 Jackson, LA
We spent Christmas at the Old Centenary Inn in Jackson, LA. After a few days of nice weather it had dropped back down into the 20's on Sunday night, and stayed cold all day Monday. We were biking through the town of Jackson late on Monday when woman came outside from a beautiful historic inn and asked us if we needed a room. We told her we were planning to camp but she insisted that it was too cold out for camping and told us she could get us a good deal and we were convinced. The next morning we found out that the ferry we needed to take to cross the Mississippi that day was closed so we decided to stay an extra day in Jackson to relax and work on the bikes. Bonnie who ran the inn told us we were welcome to stay for Christmas and eat with her family so we ended up staying for three days and having Christmas with them. On Christmas morning a German couple who was also bicycle touring came to the inn and we had a fun Christmas dinner with the German couple and Bonnie's whole family. The German couple were heading East on the same bicycle route as we had been on so we spent the evening trading camping and route tips with them.
12/23/08 Kentwood, LA
We have just crossed into Louisiana and it looks like that is where we will be for Christmas. This past Saturday (the weekend before Christmas) we were flagged down by a woman outside of a church in Plainview, LA. They invited us in for food and asked Ben to sub in as Joseph in the Nativity scene in their Christmas drive-through that evening. As you can see in the pictures the beard he has been growing this trip made him a pretty convincing Joseph.
We passed through Florida, Alabama and Mississippi with only a couple days in each state. We first saw the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama. Although it was only in the 70s it felt warm after all the freezing weather so we stopped for a quick swim; a local couple walking by asked if we were from Canada to be swimming in that weather. That night we camped on the beach with no houses or lights in sight.
12/15/08 Pensacola, FL
We finally met another bicycle tourer! We met Stewart along the route in Florida yesterday and rode with him for the day. Thanks to strong tailwinds and the motivation of riding with someone else we did our longest day yet, just over 50 miles. Stewart is the percussionist for Donovan and came from Ireland to bike from Florida to Los Angeles by himself. We camped together that night outside of Pensacola and Stewart entertained us with stories of touring with the band.
12/9/08 Lake Seminole, GA
We have been making our own route through Georgia on country roads, which has led to some difficulty finding good spots to camp. We usually try to find people working on their yards at the end of the day and ask them if they can recommend a place to camp, they often know of a campground or offer their own yard. Yesterday we were in a rural area without any houses or people in sight and the sun was starting to set, so we had to take our chances with some woods off the side of the road. There were no "Posted" or "Trespassing" signs and no fences so it seemed like a good spot. As we were cooking dinner on the camp stove a car pulled off and a man walked down into the woods to see what we were doing. It turned out he could see our headlamps from the road and knew they owner of the land and thought we might be poachers. When he realized we were camping he called the owner who gave us permission to stay the night, and warned us that there had been panther sightings by the creek nearby.
We went to bed early like usual and were alseep around 8:30 PM when there were suddenly flashlights shining into our tents and police telling us to exit the tents and show them ID. After they called in our IDs and determined we had no warrants out, they asked if they could inspect Ben's bags which were sitting on the ground next to the camp stove. It turns out that area is popular for cooking meth and that someone saw our camp stove from the road earlier and had called it in. The police explained that when they came upon our camp site they first saw only the small stove and 2 bags next to it, which is exactly what the set up would look like for someone cooking meth. After they noticed the bikes and tents they said they were pretty confused. Once we explained to them what we were doing they were really nice and stayed for an hour asking questions and trading stories with us. After they left it was pretty hard to fall back asleep between worrying about the panthers and being accused of poaching and meth cooking all in the same night! The next morning when we made it back up to the road we found a bag of pepper spray and power bars left behind for us by the cops with a note to have a safe trip.
11/28/08 Cottageville, SC
Happy Thanksgiving! We had an unexpectedly great Thanksgiving, thanks to the generosity of a family in Cottageville, SC. We had stopped that morning at a store to buy ramen and canned corn to cook for our Thanksgiving dinner and Ben got into a conversation with a man outside the store. He said that he was heading to his sister in laws and that otherwise he would like to invite us for dinner, and then returned a few minutes later and said that she invited us! He gave us a ride in his pickup to her house which was on about an acre of land filled with tools, a tractor, an ATV and an enclosure with hunting dogs. She was a local minister who cooked enough food for an army and delivered the leftovers to neighbors and parishioners. I felt bad about wearing our dirty riding cloths for dinner until family members started showing up straight from hunting that morning still wearing their camoflauge.
After dinner one of the men invited us to come with him to a neighbors where he was going to help dress a deer that they had shot that afternoon. When we arrived there were two deer lying on the ground and numerous dogs dancing nervously around, waiting for their chance to eat the deer while trying to avoid being shooed off by the men. They hung the first deer by its legs from a deer skinning contraption and it only took a couple minutes for them to skin it, empty out the insides and saw apart the limbs at the joints. I posted a couple very graphic pictures of this, including a picture of one of the dogs pulling one of the deer heads away by the neck.
By the time we returned from the deer dressing it was dark and the family suggested that we stay in their finished (and heated!) office shed in the backyard. After we set up "camp" Ben went back into the house for something and returned with two plates piled high with sweet potatoe pie, chocolate cake, pound cake and banana pudding, as well as some racoon they gave us to take as leftovers the next day. We tried the racoon for lunch today, Ben liked it but I was too preocupied with avoiding the bones and shot to enjoy it.
All in all a very memorable Southern Thanksgiving!
11/26/08 Charleston, SC
We are in downtown Charleston, staying at the "Not so hostel" youth hostel. This is the first hostel we have had the chance to stay at on the trip (and the first hostel I have ever stayed at in the US) and we are both loving it. We have met people from Scotland, France, Germany and the UK staying here and they even offer camping in the backyard for half price.
We biked into Charleston two days ago, luckily there is a pedestrian/bicycle lane separated from the traffic going over the huge new bridge on Rt. 17 entering Charleston. There were many joggers and bikers using the bridge as their hill workout, in fact there was a man on a road bike who "lapped" us a few times as we were making our way over the bridge. After we found the youth hostel and realized it didn't open until 5 Ben decided to wait on the porch and rest (he wasn't feeling well) while I road my bike around to sightsee. I was biking the outer perimeter of the city and almost immediately came upon the city marina, bringing back memories of the sailing trip I took to Charleston this past spring.
We spent that evening having a bonfire at the campsite with Blythe who works there and Kieran from Scotland who was on his way west to backpack for a few months in Utah, AZ and NM. The next morning we decided to spend and extra day in Charleston to tour and relax. Ben and Kieran spent the morning touring downtown and we took a yoga class from Blythe that afternoon. We had another bonfire last night and Ben cooked steak and potatoes over the fire for everyone.
We are leaving this morning to head towards Beaufort (one of my favorite towns ever) and are planning to stop by Angel Oak, a 1,500 year old live oak tree, on the way. We are both feeling unexpectedly sad to be leaving the hostel and saying goodbye to the people we met there.
11/15/08 Okracoke Island, NC
We have made it to NC! We rode through the Knotts Island Sanctuary on Wednesday, miles of protected marsh land just past the NC line. We then took a (free!) ferry over to Curritcuck, and finally joined up with the Atlantic Coast Adventure Cycling route. Unfortunately the weather has made the last few days really difficult. On Thursday rain started about 30 min into our riding and the road was a fast two lanes in each direction with a very small shoulder (route 158). Riding was terrifying, it was windy and rainy and most of the cars would move to the left lane to pass us as there wasn't heavy traffic, but sometimes a truck would pass us from the right lane with only a few inches between us. The wind was blowing from the South and keeping us to about 6mph. The next day the rain was even heavier, and some of the roads were becoming completely flooded. We had to hitchhike rides a couple times to avoid biking over bridges that would be too dangerous to ride in those condtions.
We finally made it to Cape Hatteras on Friday (thanks to a long ride through the pouring rain from a very generous man with an SUV). We stopped to check out the Atlantic Graveyard Museum in Cape Hatteras, an interesting maritime museum, and met a man named Drew who worked there. He recommended that we stop and see his friend Earl at our next stop on the island of Ocracoke. After a 45 minute ferry ride and a ride from another generous couple, we arrived in Ocracoke. We first checked out the two campgrounds, one of which was expensive and the other was super sketchy, dirty with horses and dogs and very wet ground. We then went and knocked on Earl's door and he was very friendly, invited us in, told us lots of stories about the island and invited us out to dinner and to stay the night. Earl was a 79 year old retired nuclear physicist with the army whose family had been on the island for 300 years and used to own most of the land. The next day he gave us a tour of the island including the local museum containing many items from his family's history and a civil war monument that he designed. It was still pouring rain and there was a tornado watch, so Earl invited us to stay one more night. We are taking him up on it, and will leave tomorrow morning for a 2.5 hour ferry ride back to the mainland.
11/11/08 Virginia Beach, VA
On Sunday we camped at Kiptopeke State Park just before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. The park was right on the bay and the next morning we walked on the beach and saw these concrete WWII war ships that they had sunk to form a breakwater for the old ferry. We met some boys by the water who were going to raise the fishing nets they set earlier in the season, they told us about how the nets can hold up to something like 80,000 pounds of fish, and they catch about 800,000 lbs each summer. Later that morning we hitchiked from the park to get a ride over the 20 mile bridge/tunnel with Kerry the Chesapeake waterman. He had lived on the lower VA eastern shore his whole life working on the water and told us all about the fishing and naval history of that area. He mentioned that his grandson was pullng up fishing nets that morning, he most likely one of the boys we had just met a few hours before!
Later that afternoon we were biking in VA beach and stopped at a house along the path to ask for directions from two people standing outside, one was a man named Joey from Baltimore who said he was one of the three people who started the Waverly farmers market in the 70s. We couldn't find any good camping spots that evening and eventually decided to camp just off the side of the road, between some high bushes and a fence containing an outside exhibit of the aquarium. An aquarium employee walked by and saw us cooking dinner, but didn't say anything and no one ever kicked us out. It was the coldest night of camping yet, we didn't use our tents in order to be less noticable and it got down into the low 40s.
We have been stopping at the bike shops that we have seen along the way to get bike and route advice. At the Contee shop outside of VA beach Robert the bike mechanic checked out both of our bikes, added a kickstand to mine and put a new chain on Ben's. He had a lot of good advice about bike maintanence and which parts we should bring spares for once we are outside of the US.
11/8/08 Exmore, VA
The past few nights we have finally been getting into some side of the road camping. After leaving Salibury we stopped in Princess Anne to camp in a beautiful clearing by some trees and farmland that did not seem used. The next day was finally nice weather, and about an hour into riding Ben got a flat tire. Three different people stopped to help us, all of them cyclists. It turns out having breakdowns at the side of the road is a great way to meet other cyclists! That day in Pocomoke we met a man in a parking lot who had once done a 9,000 mile touring trip to Canada with some friends and had some good stories about being arrested for camping in the wrong place. He owned some farm propery down the road that he gave us directions to and told us we could camp on. We weren't able to find that property and ended up camping on the lawn of a man we met while asking for directions.
We woke up to rifle shots from people deer hunting in the woods behind us, it seems that every one on the eastern shore deer hunts. Although it rained all day the roads were nice, low traffic and cute town main streets. Mostly pickup trucks driving by, some with recently killed deer hanging out the back. By that evening we were cold and soaked and desperate to sleep somewhere dry at that point, and ended up paying for a hotel. Hopefully we won't have to do that very often. Ben tried out the camping stove that he bought for the first time that night, it worked really well and it was great to have hot food.
11/5/08 Salisbury, MD
On our first day we ended up leaving Baltimore at 2:30 PM to ride to Annapolis, which meant that we were riding the B&A trail in the dark for about an hour. It is not lit and got a little scary; we decided that night that from now on we would do our best to have camp set up before dark. We eased into this whole touring/camping thing by by staying with our friend Dan in Annapolis that night, and I set up my tent for the first time in his living room. Luckily I found it easy to use! We stayed at Dan's until about 3 PM the next day reorganizing our bags and working on the bikes and then took back roads towards the bay bridge. We didn't want to end up on the other side of the bridge after dark, so we just camped right behind the McDonalds off Route 50. Around 5 AM the next morning Ben heard someone walking by his tent, and assumed it was me going to the bathroom. After we woke up and packed up, I went into the McDonalds to wash up and a hunter came over to Ben and told him that it was him walking by the tents and that we had been camping right on the edge of bow and arrow deer hunting ground. Whoops.
We then hitchiked a ride over the bay bridge from a man with a pickup truck that we met in the McDonalds parking lot (the first man we asked said yes). Although it was raining off and on all day, the roads on the eastern shore had nice wide shoulders with beautiful farms and scenery along the way. We were hoping to make it to Salisbury that night where Ben knew a Salisbury University student we could stay with. About 15 miles outside of Salisbury Ben got a flat tire and I became nervous that we would be stuck camping where we were and miss out on watching the election. Luckily a man named Mike who was a triathlete (had done many ironmans!) stopped to offer help, and offered us a ride into Salisbury. We took him up on it and had him drop us at the Unos where Ben's friend Hannah and her roommate were at happy hour. After happy hour we went back to their very typical college house, a townhouse just off campus with four people living there, and crashed on their couches.
We woke up to rain, and were not motivated to leave early for riding. We ended up spending the day at their place working on the bikes, doing some laundry and shopping at a LBS in Salisbury. That night was "Wild Wednesday" at the house, and about 15 people came over to play beer pong. We tried to resist, but ended up playing 3 man 21 cup with Eddy, one of the roommates, and our team kept winning. We played about 5 or 6 rounds and stayed up way too late. Right now we are still at their house recovering and planning to leave soon.