Final thoughts -- Andy

We have been home almost two days now and I feel ready to wrap this blog up. We arrived on the full bus from El Paso into Albuquerque about 9:45 and, by the time we got our baggage, loaded up and headed home in the dark with our headlamps and blinky red lights it was a little after 10 pm. It was very nice to be home and Laura and Tristan welcomed us with a little party in the kitchen. Like Ted said, it is easy to be home, there are more things to keep track of and but also less uncertainty. I am finding myself making small adjustments in my thinking of the last few weeks but haven't fallen into the ruts of everyday life yet. For example, I know where the typing keys are for : and ? without looking, I understand everything that is spoken to me with no effort, the streets are very wide and quiet, the money is all the same size and color, I have to choose what clothes to wear, I can drink the water that comes out of the tap without filtering it, small inconveniences are not a problem -- for example I can't get the map of our trip to orient the way I want it to!

Here are my somewhat unorganized thoughts about riding in Mexico.

• It's not for everyone. Many roads are narrow sometimes and there is a lot of stinky traffic. The trick to avoiding this is to stay on small roads.
  
• Get very good maps before you go there, I would suggest the Guia Roji maps (see photo, including the creepy picture of the blindfolded man) from Mexico City. Get them through Amazon before you leave because they are very hard to find in Mexico. If you do need to find them you will find them in the Papelerias (paper/stationary stores). We wandered needlessly for two days because of bad maps during the first week of our trip.
  
• Do your research, there is a wealth of information through the internet from people who have made similar trips.
  
• Don't plan on going very far each day. We had very large climbs every day that made it difficult to go more than 100 km in a day. During the summer stay high. Once we got below 1000 meters it was very hot and would have been difficult to ride short of very early in the morning.
  
• Ask a lot of directions from a number of different sources from people who drive places. Taxi drivers were the best sources of info we could find since they had the time of day to give us and the knowledge to offer.
  
• Use a guidebook like the Lonely Planet guide. Although it will only cover a small part of where you end up it is helpful in cities for a filter on hotels, restaurants and local attractions. It is also a helpful general background guide for different regions. I kept the book on a thumb drive and on my palm pilot. I found that it would have been worth my while to lug around that big fat paper book instead of having to find a computer or navigate around on my small screen.
• Take your time. We wish we had 6 months on our hands to really do this trip well but we don't have that kind of time away from home at this point in our lives.
  
• Wear normal looking clothes. My most used pair of shorts was a baggy pair with a lycra padded liner. As comfortable as a pair of regular lycra tights are they just don't fit in. We looked wierd enough already and didn't need the funny looking clothes. Ted often wore his regular shorts over his tights. While the bright biking shirts are visible and convenient I would use more normal looking shirts the next time around.
  
• Wear a helmet. Although almost nobody else did, except the 3 serious riders we saw in lycra, helmetless riding is not an option. Medical attention is often far away and you should never ride without one unless you are riding a few blocks to the bus station. Bring rear view mirrors that attach to the helmets, bring spares since they are so invaluable and cheap.
  
• Have a comprehensive took kit and spare parts. For instance we could have saved a lot of trouble if we had extra chains. We did have extra brake shoes that saved my butt on the rainy descent to the ocean. Don't even think about making this trip if you can't fix your own bike.
• Use really good tires. We had zero flats despite running over a lot of glass and other sharp debris. They also gave us great peace of mind during long fast wet descents. We used Shwalbe Marathon Plus 700x32 tires that cost about $32 each online. They were worth every penny.
  
• The only safety concern we had was the guy waiting in his pickup truck in the taxi zone who offered a ride to the next bus station in Mexico City for a very low price. We also chose not to ride through Juarez. If we heard stories from travelers about dangerous situations we would have heeded them as well. Everywhere else we felt very safe.
• I will add to this list with time.
  

final thoughts

Ted: The trip is over, we're home once again, and glad to be so. I think that riding Mexico makes us officially hardcore with all the mountains and such. The ride was fantastic, and I'd do it again in a second. Just not this second. It feels strange to be finished, nice not to have to think about where I am when I wake up. I still have to do some adjusting to living where shorts are acceptable, and it's okay to put toilet paper in the toilet. It takes adjusting. But I like being able to do nothing. Absolutely nothing, for as long as I want. I like having easy food every morning, I like speaking the same language as everybody else, and overall, I like being home.

San Cristobal de LC, Chiapas to El Paso, Texas

We have covered a few miles since I last wrote on Sunday afternoon.
Actually, we have traveled practically the whole length of the Mexico.
Here's a synopsis.

We were set to leave on the 6:40 pm night bus to Mexico City (DF) but
there was only one seat so we waited until the 8 pm bus and headed out
into the darkness from SC later than we planned. I really can't say
much about the dark part of our route except that we headed towards
the Carribean coast and then headed north. As the sun was coming up I
noticed that we were climbing a lot and looked over to see the
perfectly clear and snow capped mountain of Volcan Orizaba. It was perfectly cone shaped and had a
ton of snow on it. I believe that, at 5700 meters (18,700 ft), it is the highest
in Mexico. Shortly afterwards I saw more snow on the horizon as
Popocapetl and its neighbor, Ixtacihuactl, loomed on
the horizon. Popo actully had a lot of smoke coming out of the top
of its perfect cone. One of my wishes was to see a smoking
volcano and it came true!

We soon descended a very big hill into DF and ended up in the bus
station only to find out that we couldn't connect at that one and
needed to go to another station. The bus company man was helpful and
said that we could just ride the eight km ourselves following his
directions. We did that and found the riding to be fine despite the
reputation of DF. I didn't find it to be very different than the
other cities we rode through. We had the taxi lanes to ourselves and
there were so many lanes that we always had room. Forty-five minutes
after we got to the norte station we were gone on a bus to Juarez.
There's really not much to say about that trip except the drivers
were quite nice. We arrived in Juarez at around 11 am, after a 23
hour trip. Crossing the border was a non-event after taking the
bus shuttle 10 km from the Juarez station to the border crossing.
We arrived at the Albuquerque bus in time to buy the last two
tickets for the 5pm bus. By the time we get home tonight we will
have been traveling for 50 hours. It sounds much worse than
it really is. I feel rested and only a little restless. I will
update more toomorrow and post pictures as well.

El Paso, by the way, has free wifi downtown so we are partaking.
Thank you El Paso!

Today was an interesting day. In the morning, we woke up, ground our teeth on some granola, and headed out with Dan to the ruins of Tonina, where the ruins are for the most part intact. You're free to roam around almost all of the site, and there are even tunnels you can climb into. there are a few areas that are roped off, due to danger, or lack of full excavation. T'was cool. There were a few areas which left me feeling like I could of gone further, like a narrow tunnel ending in a chamber with a wall blocking the way down. That was disappointing but overall the whole place was really cool.

Andy: yes, today was quite a treat. Tonina is east of here towards Palenque at an elevation of only 900 meters so the vegetation was much more tropical than the piney woods here. Tonina was also practically deserted so we had the place to ourselves. We'll try to post a few pictures. One surreal event that happened today was that we came across a big military road checkpoint just out of the park. We had all 10 of our bike bags in the back of Dan's truck and the young armed soldier started checking us very thoroughly. After looking under the hood (?!) he asked us to remove and open up all of the bags. After the second bag he suddenly asked in Spanish, "How do you say, 'have a nice trip?'" The rest of the search looked good from his commander's point of view but for us was an English lesson. We ended up writing the phrase down on a piece of paper, which sufficed for a glove box search. The kid turned from menacing soldier to innocent teenager in about 2 minutes. He had a hard time with the tr in trip. It was a wonderful interaction.

We leave in a little while for home. We'll be home Tuesday.

More photos

I have a smattering of photos from the last day that I wanted to post.

San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas

(Andy)

Since yesterday morning we have been in the city of San Cristabol de las Casas in the southernmost state of Chiapas. SC is situated pretty high in the mountains and it is cool and pleasant here. It is the rainy season so it has been raining in the afternoons as well (but not today). Yesterday, after riding all night in a surprisingly easy 11 hour bus ride from the beach, we met up with Dan Cummings of Bosque School fame. Dan has been a great guide and showed us around the city yesterday, including catching a music act in the evening. This is a seems a different place from the north -- very liberal and artistic. The music last night, for instance included and accordian, drums, guitar and bass playing a wandering but very tight gypsy style of music. The vocalist somehow incorporated throat singing, Louis Armstrong style scat and many other types of wild vocal improvisations. It brought a smile to our faces through their whole set. I describe the music in a way to describe the town -- you never know what your are going to come across.

Today we dropped off Dan´s wife Kristen in the town where she was doing her Anthropology work and we headed off to a Zapatista village. A very short background... indigenous people in southern Mexico have been on the fringes of society for a very, very long time. In 1994 a movement led indiginous leaders and University intellectuals took over this city in a coordinated and well publicized movement the day that NAFTA was enacted. They had general support from the population here. Since then they have succeeded in many ways towards self-governence, land reform and general public awareness. In many ways it is a community based movement that makes perfect sense. The Zapatista army, EZLN, is still alive more in spirit than actuality. Zapatistas still adopt the black ski-mask look and are alive and well in a number of areas in the highlands here. We came to the gate of the town, our ID´s were checked, we were signed in and then we headed to the Council for Good Governance where we met with 2 or 3 members of the council and we had the opportunity to ask eachother questions. After that we were allowed in the town. We checked out the clinic and school and took photos of all of the murals on the side of the building. It was a good place.

The next stop was a church in Chomula unlike any church I have every seen. It was a fully Catholic church but there were no pews, just about 50,000 candles on the table and floor, pine needles all over the concrete floor, boxes for about 50 saint, groups of traditionally dressed folks praying with candles, bottles of soda and alcohol, incense, etc. Outside, as the groups left, they would set off big skyrockets and huge explosions that you felt in your chest. It was a happening place.

Following that Ted and I went shopping and got a few gifts, some great honey and some food for tommorrow.

Tomorrow we leave early with Dan for the ruins at Tonala. Following that we hop a night bus for Mexico City, where we will take a bus to Cd. Juarez, cross the border and take another bus from El Paso to Albuquerque. Since we are practically in Guatamala that will be a long trip of about 2 days. A gallon of jungle honey and a machete will follow us home next month with Dan and Kristin.

Ted: We´ve been busy since we arrived here. Doing things which are cool, touristy, geeky, or just weird. we´ve seen great live music, eaten great sandwiches, seen wild markets; the definition of foreign. We´ve walked around the city, traveled to villages governed by masked men, and had great coffee. Life is really great down here. Well paced, and calm. I like it, but I do kind of miss home. I´m tired, and cannot explain all that we´ve seen and done in these past few days.

Ted: We're here in SC del casas, and it's a pretty cool town. Here on Dan Cummings' computer, we finally have the hardware to upload some photos, so without further ado: