life @ 13

saddle sores to bed sores and back

hiatus #2....slightly more permanent....

bang!

from the top...

pictures are up

the ride to Caraz was what i expected more of this trip to be like...lots of mountain roads, getting guards to open gates, safe camping on the side of the road...ramen noodles and gallons of water as fuel. what i hadn't expected before and what i have come to overuse is other biker's journals...not only are the roads and distances between towns described to a T, but for most of my recent rides i even have accurate elevation profiles. this does kill a small amount of the fun of discovery, but i can't imagine what kind of trouble i would get myself into without them.

briefly...left chao not so early (8:30ish) due to a flat in the rear...a hole in the middle of an old patch and nothing in the tire. strange. 15k on the panamerica, then i turned off into the wild on a private road which cuts a good 40k off the trip to Caraz. the road is unsealed but in pretty good shape...i was able to hum along at 16k/h without pushing much at all. there are a few climbs along the way, but from chao to caraz is about 160k at a steady 1.5% grade...as is to be expected when climbing up a river valley. on the private road there were a total of 6 cars in 3 hours. beautiful scenery (look at the pictures, as usual they tell a better story).

after the private road, a few k on the pavement, a little town to stock up on water and food, and then the road gets about as bad as they come for about 70k. or, at least, the worst i've done without a mountain bike. riding a road like this is, in fact, a lot like mountain biking. not only are your legs always spinning at a furious pace, but you have to use a considerable amount of upper body strength and stay completely focused, else you lose your line and thus your balance and thus the bike. when you hit a good line it feels great, when you miss and the bike skids and you have to put a foot down and start over, it's incredibly frusturating...amplified by the 70lb bike and 90 degree sun.

the first day i made it about 15k on the crap before i was completely worn out...found an excellent camping spot by the river and slept pretty well....the river is so loud you can't hear anything around.

next day was uneventful...50k in the crap, lots of heat, only a few cars an hour. found another good campspot on the side of the road just a few k short of huallanca

---

taking a brief aside...it occurred to me earlier in the trip that people with UC probably, typically, don't do these kind of things. it's not really the kind of problem conducive to being out in the middle of nowhere with poor sanitation and spotty medical services. i was well aware from the beginning that this could potentially be a problem but i tend not to heed these kinds of warnings, internal or otherwise

---

woke up the next day feeling ungreat. spent most of the next 3 hours staring off into space and pedaling the last few k into huallanca. i knew that i had a little more rough riding, then 25ish k of smooth road into caraz....so i decided to continue staring off into space until a little after noon, then i bucked up a little, shut my brain off, and finished off the leg, knowing that the end was near. Caraz was a pretty little town, unfortunately i didn't get to see much of it. made friends with the local firefighters, though.

i'll probably give y'all one more post with some thoughts after i get back. right now i'm surprisingly content with the decision to return. i mean, it really wasn't much of a decision...some decisions are just too obvious to be called decisions. would have very much liked to keep going, both for me and for any entertainment i might have been able to provide. but i'm looking forward to feeling better, eating all the things i haven't been able to eat, and hanging out with y'all gringos.

finger on the trigger...

made it to Caraz, no major problems, but i'm completely wiped out. lots of pictures and a real post soon.

atrophy

apparently, for a brief moment, i was a wanted man. i managed to evade capture and would have gone on blissfully unaware had Lucho not told me that when i was making my second pass at Paijan (the cyclist's black hole) the police were looking for me, as apparently they feared i would wind up robbed, kidnapped, or killed. but at that time i, slippery bug that i am, slipped onto the cheap yellow bus and was dozing off, staring at the scenery for the second time.


i had the casa de ciclistas pretty much all to myself for a few days while Lucho was on his little vuelta with Abuelo, our 68-year old chilean friend. not much happening...just more bulking up (more later) and reading. Went to a fancy Trujillo wedding with Lucho where he was playing drums in an 11-man-1-woman band...good times, but my plans to leave the next day were squandered by free food, cerveza pilsen, and staying up till 5.


i generally try and keep these things to myself, but in all fairness and honesty i should say that i was quite flattered by the women of Trujillo. eventually i figured out that i had done nothing in particular to attract so many stares and so much attention (a nice reversal), and that many peruvians are looking for a ticket out and, so they think, up. i now understand, in part, what it feels like to be a women walking by a construction site.


anyways...after 5 weeks of rest and some spectacular hospitality at the casa, it was time to go. last night i threw a new tire on the back wheel...a schwalbe marathon....something a little wider and more durable, in part for the crappy roads ahead. i also find myself quite a bit heavier...not just in body (good) but in luggage (good and bad).

Lucho escorted me to the edge of the city, where he left me to go pay his water bill. I forgot that the first hour after a long time off is a little, well, scary -- realizing that the comforts and conviences of a city and good home are being left for the uncertainty of the road. i found my legs trembling a little, however i have to chalk this up to the 5 weeks of doing absolutely nothing active, save the vuelta de paijan. for a while i was thinking about our friend Lance A., whose rise to the top was supposedly aided by his little vuelta de cancer, where he was able to rebuild his body in the image of a tour de france champion (and not a whole hell of a lot else, really...although he's put his texan mouth to a good cause). however, my body has been rebuilt in the image of someone of a much greater body fat percentage, as is what happens when you eat for two and excercise for none.

the ride today was dominated by strong coastal headwinds, the heat of the day, and the desire to ride as slowly as possible. 67 flat k in 4 hours. i'm very content. tomorrow i turn off the panamerica and on to 200k of almost entirely dirt tracks up to the cordillera blanca. there's no internet in the middle of nowhere, muchachos.

back.

peru pictures

not surprisingly, it's easy to lose track of the days when you're travelling. recently i've been quoting my time off the bike at 3 weeks....however looking at the blog, damn, it's been a month. more on the fix for that below, but first where i left off.

south peru was good. having company was excellent. learning the true meaning of tours and tourists...well...was educational. the sky of the altiplano is spellbinding. the south coast is like nothing else...desert sandwiched between mountains and endless ocean. had some classic peruvian travel experiences: bus breaking down in the mountains in the middle of the night, bus trying to leave when your friend is in the station bathroom, being told to get off the beach because it's too dangerous, train to maccu piccu is not running, hopelessly lost in towns where the street names change every block, sunburn after 20 minutes outside, cab drivers changing the price, etc, etc. experienced the other side of lima, miraflores, where all those of means have relocated to over the years. damn, the food was good there.

decided to eschew the $4 cab ride to the bus station in lima (the bus to trujillo was $10...$4 seemed extravagant to cross town) and took a local bus. when i told the driver and conductor where i was getting off, one laughed and the other made the point-finger-gun-at-head-and-shoot gesture. apparently the bus station was not in a great part of town? turned out to be one of those parts where you're OK as long as you don't make the wrong turn.

now, back in trujillo, with the casa de ciclistas all to myself. Lucho and Abuelo (a 68 year old cyclist from chile) headed north to Chiclayo.

to make up for all the road i skipped to get to trujillo, i decided to ride with them for a little while...in the opposite direction of my trip. first time on the bike in an entire month, and it felt great...at least until my insufficient eating for the day caught up to me. no big deal. did 45k in about an hour and a half, helped by some kind of massive tailwind. the bad news is, this will be a massive headwind when i leave for Huaraz/Caraz in the next couple days. the good news is, it's only for a day. not only did i ride with them TO Paijan, the most infamous town in peru for cyclist-robberies, i rode past it, then back through again (at almost half the velocity), then stopped right in the middle.

i guess the most salient news is that for the first time in damn near 7 weeks i'm feeling 100%. most importantly, i've decided that whether i like it or not, my body is apparently not capable of fighting off little infections that the locals all resist and most all travelers grow to resist. this in and of itself does not bother me much...it's the fact that i have to be the whiny white kid who is always telling restaurants to leave things out, not eating/drinking anything remotely suspicious, and worst of all turning down offered food. but, this is. much better than sending myself home.

still trying to decide how to slice up peru. first i'm up to the cordillera blanca and huaraz. from there, i either stay in the andes all the way to cusco...a very, very slow but probably highly rewarding trip...or i descend back down to lima (could spend a lot of time there), zip down the coast for a while, then take some good paved roads to cusco. from there, i have much gana to hop over the andes again to the amazon-ish region, cross to bolivia by boat, and high-five all the people descending the "worlds most dangerous road" on their downhill bikes as i work my way up to La Paz.

peru, part 1

the past week has reminided me that travelling by bicycle is really a compromise. the uncontested best way to travel, if you're looking to get as close as possible to a country and people, is to go by foot. hands and knees might be a little too much. but by foot, you see everything, you are vulnerable to everything, nobody misses you and you miss practically nobody.

what reminded me of this? i was dumped in an "underprivileged" part of Lima at 6am, with nothing to do but wander around. one of the great things about the bus, besides being an excellent place to think, is that it often drops you somewhere strange and unfamiliar -- whereas on the bike you always ease your way into things.
i had a good 6 hours to catch the next bus onward to Cusco, and once the bus terminal security woke me up from my uncomfortable nap (head on top of arms on top of chair in front of me) and said that the only reasonable way to catch my next bus was to take a $4 taxi, i knew the best way to go would be to walk. every person i asked for directions along the way said i should be in a taxi. excellent sign. only had to turn around once because of shady looking blocks. i was looking for one of the largest avenues in the city; half the people i asked directions from claimed not to know how to get there. i was tired and got a little heatstroked again, looking like a total fool with my 2.5L bottle of water in one hand, red fleece jacket in the other, cowboy hat on top and beard protecting my cheeks. every little store and bakery i stopped at had a separate person at the cash register, all behind bars so thick you could not even be certain there was a person behind them. 90% of the shops i passed were selling car parts or small repairs. Lima is spotted with some big supermarkets, all playing a jingle based on "mambo #5" with the recurring theme "you must buy". I was in a good enough mood to actually make conversation with a guy on the street who started off with the typical "hey! gringo! tourist! lots of money!". i still feel that those who have the privilege to wander the world with a working bank card have an obligation to make cultural exchanges where possible.

going back a little, i spent 5 good days relaxing at the casa de ciclistas (google it), a guy named Lucho allows all travelling cyclists to crash at his little house/shop for free for as long as they want. an unparalleled hangout. the sad part is my body needed those 5 days to relax.
Trujillo has the worst traffic i have ever encountered. not as blazing fast as medellin, but at a maximum degree of anarchy.

and now i'm in Cusco with my gringo pal Miranda, both of us taking it easy for the first day at 11000'. a little touristy, but like most gringofied towns, you can always walk a few blocks away and find some locals to befriend.

the camera is back

an early hiatus from my hiatus

i had already planned to meet some friends in south peru and northern chile at the end of the month, so when things were not healing on their own, i decided to cheat a little, take a bus to northern peru (trujillo), and do whatever i could to get better. a couple weeks ago, my desire to keep going manifested itself in riding through being ill...now the desire manifests in rest. i look the last day riding into Loja with almost 8 hours on the bike and 2400m of climbing and wonder how i didn't collapse mid-ride

details would be a little off-topic, but i have found much, much better help here and expect to be in good shape in a week or two...but not back on the bike for almost a month. i'm worried about bike withrawl more than anything else.

the plan is to hang out here in Trujillo for about a week, then head down to Cusco, hang out for 10ish days around there, then down to the Atacama desert for a chunck of days, then back up to Trujillo to start cycling again, La Paz being the goal for completing leg 2.

i've learned not to speak for a country as a whole based on a few days and one part, but so far i'm very pleased with this border crossing. the peruvians have impressed me with the combination of energy and manyana that i enjoy about latin america. this part of peru seems both poorer and more developed than ecuador. shit is damn cheap. the 3.2:1 exchange rate highlights just how cheap...the number value of items in soles are similar to dollars. the weather in the northern peruvian desert is spectacular...dry, windy and 90 during the day, cooling off to the 60s at night. just a few miles from the ocean.

blah

still in Loja. there is a new rule now....when you're sick, particularly with respiritory infections, do not ride. even though i was clearly well enough to cycle from cuenca, it was not a good idea. just because your legs can carry you doesn't mean you should let them.
much better now, but i'm still on for a couple more days of rest.

The Sprit Catches You and You Stop at Page 60

man's best friend is going down for the count

pics updated

i admit that i did not explore very much, and it clearly had a certain kind of charm (a unesco world heritage site, whatever that means), but by my standards cuenca fell just on the other side of awesome...and this is with lots of awesome ice cream and real coffee. without those it would have fared worse. maybe i'm being unfair (note: search blog, i seem to say this a lot), but when i walk into a store and someone shouts to the back "ingles!" as if because of mywhite face and hands and red hair i cannot communicate in spanish. this happened twice. but i got some good things done...the bike has the correct number of teeth, there is a dreamy new $50 .25" of padding between my ass and the seat, and i'm a little leaner and meaner -- 7 lbs less crap, and apparently 10 lbs less me.

so i left the city on time...but after 6 crappy hours sleep. and i'm still near the depths of a cold. and my body is only about 80% as far as the food processing goes.

BUT

for the first time in a couple weeks, i have SPIRIT. it feels good to turn the cranks. the legs are flowing with ease. once the morning food goes down, i'm actually generating some real power. hell yeah.

the road is flat and busy for 20k, then it turns off and even though it's still the panamerica, it's quiet....like a car a minute quiet. quiet enough to listen to mozart quiet. then is climbs 800m at a fairly severe 8% grade...and near the top of this ascent are two big ass dogs, one of which gets a mouthhold on your pannier. you are not pleased, and for a few moments you are not at all one with the world.

then you reach the top....the road is brand spanking new concrete, you get a 10k cruise along the top of the ride, the view is excellent on both sides, the carfee air is delicious, it's a pleasant 60 degrees -- feels like freedom. hell yeah. ups and downs for a while, wait out some rain, descend 1000m, ascend 400, and you're in oña, hanging out near a peace corps volunteer from minnesota who is at least a little drunk and is more interested in talking to the people she has seen every day for a year than you. no big deal, at all. then the family invites you in, makes a bigass meal of soup and rice/lentils/chicken/salad, says they have a bed for you (no hotels here), let you spend the night, make coffee and eggs in the morning and send you off with a shot of whiskey. only notsoawesome part of this is they are running a business, and charge you a slightly steep $10 for all this. oh well. 105 km and 1700m of climbing, a sportsman's day

got up early today and was on the road by 7. road went up right from the start, from 2000 to 2900. i'm really not a morning climber. afterwards, it's pretty much a day in the office....if the ecuadorian andes are your office. thank god for the ipod...it really helps on the climbs, which can get particularly boring. the descents and scenery were spectacular today, though. another climb from 2150 to 2850, down again, some upward blips on the descent, up from 2275 to 2450 at 9%, down to 2300, then up to 2700. i really flew up the last climb, took just over 40 minutes of wheel-spinning time (14 minutes per 100m is average, 11 is pretty fast....when i was sick coming out of ambato i was struggling to climb 100m every 30 mins). lots of wind at the top of the ridge, a couple little climbs which tried to finish me off, then 800m of descent into Loja...a university town, maybe my favourite kind. 69 miles, 7:40 on the bike, and 7800' of climbing, not a flat spot the entire way.

taking a rest day to kill the cold and eat lots, then 2 more days and i'm in the desert in Peru. Unless plans change, i might not see the andes again until late march (going to take a vacation from the "vacation").

new wars, new enemies

the lows are OK

i'm sure everyone has this expererience at some point. when one or two things stop going your way, it's usually not a big deal, and you keep going and wait for them to pass. but if enough things happen and you reach the critical mass of bullshit, i think it's only natural to fall down a little

and fall i did. if we ever got into a deep conversation about cycling saftey, i would certainly point out that since i, personally, have made pretty much every mistake there is to be made on a bicycle, i am better off than most because i am pretty well aware of just about everything that can go wrong. but i found a new one (or a new combination).....a fairly rapidly-deflating front tire, moving at low speed, distracted by the little village i just entered, sand, and a turn. in my experience, most cycling accidents involve the bike sliding out from under you. this time, i'm moving pretty slowly, and the road rash was pretty minor. take out any one of those above circumstances, and only my feet touch the ground.

the bad news was the fall wasn't the bottom. i was up and running soon enough, the only real problem was that one of the scrapes was on my palm which did not make for much riding comfort (i'm really missing the bike shorts now, too). the next day, even though i could tell that my body had finally turned the corner and was going to start accepting and processing food in a more normal way, and i had done 1200m of climbing at an average 5% grade on a shitty road, and had met a couple good characters along the way (someone forced me to take $1), and had figured out how to deal with the endless dogs (bark loudly and carry a big stick), the real enemy appeared. the fucking clouds and rain.

i'm sure at the time i came up with numerous justifications for this, but i think in the end it was worth bruising my pride to keep the depression away...i took the bus out of the clouds. no big deal, really.

the good news is that i'm already regrouping. the bike has been slowly eating away at its chain, hopefully this will be fixed. i'm going to get rid of some stuff i'm not using...always feels good to be travelling light. i will get some bike shorts no matter what the cost. i met a dutch cyclist going the other direction on the way to cuenca...been riding with the same stuff for 25 years and had a really good spirit. somehow, i'm enjoying the constant bombardment of water balloons.
ecuador, in its humble way, is slowly growing on me, although i have to admit i miss the electricity of colombia. i have almost completely fixed my riding position on my little bike. my body is finally hungry like it's supposed to be.


pictures soon

the world IS flat

unforatuanately, the flat world is not really full of great things to blog about. me, i'm definitely a mountain person, but it's good to take a break from the religion once in a while. there are many months of the andes ahead of me

some have mentioned that it looks like i'm having too much fun....there is a case to be made, but it's worth noting that i leave a good amount of the crap out of this (bastard descents in the rain stay, though), because the shitty side of travelling makes for poor reading.

on that note, the weather is so fucking perfect here, you can swim in the 78 degree water in the very late afternoon in all your clothes (an easy way to wash), walk around the beach for a little while, eat a tasty and filling $2 fish dinner, be dry by the time you finish eating, and not be the slightest bit chilly once. seriously, you can descend from the high mountains to the beach in one day on a bike here (no the route i took a few days ago). maybe not THE life, but it's definitely one.

was an easy ride from guayaquil to Playas...the city is absolutly dead on sunday as everyone is at the beach. not that i needed to ask, but the locals confirmed that everyone comes back sun night, so i left a little after noon, cruised about 100k and arrived well before sunset. was really flying once i left the city, averaging 27 k/hr, but my body reminded me that this is not sustainable in 95 degree weather. rained the second half of the ride, but in ths climate it's welcomed.

gave the bike a nice tune up today, evened up the number of spokes and trued the wheels...even cleaned the caked grease out of the drivetrain, which i know is largely pointless, but this time it revealed that, holy shit, i'm missing two teeth from the middle chainring and the tooth bearing all the load is badly sharkfinned. this explains the shifting weirdness from the granny ring to the middle. will have to look for one in guayaquil tomorrow (only reasonable way back is go pass through)

looks like i'm going to spend less than a week down at the coast here, but i'm glad i came. i'm reminded again that with great spirit comes incomprehensible spanish, but with incomprehensible spanish comes personal growth. in a couple days i should be back in the clouds, above 3000 yet again.

(PS more free internet for network and PC troubleshooting at the internet cafe)

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
the experiment in liberty must be photodocumented

pics up

sheet up

tuesday
first day cycling alone in a long time was from latacunga to ambato, 42 highly unintimidating kilometers. just to keep things interesting, someone pointed the wind in my face, put up a couple 150m passes, took away my shoulder for a while, and threw in lots of traffic. whatever. Ambato turned out to be much bigger than i expected...the guy who owned the hotel i stayed in lived in newark for 20 years and drove a truck. apparently almost all ecuadorians who go abroad to make money come back (i´m guessing a little here, but people from mexico tend to stay)

wednesday
left early in the morning, felt OK but not great...good breakfast of croissants and yogurt. climbed 400m just to get out of city. road never went down...but this was expected because according to the book the climb was to fourthree. my energy level was slipping rapidly..legs giving less and less. took a nap on the side of the road, which helped but not totally. i notice i'm short a spoke on the back wheel
stopped by little indigineous town, made coffee in a little farm house, decided to stay the night there because i was at threesix and any higher it would be cold. eventually a boy came by, shy, asked him if i could stay but he didn't really respond...later on dad came by and was very friendly and said it was OK to stay...boy came back with brother and more fam and asked for dollar. this would not happen in colombia, then again i wouldn't feel as safe doing this in colombia. an act of faith??
slept pretty well...almost cold but OK. crappy sleeping bag...NEVER wash nice down bags by hand.

thursday
left really early, spectacular morning. quiet road, started to get views of volcano chimborazo, felt much better, more climbing, practically next to volcano, great views, etc, etc, cross four, down to threeeight, through the altidessert, cross the pass at a little over fourone (thirteenfive).
downhill from there. descent starts off cold, then in really heavy clouds, then road gets worse and worse. first 1000m decsending are NOT FUN. then i'm below the clouds, still crappy road but i make it to guaranda in one piece. lunch, then i decide to keep going. something is drawing me to the coast. 5 weeks in the mountains and i want a change. my brain wants the kitch value of descending from 4100+ to 0 in the same day.
and so, with 80k and 4100 m of descending, you think this would be a pretty easy ride. hm.
the road goes down a little, up a little, down a little, down some more...ok with me. only 60k to the coast and 2600 to drop. climb 100m as the google terrain view predicted, then down to 2400. steep climb out of the town, 2500. notice that there is a wall of mountains, no pass in sight. screaming, raining, unhappy. there was nothing, NOTHING on the map that indicated a climb like this. only the deaf in San Vicinte did not learn a new word today. put on the pixies. climb to 2700. no pass in sight. can't see anyways. feeling incredibly strong (probably from the heavy air) and incredibly pissed. road turns shitty. 2800. lady says there is lots more climbing. 2900...in the clouds again, light rain, top of the pass finally. still can't see though. start descending. 11 degrees C, raining, i'm fucking soaked and pissed. road sucks, descending slowly, rain in eyes and can't see well, using every ounce of concentration i have to keep from hitting the big potholes. down to 2500, guy at gas station says it's all down from here, lady on horse says more climbing. unfortunately the horselady is right. mostly push bike to 2650, almost crying from extreme frusturation. down to 2400, rain and road get worse....in patches it is OK and others i'm descending a 5% grade at 15 or 20 km hr, using all my concentration and every bike handling skill i have. then back up to 2450 and now i'm in total disbelief...feeling very cold but just miserable, no real core temp danger. keep thinking that i need to descend at lesat below 1500 and dry off in order to be comfortable. finally, the descent i have been waiting for, 16k straight down to 800m, see sign for hotel, $5, done deal. mud everywhere, everything is wet. "the life of bees" is soaked, camera display is not working, "zen..." is OK, body not happy but in one piece, sleep 12 hours. 137k, 1250m up, 4100 down. hell of a day.

friday
wake up late, warm and still a little wet. hung up all my clothes in the room last night and in the morningnone of my ultra-drying synthetics are dry in the least. pack up, using much more plastic to keep everything dry.
really crappy descending the next 800m...unfortunately did not tie down my cycling shorts and the are gone with the wind and i'm still too pissed-hungover from yesterday to care. 35 flat, flat, flat k to the next town Babahoyo where i eat and charge the ipod and start sketching the blog post in shorthand....much of which i left in shorthand. the sign says 70k to Guayaquil, the biggest city in ecuador, not recommended by any guide book or person i've met, which means my interest is piqued. the road there wasn't bad...busy but mostly with a good shoulder. i haven't cycled without shorts in a long time and it's bitingly clear why.
still not feeling great and haven't eaten much in the past few days so i'm not entirely sure where my energy is coming from, but i'm able to hold around 23k/h for a few hours. cross over two massive bridges to enter the city....lots of traffic but for me it was much easier than quito.

saturday
i LOVE the city right from the get-go. to me, most people here on the coast have a certain gusto that was mostly lacking in the andes. entirely different people. there are very, very few tourists in the area, a huge plus in my book. My guide book sings highly of quito and damns guayaquil with faint praise (and very few pages), probably because there is "nothing to do" here, but, for me, this trip is intentionally very light on things to do (not counting the bike) and heavy on trying to get under the skin. guayaquil feels even more citylike than medellin.
the way i speak and understand spanish is improving too. very few improvements to grammar and vocab, but i'm speaking and asking questions with much more confidence, and ignoring the fact that my pronunciation sucks, because it changes so much from place to place there really is not much of a center to adhere to, anyway.
a day or two here, errands and things (definitely new shorts), then off to the pacific for a day or two....i've been pining for a swim there for weeks now.

learning and sleeping

we left off in quito, right? originially i wanted to leave friday and julian monday, but he moved his day up to saturday so i stuck around to ride out with him.
we did a fairly good job at one of the harder parts of the trip (for me)...getting up early after several city days. the good news was that the only way to beat the crazy quito traffic is to leave before the sunrise, which is more or less out of the question on the bike -- so we got going a little after 7. once we got away from the center there was a well-graded road out of the city...only 300m, which doesn't register as a climb around here. the andes in our legs? anyway, shortly after lunch ran into a swiss lady who was cycling the other direction...very friendly lady, who was clearly a lifelong traveller and sportswoman and just had a very good air about her. she let me take pictures of her nicely detailed peru and south ecuador map.
kept going...knew that the top pass was 3500 from our low point of 2700. nice 1% grades up to 3100, then we got some steady rain, the grade increased, and our shoulder disappeared for a while. at arond 3200 i started feeling the altitude (a little strange....i've been much higher without feeling it). anway, it's happened before and i know that if i take it very easy for 30 mins i will return to normal, which i did. got some spectacular views of the 5900m volcano copotaxi just at the top of the pass. one of the most rewarding descents of the trip...first 300m down were steep and straight and i stayed above 60 km/hr for 5-10 mins. then the grade drops to .5-1%, which allows you to cover spectacular distances very quickly. on flat ground i average about 24-25 km/hr, but at a 1% descent this goes to about 38.
Anyway...made it to Latacunga really early, even with a long stop talking to the swiss woman. not too much to say about the town...it's seemingly engulfed by a large market, where i got hat #4, pictures to come. Julian was to climb the volcano the next day and i was planning on splitting, up and over the mountains and then down to the coast. but met a couple kids in the hostel who were going to a volcanic lake Quilotoa and decided to tag along for the day.
The lake was very cool, pictures to come..only drawback was one that i have noticed quite a bit in ecuador, that the locals tend to look at you like walking money and treat you as such too. i sympathize, but that doesn't make it much less annoying. this was almost nonexistant in colombia. One of the kids, Eli, was planning to hike the next day...which goes halfway around the rim of the volcano then descends into the local towns. i decided to tag along. we stayed at one of the little guesthouses at the top of the volcano, but didn't sleep entirely well at 3850 (12, 500).
started off early the next morning, and the big challenge of the day was instantly apparent...we were in the clouds, and couldn't see much more than 20 fet in front of us. the other big challenge was that the main path was not entirely clear...sometimes the side paths were bigger and more worn. and, to top it off, it _seems_ that someone removed all the signs from the signposts, which _may_ be related to the fact that everyone you enconter is offering to guide you for a price. anyway, we got a little lost, found our way back, etc, etc...but missed the main turnoff that would lead from the top of the volcano to the next town. we got a break in the clouds, could see a fairly clear descent into the valley, as well as a road, and jumped on it. but because we had walked to far around the rim, after descending the mistake was amplified....to keep this short, what was supposed to be a 4 hour 11km hike turned into a 9 hour 23-ish km hike with well over 1500m of vertical. the good news was that after the town on the rim, everyone was very friendly, giving us shelter from the rain and good directions to the next towns.
Found a good hostel in Chuchilan, dried off by the fire, ate our first meal in 11 hours, and enjoyed some beers (i, um, realized that it was just a couple hours to my, um, birthday). woke up at 2am to catch a ride back to Latacunga with the hostel owner...quite an interesting experience riding in his large delivery truck, with your face right up against the front of the truck, driving in the dark, in the clouds, with debris all over the road, mud, sharp curves, narrow passes with oncoming traffic, etc, etc. my kind of fun.
said the goodbyes to julian (again) this morning...heard about his conequest of the 5800m volcano and all that good stuff. he's got a damn good plan...descending today to a town at 1800 with hot springs, then a few days riding in the amazon region, and then taking a boat for 5ish days, crossing into peru. we made a pretty damn good riding team, and the first couple days will probably be a little strange. one thing that made him different was the fact that he was not at all a cyclist before starting his trip. we balanced each other out...i helped him with tips and tricks about efficient cycling, and he helped remind me that the trip is not about the bike.
i'm going to Ambato this afternoon, a short 40 k. then, what should be an interesting day...climbing (with ups and downs) from 2600 to 4300 (above 14!), around Chimborazo (6300m) and, according to my book, about 30k of alti-desert.
as always, pictures soon.

Leg 1 -- Cartagena to Quto -- Welcome to the (alti-) Jungle

final colombia pictures are updated

created a new album for ecuador pics..also updated

sheet is updated.

thoughts on leg 1 of the trip a little later, then off on a "vuelta de cuencua" tomorrow, most likely without company. curently bleeding money in quito, the first and last good chance for a while to buy gringo-style and -size clothes, shoes, camping gear.

south of the equator, and then some

sometimes i wonder if travelling like this is entirely selfish -- it's a feeling that's hard to resist after spending most of your life in school or working. maybe it's because most of us are so used to being in some kind of structured environment, working as a group toward some kind of progress or goal. when you're travelling there is no such goal -- all your time is clearly your own and your time is entirely what you make of it.
but the past week helped remind me that, quite possibly, it's the other way around, that not only does travelling tend to augment the individual, but it's a pretty damn good way to enhance the group as a whole.
anyway, the past week or so was well spent. for me, it was lots of good food, good sleep, good spanish practice, and more than a little glimpse into an entirely different culture. in exchange, i made lots of food for lots of people, helped watch and entertain 5 kids, did some typical household and bike repairs, played some violin (so far nobody i've met has heard a solo violin), and provided the best glimpse i could (in broken spanish) into life in the US.
i can't remember too much detail off the top of my head, but when i update the pictures later today or tomorrow i'll give some narrative in the captions

to quito was a good long day, over 100k and 2100m of climbing. we started as 4: me, julian, claudio, and enrique (the father). enrique rode with us up the first pass, from 2500m in octavalo to 3100 at the top...pretty impressive for someone who usually just bikes around a farm. claudio wasn't feeling great so at the top of the pass he let me and julian go ahead. the road descended down to 2000m, up to 2300, down to 2000 again, then up to 2850 into the Big City (as always, there are dips in the climbs). we ran into the owner of a bar we visited twice in octavalo along the way. with a week off, it took the heart and lungs an hour or two to get back into the swing of things, but once they did the body was in full force, flying up the climbs a good 1.5-2 km/h faster than usual -- aided by spectacularly temperate weather and cloud cover all day.

still not entirely sure how long i'm going to stay in quito...might be just a couple days or i might stay through the weekend. as i'm sure you've noticed, there hasn't been a whole lot of biking recently....but we here have decided that if all you care about is the biking, you might as well just stay at home, away from the microbes. (PS despite some opposition to them, i must admit that modern antibiotics are pretty damn close to a miracle drug)

octavalo

so, not 10 minutes after the last post, i (we) ran into yet another fellow travelling cyclist freakshow...Claudio from Modena. we stopped at the gas station, filled up the stove bottle, made some tea, then decided to continue on together to octavalo, just 20k away. and then, not 10 minutes after that, we ran into another freakshow...didn't catch his name, but he was a big dude from switzerland who had been travelling around s america for 3 years (and looked it). he was going the other direction, so we just stopped to chat for a few minutes about this and that.

the last few days, the three of us have been living with the indigenous family that we met in cali. so far, a very cool experience. i'll write some more about them later. it's been very good for my spanish, because that's the only language everyone understands. we're planning to spend the weekend here, ride to quito monday and, for me, find all the crap that i didn't get at home or have already lost or destroyed.

sombered

back to posting on the road. in ibera right now, going to stay with a family in octavalo tonight, just 25k or so away. tomorrow to quito.

yesterday....woke up early. still not feeling too great, but after 3 days rest it was time to move on. leaving colombia was quick, only 5 minutes wait. not quite the same for ecuador...waited almost 4 hours to get our entry stamps.

ecuador was off to a very bad start. slow border, shitty police asking how much money we had a few k later, a cold cimb to 3200m, and no decent food on the road.

but after lunch things turned up, some nice decents for a while, then rain, then up a little more.

once we climbed back to 2800 the scenery was as spectular as anything. huge valleys, open roads, good weather, spectacular light (you'll see in the photos later), and 1300m of descening (video of this later too). at almost the same time, we both blurted out ´this is freedom!´saw some strange dioramas of mammoths, saber tooth tigers, and snoop dogg. ecuador, fuck yeah!

so what was going to be the story of a shitty day turned great eneded very quicky when we were going up a little climb, heard a siren behind us...around the next corner there was a crowd of people, streams of blood, and a body with a blanket over it. we only stopped for a few seconds, not really wanting to find out what happened (an accident, somehow). a very quiet next half hour riding. i guess as travelling brings you closer to life, it also brings you closer to death (philosopically speaking)

anyway, descended down to a little town (everyone was black, a little surprising for ecuador), couldn't find a hotel..but 5k later found one, chilled out, ate some spectacular grilled chicken, and slept.

comments, cool.

so i had all the settings right before, but apparently i had to change the template in order for the link to comments to appear. originally, i picked the one most likely to induce seizures -- white text on black -- but in the end i had a little mercy.

y blah blah blah....

shit (pictures updated)

the curse of the blog. if it's not updated regularly, not only do people stop reading (ok by me) but if lots of stuff happens then you have to make a very confusing and slightly epic post. so this is what we're going to get. deep breaths.

Cali

we all really, really liked Cali. Medellin was like a bone-crackling puppy, growing and developing at a seemingly stupendous rate, not entirely full of culure but flush with interesting people and felt like a "real" city. Cali was the opposite, fairly quiet, seemingly stuck in the past, and seemingly devoid of city people. but it had a great vibe, great music, great clubs, very friendly locals, and a coolness matched by few other places.
we made the mistake of not making reservations at a hostel, so when we got there every hostel and hotel was booked (except in the very undesirable center of the city). we ended up talking our way into one of the newer ones...which has the potential to be a great place, but the owner was more than a little batshit crazy and there were more than a few tense moments.
anyway, we passed the new year there, had a couple of really great days with lots of alcohol and dancing and meeting people from all over (including some ecuadorians we plan on staying with in a day or two). fabian and i met quite possibly the craziest man in Cali and left some good english and german quotes for him to dwell on. if you scan through the pictures, you'll see that we even made it into the local newspaper. etc etc.
so fabian continued on his quixotic way back to medellin and up to venezuela. julian and i left early in the morning, hoping to make the 130k to popayan. leaving the city was pretty easy, fast and flat for the first 50k, but soon after the road turned up, and the new year's residue began to make itself known. unbeknownced to us, this was the beginning of the endless (ENDLESS) ups and downs..up 100m, down 100m, up 150m, down 120m, up 75m, down 50m, etc, etc etc. mentally unfun. took a long nap in the middle of the day, so by the time we got to piendamo about 105k from cali it was already getting dark, we had climbed 1500m and were ready to stop. stayed in a gas station with a very friendly and businesslike owner.

piendamo - mojarres

one of the things that most anyone who has spent an entire day riding a bicycle notices is that when you have a good, long day it feels like you get to experience a miniature version of your life within about 12 hours. extreme highs, extreme lows, love, sadness, infinite happiness, unforseen problems, new friends, new enemies, etc, etc. this was one of those days. 161k with 8:15 on the bicycle and over 2000m of climbing. left really early in the morning knowing we were in for a long day...we were feeling whipped just a few k into the day by the ENDLESS ups and downs...after 20k these calmed down and we had some really, really great cycling descending to and around popayan. good roads, nice grades, a seemingly infinite number of cyclists. leaving popayan, already a couple hours into the day, the sign said we had 121k to go. more of the ENDLESS ups and downs for 40k, then down to about 1300 (from 2000?), and a climb back to 1800. i stopped at the top to wait for julian but he must of passed while i wasn't looking...after 20 mins waiting i couldn't decide if i had really sprinted up the climb or if he was ahead of me. after 3 people concurred that there was in fact a tall cyclist with a black shirt in front of me (one lady said one hour in front...) i realized i was goign to have to push pretty hard the next hour or two to catch up (still not entirely sure if he was in front or behind). a big descent down to 900m, then a hot, shitty climb up to 1300 to get out of the valley.
eventually caught up with julian along the way, there were another 25k or so of ENDLESS ups and downs. stopped in el bordo about 45k short of mojarres where we ran into a group of 10 cyclists (and these people were REAL cyclists) from bogota cycling to quito. took some pics, exchanged the typical chit-chat, then decided to ride together to Mojarres...our final destination but they planned on going furthur. was lots of fun pedalling with them...got to lead the group for 8 very fast km. then our weight and long day caught up with us and they were all pretty far ahead of us...however they stopped near a scenic river and i played some violin for them and took some more pictures. they pressed on...we searched for water and juice (funny story, somewhere in the picture captions). but as it turns out, they decided to stop in mojarres too. all had dinner together, stayed in the same hotel with a well-negotiated price, and drank a few of the best beers of the trip. a very memorable day

mojarres was at 600m, so we knew the next day would be hot. ok, fine, we leave early, we know there is a climb around 35k so as long as we get above 1200m or so by 9am we should be fine. and we were doing well, until we realized that we had very little cash...and it was sunday morning in the desert and there were no stores and nothing was open and we had little food and water. after 8k on no breakfast we stopped at a tiny pueblo with no stores, but somebody let us in their house for water, which we filtered to drink and cooked up some pasta for breakfast. really, the biggest problem was not that we were still hungry afterward but that we were losing time, it was already 90 degrees at 8:30 and it was going to get worse.
more ENDLESS ups and downs for 35k, stopped in a town that finally had food, spent some of our rations on lunch (but filtered water from the tap), and began one of the shittiest climbs yet...starting at 500m and well over 95 degrees with a 7% grade, it was a very slow and water-intensive first hour or two. bought some more pasta to cook along the way (cheap empanadas for lunch), climbed to about 1600m and descended down to about 800. ever since we left cali, the people have changed almost completely...almost everyone we see on the road is of indiginous descent. lots of them sitting on the road asking for money (people throw coins from cars sometimes). they were very bitter and verbally agressive with us...really the first time I had experieced this sentiment in colombia.
anway, climbed back to 1200m, knew there were no cities around which was OK because we didn't have anything close to the money for a hotel. camped just off the main road, overcame stove problems to finally make some dinner, crammed into julian's tent when it started to rain, woke up to nice mountains and questioning sanity...the campsite was less than 2 feet from a pretty sheer drop.
next day to Pasto was a climb all day from 1200 to 2700. met a local cyclist on the road who was really friendly and talkative...invited us to his sister's house near the highway for juice and coffee. me the whole family, hung out for a while, and of course, played some violin in exchange for hospitality. the rest of the day was uneventful, except for the fact that we were completely wrecked from the past few days and the end of the climb was not technically difficult but a little bit of a mental challenge. rain near the top, temp dropped to about 50 degrees. descended about 300m into pasto leaving victory cries in our wake. greeted by some friendly but aggressive festival-goers who promptly sprayed us with "snow in a bottle", threw powder in our face, and painted us black. pretty endearing, really.
the rest of our stay in pasto went pretty much like that. we were there for the last couple days of the festival de blancos y negros, quite possibly the greatest party on the planet at the time. lots of drinking, dancing, random spraying and face painting and powder throwing. stayed in a nice but expensive hotel ($12 each per night). helped a randon guy on the street who was fairly brutally assualted by a taxi driver. ate something i shouldn't have.
leaving pasto, i knew it would be an interesting day. i was feeling 80% at best. two flat tires on the way out of the city for me. my legs felt good but my body not so on the climb from 2400 to 3050 out of the city. very cold on the descent...julian got pretty far ahead because i kept stopping. by the time i got to the bottom of the descent at 1700m i realized that my chances of making it up to ipiales at 2900 were nil, as i couldn't eat anything and could barely hold down water at the moment. took a nap on a restaurant table over a little bottle of water. woke up a couple hours later feeling a little better, worked up the motivation to unpack the bike, stop a bus, and ride about 40 mins up to ipiales, shouting at julian when the bus passed him.

so ipiales is where we are, a pretty cold city at 2900m, but it's a good size, nice and cheap...the perfect place to take a few days off to get better, reflect on colombia (a fairly big task) and plan for ecuador. in the hostel in cali we met a really friendly and fun dutch couple, Loes and Joop, who we also saw in pasto and ipiales, who just left for quito this morning. lots of good times with them. don't have my camera with me right now, but went to one of the most spectacular churches just a few k away from here...pics coming...eventually (maybe not till quito).

we're going to leave sunday morning with the hopes of an easy border crossing (heard some horror stories of 12+ hour waits), going to stay with the ecuadorians we met in cali for a night or two, and should be in quito by the end of the week.

one last thing. (i'm getting a little tired typing this much....unless you're desperately bored at work i'm sure you're getting a little tired reading too. check the pictures, they're more interesting anyway.) i'm going to leave most of the numbers out of the blog and use this instead, mostly for me (i can't imagine why anyone would be that interested) but also for you number freaks out there. reading over other biker's travelogues i'm realizing it's easy to slip into a fairly uninteresting narrative of distances, terrain, and cities. not entirely sure how i'm going to counteract the tendency, but at least know that i'm thinking about it.

mark.
lots of cycling, scant internet, ran out of cash, having too much fun at the greatest party in the world, etc, etc. post and pictures soon.

discriminating

fast ride to cali, 65k at 22km/hr. all hotels and hostels are full for the new year, but we managed to talk our way into one (NY eduaction is paying off).

sensuatinal

since we left off....the three monos (monkey is a term of endearment around here) had a nice christmas dinner of minature turkeys with arepas and rice and beer. not much different than any other meal, but we ate with as much christmas gusto as we could find.
leaving Riosucio we had a fairly steep 400m climb to 2100m, but the rest of the day was fairly flat riding along the mountain ridge, finally descending to about 900m in Cartago. spectacular scenery all day, riding through the clouds and new and carless roads in the morning, then a gradual descent through the river valley where we pushed 30 km/hr for about 10k. we stopped by the river for a swim with the locals. at some fire-cooked carne de cerdo (pork) late in the afternoon, climbed back to 1200m, then had a spectacularly fast descent (max 71 kmh for me) into Cartago.
Cartago was about as uninteresting as a city of 150,000 could be, but we stayed in a very friendly..umm...hotel. there was a sign reminding everyone that anyone brought back to the hotel must be of age (which is about 14 here). met a nice couple on the street who invited us back to their place for wine, coffee, and pastries.
Last night i made sure to point out that after three good days cycling, we were due for a shitty one. and a shitty morning it was...drizzle and rain, crowded highway, and all three of us punctured before noon. brilliant. but the rest of the day was good....for a stretch we averaged about 24 km/hr. totally flat riding through the valley, 110 km. drafted a truck that was going about 22 km/hr for 15 minutes -- just like taking a break but we were covering ground.
I've been feeling much better the past couple days, and starting to feel really strong on the bike. tomorrow will be a short, flat 65 km day into Cali...a few days off there, then off to Ecuador. I'm realizing that i haven't had much to say about the country recently...most likely because everything is starting to feel very familiar. all the thumbs up on the road, the insanely aggressive city traffic, the somewhat skeptical but overwhelmingly friendly people, the strange stories and history, and the highly varied and beautiful scenery, have become more internal than external to me. in short, Colombia is a spectacular country, through and through. one could spend years here and never get bored. like most other countries i've been to in latin america, everyone tells you that there is danger around the next corner (partly out of habit, partly to feel better about their own turf), but to me it seems as safe as anywhere here.
Oh, and i bought a violin. i would like to say it was a spur of the moment thing, but it was in the early plans. a guy at the hostel in medellin knew of a luthier in the city. so on monday we paid him a visit....unfortunately he had no instruments of his own, but he sold me a very, very nice chinese-made kit that set me back very, very little as far as violins go. the police in particular seem to enjoy listening.
pictures, videos, seranades to come soon. i just spent an hour working on them here, but the computer is just not cooperating enough.

tres monos

we're a little bit behind schedule, but otherwise everything has been going as planned. we left medellin early tuesday, heading towards cali. yesterday we had a little 700m climb to get out of the city, then almost 2000m of descending down to la pintada. the temperature near the top was about 65 degrees, at the bottom well above 90. total distance was about 75k with 1200m of climbing. not much happening at night, we were all wasted (tired) and slept almost 12 hours.

today we cycled along a river for the first 45k, then the road turned up and climbed from 700m to 1800m. about 70k total. i was feeling the heat in the middle of the day and had to go very slowly, but was very fast for the last 300m of climbing. now we're in riosucio, about to eat our christmas dinner.

pictures soon

also

those of you with a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket (i.e. you are not decimated by the current economy) should run, not walk to this website, get this camera, and carry it with you everywhere.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830120251

stymied

so here i am, back in medellin. maybe i just really like this city, or the hostel and the people it contains, but the decision to turn back was not entirely difficult.

since the last post, there was some really good cycling on good roads for about 40k, but then things took a turn for the worse. i came to a T in the road...in one direction it was a good road that was a dead end, and in the other direction i would have had to cycle or walk 34k over some really, really nasty dirt track. there was a guy with a little store at the T and he laid out all the options, most of which involved going back through medellin. i figured i would average 3-4 km/hr over the dirt -- not appealing to me. it's probably going to be a good long trip, and i'm not quite ready to push myself like that. not to mention i was having some issues with a bike 1-2 sizes too small and am starting to feel the effects of living in a part of the world where hygiene is definitely not king. this is most definitely not a race

So with the help of the very helpful and hospitable guy (he gave me advice and coffee and showed me his handbuilt welder and i promised him a postcard from the US) at the T, i flagged down a bus, threw the bike in, and backtracked to the city.

that's the bad news

the good news is, i'm having a good time at the hostel, relaxing, hanging out, enjoying the international company and friendly city. the other good news is that, come monday, i will be cycling with not one but two companions (maybe more...i'm getting better at converting backpackers to bikepackers). one french chap who has cycled down from mexico city and a high-spirited quixotic german who will be testing the cross-country cycling waters. just as i like to spend quiet weekends at home, i've been spending the last couple days fixing up everyone's bike for the trek down carratera 25 and a side highway to Cali.

no pictures at the moment, but tomorrow i'm going to ride into the center of town in search of bike parts and post cards. if you guys play your cards right, i'll slap the video-capable camera to my handlebars and give you a glimpse of how positively insane it is cycling down the streets here. i'm fairly sure your reactions will run the gamut. will take some pretty church photos to balance things out. and some good pics of my john mcenroe hair, too

i'm thinking about ditching the machete too. in the heat of excitement at the home-depot-like store here, i ditched the much cheaper and effective dog-repelling wooden stick in favor of the shiny bush clearing weapon. but my better judgement is telling me it's more of a liability than anything else.

escape

finally, truly, escaped from medellin. i'll have to watch myself in the future -- it's easy to slip back into city mode. forged an alliance with a couple kids at the hostel based on distributing little pocket notebooks to kids in poor areas.
getting out was pretty rough physically as well. didn't get out until after noon, then the next few kilometers were straight up with grades from 10-17% for 400m of climbing. once i hit the highway the grades slowed to about 6% but there was still another 850m of climbing for the day. only covered 37k.
i decided to get off the main road for this leg, which looked particularly car-oriented (they even call it the autopista). so far seems to have been a good move, as the cycling is pretty awesome. lots of roadies out here. i'd heard that colombia was pretty fanatical about cycling, but not until recently did i actually see any cyclists.
rode until 20 minutes before dark...saw a lot of halfway decent camping spots by the side of the road but didn't feel like the area was quite remote enough for this. eventually came across a seminary school of sorts and the guy i saw called a couple of people and they let me string up my hammock between the goal posts on the soccer field. not bad sleeping at all....i'm starting to get used to this semi-wild camping.

loosening and lightening

no good updates today. been having a little too much fun in medellin exploring the city and gearing up and down. the spanish here is much easier to understand and i'm slowly starting to feel comfortable. fixed a downed computer at the hostel for a free night and some beer.
definitely leaving tomorrow towards manizales.
gearing down, i cut out almost everything that is not necessary: extra length from straps, labels, extra backpack pockets, plastic bags, flashlight (my cell phone has one), guide book (took 500 + pictures of all the pages), and two of my bicycle bags, probably 10 lbs in total.
gearing up, i got some new socks, lightweight pants, fishing hooks and line, headphones for the ipod, alcohol for the stove and, well. this. it serves a rather utilitarian purpose, but i think it's best to let your mind run wild.

pre-developed

pictures are updated

spent most of today doing boring stuff like laundry, shopping for socks and trinkets, and eating. non-stop eating.
i went out to the city for a few hours, just to get a little lost and get a feel for the place. i haven't been many places, but i guarantee you there is nowhere quite like medellin. moving on from its cartel days, there has clearly been a massive investment in infrastructure -- all the roads are new, the metro is fairly new, and they have a couple cable cars that run over and into the poorest neighbourhoods. but despite all the new stuff, the city center functions like most other poorer cities i.e. it's a giant market of small stands and shops, full of loud busses and oodles of exhaust.
it's been a nice day and a half off, but except for finding alcohol for my stove i've found all the little stuff i was looking for and am ready to keep going.

medellin

thought it would be a nice easy descent, given that medellin is 3300 feet below santa rosa and only 67 k away, but the mountains had their last hurrah of the first leg and had me climb another 2700 feet on the way down. i cleared the computer again by mistake, but it was about 75 k at 21 km/hr. drafted a truck on one of the descents and hit 68.5 km/hr on my aerodynamically challenged white donkey of a bike. i strapped my camera to the bike and took a video of one of the steeper parts of the decent. it's 250M so i need to cut it some to make it fit on the internet.
staying at a nice clean hostel with lots of backpackers. can't say i'm a fan of spending a lot of time at these places, but here and there they are quite nice. there's a mega-lo-mart a few blocks away to stock up on rice, sugar, and oatmeal.
i'm going to try and find someone on couchsurfing.com who can take me in and show me the city. i'm not much of a fan of doing touristy things.
i need to work on my spanish too. i can communicate just fine, but conversation is pretty much out of the question.

i enjoy getting emails from y'all, keeping me updated on what's going on at home. so keep them coming and i'll try and keep this thing updated.

the mountains in my legs (reprise) / how do you say fing knackered in spanish??
i'll warn you that i'm a little worn out and hungry and feeling the altitude right now, but here's my best

the pictures are updated. everything since the one captioned "cockpit view"

i think we left off in caucasia. the rest of the ride into taraza was uneventful. for the day i think it was 133k at about 22 km/hr. stayed at a little hospedaje (guesthouse) there which was fine, but i had a little bit of a funny feeling about it, so i took the oppertunity to take my us cash and spread it out all over my clothes and bike. the town was a little dusty but very amenable

the last couple days went as follows (the number is altitide in meters, multiply by 3.3 for feet)

125M
started off in taraza, climbing slowly. pretty scenic, following a big river, lots of shade, ate a gigantic lunch around 45km

200m
after lunch, crossed a bridge and noticed that the rode tilted somewhat drastically upward. no big deal, i switch over to one of the tiny gears and keep going. it's very hot, by the way

400m
the grades are between 6 and 10 percent, and i'm feeling it

800m
holy shit, i'm tired. when i cough i feel it down my entire leg. stopped a whole bunch of times to drink and eat fruit. it's getting slightly cooler, though

1000m
wow, 1000m. take a picture of the altimeter

1200m
reached the first town...seems like the top of the range. medellin is 200-ish km away and at
1500m, so i should be good from here

1600m (like 3km later)
what really gets me, besides the fact that i'm tired and pushing the bike now, is that you can't see any switchbacks here...every 10 minutes you round a corner that is 100m higher, and as soon as you round that one there is another. i'm, in the clouds. everyone is giving me a thumbs up and smiling.

1700m
i'm clearly not near the top. not that i can see much because i'm in the clouds. it's 20 minutes from being very dark. there are lots of shabby looking shacks around here, but i find a decent looking house and ask if i can stay there. the lady says i have permission to stay, but this is in one of the uninhabited shacks. i'm so tired i don't care. i lay out all my stuff, set up the hammock inside, filter a few litres of water, and make a dinner of rice with tomatoes (delicious). read some dostoyevsky in the hammock, and i'm pretty sure i hear footsteps around me. i ask if anyone is there, and no response. this is the point, for me, when the rational and irrational minds duke it out. the irrational mind says that i'm in troulble. the rational one says no, it's probably nothing. and even if there is someone, i locked the door (with some spare brake cable), and even if they come in, they're probably not hostile, and if they are, they just want money or, at worst, my stuff. honestly? they can have it if it comes to that. i'm so infinitely more fortunate than whomever would do this that a couple hundred dollars and bike and some camping gear is really nothing to me.i put my earplugs in and sleep pretty well, despite the loud ass trucks 15 feet from my earsin the morning i notice some falling debris near the shack that sounds a whole lot like human footsteps.

2200m
i'm at what looks like the top, but turns out to be YALP (yet another local peak). feeling pretty good now. only walked a little bit this morning, up a grade that was 18-ish percent. going up lots of people were offering me rides and the slow moving trucks offered to let me hold on and be pulled.

2400m
stopped by the police yet again. i guess they're bored and i seem interesting. these guys are particularly fun -- ask the usual questions about where i came from, going, where i eat and sleep, which country has better women, etc. they give me some arepa with egg and "chocloate" which is some chocolate powder with water and milk (we'll see how my stomach feels in a couple days. can't turn down free food unless it's obviously bad though). there's a picture with these guys in the album.

2500m
up and down, but i'm finally at the next town, yarumal. feeling tired but pretty good. stop at a little food stand, there's some guy there who is very talkative (he even looks like rodney dangerfield) who pretty much orders everything for me -- cafe con leche, arepa, and chicken in a fried shell -- and then even pays for it. pretty cool. i wish i could send some of this weather home: clean air, blue sky, 75 degrees.

2000m
nice decent

2500m
stopped by the police yet again. just one guy and he was actually serious for a couple minutes, then slips into sizing up how crazy i am

2700m
the top. feels good. it's all pretty much flat and downhill from here. descend a little to santa rosa de osos where i am typing and starving now. and feeling particularly good. the lady at the hotel didn't have enough change so i bought a beer to close the gap.

by the way, the numbers are starting to mean nothing to me. they're a point of amusement, but this is clearly not about numbers.

yesterday was 74.09 km, 12.6 km/hr, 1671 meters gained
today was 81.03 km, 14.5 km/hr, 1832 meters gained
in total, i climbed 11,500 feet the past couple days. ready for a break

photos and videos

why google does not make it easy to easily integrate photos and video into the blog site is beyond me. when i get to medellin i'm going to try and see if i'm missing something or if there is a better way to do this. i'm somewhat tempted to move the whole thing to crazyguyonabike.com (yes, a real site).

anyway, instead of a siesta i found an internet cafe and updated pictures. and i uploaded a couple videos here and here. i also finally started taking some pictures with my camera that exposes real film, but it may be a long time before anyone sees them.

so far today has been good, very overcast and humid this morning, only 80 degrees. i'm stopped in Caucasia and it's back to 95 again. 70k at 22.6 km/hr (glad i wrote this down because i just cleared the day on my computer). it's pretty flat, the shoulder is nice and big, and i'm starting to feel like my good old biking self. the road is about to turn up, though. 275K more to medellin -- i'm going to try and make it there by wednesday.

moving on

right now i'm in a little puebla called Planeta Rica. was planning on trying to stay at a farm again tonight, but the name was too good, and after 121k at 21k/hr i'm treating myself, a little.

not sure if i let on to this much, but yesterday i was really baked. my little bike hat was just not cutting it, and after two days of constant equatorial sun i think that half of my brain cells went into heat hibernation. anyway, today was much better for a number of reasons. 1) i got a sombrero which does a pretty good job of keeping the sun off my head. had to sew some twigs into in to prevent the front from flapping around. 2) i wore pants today which kept the sun off my legs so they can tan instead of blaze. surpisingly not that bad. 3) i'm starting to perfect the Gunnar method of wearing a longsleeve shirt -- cuffs buttoned to keep the sun off the arms and almost the entire shirt unbuttoned to keep cool. 4) i'm finding out what's good and cheap to eat: little bananas that taste 10x better than anything i've had at home, oranges are good and practically free, fried whole potatoes with a little meat in the middle for 20 cents, and fried arepas with egg for 40 cents. right now i'm drinking a little over 2 gallons of water a day. 5) the bike is performing admirably -- the index shifter seems to have fixed itself in the warm weather -- but i'm thinking about slimming things down considerably when i get to medellin. 6) yesterday i saw a guy travelling on a motorcycle get stopped by the police and he was being searched. today i was stopped for the first time and they just wanted to get a grip on exactly how crazy i am.

Colombia is very familiar but definitely not the same as the other central american countries. they use a lot of slang here -- it seems like every 3rd word i hear is "plata" (cash), fittng for a country that makes a lot of its money exporting something so frequently bought in cash. people are far less likely to wave when i pass by (fine by me) but they frequently say something to me, although either i can't understand their accent or they're using slang i don't understand or they're just talking to someone else but looking at me. i get a LOT of honks, but, then again, not nearly as many as the women on the street.

i PROMISE to have pictures next time...i remembered to bring my camera to the internet place today and even took the usb cable out of my bag but it didn't make it into my pocket

stroked

i met a german couple at the hostel in cartagena, sven and ilya. they had spent some time at an italian-run children's school in one of the poorer areas outside cartagena and convinced me to stick around one more day to see the school. which I did, and it was worth it.

so yesterday i was off -- i wanted to leave early in the morning but didn't make it out until 9:30. lots of traffic leaving the city. i missed a turn to stay on the main road and wound up in a little town where everyone thought i was looking for the beach (fittingly, playa blanca). once i was about 20k outside the city the road was pretty good and not too much traffic so i was pushing fairly hard, which turned out to be a mistake. i've had my fair share of experience biking in latin america, but i underestimated my lack of acclimation to the heat and the heat itself (100 degrees and very humid). so i think what i experienced was a little heat stroke (not dehydration, that much i can judge). after an hour an a half in the shade i felt better and was able to keep going, albeit slowly and with lots of stops. biked a little later than i should have, but it turned out well because just as it was getting too dark i found an open farm gate, walked in and asked the farmer living there if i could put up my hammock. he invited me to stay inside with himself and his two kids. they had a lot of questions but i'm coming to realize that colombians speak fairly quickly, with an accent í'm not used to, and like americans they seem to be making up the language on the fly. anyway, i gave him some rum i had in my bag (leftover) and showed him all my toys: stove water filter, etc.

went to sleep very early (didn't sleep well on the foam mat on the floor and lots of animal noises) and woke up around 5am. made some oatmeal with my alcohol stove and got moving early to avoid the heat. there was lots of traffic for the first 10K or so and i was very lethargic. afterward the road improved and the traffic was much, much better. lots of little 200-300' hills. took a nap under a tree and afterward felt my legs come alive for the first time. towards the end of the day today I ran into a man who had been walking around colombia, peru, venezuela, and bolivia for 10 years. he was very friendly and he rattled off his favorite bands (def leppard, bon jovi, ac/dc, kiss, etc).

now i'm in Sincelejo, a local capital, univeristy town and cattle town. leaving early tomorrow, south toward medellin (med-ah-jeen). should be good riding, but i might not have internet again until medellin, 457K away

98K yesterday, 105 today. not very much, but i've been stopping a lot to stay cool.

will have some pictures and videos next time.

agua man

detroit to cartagena airport to cartagena centro

it's hard to describe the feeling when you first get off the plane. all the months of planning, reading online and recounting past experiences suddenly mean very little. you're somewhere very, very different. just as i got the bike all set and rolling, it started pouring hot torrential rain, which was clearly worth a chant of "agua-man!" from afar.

but for me, this time, it's also familiar. i don't even know how i did this last time with no spanish, but it's very satisfying to be able to communicate without much pointing and grunting.

one thing i remember clearly from last time is that whenever the guide book describes a city as a must-see, i'm best off avoiding it. cartagena is fine, and i'm sure some of the surrounding beaches are very nice, but the centro area is crowded and dirty and not all that inexpensive. charming, maybe, but i'm just a little too jaded. and i've already had a week of being lazy and have spent my fair share of time in crowded and dirty latin american cities. on the upside, the hostel here is perfect: cheap, friendly, and has free internet.

so tomorrow i'm going to gather some final supplies, get to sleep early, and start riding

detroit

not much notable about the ride back from royal oak, 40 mi again but a headwind most of the way. once the lingering ethanol wore off in the morning i was pretty hungry.

today i went exploring downtown detroit with Aaron i.e. we were looking for cool abandoned buildings and factories. pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dlittle/DetroitApocCity#

pre-tripping

just as my core temperature was coming back to normal, i figured the best way to pay hommage to those still freezing in new york would be a 40-mile pre-trip ride through the slush and snow in detroit's sprawl. it was pretty shitty, but not too bad -- i know this becuase i only thought about calling to be picked up and never made it as far as taking my phone out of my pocket.

good times with mike (old college roommate) and megan (college friend and mike's wife) and their puppy in royal oak. i'm sparing you all the video clip of me singing "in bloom"

hats off to suburban/metro detroit drivers: not a single honk or side swipe after 40 miles on car-filled roads with no shoulder (i.e. 8 mile). i'm pretty sure that most of this was not out of courtesy, but because MI drivers must think i'm crazy. and not crazy in the way that i AM crazy, i mean bat-shit-straight-out-of-the-prison-mental-ward crazy. they were scared to get anywhere near me.
i'm afraid another side effect of this ride and the ride today will be deepening fears about the economy. so hopefully you all hear it from me first: it's not THAT bad here, the economy is still chugging along, and my riding a bike around detroit is not a symbol of economic distress.






"in bloom"













Mike probably singing Ozzy














prettiest couple north of 8 mile












pit stop for cinnamon doughnuts and eggs














slightly lost on an unpaved side road

149.6

this is how much my 3 boxes of life weighed at penn station, divided almost equally to stay under the weight limit of 50 lbs each. of course this meant the remaining 70-ish pounds had to be dragged around on the floor and my back and onto the train, but no big deal. Tom, you are awesome for helping me get my shit to the station, and our cab driver is awesome for noticing that i left my viola in the cab and for coming back to the station.

so after countless months of hemming and hawing, i'm finally out of new york. it was not easy by any means. apologies to the many who had to listen to my ongoing internal debates about the what when why and how.

i was very comfortable (if not a little cold) and surrounded by lots of great people -- this is clearly one of the advantages to being in a large city. i had originally set off to new york to be a bike messenger for a while and to meet a lot of people and i think it's safe to say i accomplished this. i refuse to make any predictions about the length of this trip or what's going to happen afterward, but it's going to be hard not to go back.

as i'm writing this on the train, flipping through recent pictures, of course i'm still thinking about what i'm leaving behind. but at the same time, after being caught up so long in the little details that go into planning a trip and explaining what i'm doing to people who are not necessarily on the same wavelength and trying to gracefully disconnect myself from new york, i'm also reminding myself why i'm doing this.

anyone who has know me knows that while i certainly am capable of logical thought and reasoning, i tend to make a lot of decisions based on little information and lots of instinct. the fact that i NEED to travel underscores this. as great in my life in new york is, i'm always stuck with the sense that shuttling myself between work, home, museums, concerts, bars, and other people's apartments does not constitute a complete life -- for me. maybe i'm exaggerating a little, but this is frequently what it feels like.
i need to get out there and instead of just talking about the world, i need to get a real sense of what this space actually entails. who knows, maybe this represents some kind of deeper longing that not everyone experiences, or maybe it's as simple as an itch that needs to be scratched, but bet the reasons lie somewhere in between. or maybe we can set up a section on intrade where we all can bet on the real reason.

to be honest, i'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this trip is. of course the biking will be great. i will meet lots and lots of interesting people, and will develop connections with everywhere i visit. i'm very keen on becoming acquainted with the world in a very real and physical way, so when i read about what's happening i won't just have an abstract idea about who is affected but will be able to apply my own filters, understanding, and experiences.

this will be my first time camping in the wild, so i will get to spend some good time with the world we are so far removed from in new york. i'm looking to learn some skills that might help make me (us) more self-sufficient -- this is the muddiest part, more details later. i'm keen on getting my spanish (and maybe french) near fluent and being able to hack my way through some other tongues. and, despite the minefield of "(i)s and (me)s" in this post, this trip is as much about having something to give back as it is about myself and my experiences. don't think for a second that i don't appreciate my position in being able to do this with ease.

i'm going to try my best to keep this up to date. as it turned out, one of the most rewarding parts of my last trip was coming back to learn that many of you were following along and sometimes living vicariously. reading back through the central america posts, however, i can't say i'm impressed with the last journal. hopefully, now that i've been living my own life entirely the past 5 years and just a little older and more exierpienced, i'll be a little more lucid and insightful and give you guys a reason to keep reading. and i'll have a digital camera to help illustrate the trip as it happens, and hopefully my little film machine will produce results comparable to the heavier, bulkier ones that will stay at home. if we're lucky one of our creative consultants (brianlightbody.com) will make some more cool jpgs to highlight some particularly awesome events.

again, if you like me and can't remember anything, RSS is a good way to keep up without having to bookmark and refresh. but god bless the refreshers.

i'm looking forward, first and foremost, to being done with moving all my shit around. then, i'm looking forward to spending some good quality time at home. then it will be the beach for a few days, getting my core temp back to normal, collecting whatever last things i might want. then it's time to hop on the bike and explore

-------------------

packing lists. these are always horribly boring. the gear never makes the trip. but it's clear to me that for cycling long distances it pays to be prepared if you have the means. without the bike my list would probably be just a toothbrush and a camera. and maybe some of you get off reading about this stuff, like me.

- marin pine mountain steel mountain bike, circa 2001. one size too small, just how i like it. practically stolen from a 2nd hand bike shop in colorado. 9 speeds and shimano trimmings. kona rigid fork to take a front rack
- CETMA 5 rail front rack. Nitto rear rack. both are cro-moly (i.e. steel not aluminum). spare mounting hardware because shit will break.
- panaracer tires, spare tubes, patches, pump, etc, etc.
- axiom lasalle and nashbar waterproof bags. ancient north face backpack.
- hennessy hammock, 20 degree down sleeping bag, large foam mat (doubles as yoga mat), space blanket, ground tarp.
- spare clothes? nah. buy em as you need em. a pair of wool socks and underwear. otherwise, old tennis shoes, bike shorts, over-shorts, lightweight pants, a couple layers up top, a poncho, and a hat. i plan on wearing the football jersey of whatever country i'm in, and one neutral shirt for border crossings.
- bike computer with altimeter -- COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY but i'm as dorky as most of you reading this, so i'm sure you understand
- brasslite ethanol/methanol burning stove. pot. biodegradable fork and spoon (Amber send me your website so i can promote them!). water filter and iodine tabs.
- alien bike multi-tool, big ass swiss army knife, little flashlight, small channel locks, freewheel tool / chain whip, cone wrenches, grease and chain lube, ball bearings, spokes, cables, etc, etc.
- rear light in case i get stuck riding at night. this usually sucks but it definitely happens
- cheap cell phone. for emergencies, i guess. likely to be ditched
- a novel or two (WIDE open to suggestions, although i'll probably end up reading whatever i can find), guidebook (footprint s. america), spanish dictionary
- zip ties, lengths of velcro (awesome), bungee cords, tape, glue, sewing kit.
- canon powershot sd1100, 3x 4G memory cards, 3x batteries, usb cable, charger. Olympus XA and 10 rolls of various kodak b&w films
- more drugs than i care to admit
- plastic bags
- straw hat
- passports and spare copies
- F harmonica

tico 

poor mexico. too close to the united states and too far from god

last time i checked in i think i was somewhere in the middle of my 9-day tenure in zacatecas. somewhere around day seven things started to get interesting. the whole week consisted of drinking (cantinas, corona factories), shooting the shit on the terrace, and generally enjoying the really cool hostel there. tons of people to meet from everywhere including a couple of guys from wisconsin out on a "spiritual mission" in the mexican desert. to keep the story short i'll just say that i was just about ready to take myself and the bike on a bus to laredo tx and hop on the greyhound bus i'd booked for monday the 26th. but that didn't happen, mostly because i was convinced that going home early was a bad idea. which i'm now really certain turned out to be incredibly true. i decided that me and biking in latin america had been worn out by that time, so out of good will and getting rid of dead weight i gave my bike to the hostel and got a few free nights and free internet in return.
so sunday afternoon me and zack, a quietly kerouackian type guy from new mexico, hopped a bus to fresnillo, the next town north, with the intent of wandering through the mountains and backroads to mazatlan. our plan was to hitchhike from fresnillo to mazatlan, which was almost entirely successful, and in almost every way exceded my expectations. the next 4 days can be drawn out into a really long story but i'll carve out the highlights
1. we took about 13 rides in 4 days, most of which were in the backs of pickup trucks
2. the first night we slept (froze our asses off) outside under the stars in somebody's ranch near fresnillo
3. discovered how ridiculously easy it is to hitchhike back roads in mexico (everyone stops)
4. were treated to some spectacular scenery in the sierra madres (desert to forrest in less than an hour), climbing from about 4000 to 12000 feet no less than three times in three days
5. i got to drive someone's truck for 5 hours
6. shared some beers and conversation in spanish with some guys at a little store in the middle of nowhere
7. hitched a ride with the general store delivery truck and got to experience and be stared at in a tiny huichol (indingenous people) village.
8. got lots of briuses from being thrown around on the really nasty roads
9. survived off quesadillas

and that's just the shit i can remember right now, sitting in a really slow internet cafe on an island near mazatlan. but the last few days were easily the best, roughist and most rewarding part of the trip so far. people were incredibly friendly, especially considering that they never see travellers there.
so we actually managed to meet our friends from zacatecas in mazatlan, which was really cool since we had a lot to talk about. life moves very slowly here, with tourists visiting from mazatlan during the day and the island being almost entirely deserted at night. but i'm pretty much ready to get moving again, probably back to laredo where my ticket is still good for another 9 days.

passing

the days are flying by here in zacatecas. feeling pretty worn out by cycling and colonial mexico and latin america in general, i've been more than happy to do absolutely nothing for 5 days. the hostel here is nice, with use of a full kitchen and lots of people to chat with. i'll probably leave tomorrow for saltillo, a 375k ride or a day's hitchhike, supposedly very easy to do.

what did i tell you about riding your bike at night?

at this point i'm not entirely sure what pearls of knowledge i've gleaned from my akward traverse of northern latin america, but today i did learn that when a nosy whore wearing clown makeup shows up at your door looking for conversation, this is the best time to excercise your right to not understand any spanish. funny things happen in cheap hotels.
so i was planning to make a short 45k trek from guanajuato to leon a couple days ago, but somewhere along the line i decided that i should push on to make for an easier next day. that did not happen. about 122k into the day and 30 mins. before dark i was informed by a wandering poet (whom i gave 4 pesos and half of my peanut butter) that there was no town for another 30k, which turned out to be almost correct. unable to choke down any more peanut butter, i pressed on slowly, eventually caught a second wind, and made it to the next town a good 90 minutes after dark. riding around the suburbs of madison after dark is one thing, but the highways and two-lane roads of the desert are another. but i made it ok, and learned several lessons in the process (like have extra food and water for the wandering poets).
i'm still working my way back, somewhat determined to do it all on the bike. however the forecast doesn't look too promising, and i'm not the kind of person who enjoys biking through thunderstorms.

(in your best falsetto)
you can try the best you can, if you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough
(or)
"work is for people with jobs"

at this particular moment i find myself tromping around coloniel mexico, which feels much more like eurpoe than mexico, and spends in similar fashion. apparently most of the towns i've been to (queretaro, celaya), the one i'm in now (guanajuato) and the next few (leon, aguascalientes, zacatecas) are wealthy not so much from tourist dollars but from silver mining. which is somewhat plesant, because although there is a fair amount of catering to tourists these towns (big cities, some of them) feel rich but real. guanajuato in particular is very polished.
biking the past few days has been tough. spent much of the past few days going straight at 20mph (30 kph) sustained winds, with distances of 70 and 110k but average speeds barely over 16 kph, which means i've been spending a good time sitting on my little swiss wedge of a bike seat begging the road to bend to the right. i thought about inventing a new ratio -- distance to average speed -- but quickly realized that it was um, concieved, several billion years ago.
the weather here is damn near perfect, with daytime highs in the upper 70s and cooling off to around 50 at night. if i plan it all correctly, i should be able to keep this up as i head north to and above the border, and of course then some.
overall, me and latin america are at a standoff, and one of us is going to have to start heading the other direction. but i think we all knew this because it's happening already. at this point i feel that most everything i'm capable of taking with me is already stuffed somewhere in my head, bag, or intestines. the next few days i'm going to hop from coloniel city to coloniel city (why can't they all be like leon, nicaragua?), which i'm expecting to be pretty uneventful. however there is a 375k stretch from zacatecas to saltillo which seems to be mostly uninhabited and my best chance to experience rural mexico, or at least to finally use my hammock i've been dragging around since san salvador.

hello. we're in deleware.

had a plesant if not noisy ride today along autopista 55 to queretaro. 111k, 23.1 km/hr. saw a bunch of bikers apparently making some similar sort of tour of mexico, except they had a couple of support vans to carry all their shit for them. which made me dream and maybe drool a little, but since they were barely going any faster than me and had inferior cadences, i felt ok.
queretaro has by far the cleanest city center i've seen this trip. i feel like i'm in rhode island or something, which is at least unexpected being in the milddle of mexico. but perceptions are usually wrong anyway, and i can already feel them changing. if i can find a cheap place to stay i might kick around for a day, if anything to enjoy the food.

it's always something. fortunately it's not everything at once

i think i'm through the worst of it here. yesterday i started around 10:30, biked about 15k to get out of the worst of the traffic, stopped at a mall and had a cinnabon (because the rain at 8000 feet is cold), biked about 2k before the rain got bad again, hid under an overpass with a few local kids for an hour, started biking again but got caught in sleet, was forced onto the non-toll road (more traffic, no shoulder) by the attendant, had my crank arm fall off 3 times (no bike shops on the highway), and then enjoyed a breezy descent (first 35k all uphill) through mexico's largest industrial district (sans roger moore) into toluca, where the cheapest hotel i could find was $20 a night. 73k, about 15km/hr average.
but today was much better. the roads leading out of toluca were flat and straight, and at some point i snuck onto the toll autopista (highway), which is well graded and has a nice fat curb lane. about 90k into the day i was feeling a little tired and out of shape and had about 60k to go until the next town, so i'm stopped here, except i don't know where here is. but they do have a couple of hotels ($8/night) and internet. i think i'm about three days away from guanajunto, the nearest town on the gringo trail, which is supposed to be a cool mexican university town.
i'm getting much more comfortable speaking spanish even though it's really not improving at all. but it's good enough to make really basic conversations, which is a long way from where it was 6 weeks ago. at this point i figure that if i really want to learn spanish the best way would be in an exchange for teaching someone english. which would be cool to do here, but i could do it almost anywhere in the US for free (while i'm making not hemmoraging money).
i think i'm going to like mexico. i'm just starting to get away from the heavily populated and industralized areas, and the people are changing pretty rapidly as well. mexico seems much less distant from the west at large, mexicans seem to have the greatest understanding of the US and the american way of life, and tequilla is cheap. and i might even try and drink some tonight for my 3 month aniversery. complemeses feliz

buscamos uno barro con mamacitas sin ropas -jeff to the cops in guatemala city

is there any coincidence that the mexico city bicycle shop strip shares the street with the local hoes? i'm not going to insinuate anything (because there is nothing to insinuate), but we can all think about it for a while and maybe come up with something. i think the liquor stores were on a diffent strip, anyway.
so i'm a little excited because i finally broke down and bought a bike computer (needed one for home anyway), so now we're all going to get decimal gritty accuracy on the mexico leg of the trip. also picked up a new tire and a new quick-release front basket, whose design is some combination of goofy, stupid, genius, and useful. reminds me of some people i know. paid $4 to see the city from the top of a 42-story building here, which was cool although not necessairly wirth $4. getting lost looking for bookstores with english books (didn't happen) was more fun.
so something will happen tomorrow, and i will go somewhere, hopefully not the hospital. actually the traffic here is pretty sane compared to saint salvador, but think good thoughts.

immuseable

mexico city is a cool place. i've spent two days here getting lost and eating out of street stalls -- very cool. the central area of mexico city feels very modern and western compared to just about everywhere in central america. compared to the US (coasts?), each country exudes the folliwing characteristics:

guatemala: stuck in the 1850s, but the natives still make up half the population.
el salvador: trying to skip from the 1850s to 1980 with some success and lots of busses
nicaragua: stuck in the 1950s but quite content to be there
mexico city: stuck in the 1970s and seemingly trying to catch up with the rest of the west
belize: stuck on the north american continent, hoping for an earthquake that will help it break off and join a carribean island.

...at least that's what i was pondering today, for what it's worth.
today i took the subway to the "velodrome" stop, where there was a velodrome but nobody there, so i went to a park and watched some pickup basketball games and most of a soccer match until i fell asleep. then i remembered hearing from someone in the hostel that "this place that starts with xoc..." is a good place to hang out, with gardens and stuff. so i scraped up 2 pesos for a subway ride, then another 2 pesos for a train ride to the gardens, which apparently are only accessible by boat, which you had to pay for. since i just had an excellent lunch of two giant cheese-taco things, i was content to walk around the town, get lost, use the internet for a couple of hours, and make my way back to the city center.
tomorrow i'm going to finally get ready to leave. as much as i like this city i think after another day i'll have had my fill. that and i'm easily spending $25 a say, almost 3x as much as nicaragua. i'm going to ride 60k to toluca, crossing a pass to get out of the basin here. toluca is the higest city in central america at about 8700 feet, much to the dismay of my nose. but i think cycling here will be much more enjoyable, as the climate is much more temperate, and i have an extra two hours of sun.
i had to leave some bike parts behind in san jose (souvenirs for pablo at TACA) so i'm going to try and replace them. supposedly there are some cool bike shops in town. and maybe, just maybe i'll drop 75 cent for a couple new pair of socks.

every time i come around your city bling, bling

among all the "you should have been theres" that you should have been there for, my arguments with the TACA manager and the eventual packaging of my bicycle (two tiny boxes and well over a roll of packaging tape) top the list. my reality tv show ratings would have sored, and the climax where migration is reopened for me to make it on the flight keeps even the most dedicated channel surfers through the commercials (for clean socks, unripped pants, and post-1970 technology bicycles?).
although my decision was on a whim, i don't think i'm going to regret spending the next month or so in mexico. at least i won't regret the weather. the city is a world apart from anything else i've seen so far -- where else can you take a $.18 subway to the front door of walmart? san jose was OK, similar in theme to other latin american capitals but much cleaner and thus more boring. furthermore, it's home base for a gaggle of (mostly american) beach and ecotourist vacationers, so i went from having the country to myself to sharing it with other not-necessairly-like-minded people.
so now i'm going to
1. hang around the big (big) city a few days, probably wandering around on the subway
2. take the 35 pieces that are my bike and turn them back into one
3. figure out how the hell i'm going to escape this city
4. go north
5. kill the amoebas with tequilla if the drugs don't work
6. ?????????
7. return back to the land of cheap chololate

en estas maquinas esta totalmente prohibido ver pronographia

the central american leg of this trip has come to a close. i'm not sure if i'm just getting sick of travelling, being sick in general or biking too much without taking breaks, but i'm cutting it short. due to all the long-distance busses are booked up due to some holiday and my nondesire to bike back (more of a border-phobia than anything else) i've opted to take a plane, tomorrow, to mexico city. i'm not entirely sure what i'm going to do when i get there, but the general plan is going to be to cycle north from there, probably taking a month or so to hit the border. mexico city is supposed to be a really cool place, so i'll probably hang around there (they have a subway!) until i get the itch to bike.

just when things were getting a little dull, they got duller (or) is my world slipping away?

greetings from costa rica. i find myself south yet again. my 100 mile day didn't go quite as planned (late start, hills, wind, more than 100 miles) but i am here in liberia, CR.
my alarm was set, my bags were ready, and the 1/2 dose of dramamine and 1/2 of american pie 2 had made me dozy, but as soon as i stretched out to go to bed the itching and burning all over my torso and upper legs put any chances of sleeping early and leaving early quietly under the covers. so friday i chilled out, watched some more movies and slathered myself with lotion. saturday i started off about 2 hours later than planned, easily enough to keep me from my century, as it's dark here by six and had only done about 75 (120k) miles by 4:30. my upper legs burned from rubbing against my cycling shorts and my chest just hurt in general -- and for good reason, as i discovered halfway through the day the sweat on my stomach had sandwiched itself between the old layer of skin and the new, making for an interesting sight. but continuing, i finished off the last 60k to liberia today.
a couple of days ago i was thinking that my journals (there's an offline one too) were getting repetetive and generally boring. not that i'm bored in any particular way, but despite the rapidly changing scenery my days had been starting to look all the same. and then i came to costa rica.
as i mentioned before i visited this town in my microtour of costa rica about three years ago, and i remembered passing a very enjoyable three days here. but something has changed, and the answer to the question is "probably both". maybe it's the mediocre burger king i just had, the swarms of tourists here (liberia is a major crossroad for northern CR), or the lack of nicaraguan girls, or the general feeling of sanity and sanitation that costa rica gleams in. maybe i really was trying to escape from something, and that the poor and dirty and war-torn areas provided shelter that the endemically peaceful ones don't. right now i really miss the chaos of san salvador. why did i even leave home (in the nationalistic sense) in the first place, and why do i want to go back yet shudder as i travel the road?
it's really strange, because i expected coming back to a familiar place would bring some sort of comfort, but instead it's made me want to head back into the wilderness. temporairly, i liked being lost, alone, and unable to partake in meaningful communication (my own world) -- maybe i just didn't get my fill.
so that's where i am. or something. i'm gonna lay low tomorrow and let my skin heal some more and make another attempt at flushing out these amoebas. i'm far from being stuck -- the options are endless -- but i'm gonna take a microsecond or two to decide if forward or reverse is the best course.

it's the eights and fifteen (8:15)

another day, another city. besides the constant wind (still against me) and my left crank arm (8-inch part that connects the pedal to the rest of the bicycle) falling off midday it was a pretty short and easy 45k ride from outside managua to granada. since i knew i had so much time and so little to do today i started by getting lost in the streets of managua. most all the capital cities in latin america have a reputation for being somewhat bleak, but so far managua is the only one i've seen that fits. besides literally having no center, when i was wandering around the scenery was dominated by dead grass, dead trees, and trash. and i think the mexican president se?or fox was around (there were a few billboards dedicated to this; i don't think managua gets many visitors) so there were road blocks and police everywhere. about 20k into the day said crank arm came loose and eventually fell off, but a 4k walk and buying a $.20 pepsi at the mechanic's place set things straight.
granada is probably the most popular coloniel city in central america save antigua guatemala. it's a really attractive place, set on the shore of the grand lago de nicaragua and surrounded by cliffs and volcanoes, with more than a sprinking of old spanish churches and architectural stuff. there are a few friendly travellers around, as me and the world are on speaking terms again, and it's not just what's your name and where are you from and how do you like our country. but two things among others set me off about this place:
1) within 5 minutes of arriving in the city a young kid speaking good english offered to sell me some drugs (a bad sign, not a bad thing in and of itself)
2) the two 50-year old americans drinking and chain-smoking at the bar at my hostel
so instead of spending the day i had planned to i was content with eating some tacos and staring out at the lake. as a side note one of the guys staying at the hostel knew about me via gunnar and oskar, which is pretty cool (similarly, vince from guatemala met gunnar and oskar based on my description of them). anyway, after failing to come close to completing the 135k ride from leon to granada in one day, tomorrow should be the perfect day to attempt an imperial century (100 miles, 165k). of course it all depends on the wind, whether or not i adhere to my 6:30 (the sixes and thirty) alarm and my ability to sit in the saddle for 8-10 hours. if i do manage the ride to liberia, CR in one day, it will be the closest i get to the feeling of returning to 1724 after a long day's ride, as i have actually been to this city before and enjoyed it. if i'm really lucky i'll even remember how to get to the hospedaje i stayed at last time, since i certainly don't remember the name.
yet again the forecast doesn't look good. at the very least it looks hot. the weather in northern costa rica will be damn near 100 in a few days, all the more reason to make a sprint for the highlands of the san jose area.

when people talk, listen completely. most people never listen -hemingway


my goal today was to hop from one coloniel city to the next, leon to granada, about 135k. about 13 seconds into the day i realized that this was a pipe dream, as the wind here comes out of the East and almost the entire way is ESE, meaning i had a crosswind at best. it was a really rough day, and i doubted that i would even make it to managua, 95k from leon. but i made it, with some spectacular views of lake managua and surrounding volcaones toward the end of the day. my hotel last night cost C75, but the lady would only take C50, and when i stopped along the way i was treated to a free lunch, pretty cool. and my hotel happens to be right next door to a free internet cafe, so here i am.

sucked in

to nobody's surprise, i was unable to leave leon today. i woke up around 8:30 this morning, stared out at the street from the little indoor balcony in my hacienda, and gave myself two choices which were either 1) pack up my bike and start biking toward managua or 2) don't pack anything and bike 20k to the beach. if you saw the color of my stomach now (i'm trying to even things out) the answer is clear.
honestly i had a really great time today. even though i said that i swam in the pacific in honduras, it was off a little concrete pier on a bay -- not exactly a beach. today was a beach, and it rocked. the beach was huge, clean, and there were no more than 10 people in total. felt like a little kid today, crashing into waves, ducking under them, and trying to drown myself in the process. i'm glad i made it to the beach, even though the ride back was a little rough (nasty road, nasty headwind) because i don't think i'll see another one like this for quite a while.
part of the reason i stuck around was i met some cool welsh couple and an american guy staying at my hotel. we're supposed to go see a baseball game tonight, should be cool. and i really enjoy this city, and there may well be none to match it from here on.
i'm already thinking about what i'm going to do when i get to panama. south america is starting to sound a little shaky, since my funds are in doubt and my bicycle/gear in even greater doubt. flying to detroit or chicago from panama city is ridiculous, like almost $600. i learned that i can get a bus from panama city to mexico city for about $100, so i might do that and do a couple more weeks (months?) cycling north from there. but it all remains to be seen.
as a little bonus i'm posting (without consent) gunnar's recent journal, which is similar to mine except his and oskar's trip has been far more exciting than mine.

south of another border, and then another

after weeks of blood and sweat your faithful author and web guru bill stube are able to offer a few pics of my current part of the world. take a look for yourself, eh.

shortly after my last post in the unlikely honduran internet cafe an even more unlikely event occured -- i ran into another gringo(a) there. adrienne was a peace corps volunteer doing health education type stuff and from a detroit suberb and a former UM student. it was the frist time i'd spoken to anyone in english in nearly a week, which was nice, especially since we shared a decent bit of context. the town, san lorenzo, happened to be right on the pacific coast so she showed me to the pier and the pacific and i had our first rendez-vous in well over 10 years. cool. rest of the day was uneventful, i rolled into choluteca, honduras around sunset, found a decent hotel, ate a whole pineapple (mmmmmmm) and proceeded to pass out for 3 hours, which is not a good thing for a couple of few i.e.
1. i was either overworking myself or biking on little sleep
2. it's damn impossible to get to sleep at 11 when you just woke up at 9:30
3. eating at 10 isn't the best for the digestive system, which is a key player in being able to bike all day
additionally that night i was pretty proud of myself, as i managed to remove 10 almost microscopic stitches with a swiss army knife, a nail clippers, and a flashlight, with one eye open.
next day i was planning to bike 127k into chinandega, nicaragua but faced some really fierce headwinds in the first 48k up to the boarder. i'm not sure how many of you have really seen me swearing and screaming before, but i assure you that if there was a camera and mic on me friday you would have had your fill. i was trying to think of a sonnet to write about my mortal enemy (the wind) but i didn't know the rules of sonnet writing until now, so be patient. anyway after crossing the boarder -- $5 for a tourist card and a $4 sietsa surcharge -- i pressed on, but upon finding a hotel 7k from the boarder i figured it wise to stop since the hour was getting late and making the push to chinandega would not save me any time, my destination city being leon, only 40k from chinandega. so i stopped in somotillo, a little town near the boarder. the hotel owner was a black man (always a little strange to see them in latin america) who spoke some english, so he must of been some carribean descent. i was under the impression that i was the only gringo in town when around 8 i heard a clearly american preacher on the street, who appeared to be making a grand tour of central america, which i suppose gave us something in common. and just after eating dinner a little boy stole the last two sips of my coke, somewhat maliciously. i was unfortunately unable to conjure up the word for "asshole" (cerrote) in spanish at the time. and the electricity in my hotel sucked.
i remembred adrienne telling me that "like half of the road between somotillo and chinandega is, like gravel". naturally i ignored this piece of advice, but i paid for it dearly on friday (i could have taken a different road from choluteca, but that would have cost me at least a day). and it turns out that she was a little off as about 90% of the 70k stretch between somotillo and chinandega was unpaved, meaning again that said camera would have recorded some delicious hostility. the road wasn't nearly as bad as the one outside melchor de menchos (see Jan. 25), but the gravel made the would-be 2.5 hour sprint into a 4 hour slugfest. if i didn't have the decent tailwind things would have been really ugly. towards the end of the stretch i stopped by the side of the road, had one nicaraguan gaseosa (soda) which quickly turned into 3 gaseosas, lunch, and an hour or so of choppy coversation in spanish. the lady there refused to name a price for the drinks and meal, so i gave here 20 cordobas ($1.30) and a $1 tip. the 40k from chinandega to leon was easily the hardest i pushed myself. even with a cross/headwind most of the way i did the stretch in a little over 90 minutes, the first time i'd really pushed myself hard, and the first time i noticed that my legs are starting to pack a little punch, meaning some people are going to have to watch out next time we take a ride. about 110k on the day.
so this is actually my third day here in leon, but the first time the internet's been open. up until now xela, guatemala had been my favorite city and considered the most tolerable to live in, but leon is way cooler. actually nicaragua in general seems to be the capital of cool in central america. but more on that later. it's still damn hot down here, but the difference between 85 here and 95 in el salvador is noticed and appreciated.
my hotel here is really cool -- it's a tad pricy at $5/night, but it's a real house (more like a hacienda) with an indoor courtyard, a kitchen i can use, a tv with lots of shows in english, and a huge bedroom for me. and there's a supermarket barely two blocks away. seriously, you can put me in the shittiest room in the shittiest city, but if there's a supermarket nearby i'm more than content. i had my bike tuned up by a really excellent mechanic (latinos seem to have a gift for this stuff) -- for about an hour of labor the guy charged me $1.65. i'm actually forcing myself to leave this town tomorrow, otherwise i think i'll get sucked in. tomorrow i'm heading 135k to granada which sounds like another antigua guatemala (i.e. not really to my liking), so i'll probably take one more day off to kick around with the gringos, swim in the big lake for a bit, then charge on toward costa rica.

just consider the unparalleled advantage of a natural disaster that's impossible to manage - the RZA

lucky enough for you, just as i stop by the side of a building to look at my map somewhere in the south of honduras i run into an internet cafe. lucky enough for you.
i must have been praying to the wrong gods recently, as my last two posts didn't make it through, one because the internet ran out and the other because i forgot to comfirm the post. just thought i'd let you know that i haven't stopped trying.
any, since i last wrote successfully i've crossed into honduras. not much to note about the rest of my stay in san salvador, except that i discovered an excellent comedor (resturant) across the street from my hotel which served up some very tasty plates at less than a dollar apiece. woke up at 6am on tuesday with the hope of avoiding the worst of the san salvador traffic but it turns out that 6:30 is the worst possible time to go. anyway i ended up walking about 2 miles on the sidewalk (ditch on the side of the road) until i decided that my chances were better than 50:50 of making it. san salvador was by far and away the most bike-unfriendly city i've seen, so don't expect more bus accident stories anytime soon. so i rode about 140k to san miguel which was a surprisingly easy ride, although the last climb 115k into the ride in the 96 degree heat of 2:30 was pretty rough. passed out about 2 minutes after getting a hotel room and eventually woke up to eat my most expensive dinner so far, $6 at wendy's.
yesterday i woke up late, ate breakfast late, and sat around in the hammock in my room for almost 2 hours before leaving at noon. did i mention that it's really hot here? i checked the currency exchange rate before the border and succesfully changed money without being ripped off. rode about 65k to the border, did the whole border routine, tried to keep biking since i had about an hour of daylight left but ended up turning back to the border since there were no nearby hotels on the way. today i've gone about 55k so far with about 35 to go, relatively easy stuff besides the wind. which is one hell of a big IF.
there is a pretty strong wind coming out of the NNE here, which has been reasonable menacing so far but should start helping tomorrow when i head south for nicaragua. the terrain reminds me very much of southern wyoming, and the traffic along this highway (knock knock) is pretty light. next time you'll hear from me will probably be in leon, nicaragua, about 4 days away.

it's hot in here

in my last post i neglected to mention that my bike is in fixable condition and will be fixed, knock knock, tomorrow when the shops open up, meaning i should be out of here on tuesday. my eye is a little puffy and i'm going to have to figure how to get the stitches out, but that's at least five days away, nowhere near my field of vision.
it's hot here. the temp. now is 93 degrees with a heat index of 115. i can't remember the last time my non-alcoholic/alcoholic intake ratio was this high (between the amoebas and the drugs even a beer is indigestable). hopefully it will be cooler in honduras and nicaragua.
if you're looking for some comforting bedside reading, take a look at the deartment of state travel warnings and advisories: http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html , but don't believe the hype.

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this - Cervantes

apparently my earlier prediction about lots of internet cafes in el salvador was a little off the mark; even here in san salvador (san sal-va-DOR, fyi) i had to do some bus-scouting to find one. again i will try and keep this updated, but it looks like it won't happen much while i'm on the road.
starting from where i left off, the last couple days in guatemala city were relatively tame. through some combination of not finding bike shoes, subliminal coercion and generally not feeling up to it joel decided to temporarily abandon the whole biking thing. which i think works out well for both of us because this kind of biking is most rewarding when done alone. before leaving guatemala city i ran into a real veteran cyclotourist, vince, who had cycled in africa, iran, packistan, india, and western china -- pretty impressive stuff. besides the usual cyclist-banter the most useful thing about vince was his extra pair of cycling shorts which he donated to me, a very gracious and useful gift. my ass will be forever thankful.
so tuesday i left guatemala city alone, headed for the el salvaDOR boarder. neither the traffic or the climb out of the city presented much of a challenge, and i was on my way to descending about 3000 feet within 90 minutes of leaving. now that i've done a few of them, i've started to dread the descents. besides the fact that the stakes are much higher at 30mph, going down not only means that you're going to have to come back up again, but in this case it means that the weather went from delightfully temperate to oppressively hot. despite all the descending i only made it 100k on tudsday, short of the el salvador boarder.
having still not adapted to the heat (between 90 and 1000 in the valley near the boarder) and the constant head/crosswind i was already exhausted by the time i made it to the boarder only 17 k away, at which point i made my first boarder faux-pas -- not having enough cash to cross the boarder. figuring that since travellers cheques were changed at the guate-belize boarder and that the official currency in el salvaDOR is the dollar i would have no problem changing the cheques, i proceded to the boarder with only $5 in guatemalan quetzal. besides this, when trying to get my exit stamp from guatemala i was informed that i only had a 3-day transit visa, which i had overstayed by about 47 days, at about $1.25/day fine. eventually the boarder officer gave in to my look of befuddlement, dumbfoundedness and stupor and issued me a retroactive 90-day visa (which i should have recieved in the first place) and an exit stamp free of charge. to make a long story short, i took a bus back to the town i stayed in the night before, eventually changed some money, biked back to the boarder, changed my money again (at a really shitty rate), paid the $10 to get my el salvaDOR tourist card, and biked another 12k to an expensive but well-placed hotel with a very talkative owner.
thursday was comparatively uneventful, sometimes very smooth cycling on the smooth parts of the highway and rough cycling on the rough spots of the highway. for the first time in one hell of a long time there were some flat stretches -- my asphault oasis. nothing compares to the feeling of all your pedaling effort contributing directly to your velocity, especially after spending time going up and down mountain passes and the fact that the extra 40 lbs on my bike don't matter as much on the flats. after 90k i stopped in santa tecla just short of san salvador.
so then there was yesterday. somewhat less productive. i'm still not entirely sure how this happened, but my best recollection is that i was travelling behind a bus (typical, as we tend to share the right lane) on the highway near san salvaDOR, which happens to lack a curb lane. the bus slowed down, sped up, then stopped abruptly right by an on-ramp which i briefly glanced at to check for merging traffic. of course my brief glance was more than enough time for the bus to stop right in front of me, sending me smack into the back of the bus at about 10 mph. i walked away without any problems, although i can't say the same for the bike. a very friendly salvaDORian drove me to a national hospital in san salvaDOR for stitches (about 12 around my left eye) and x-rays (at $4 the only cost) to check for fractures, of which there are none. the care at the hospital, while not necessairly first-rate, was damn impressive, as i was taken care of pretty quickly and throughly, despite my nationality and spotty spanish. i actually quite enjoyed my time in the hospital as the female staff were not only friendly and helpful but particularly easy on the eyes. all in all i walked away with only a couple of scrapes, although i can't say i will look at the back of a bus in the same way for a while, which is probably a good thing.
today, and probably until monday or tuesday, i'm just hanging out around the city, not exactly a bad place to be stuck in. el salvaDOR has a considerably different feel than guatemala -- certainly less conservative -- the people here seem to have more flair than their relatives to the west. much, much fewer tourists here (only saw two, on the boarder). i've also made some headway for what seems like required reading for being down here, Don Quixote.
in short, it's one thing to be a tall lanky gringo off the tourist trail in central america, but it's another thing to be a tall, lanky gringo who looks like a pirate off the tourist trail in central america.

nobody said it was easy, but nobody said it would be this hard

after delays in waiting for bicycle bags (never happened) and for the amebeas to clear out of my stomach (more on that later) we finally broke free from xela on wednesday. after two tough days of riding (75 and 90k) through the mountains/highlands and an interesting night in a little hotel on the road, we finally made it to the peace and quiet (sic) of guatemala city. joel is holding up pretty well especially considering how little biking he has done, but i'm quite a bit faster than him and the pace is a little slow for me.
so i'm back in guate city now and besides the somewhat seedy atmosphere at night here in the city center i really like this city. maybe i just like cities in general and all they have to offer; this is the biggest one they have around here, save mexico. friday we tromped around looking for bike shoes (still waiting), soaking up the sights and people of the city from a seat on the $0.12 city bus.
yesterday i learned that fighting a parasitic infection is all work and no play, and that alcohol does nothing to improve matters. i bought some nitroimidazoles at a local pharmacy yesterday and am feeling much better, but apparently these kinds of infections can be hard to kick. although as long as i'm feeling strong on the bike, not much else matters.
monday or tuesday, bike shoes and gotta-go-itch depending, we're heading for el salvador.

after a long dry spell i finally managed to make it to watch a good movie, scent of a women. one thought that stuck in my mind afterwards -- right about now -- is how the greatest and most effectual personal interaction with a movie is not just witnessing a special scene or a special moment but the incredible feeling of anticipation when you know the what's coming and know how it's going to affect you. barring serious disaster (i'm still here, so there have obviously been a couple of setbacks), tomorrow i will be on the road again. now that i've had my taste i'm ready as hell to dig in. as usual the destination is simply one day at a time, but the path ahead will be a good one and if not, the path itself will serve as a tasty surrogate. again, the real goal is panama city, but the thing will be what happens in-between. riding as two will certainly alter the experiences, but i'm more than hopeful that it will add more than detract. some make their dynasties on blood, sweat and tears, others do it with ideas.
keep the emails coming. even if i don't respond i always digest and always appreciate; sometimes i simply don't have enough to add beyond what i'm saying here. moreover i'm finding it interesting to give everyone the same story and i think i'm more honest because of it.
on a final soapbox moment -- trust me they'll fade as my energy is diverted -- i'm finally starting to recognize the value of this excursion. i knew from the outset that by placing myself in unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations (guatemala city (again in two days)) would result in something useful but what and to what extent i didn't know. experiencing how i experience and the experiences themselves have if anything made me think, well, lots of things, not the least of which is how i should construct this senctence. but unlike some, these experiences (how the air changes the moment you set foot in guatemala) need to moor and settle before their meaning can be sampled. and i'm starting to learn from my samples. so i got that going for me, which is nice
tonight's menu: spaghetti bolognese with spicy mexican sauce, fully saturated and toasted garlic bread, guacamole (when the ingredients are this good it's hard to fuck up) with tortillas, a sweet, sweet pineapple, and a beer or two or _____

it would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them - steinbeck

first off, apologies for my period of silence. i honestly didn't realize it till my last update. i actually had a post done about a week ago in the middle of the big gap, but for some reason felt it unworthy. in case you haven't heard my rant, i should let you know about my love/hate relationship with writing. i feel that i'm much better at expressing my thoughts and ideas though writing although my writing rarely lives up to my expectations so i end up doing a lot of writing and a lot of deleting. sometimes, as you have probably noticed, i just say fuck it and hit the send/post button, no matter how much i like or dislike what i wrote. as long as its coming from my head and fingers it has to be worth something, although i usually don't know what or care to really find out. maybe this is just part of the beauty of our mostly one way relationship, because we all know that the words in between the lines are the clearest.
one of the great things about being at the crossroads is how you get to not only an oppertune chance to look at the function and machinery of languages but the ability to quantify their significance in how we define ourselves and our world. in the central park in antigua guatemala an older american man (with a hollywoodish aura) pointed out how speaking in another language is as close as one can get to having an alter-ego. just today, after translating 50 Cent from black american english to formal english to spanish i realized how ridiculously different the spoken english of my generation is from the relatively static (or at least somewhat antiquated) spanish spoken here. so many of the phrases and idioms we use are so purely absurd that even translating them into formal english is difficult if not futile. but even after speaking a little bit of spanish to a few people i'm starting to realize what i already knew; that not only is language a voracious part of how we define ourselves and our relationships with other people and the world but the sheer absurdity of how it works makes you doubt whether we can attain or communicate any meaningful knowledge through it.
i'm beginning to realize that part of the part of the purpose of this trip was to at least attempt to find some like-minded people here, maybe even some who were willing to try and forge some kind of dynasty, as like-minded people tend to do. but, even though all travellers share some similar ideas about the Way Things Are, so far i havent't found what i was looking for. which is ok, since i'm patient, willing to experiment and have come to expect that i'm rarely content with the given answers anyway. expect the rest of the Why I'm Here report to trickle in as time passes, and as i get the chance to use computers in people's living rooms, especially the ones i fixed.
being a little bored staying in one place and even though i like it here, my best next move is to hop on the bike and go. for me, the next goal is nicaragua, about 600 miles or so from here. having unintentionally convinced another fellow traveller of the joys of biking -- here, in particular -- i will have a companion, a student, a tanto, for a little while. being that we are like-minded americanos and share similar ideas on how to to travel (and how and why to find a latina girlfriend), the next couple of weeks should be a real kick in the pants. either that or we'll be punching each other in the face. either way, something will happen. stay tuned, i hear there are internet cafes aplenty in el salvador.

Yeah, and you thought it was rain

for the rest of this week, until early sunday the 29th, i will be staying in a real house with a real family with a real telephone. if you want to talk to me, i'm very reachable. the number here is: +011 502 9 671-2360, where 011 is to call internationally, 502 is the guatemala country code, 9 is the city code and the rest is the local number. obviously i haven't tried this, so i make no guarntees. i am always at home around 2pm and 7pm, US central time. i have no idea what it costs to call from a cell phone, but from a land line it should be in the ballpark of 0.20/minute. if your work asks why you made a 20-minuite call to guatemala it's up to you to make an excuse

greetings from the land of enough-visible-guns-such-that-the-random-and-frequent-fireworks-are-not-appreciated. besides the title, i'm enjoying this country, and in particular this city, xela. so far i've taken 4 days of spanish (got off to a late start) and am slowly becoming confident in basic communication beyond "how much does it cost." although i had some personal reservations about Paying to Learn, the pace at which i'm learning now is surely faster than it would be were i on my own. my "school", more like "rent a bilingual local for 5 hours a day", is, dare i say it, cool. for the first time in one of my excursions to a local bike shop (i now have some more merciful gear ratios) i was actually able to make decent conversaton with the people, who are constituitevly open and friendly. besides the locals, i met some good gringos as as well. recently i've been exchanging (and pulling) punches with a swiss bloke, most of which conform to the topic "your country is evil vs. is your country on the map?", although the discussion does occasionally extend to "do nationalities sill have meaning?"
It has been nice settling down in one place for a while, and not just because i am too sick to cycle. for guatemala, this city (xela) is very progressive and, though well-earned, anti-gringo sentiment is minimal, as is catering to tourism. my family is cool if a little reserved, although when the equation works out to 3 bottles liquor + 10 people things tend to loosen up. as a side note, the family also has the biggest, shaggiest, smelliest dog i've come across.
i think my trip is starting to bear some sense of purpose. now that i've been asked several times "how long is your vacation" and "are you having fun" i suppose i can try and address. in my mind, this is not a vacation in the sense that i'm taking a break from normal life and returning in a definite amount of time. although i've been a little dissapointed in the experiences so far, this is by all means a journey for me, on which i hope to experience as many different people, ways of life, and ideas as possible. in this journey, the biycle is a tool, and spanish is most definitly a tool. like life at home, it seems that fun is balanced against struggle and hardship -- this is particularly poingnant when cycling against the wind or up a poorly-graded mountain pass. now that i've been if not immersed then exposed to a culture certainly different from mine at home, my mind is slowly slipping into a more evaluation-like mode, and i'm starting to be able to look at my home life from an outsider's perspective.
right now i'm vaguely content to continue my break from cycling, do a little speed-learning of spanish, and generally hang out with the gringos here. but soon, probably this weekend, i'm going to be back on the bike, off the beaten track, and hopefully experiencing at a slightly higher level.

Don't belive the Pharmacist when she tells you that the Cipro is free...
after another round of bacteria and another round of cipro -- very, very cheap here -- i'm finally back on track and doing, well, something. today was my first day in spanish school, although it's more like renting a local who speaks english (and spanish, of course) for 5 hours. i'm beginning to realize that i'm not going to learn overnight, but i think with a couple weeks of solid practice i should have some decent chops. i'm staying with a family now, which is, if anything, a nice change from living in hotels.

The Mountains in my Legs
so, as expected, my 4 days in san pedro were uneventful, to say the least. but the living was cheap, and it was nice to have persistent company. i got a really nasty headcold the day i left antigua, and i'm still getting over it now, but at the moment i am enjoying a period of respite from the bacteria.
yesterday morning i woke up early, a little hung over and very dehydrated. i took the boat back to panajachel, wandered around for a bit, unsuccessful in finding the supermarket, and ended up having a breakfast of eggs, beans and tortillas. over breakfast i inspected my new topo/political/road map of guatemala for the 1000th time, except this time i noticed the fine print, which read "3670m, the highest pass on the inter-american highway" with an arrow pointing to the road i was to take.
from my descent into panajachel i knew it would be rough getting out, but i didn't know it would be _that_ rough. literally 2 minutes after starting i had to walk; the road was too steep. the first 6k took what felt like 2 hours. by the time i made it to the (inter-american) highway, only 17k into the day, i was ready to quit. the next 35k were a slow grind, but the nice grading of the highway at least allowed me to pedal instead of walk. when i started the climb to the high pass (12,000 feet, exactly) <<edit: i'm pretty sure now that the map was wrong, the elevation was probably closer to 10,500 >>, i really, really wanted to take a bus, as i was already starting to cramp and had some strange and sharp pains in my left knee/shin. however, i could not get a bus to stop on the pass, and couldn't make myself turn around, so i kept going, very slowly, one switchback at a time. but, in the end, i recieved the distinct satisfaction of climbing into the clouds and very cool air on my own power -- by the time i reached the top i had climbed over 7000 feet for the day.
the people in these guatemalan highlands are, by and large, of mayan descent. their dress, language, and way of life has remained intact for the better part of 1500 years. in other words, they have Real Culture, something which i feel i've missed out on. but that is another rant
anyway, my immediate goal is to learn some spanish. honestly, i haven't been too impressed with myself so far, possibly because i came here with the goal of getting close to the people, hoping for some sort of useful knowledge or experience to come from it. but language is the first obvious barrier, and i'm going to try and fix that
right now i'm in quetzaltenango (official name) a.k.a xela/xelaju (mayan name), which, to say the least, is my kind of city. even though there is a small mass of gringos here, their effect is nothing like antigua. this is, effectively, a typical, if somewhat large, guatemalan city, which happens to be hospitible to foreigners. it should be an excellent place to learn spanish, as very little english is spoken. a spanish course here means 5 hours of private instruction (partly grammar and vocab, partly shooting the shit in spanish), 5 days a week, and living with a local family. the cost is about $110/week, which, all things considered, is dirt cheap. i'm going to start on monday, we'll see how it goes.

But in Latin, Jehova begins with an I...
yeeeeeeeeeeeeehaw! ok, so i'm a day behind where i thought i would be. yesterday i felt very blah, and simply couldn't get myself to leave. i came very close to hopping the bus today, but after a filling breakfast and two cups of good guatemalan cafe i worked up the nerve to get back on the bike. 101 km today, lots and lots of climbing, incredible scenery, chaotic mountain towns, and much satisfaction for a ride well done. about 75k into the ride there was a very steep pass which i had to walk up most of the way (my 11th gear, the diagonal ascent, wasn't enough), but i was rewarded with an incredible view of the volcanic lake here, and a breathtaking 2,500-3000 ft descent to finish the day. i'm still getting goosebumps thinking about it. to top it all off, i just ran into some good israeli (and american) company.
i am in san pedro la laguna on lago atitlan, where everything is cheap, the atmosphere is very relaxed, and the views are top notch. i'll probably stick around until saturday, get some sun and finish anna karenin. for now, life is very good.

The best decisions are made in a Guatemalan McDonalds, after a grande numero uno
after passing several uneventful days in antigua i decided today was the day to finally leave. yesterday, after my condition not improving, i walked over to the friendly neighborhood farmacia and swiftly, easily and perscription-free-ly picked up some antibacterials. my destination today was rabinal, on the road to coban, where i would check out some cool caves and waterfalls, etc, etc.
now that i think about it, this is a gross oversimplification of what happened the past week, but i'm sore and tired and only have 5 minutes. anyway, i left this morning without a guidebook (lost along the way), map, or complex-direction-grade spanish. i knew the beginning of the route, but upon arrival in the center of guatemala city (not part of the plan, but apparently part of the route) i sought sanctuary in a certain well-known american resturant establishment. i'm not sure whether it was the big mac in my stomach, the lack of low gears on my bicycle, the spaguetti confusion of guatemala city or my ambiguity towards my chosen route; i decided to take a 180 and spend one more night in antigua, where i am right now.
the revised plan is:
tonight -- 2 dinners, 4 beers, 8 hours sleep
tomorrow -- 1 bicycle, 1 me, a hilly 80km road to panajachel, and the last boat to san pedro la laguna
after -- onward to quetzeltenago, some spanish lessons, a 2-day trek up a 13,000 ft volcano, several dinners, several beers, etc, etc
sorry for the shoddy update. i make no apologies. i'm alive, pharmacologically cleansed, and late for dinner.

Dios Guia Me Camoine (god guides my truck, hopefully not off a cliff)
yes, as you may have heard, guatemalan drivers are typically, literally crazy. no margin is too small, no speed to fast, no blind corner blind enough to stop them from attempting a pass. theoretically i am done with the busses, unless i happen to find one on top of my back tire.
antigua is not guatemala. the weather is too nice, the people are too friendly, and there is far, far too much money and affluence, by their standards. the only hints of guatemala are the endimic mayans and shotguns. of course it is easy for me to enjoy this -- not the shotgun part -- but i think i'm going to pass it up for now. no self-respecting travelling cyclist (circus?) can allow themselves to take two weeks off after only two weeks cycling. I'm meeting a couple of brits for dinner in a bit, and maybe going to climb a nearby volcano tomorow. after that, it's back on the road. i'm a little weak, but itching to get back.
i've been here for almost four weeks now, and i think i've been sick for about three of them. maybe not, like, really sick, but certainly intestinally dysfunctional. last night/today was easily the worst i've felt, a clear reminder that travelling is not all highs. not by a long shot. but i have discovered that i enjoy being on the road.

today i find myself in antigua guatemala, the former capital and a very plesant colonial town, chock full of gringos, most of them here for good gringo company and/or the 100 or so language schools here.
yesterday i broke down and took a bus from poptun to guatemala city with someone i met in finca ixobel, the previously mentioned ex-hippie work/sleep/etc. farm just south of poptun. the farm was more like a chill-out/hang-out spot where the locals work on the farm and the tourists stay in comfortable beds and eat expensive ($6) buffet dinners. nothing special, but it was a good place to relax and meet some fellow travellers, nurse a sore achilles, and play some excellent ping-pong.
my primary reason for taking a bus was to avoid the commercial traffic from guatemala's sliver of atlantic coast to the capital, and judging from what i saw out the window, this turned out to be a good idea.
guatemala city is known as one of the dirtiest, seediest, smoggiest, and chaotic cities on the world, and i was not dissapointed.
(disclaimer: family may wish to skip the following paragraph)
jeff, who i was travelling with, suggested we check out the red light district, hoping to check out the guatemalan mamacitas. all we could find were a rather large cluster of brothels which were, save for the bathrooms, surprisingly clean and friendly. our interaction with the guatemalan prostitutes was limited to sharing a beer and some conversation; this was a surprisingly worthwhile and interesting experience.
(resume)
i was planning on spending today looking for a good bike shop in guatemala city, but it being sunday none were open. although i had a vague desire to wallow in the disgusting but interesting city, my weak american lungs preferred to head for the clean air of antigua.
on the bus to antigua i was hounded by the owner of a language school (of course he was, um, dropping off his daughter to, um, visit her grandmother, um, yeah, whatever) who dragged the typically agreeable me to his school when the bus stopped. i'll take this oppertunity to mention that this was my first ride on the so-called guatemalan "chicken bus," the bus system that the locals use to get around. the name is rooted in a history of humans and chickens sharing seats on the busses, which are all old american school busses, dispelled from our rule-obsessed nation.
upon arrival at the school, i was offered 1-on-1 lessons 5 hours a day, five days a week, and 6 days stay with a family, room and board inclusive, for $125/week. which, when you work it out, is about 6.3 minutes of lecture at the UW. upon refusing this offer, i was immediatly kicked out of the building, and told not to come back without being given the chance to explain that i haven't decided to study spanish or stay in antigua. i'm thinking this over as i type. although i haven't done too good a job so far, one of my supposed goals for this trip was to get away from the tourist trail, and antigua is the base camp for said trail. i'm gonna hang out for a day or two, read some tolstoy, and see what happens. i'm anxious to get back on the bicycle, the roads around here look excellent and the scenery is spectacular.
besides all that, back to watching the superbowl. i'll get back to your emails and maybe put up another post tomorrow.

first off, apologies to those who didn't make it on my email list. i would have considered you the Lucky Ones, but apparently not everyone agrees. if you were slick like me you would have set up an autoresponding email that said something like "strangely enough, after giving this school XXX dollars they couldn't afford to pay the rent on my email address, so they sold it to the highest bidder. you can now reach me at YYY. Darien Little of the class of 2006 does not want your Love Letters." but, since you're not as much of a computer geek as i am/was/maybe will be (unless you are bill stube, (by the way, i've been wearing your gym shorts every day, thanks)), so long as you forgive you are forgiven.
not surprisingly i've been moderately sick for almost the entire trip, but sunday i ate a bad banana or three which cost me 16 hours of sleep, as well as an extra day here in touristy flores. which, at about $11/day, isn't all that bad, moneywise.
yesterday was mostly a waste of a day, which is a good thing. i had a nice juicy post ready, but the daily power outage occured at the wrong time.
today i finally visited the tikal ruins, my first official visit to a Tourist Attraction, and my first time riding the Bus this trip. like most attractions, tikal is a lot of hype and a little delivery. i took a 5am bus which unfortunatley arrived 20 minutes too late to watch the sunrise from the top of temple 4. i felt much less safe on the rich gringo bus in a poor country than as a lone unshaven cyclist with rotten bananas and empty bottles in the basket in a poor coutry. less comfortable as well.
the ruins are impressive, but not exactly in a worth-a-day-trip sort of way. of course i stayed for 11 hours, until the last bus left, but a good portion of the day was spent napping in the shade and hanging out with people i met in cancun.
i'd like to buy some native arts/crafts/linens/etc. here -- they're cheap and beautiful -- but postage is almost prohibitavely expensive. the book quotes $115 for 12 pounds, which means it's probably $130 now. $10 for the goods, $130 for postage. $3 for a hotel, $1.50 for dinner, $.80 for an hour of internet, $0.20 for 5 oranges, $130 for postage. el salvador (probable next country) is much cheaper, but my legs don't seem too keen on hauling much crap around.
all of you seem to enjoy mentioning (complaining about) the cold weather in the northern US, and, trust me, i thouroughly enjoy recieving your complaints. 3 weeks down here and i haven't even seen a drop of rain, much less the thermometer dropping below 65.
two weeks ago today i started cycling, which means i should be in better shape now than i was two weeks ago. so tomorrow i should be going at least twice as fast as i did last thursday.
tomorrow i'm heading down to poptun, possibly staying on some sort of work/study/eat/sleep ex-hippie tourist farm, which sounds interesting, if not entirely guatemalan.
finally, as if i didn't remember (and i almost didn't), many of you reminded me that i was born 23 years ago today, albeit several parallels to the north. if anything, birthdays are always a reminder that Girls keep better calendars than Boys. thanks for the emails, of course i appreciate them. hopefully i won't get a speeding ticket and 3am prepress errors (unlikely) this year. guatemalan postage stamps will be gladly accepted as gifts.
if you're bored and reading this (inside the dept. of redundency dept.), check out this guy's site: http://www3.utsidan.se/corax-e/ . after tens of thousands of words describing his travels through china, his description of travelling throgh central america was "i travelled through central america."

greetings from the land of bling-bling, but not really
as i said before, i've been anxious to get to guatemala. caye caulker was ok, but i simply wasn't in the mood for it. while urinating in a resturant bathroom, the bartender asked me if i dive (diving is one main attraction to the island). i told him i didn't dive, so then he told me that i must get stoned. i informed him that this wasn?t entirely true, although if he was offering either for free my ears were open. so that pretty much sums up my experience on caye caulker, although i did have an interesting chat with an old resturant-owner who lived on the island long before the tourists showed up, and watched a local football game. belize is the official country of the '89-'91 toyota camry -- like the one i used to drive. belize is also the land of junked 'parts cars' parked on the street, although none of them are camrys.
friday morning i woke up at 5:45 to take the 6:30 boat to belize city. i arrived in the city at 7:30 and promptly started cycling, alone for the first time since cancun-playa del carmen. riding in the morning was, well, painful. my legs hurt, there was a headwind, the first 70k were all slightly uphill, the sky was grey and gloomy and i had my first flat tire (even worse, a slow leak). a morning of no smiles. around 70k i met a german guy, cycling in the other direction, who had been going since los angeles. after a brief 1-hour chat about nothing, he informed me that there was a fruit stand selling bananas (my staple food) only 2k up the road. so after an hour rest, 3 bananas, 1 orange, and 500ml of coke, the sun coming out and the wind stopping, i felt better. the last 65k were hilly, scenic, and hot. my determination to make it to the guatemala boarder paid off, and I was rewarded with a nice hotel room for $2.50. i spent almost 9 hours on the bike on friday.
to finish off the cycling drivel, yesterday was tough too. the first 17k of roads outside of melchor de menchos (the boarder town) were unpaved and in very poor shape -- it took almost 2.5 hours to ride. the remaining 65k were quite hilly; pretty similar to the roads in wisco, actually, but my legs held up and i made it here, to flores/santa elana.
the transition from belize to guatemala was striking and almost instantaneous. belize immigration is in a nice, clean building with friendly, english- and spanish-speaking staff who charge you $19 to leave the country. 15 feet past is guatemala immigration, where you shove your passport under a dark window get it back instantaneously with a stamp and some illegible scrawl (something i know a lot about). suddenly the roads are dusty and in bad shape and every third person has gold teeth, apparently a sign of wealth. guatemala is like the latin-american version of the old west, with horses, cows, guns and machetes everywhere. i was shot at yesterday, but fortunately it was only a 4 year old with a water gun. people are polite and friendly here, but there is a noticible seedy undercurrent, which is much to my liking. it seems like the the poorer the country, the friendlier the people and the more numerous the hijackings. i actually feel safer on a bicycle that i would on a tourist van or bus. i'm having this recurring vision of being greeted warmly by a gang about to rob a tourist bus. because, after all, i'm a cyclist, not a tourist (participating in cyclism?).
today is a rest day. a couple of israelis i met in cancun are here, so we're going to hang out and swim/canoe in the lake here today. tomorrow we?re taking a 5am bus to Tikal, supposedly the most impressive mayan ruins site. it better be impressive, because i dropped a whole $16 on a new camera for it.

the internet here (caye caulker, belize) is expensive, so this will be brief
bacalar in mexico was really cool. cheap hotel, cheap food (hot dogs with mayo, ketchup, onions, picante, cheese), a beautiful lake, friendly (usually) locals, and the few tourists that were there were very cool. A welshman gave me an extra coat he had, and a young american gave me some sunscreen and his guide book. I'm not sure how big the town was, but there was a real sense of community there, something I have never really known. i slept outside in a hammock saturday night.
Picked up some new bike parts on the way to Belize, new handlebars and a basket for the front of the bike, a nice improvement. We only did 40km on monday, but made up for it with a brisk ride of 135km yesterday.
Belize is a very cool country. only 250,000 people, a very vibrant mix. People of carribean, mexican, latin american, mayan, british, german and chinese descent all living within the same city. English is the official language, but english and spanish are spoken everywhere. People are very friendly -- when we took breaks from cycling people driving by would stop to say hi and tell us how much longer to belize city.
I ordered a hamburger from a chinese resturant in corozal (in belize, near the boarder) and, to accompany it, two kinds of hot sauce (one in a mustard container), but no ketchup or mustard. a picante burger. and fried rice.
caye (pronounced "key) caulker is a very relaxing place, with cheap hotels and outrageously priced food. lots of gringo tourists here, which, for the time being, i'm trying to get away from. maybe i'll slip into a groove here, but my stay may be short. again, i'm anxious to get to guatemala, and to start cycling by myself.
armchair philosophy is suspended until the internet is cheap again.

It's amazing how easily one rest day becomes two
101km on thursday, 115 on friday, and my ass is really sore. But my legs feel good, and my knees are intact, a good sign.
Thursday night I got a taste of a more authentic mexican city (felipe carrillo puerto), one that is almost always skipped by tourists. Maybe this is too obvious to state, but this is possibly the best reason to travel by bicycle -- you meet more local people when you get off the tourist trail.
Friday night we wound up in a townie bar (in Bacalar, where I am now) where the locals insisted on buying us drinks -- actually they didn't ask -- in exchange for english lessons and good gringo company. Another reason to travel by bicycle, free alcohol.
The weather here in Bacalar is almost perfect. Being about 20 miles inland, the sometimes chilly costal winds diminish to a light breeze, right now it is 79 degrees, sunny, with moderate humidity (type "chetumal" into weather.com for full details).
Tomorrow we will head to belize stopping in Orange Walk about 30km south of the boarder. We will hit Belize city on tuesday, then probably take a boat out to one of the islands off the coast (caye caulker). From then it's foggy. We will probably cycle to the belize-guatemala boarder together, but I'm probably going to catch a bus in northern guatemala, as the distances may be a little too far between towns to cycle without camping gear. From there I'll probably be cycling on my own, and I'm looking forward to it.
Monday and tuesday nights I slept in the top bunk of a dorm bed, wednesday in a rope-suspended bed outside on the beach, thursday on a hammoc strung across a hotel room and friday on a matress on the floor.
This week I was eating 4500-5000 calories a day. We buy water 18 litres (5 gallons) at a time, and it doesn't last much more than a day.
My spanish has been upgraded to one notch above survival-grade. FYI, most of the learning takes place at some sort of bar.
Anyway, that's all I can type for now. One day I will get used to these keyboards. Be like me, stay warm and safe. Adios.

Today I cycled with Gunnar and Oskar (the norwegians) from Playa to Tulum, about 75km total. Our average speed was almost 28 km/hr (about 17.5 mph). Fast.
I'm anxious to get out of mexico. It's somewhat expensive, and there are too many tourists.
I will probably be travelling with G and O through Belize and part of Guatemala, about a week or so.
In two days we should be in Chetumal, on the boarder of Belize and Mexico.

Thanks for all of your emails, it feels good to be in touch with friends and home. I'll get back to you when i take a rest day.

Well, I´m here, and, for the moment, I can actually tell you where here is. Playa del Carmen is in the northwest corner of the Yucatan, with the larger hotels in Cancun still visible.
Apologies for the mass email, although I know at least half of you have some vague interest in knowing that I´m still alive and kicking. Let´s make that alive and cycling.
Upon arriving in cancun i went directly to Isla Mujeres, off the coast near Cancun, and spent 5 warm, relaxing days. I´ve already met more people than I can count. The day after I arrived my interest in using bicycle instead of bus to get around was piqued by a couple of very enthuastic and friendly Norwegians who have spent the past 6 months and 7000km on their bicycles. So yesterday afternoon I bought a bicycle (new, cheap) and a few necessary supplies and cycled from Cancun to Playa, about 75 km. As crazy as it sounds the ride was a breeze (and helped by one coming out of the northeast). Tomorrow I will leave for Tulum about 60km to the south. Cycling is a well-accepted form of transportation in this area of the world, and motorists are alert and courteous.
My plans at this point are vague, although over the next several weeks I will travel from mexico to belize to guatemala, possibly spending several weeks in Antigua or San Pedro on Lago de Atitlan.
Being the new age traveller that I am, I set up a weblog which will be updated periodically at http://dlittle.blogspot.com . Since I´m not going to send another email like this, the blog is the line to my world for the time being.
I do not know when and where I will have internet access, so if you send me an email and I do not respond, you are required to assume that I am holed up in a remote village without access. Or I am simply having too good of a time to sit behind a sticky keyboard in a hot room on a very slow connection just to find that my only email is a cell phone bill (which, by the way, does not work).
So that´s that. I´m warm, safe, and happy to be on the road. Adventures are impossible to plan, but I think some of the ingredients are there for me. Keep in touch, I want to know how all of you are doing. Me, I´m going to make a large pot of spagetti, have a few beers, get some rest, and tomorrow cruise down to the next hostel.


David