Explosions, concrete, and cell phones Juventina Rosas to Acambaro, GTO

Ted: Today we went, I think, a bit further than yesterday, due to much less climbing. We´re staying in a decent hotel (suite for about $18) with beds, and a bathroom of our very own! Acambaro seems like a normal town, like most other mexican cities, it´s a concrete jungle. Everything seems to be made of concrete. On a few other notes, there seemed to be rockets going off in most of the town we passed through today. At first, we thought they were blasting rock in the quarry that was outside of the town, but we heard them in other towns, too. They seem to be going off at random intervals, with anything between 1 and 6 rockets being sent up at a time. They´re loud as heck, too. We can hear them through the foot thick concrete walls of our hotel room. Also, I kind of wish we had decided on buying a cell phone down here, because the cells are cooler than the ones up in the states. They´re about the size of two fingers, and half as thick, sometimes the size of two fingers up to the third knuckle, and about one centimeter thick when closed.

Andy: our route today left Juventina Rosas through a large town on the highway to Celaya that I can't remember the name of, to the lovely town of Salvatierra, past very ancient churches and what looked like forts and storehouses and into Acambaro. The state of Michoacan is just a few km away to the south.

Again, I find myself sitting in another internet café, this time in Acámbaro, GTO. The city is fairly large, maybe 50000 people or so and it is in a large well watered valley. The stores here mostly all open out into the sidewalk. When the end of the day comes they just pull down the “garage door.” In the meantime I am smelling the fresh rain and hearing the busses and cars pass close by.

After our second day on the road we feel more comfortable with the customs of traffic and the different challenges of riding bicycles on these roads. The foods we bought in the stores and ate on the road last year are not to be found here as easily but we are finding good substitutes. Bananas are small and cheap and provide a great pickup during the day. Bakeries are everywhere and we like to snack on fresh rolls. The cheese we found is different (white, squeaky and wet) but good. Mangoes are great but they are a mess to eat on the road, better to have as a dessert in the evening. Roadside restaurants are everywhere, inexpensive and good. Today we stopped for a meal in the afternoon, sharing a big plate of beans, nopal (prickly pear), salsa, wonderful corn tortillas and 2 huge 1 liter drinks for all of 40 pesos, slightly less than $4. It was a good way to pass rest in the heat of the day.

Tomorrow we head further south, first to a town called Ciudad Hidalgo and then to Zitacuaro. I want to go there because it has such a cool name but it is also supposed to be a beautiful colonial town, a UNESCO site I believe (I was wrong). For information I am using Lonely Planet´s guide to Mexico as well as blogs from folks who have passed through here previously. After I post this I will do my research and will know more.

Distance today: 96 km
Riding time: roughly 9 to 5 with a few long breaks.

Guanajuato to Juventina de las Rosas, GTO

(Ted writing)

hallo pipple ahf de yoonited staytes!!

We had our first day of hard riding today, and I have to say, I´m not as in shape as I´d like to be. I bonked at about 9 tenths of the way, and it wasm´t fun. The terrain today was like Iowa. It was lots of timy hills, and ups and downs, although near the end were painfully long hills, and blisteringly fast downhills. I enjoy racing trucks. most of the day was spent in caballero country. lots of horses and scrub, and cows. We ended in a town with plenty of stuff in it, and nice enough people, and got a fine hotel room. Easy access to good water, too. All in all, I´m not as strong as Dad, but I hope to be by the end of the trip. We just rode up and down today.

(Andy here)

Sitting in an internet cafe, not really a cafe but just a small shop open to the street with lots of computers. It´s warmer than I would like but that´s okay since the shower in the hotel room works very well. I wouldn´t say that the terrain was like Iowa because the hills were miles long! At some points they were steep enough that we were in our lowest gears. Our lowest gears are very low (34 teeth in the back, 24 in the front). We were up high enough that the air for much of the trip was coolish and we also had a helpful tailwind. Getting out of Guanjuato (GTO) was tricky since the place is so maze-like. We ended up finding the right tunnel and it ended up being uphill, hot and suffocating with exhaust. We were riding as fast as we could to not hold up too much traffic. We managed to get out of town by 8am. The town disappeared and we were soon in open and empty country, to our relief. Traffic was thick in town but everyone was courteous. The roads were narrow but everyone went way around us or slowed down to wait for opposing traffic to pass. At this point we have a comfy room, a town with food to buy for tomorrow and a good internet connection for maybe a dollar an hour.

Now that we are out of GTO we are more of an abnormality, especially on our loaded bikes. I´m not quite sure what most people think but those who we do talk to are surprised. There are plenty of bikes here, in fact they are the primary form of transport in this town, it seems, but most don´t see it as a way to go a long, long way.

We continue to be well.

distance today: 81 KM
riding time: 4 hrs 42 min

total distance: 92KM

PS, we´ll be doing the mileage in kilometers on this trip. It´s easier. Convert it if you like (multiply the number by 0.6 if you want imperial units).

Before we headed to bed we wanted to post one more entry since the
internet is so easy to use here. One other advantage of such easy
connections is that we have talked home via Skype several times today.
the connections from this Pocket PC to the computers at home has been
clear and very simple to establish. Another advantage is that it is
totally free. What an amazing world we live in. i'll let Ted tell
more about the day.

Ted: Today was busy and quite an experience. We started off by
noticing that we hadn't any milk to put in our tea, nor a mug to put
the said tea in, not to mention a lack of honey. thankfully, the
hostel we're at has mugs, and sugar for the use of guests. After a bit
of breakfast, we began to wonder: where can we get the items we
missed?after some time of walking about and asking questions (the
answers of which usually provided about 20% of what we needed to know)
we ended up at the local big-mart, which had everything we needed. We
ate, then took a nap because by this time, it was lunch and we'd spent
most of the day thus far on our feet. Post siesta, we had tea with our
newly procured supplies, and stared at maps for a while. Shortly
thereafter, we decided to go south. we walked up the street some in a
new direction, and checked up on the internet, and all things included
and headed on our way. Back at the hostel, we decided that we'd pack,
then headed out to a piano, and trumpet concert. It was breathtaking.
every time the trumpeteer hit a fast spot, you wanted to laugh, and
the whole way through, the audience had wide smiles on their faces. we
walked some more, got some strangely flavored ice cream (chili mango,
and something neither of us had ever tasted before, called a weird
word, and powerfully purple) and retired. Well, Dad did, I'm up
writing, but not for long! Cheers.

rest day

Ted and I arrived last night after a long trip here. Things don´t get going very early so, by the time we had our supplies and could have left it was after noon. This is really a lovely town and we didn´t have to think too long to decide what to do, we are staying another day. This way we can buy the food we want here, maybe find new lenses for Ted to replace the lost one, research our route a little better, relax, soak in the place and eat.

We are staying in a little hotel in the center of town. They were out of regular rooms so we took a dorm room. There are 6 bunkbeds in a divided room with no windows. Actually it is really better than it sounds because we are the only ones there and it is buried so far back in the building that it is very quiet and dark -- perfect for sleeping. We have also a kitchen, bathrooms, lounge chairs, a roof, etc. The price is killing us at $12.50 for both of us.

more photos

photos up to Guanajuato

Guanajuato

We just ate lunch and are sitting back on the bus feeling much better.
As usual food does the trick. Eating here, at this point is
challenging because we don't know the customs. For instance we just
pulled up to this big meat restaurant with big grills and huge frying
vats outside of a large semi-open dining room. Of course we are
clueless so we wait intil we see how it is done. Eventually I just
ask to to start and they point me in the right direction. Before I
left on this trip I decided that I would not try too hard to be a
vegetarian because of situations like this -- there are not too many
options sometimes. Besides the grilled chicken was really tasty!

Moving back chronologically we left ABQ yesterday at about 11:30 am
and went to El Paso. Once we got to EP we hopped bus lines and took a
bus across the border to the large bus station in Juarez. This
entailed unloading and loading the bikes four times. The fifth time we
loaded the bikes was simple because the compartment underneath was big
enough that we just rolled the packed bikes on upright. Before then
we had to take off the bags and slide them in sideways. We got an 8pm
bus out of Juarez and have been on it since. We are due in Leon in an
hour or so. From there it is about half an hour on another bus to
Guanajuato, where we will stay for the night and ride south from. As
busses go it would be hard to beat this one in its comfort. I slept
fairly well through the night on the reclining seats. Still, it's
time to stop for a while.

Ted: The suspension is soft, but the driving is hard. This bus
traveling is almost preferable to flying on an airplane, due to the
quietness, and the ease of boarding. Nobody has asked about the
gasoline we're carrying on dad's bike, nor the knives in my glovebox.
However airlines are still faster. Overall, though I think busses are
a nice way to travel. Our bikes are loaded upright fully assembled
with bags, and the people we travel with are nice. I wish we had a
little more reading material, as I've finished brave new world 1.5
times, and now have only the cheesy dramas they put on the screen to
entertain me. But hey, they're funny enough (though perhaps not in the
ways the directors intended).

Ted, 5 hours later: We have entered mexico, and are in Guanajuato. The
ride into the city was...adrenalizing. We rode fast, and close to the
cars over painful cobblestone streets, and through throngs of kids
being let out of school. Quite an experience. I went to put in my
contacts this morning, and discovered that somehow I only had one
contact in the case. I suppose I must have lost the other one doing
something daring , like taking them out in a moving bus with no light.
This city is something else. It's got huge tunnels, and tall buildings
on either side of the roads. It's like San Francisco but different.
It's built on inclines closer to cliffs than hills. Every building
has more than one story, always, and some of the hills are beyond
reason.

10:15 am Monday, June 2nd

Tristan and Ted

Parting photo of Andy and Ted. They are biking to a bus station in Albuquerque and will take buses eventually down to Guanajuato, Mexico.
I am happy to see them pursuing this dream and on schedule, too!

Leaving the cats behind.

Ted says: I'm still, even upon the day of departure, acclimating to the idea of leaving the world of climate control and lazy felines for a life of travel. Packing up here, we have more space than last year (due to dad's larger bags), but the same amount of stuff, leaving us with the option of excess, and/or luxury. We've got more room than we know what to do with, so I suppose we're going to be filling the space up with food, or something. When I think of food, only three items come to mind: powdered soup, granola, and Cliff bars. A limited venue, I know but we may come upon more goodies to fill our bags while we're down there. Last year we went fast because we had a set destination, and only so much time to get there, this year we both look forward to a more leisurely pace, with more rest days, and fewer miles. My swiss cheese'd gloves from last year have since been replaced with less corroded gloves which have yet to bend themselves to my will, and hands. Tonight, we set off to find new lands, to boldly go where gringos have gone before. Armed only with our wits, and a pair of padded shorts we depart. Cue the Indiana Jones theme!