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Planning began around tax time when we both realised we had the money and the impetus to travel overseas for the summer break. We had both loved the idea of cycle touring, but with neither of us having done it, we knew we would be up for an adventure. We talked about destinations, and we both desperately wanted to go to Europe but with the time of year, it was going to be to cold, with very short days. After some discussion we eventually settled on Mexico and I started learning some Spanish!
With the destination settled, we had to get new bikes (exciting). I opted for the Surley Long Haul Trucker (bought from Cheeky Transport) and Laura for the Gazelle Fuente Light (bought from Omafiets). Both of these shops were excellent and if you are considering getting into cycle touring, you should consider paying them both a visit.
Now that we each had a new bike, it was time to give them a trial run before we jetted off half way across the world, and Boree Log weekend presented us with a good opportunity. This semester, Boree Log was being held at Barrington Tops, so we resolved to ride from Dungong to the camp ground. Google maps told us it would be about 65 km, but by the time we got lost twice (once because I rode rode away and missed the turn by a kilometer or so, and another when we just got thoroughly confused by the un-labeled country roads) it ended up being closer to 85 km. This unexpected distance, coupled with 50-60 km/h head winds, above 40 degree temperatures and a bush fire made for a pretty rough introduction to cycle touring. As I write this now at the end of our tour, that was still the hardest day of riding we have ever done.
With our painful virgin tour out of the way, our next time fully loaded in the saddle would be Mexico, and that left us with a slight feeling of dread. The time eventually came though and we packed our bags, spent a good 3 hours disassembling our bikes to get them in the cardboard boxes - we thought we had done a pretty good job of the packing as well. The next day Niels took us to the airport (thanks Niels) and we jumped on a plane headed for Mexico City. We spent a day looking around there, but we were keen to get to our start point, so we quickly booked a bus ticket to San Cristobal de la Casas.
We got off the 15 hour bus and painfully applied our spanglish to the task of catching a taxi to our hostel. We finally convinced a taxi driver to take us and our bike boxes and we were at Paco's place in no time. The next morning we woke up and started the task of re-assembling our bikes. After half an hour of tinkering, Laura turns to me, white as a sheet and says "my rear derailuer bolt is missing" (this is the bolt that attaches the rear derailuer to the frame and is a very crucial piece). We blame the American TSA who has gone through our boxes during our transit through Dallas.
We took the bike to a number of shops and finally found one who said they could fix it. We left the bike there over the weekend and returned on Monday but they were still unable to find the correct part. We asked them to keep looking but we took the bike and started going to some other bike shops ourselves. Our friendly hostel owner, Paco, suggested a backyard bike workshop nearby. Went we went to check it out we found a tiny little corner shop front with one young Mexican guy and mountain of spare parts. We managed to convey the problem with the bike and he promptly started foraging through his draw of spare bolts. To our delight and relief, he managed to find a bolt that fit, and did the job well enough that it would suit as a temporary fix. We got in contact with Chris Moore at Omafiets and he graciously agreed to send the required part to a hostel that we would arrive at a week later to spend Christmas.
Now that Oma had had her hip replacement, we were ready to go and we set off the next morning. We enjoyed our 4 days in San Cristobal, it was a beautiful place, but we were chomping at the bit to get on the road. Our first day in the saddle took us 96km through the mountains to Occosingo. It was a spectacular stretch of road winding through indigenous communities and deep, green valleys. The local children were always excited to see a couple of white people passing through, and would chase us down the road screaming "Gringos! Gringos!". The occasional dog would also chase us down the road and I was happy to have had my rabies vaccination.
We spent two nights in Occosingo, using the intermediate day to visit and explore the nearby ruins of Tonina. They were our fist (of many) Mayan ruins, and while it was not as well excavated and restored as some of the other more well known Mayan sites, we were still suitably impressed.
The next day we jumped back in the saddle and started making our way toward Palenque, about 120km further on. Between Ocosingo and Palenque, however, were two excellent waterfalls, Agua Azul, which is well known in kayaking circles, and Misol Ha, so we decided to spend a couple of days camping at them.
The only road leading in and out of Agua Azul was very steep and on the day we left, we found that entrance to the reserve was lined by about 100 Zapatista's, a local geo-political group. Unnervingly, they were dressed in mismatched camo' gear and balaclavas and were heavily armed with assault rifles and machetes. It was a very weird experience and we could not ride up the hill fast enough with all of them staring at us. We found out later in Palenque that they started demanding money from tourist busses entering the waterfalls and we were thankful that they didn't approach us. The rest of that day we visited Misol Ha and finished the 70 km we had left between Aqua Azul and Palenque.
Reaching Palenque signalled the end of our first leg and a time for us to gorge ourselves over Christmas lunch. There, we met up with Laura's sister and made merry with some other travellers. This merry making included the purchase and detonation of several fireworks, which was very exciting indeed. We didn't really have any route plans heading beyond Palenque, and when we looked at google maps and the Lonely Planet, we found that the next 400km was described as low lying un-inhabited and un-inhabitable jungle, so we decided to dismantle the bikes and take an overnight bus to Campeche.
We arrived in Campeche at 2:30am and rode to our hostel to get some short, but much needed sleep. Campeche was a lovely city. It was an old walled city and the central area had been fantastically restored and rejuvenated. Every building was painted a different pastel colour which was very striking. We spent a day riding around the city and along the Gulf coast before we set out the next day en-route to Cellestun about 180km away. We took two days to ride there, stopping in a small town called Becal for the night. En-route to Becal, we had stopped for a short drink break and just as we started setting of again, two other cycle tourists peddled up behind us and we stopped to have a chat in the middle of the turing lane on the interstate highways. They introduced themselves as the Philtrons.
The Philtrons were married and instead of taking one of each others names, they combined both of their names to make a new one - to this day, we still don’t know what the root names were, but it allowed for hours of speculation as we made our way across the Yucatan. After chatting for a while we found out that they had ridden 7000 miles all the way from Anchorage, Alaska and were en-route to Argentina - a true Pan American adventure. We exchanged details and they told us they were staying in Merida for a couple of days over new years and invited us for dinner some time, which we graciously accepted. We parted ways with the Philtrons and made our way to Becal where we found a hotel for the night.
Our poor grasp of the Spanish language loaned itself to some interesting situations, but always the most fun was trying to find accommodation for the night. We found a nice little hotel in Becal and managed to check in with the help of one of the nicest hotel owners we met on the trip. He spoke no english, us, no Spanish, but when we indicated to him that we were heading back into town to get dinner, he looked at the sky (looked like rain) and offered to order us a delivered pizza! We didn’t accept because we didn’t want to impose, but after the food we ate wasn’t great, and it poured rain on us, we regretted not ordering that pizza. Biggest regret of the trip…
After leaving Becal, we got our first taste of the long, flat, straight roads that the Yucatan has to offer. These roads would stretch all the way to the horizon (in both directions) and would be lined by thick, low lying, impenetrable jungle that offered little to no shade. These days were long, boring and brutal on the bum and would come to define the remainder of our ride across the Yucatan Peninsula. It was at this point that we started missing the mountains. After two days of riding, however, we made it to Celestun and a well earned swim in the Gulf of Mexico.
We spent two days in Celestun and took the opportunity to go and check out a couple of the local Flamingo colonies and drink a few margaritas on the beach before we set off again to spend New Years Eve having dinner with the Philtrons. It was nice evening that ended early so we went back to the hostel and found a raging party led by some Norwegians, so we knew we were in for a good night!
After a few days in Merida recharging the batteries and visiting the sites, we set off again eastward bound toward Modal and Izumal. On the way out of town, however, we came across “Family Day” where they close off the main road in town to cars and people ride along it on their bikes. It was AWESOME. So many people, so many bikes. Even some crazy custom bikes which were very cool indeed. Once we had seen enough we headed out of town, but the late start meant that we were riding in the hot part of the day. We eventually found some shade under an overpass which had been inhabited by a swarm of bees. Seriously these bees were, like, living in the wall. Bees were coming and going out of what looked like drain pipes in the side of the walls. I was fascinated, Laura was not. I moved in for a closer look and after I snapped a few photos, the bees turned on me and started swarming. I took a bee sting to the face as I legged it out of there, asking (screaming) Laura to remove the stinger. A few angry bees persisted and started chasing Laura so we got on our bikes and rode away. Laura was very angry at me because we didn’t get much time to rest in the only shade of the day. It was quite a funny experience.
Our lack of a good rest in the shade lead to Laura becoming a bit touched by the sun, so we called it a day and found a place to stay in Modal. The next day we set out to Izumal and we were greeted by a very pleasant city that had been painted completely yellow. It was very cool. The town was built around an old ministry that had a commanding view over the city once you got into the bell tower. We found a hotel that was seemingly run by a 10 year old boy before heading out for 24 peso ($2) tortas in the town centre - they were delicious
The next day we head out for Chitchen-itza via a cool cenote which we could camp at for the night. We got to the cenote, paid the 50 peso entrance fee and asked if we could camp the night. The guy pointed to a clearing over yonder and we set up camp. Once we were set up, we asked him where the cenote was and pointed to a stairwell behind him in the ticket shack. We started walking down into the dark at the bottom of the stairs when the guy remembered to turn on the lights which lit up large chamber filled with crystal clear water. We waded into the cool water and swam around in the complete silence, broken only by the occasional echoing drip of water deeper into the cave system - oh, and the water pump that turned on just before we decided to get out.
The next morning we set off and found a place to camp just outside Chitchen-Itza. We were told to get there early to avoid the crowds, so we woke up and got the gates just as they opened at 8am. We spent 2 hours exploring the ruins and left just as the majority of the tour busses started to arrive. We made our way toward Vallidolid where we had a Hostel booked for the next two nights.
After our stay in Vallidolid, we started making our way toward Tulum and Caribbean coast. On the way, we planned to camp in one of the national parks for a night before we made it to Tulum. On the road, we met another set of cycle tourists who were also heading for Tulum, so we took the opportunity to form a peloton and exchange experiences. They were a couple from Colorado so we took the opportunity to ask them about their new Marijuana laws. During our conversations, we realised that we had probably missed the turn off to the national park, so we decided to ditch it and just made our way to Tulum where we parted ways with our new friends.
Once we got to Tulum were were greeted by the full force of the American holiday season and were unable to find a place to stay. For the entirety of the trip so far, we had never booked anything ahead (Save for Christmas and New Years) so we were completely un-prepared. After much riding around in the dark, we eventually found a place with room to stay. It was a pretty shitty place so the next morning we packed up and found somewhere else, we eventually found an AWESOME campsite on the beach under some shady trees which lead to us staying in Tulum for a few days longer than we planned. We visited a some of the surrounding cenotes and the famous ruins, before heading north to Cozumel.
Cozumel was great. There was a spectacular coast line on the eastern side of the island, which took in when we spent a day circumventing the island on our bikes. The next day we booked into a introductory scuba diving tour on the one of the island shore reefs which was fantastic. We were now nearing the end of our holiday and Laura and I’s 1 year anniversary, so we booked into a beach side bungalow north of Cozumal where we planned to stay for a night on our way to Cancun. The morning we were set to leave Cozumel, however, I woke up with an upset stomach. At first it thought it was just cramps and that I would be ok, but by the time we got on the ferry to take us back to the mainland I felt like I was going to chunder. Laura dug into her incredibly well stocked pharmacy (first aid kit) and pulled out some drug which is usually given to cancer patients on chemotherapy to reduce nausea. I managed to survive the boat ride and we jumped on our bikes and started heading north again. After 10 slow kilometres, I had to stop and hurled my guts up in the car park of a petrol station. After that I felt a lot better and Laura gave me some Gatorade to drink and then we set off again. It wasn’t much longer before I started feeling quite sick again and we had to stop in some shade where I had a lie down. After a little while I threw up again, which had now been coloured blue thanks to the Gatorade. At this point I was feeling pretty bad, but we hopped back on the bikes. A short way down the road again (I think maybe 20-25km from the ferry terminal) we had to stop for a third time and I completely passed out under the shade of a palm tree.
After being a sleep for quite a while, and with a fever well and truly set in, Laura made the decision to call a taxi to take us the rest of the 15km to our beach side bungalow. I spent the rest of the afternoon delirious with fever and tried to get some more sleep. It was great night…happy anniversary Laura, and thank you for taking care of me.
The next morning was I still wasn’t feeling great, but still felt like I could ride, so we saddled up and set off toward Isla Mujeres, just north of cancun where we would kill a couple of days before we flew out. I didn’t eat anything for 2 or 3 days after I was sick, and didn’t start eating properly again until a week after that, but Isla Mujeres was a pretty nice place. The hostel was right on the beach and had a very party vibe about it. We spent a few days snorkelling and overcoming sickness before we headed back across the ferry to our final hostel in Cancun.
Our final days in Cancun revolved around collecting bike boxes, dismantling bikes, and visiting The Surfin’ Burrito, famous for their delicious burritos (to this I can attest) and 1 litre margaritas. It was a worthwhile detour into the hotel zone. We caught a crazy taxi to the airport and thus ended our trip on a total of 1289km pedalled.
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