A rest day in Toluca

Big cities are a mixed blessing. While, on one hand, Toluca isn't the most ideal place to spend a day it is very convenient. From our 300 Peso per night hotel room, reasonably appointed but short on charm, we can walk to a gigantic ancient church, the legislative building, several other old churches, museums, a number of large public squares, etc, etc. I can also find a Denny's-like restaurant with wifi to use Skype to talk home for free, Ted can buy a set of six contact lenses to replace the one he lost on the bus for the same price as he does in ABQ. I also found a reasonable pair of sunglasses to replace the ones I lost somewhere yesterday morning as well. All very convenient. This has been a good rest day. Probably one of the most interesting things we saw, beyond the 100 riot police guarding a government building while a group of campesino looking people sat on the curb outside with a sign or two, was the Cosmic Palace of Glass and Botanical Gardens -- the real name of an old renovated central marketplace. Pictures show the rest.

Valle Bravo to Toluca, Edo. Mexico

Today was a day of almost all climbing. This area of Central Mexico
is quite mountainous and we have had to pick our way from one town to
the next. By going to Valle de Bravo, which turned out to be a
beautiful place, we had two choices that would eventually lead us to
the road to Oaxaca and points south. This morning we decided to go
around the large city of Toluca, with its half a million inhabitants
we thought that it would be a bit much. After riding all day, much of
it light to ocassional heavy rain, we ended up asking a woman at a
roadside restaurant how far it was to Toluca and were shocked when she
told us twenty minutes on a bike. She was right and we were in our
hotel room in the center city within the hour. For such a large city
it was relatively easy to get around. Since leaving Valle de Bravo
this morning we climbed continually. We had one descent but went
right back up again. I would say that we climbed several thousand
meters over the eighty kilometers we rode. Of those eighty kms it
seemed like about fifty were steeply (first or second gear) up. Much
of the time we were in very thick pine and spruce forests covered with
spanish moss type stuff. At one point we stopped for lunch at a
roadside stand with three women coooking on an iron slab on a fire.
We were chilled so we put on our fleece jackets and continued to ride
with them after we ate. The good news is that we are largely
waterproof. I'm completely watertight in all of my five bags but Ted
leaked a little bit. Our rain pants and jackets seem to be working
well also, although rain does go down our necks since we aren't using
the hoods. Ted is voting for a rest day tomorrow but I don't
particularly want to stay here as it isn't all that appealing.
Cuernavaca is down the road a day's ride from here and I think that
might be a nicer place. I'll get up tomorrow morning and explore some
more and also will find a place to post this. In the meantime I'm
happy to be in a dry bed instead of a dripping pine forest as I was
figuring we might be doing before we found out how close Toluca was.
Today we rest in Toluca.

Total distance today: 81km
Riding time: 6 hours

Zitacuaro, Mich to Valle Bravo, Ed. Mexico

Andy: After a slow wakeup this morning we left Zitacuaro and immediately climbed steeply for 2 straight hours. By the time we reached the top of the hill we had covered all of 18 km! Fortunately such long climbs don´t kill our legs because we both have great gears for climbing now. Instead we just go really slowly. Another good thing was that we were on a very unbusy road and we even got to ride side by side for a lot of the time. With such steep hills it is impossible for anything to sneak up on us since we can hear their motors working so hard! The whole time the weather was misty and cloudy, we used no sunscreen. We have been in pine and oak forests all day and the scenery is wonderful. The people we meet continue to be friendly and helpful.

What comes up also goes down and we enjoyed great descents during the day. The final descent into Valle Bravo occurred in the rain but lasted for miles. Our raingear and my drybags worked well and we stayed comfortable. When we got to town Ted told me to take off my yellow rainpants because he thought I looked too much like Ronald McDonald in my yellow and red outfit. At least I was visible if not cool.

We are staying in Valle Bravo in the state of Mexico (yes, it´s a little confusing). This is a neat old town with a lot of tile roofs, a big lake and nasty (to ride on) cobblestone streets. We are staying in a very funky posada way back away from the busy main street of town. I have yet to explore more since it has been raining on and off.

Ted: Today was hard. Annoying. Slow. Short. Long. Wet. Cloudy. Loaves of bread lending their flavor to the peanuts eaten afterwards. Showers without curtains, toilets without seats. Ceilings and rooves made of tin and wood. Internet cafes with a technological edge stick out like sore thumbs. Open air shops advertise their wares by yelling, not signs. Grown men eat ice cream with solemn looks on their faces, children carry chickens down the road, and teenagers laugh as we go by. Tired looking people stare at us through the windown of a bus, and everything is great.

distance today: 81 KM

total distance: ?

top speed:66.7 KM/h

Acambaro, GTO to Zinacuarto, Michoacan

Andy: We left Acambaro at about 8:30 this morning and easily found our way out of town by just following the signs to Zinapecuaro. For the life of me I could never remember that name if it weren't on the signs. Light traffic and slight hills were pretty much the norm. Zinapecuaro itself had terrible pavement leading into it and a lovely square at the middle of the place where we stopped for a few minutes to drink and afix our water bottles with bungee cords so we didn't break any more bottle cages (Ted broke one yesterday but we brought two extra). Speaking of water we have figured out a good water system. We carry on the bikes between four and five liters (about a gallon) each. Over the course of a day we drink it all in addition to a refresco of about a liter each at lunch. I brought our camping water filter and have discovered that it doesn't need to be pumped as long as it has a drop from the source to the destination gravity does the work very nicely. It's a little slower but we have the time and we really don't like the task of pumping. The wter tastes fine and it saves the world from a few more plastic bottles. From Zinapecuaro we started into a climb that lasted at least two hours. By the end we were in pine forests and small towns made of wood, instead of the ubiquitous concrete. When we finally descended we did it very slowly through the town of Cd. Hidalgo and finally to Zitecuaro, where I sit typing in our 150 peso hotel room a block from the center of town. The weather was relatively cool and very cloudy all day. We thought it would rain but it never did. This part of Michoacan is very hilly and there are jagged peaks in the distance. Very close to here is the monarch butterfly wintering place so there are monarch icons everywhere in town. We went out after showers to a rolicking festival in the civic central square and ate Oaxacan tomales wrapped in banana leaves. Our eleven year old waitress was very patient with us when I told her that I knew nothing about Oaxacan food. She helped.

Ted: It's different down here, yet underneath the skin, all blood runs red. I've told several people on each trip that dad and I are not brothers, nor friends traveling together, but that I am, in fact, his offspring. The western influence down here is incredible. I've seen people wearing pink floyd shirts, and today at 8:30 in the morning, I heard a very popular Rick Astley song in the central square of Acambaro. At the same time, this is the most alien world I've been in. You can see people herding goats, and cowboy hats and boots should usually match. Wearing shorts is frowned upon unless you're a child, or doing something physically demanding. Rockets go off for no apparent reason, and all buildings seem as though they were built to survive volcanic eruptions. Yet the Chinese food tastes just the same.

total distance today: 130 km (or so)

ride time: 7 hrs 45 min

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.