Andy:
After getting a good start this morning and stocking up (and posting) in Acatlan do Osorio. We headed down the road -- or rather up(hill) the road. There is little that is level here. The landscape tends to be scubby, with an interesting mixture of giant cactuses like saguaros (or cardon)and senitas, palmettos, giant agave, mesquite and big trees. Geologically we passed today from largely volcanic ash deposits to a lot of metamorphic schist to simple limestone. The climbs weren´t more than a few kilometers but they took a long time. The road is in good condition and the traffic is reasonably light. For the main road in this area it is a great deal for us. Towards the afternoon we began to get relief from the hot sun when the clouds started to get thicker. As we came down a huge descent into this town thunderstorms began crashing around us. We stopped in a bike shop because my 35 peso chain was becoming difficult to shift. We found the first decent bike shop of the trip and promptly replaced my cheap chain with a good quality Shimano chain and bought a backup thin 9-speed chain for Ted as a backup. Since he started using mine he has had one break and I don´t trust his bike to not break more. My chain probably has 2500 miles on it already. The prices were right and it´s great to have the insurance against further problems. The people at the shop were great and even brought a repair stand out so I could change the chain in the shop.
This town surprises me. We really are in the middle of nowhere here, it seems, but this is a hopping place teeming with shops of all sorts, narrow streets and an active night life. It is still raining so that tones things down a bit but we had a nice time walking around taking in the town. I like it here. As you can see from the pictures we are now in the state of Oaxaca, home of the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico -- Benito Juarez. I have been trying one way or another to get here for years so I´m glad that I finally made it. The riding is quite pleasant but it seems like we´ll be going for about one and a half to 2 more days until we get to the city of Oaxaca.
Ted: Not too much to talk about today. Lots of climbing. Lots of rocks. Lots of sun and sweat, and other things. Lizards, too. I find myself thinking in spanglish, saying in english the words I don´t know. We´ve got a nice hotel. I´m happy.
distance today: 83 km
riding time: roughly 5 or 6 hours
total distance: over 700 km
No comments:
Post a Comment